Originally written April, 2013 for degree candidates in Yorkville University's Counselling Psychology Program.

Word flags grammar errors with green squiggly underlines, and spelling errors with red underlines. Depending on how you have configured Word's grammar and spelling options, your grammar and spelling errors may not be displayed on your screen, but they will show up on your professors’ screens. That's because professors configure Word to display errors in all of the documents we open and create so we can instantly spot errors in student papers, and so we can instantly find and correct our own errors when we are creating documents.

Many profs have commented that they are constantly appalled when they open a student paper and see their screen riddled with green squiggly and red underlines. They know that the student didn't bother to run a grammar and spelling check, or didn't bother fix the glaring errors. But after teaching at Yorkville for 8 years, I finally realized that students probably didn't know how to configure their grammar checkers in the first place, so their zillions of errors weren't being displayed on their screens. Most students' grammar, spelling, and writing skills are so poor that they can't catch their own errors.

For a master's thesis or dissertation to be accepted, your paper cannot contain any errors at all. This is a standard thesis requirement at all universities. Learning to eliminate all errors is especially important for Counselling Psychology majors, because they will be writing session notes and reports, which are legal medical records. Setting up the grammar checker and researching your errors as required to fix them will will help to protect your future patients from devastating problems caused by grammar errors.

When evaluating clients for inpatient treatment, and when making decisions about probation, parole, custody, and even the need for surgery, professionals such as psychiatrists, court officers, judges, and even physicians rely more heavily on notes and reports from a professional counsellor who has worked with the client over time and knows him or her well than from their own brief assessment. Is this patient merely hypochondriacal as it seems, or should he undergo exploratory surgery for a burst appendix? Counselling reports are constantly used to help make important decisions; our records can have life-and-death repercussions.

Thus, it is our professional duty to ensure that our notes reports are clear, concise, and are NEVER sent out until we have checked them for errors. So if you have not been using a professional editor or computerized grammar checker, the time to learn how to check and correct your documents has officially arrived.

To find Word's Grammar & Style checker, Google your version of Word, e.g.,

Word 2007 grammar checker

{Hint: for Word 2010, the Spelling and Grammar checker is on the Review tab).

Setting up the spelling and grammar checker is complex, and Word's help function (F1) is useless - the instructions are convoluted and nonsensical, written in incomprehensible cyberspeak. Soto learn how to configure and run the grammar and spelling checker, Google your version of word and find an explanation written for ordinary humans. E.g.:

"Word 2010" configure grammar spelling check

"Word 2010" set options grammar spelling check

To configure Word for Canadian spelling, start the spell checker (by clicking on it) and set the language to "English - Canada."

Next, click "Options" (located near the bottom of the spell check page - again, this assumes that you already started spell checking your doc). Now down a shot of Vodka to prepare for the rest of what must be the most convoluted process that the computer geek who designed this !@#$ program could possibly dream up to torture the world. Ready? (If not, try another shot of Vodka.)

Near the bottom of the Options page, find and click on the "Settings" button. Yet another box will open up. (You're only 1/4 of the way home, so take another shot of Vodka as needed to steady your nerves.)

Click on "Proofing" and tell what types of spelling errors Word should look for, such as as repeated words words.

Under "When correcting grammar and spelling in Word," under "Writing Style," select "Grammar & Style," then click on "Settings." Set up the options under "Require" for Canadian spelling by selecting the check boxes:

"Comma required..." don't check

"Punctuation required..." outside

"Spaces required..." 1

Then...

Check ALL of the boxes down that endless list of Grammar items so that Word will catch all of your errors, and then all of the Style items EXCEPT "use of 1st person" (because Yorkville prefers the use of the 1st person).

Next, take another shot of vodka, and proceed to run the Spelling, Grammar & Style check. (Better make that a double.)

If Word claims there is a punctuation error in a sentence that looks absolutely perfect to you, it could be the spacing after the period - no spaces or two spaces instead of one, or no spaces or just one one space instead of two, depending on how you set up the grammar checker. So fix the spacing, have another shot of Vodka, and see if Word now approves of your sentence.

Word can be very helpful in guiding authors away from overly long sentences (which inevitably contain grammar errors), subject/verb agreement errors, noun/pronoun agreement errors (the solution in most cases is to make the noun plural), and the passive voice. Eliminating the passive voice both improves and shortens the text!

Passive: It was found by the authors that...
Active: The authors found that...

Passive: Children are expected by their parents to...
Active: Parents expect their children to...

When running a grammar and spell check, pour yourself a double shot of vodka, because you will have to decide whether each problem Word catches is in fact an error or is actually OK.

For example, if you initially configure Word to check for sentence fragments (incomplete sentences), Word will mark all of your headings as errors when you run a grammar check, because headings are sentence fragments. So when you run a grammar check, you must tell Word to ignore the sentence fragment rule each time it presents you with a heading.

Alternatively, you can accept one of Word's suggested corrections for a sentence fragment error; you can retype the text yourself in the little grammar checker box; or you can exit the grammar checker, retype the text, and then restart the grammar checker.

Word won't recognize many technical terms, so it will flag them as spelling errors time and again. You must tell Word which words are actually OK by adding them to your dictionary.

Running the grammar checker may be VERY hard if you aren't a grammar expert, because when Word flags a "noun/pronoun agreement error," you may have to Google that phrase to find out what it is so you can figure out how to fix it. The good news is that you will learn a lot of grammar as required to improve your writing.

When you finish, pat yourself on the back, take a final shot of Vodka, and pencil an AA meeting into your calendar.