Spelling/Grammar Tools

JayAgostino

JayAgostino

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Joined
Jul 12, 2022
Posts
208
At my workplace, I use Microsoft Editor to check for any grammatical errors in my documents. It points out many things that I would've never noticed. I've also heard about Grammarly, but it's not something that I've personally used before.
 
JayAgostino said:
At my workplace, I use Microsoft Editor to check for any grammatical errors in my documents. It points out many things that I would've never noticed. I've also heard about Grammarly, but it's not something that I've personally used before.
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I can;t use anything that sends what you type to their servers. I think grammarly does that? I may be wrong. I don;t know anything about Microsoft editor.
 
Cmaier said:
I can;t use anything that sends what you type to their servers. I think grammarly does that? I may be wrong. I don;t know anything about Microsoft editor.
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Yeah, that's a fair point. I'd definitely trust Microsoft over Grammarly. The latter doesn't really have a major company behind it.
 
JayAgostino said:
Yeah, that's a fair point. I'd definitely trust Microsoft over Grammarly. The latter doesn't really have a major company behind it.
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Even if I trusted grammarly I couldn’t use it if it works by sending the text to its servers. If you’ve got a trade secret, or you have an attorney work product document or an attorney-client privileged document, sharing it willingly with a third party can be a pretty good way to lose the right to call it a trade secret or to lose the legal privilege. There are similar issues with things like cloud storage or web-based email. You can sometimes solve the problem with iron clad contracts that require special precautions, etc., but in general it’s better to stick with self-hosted solutions and avoid the hassle.
 
JayAgostino said:
How are office suites like Google Workspace so successful then?
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I don’t think they’re used much by anyone who has these issues (lawfirms, Hightech R&D companies, etc.). Google workspace is huge in education, and among people and organizations who don’t want to pay for Microsoft, but I think a lot its popularity has to do with price. Even medical professionals have to be careful - in order to be HIPAA compliant they need to sign a BAA. There are also data privacy issues with some of these services - if you type in someone’s name and address into a document in Germany, and that gets sent to a server in the U.S., are you violating european data privacy laws? I am not a European lawyer, so I don’t know the answer, but it’s something that I’d be careful about.
 
Cmaier said:
I don’t think they’re used much by anyone who has these issues (lawfirms, Hightech R&D companies, etc.). Google workspace is huge in education, and among people and organizations who don’t want to pay for Microsoft, but I think a lot its popularity has to do with price. Even medical professionals have to be careful - in order to be HIPAA compliant they need to sign a BAA. There are also data privacy issues with some of these services - if you type in someone’s name and address into a document in Germany, and that gets sent to a server in the U.S., are you violating european data privacy laws? I am not a European lawyer, so I don’t know the answer, but it’s something that I’d be careful about.
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Home Depot and Costco appear to use Google Workspace.
www.appsruntheworld.com

List of Google Workspace (Formerly Google G-Suite) Customers

Verified list of companies using Google Workspace (Formerly Google G-Suite) for Collaboration, along with their revenues, number of employees, the industry they work in and location.
www.appsruntheworld.com www.appsruntheworld.com
 
JayAgostino said:
Home Depot and Costco appear to use Google Workspace.
www.appsruntheworld.com

List of Google Workspace (Formerly Google G-Suite) Customers

Verified list of companies using Google Workspace (Formerly Google G-Suite) for Collaboration, along with their revenues, number of employees, the industry they work in and location.
www.appsruntheworld.com www.appsruntheworld.com
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Sure. I’m sure lots of big companies do. But neither Home Depot nor Costco falls into the categories I listed. To the extent they have R&D trade secrets or in-house legal departments, I’m sure those employees would avoid google workspace for anything that’s meant to be secret or privileged.
 
Cmaier said:
Sure. I’m sure lots of big companies do. But neither Home Depot nor Costco falls into the categories I listed. To the extent they have R&D trade secrets or in-house legal departments, I’m sure those employees would avoid google workspace for anything that’s meant to be secret or privileged.
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BTW, Costco also uses MS products, so I’m not sure what to make of these announcements.
 
Cmaier said:
I’m sure those employees would avoid google workspace for anything that’s meant to be secret or privileged.
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Even Google (which obviously uses its own office suite)?
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JayAgostino said:
Even Google (which obviously uses its own office suite)?
View attachment 16152
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I think you’re confused. How would google be waiving attorney work product privilege by using its own servers? How would they render information not a trade secret by using their own servers?

You lose privilege if you intentionally share things with ANOTHER party (subject to various exceptions). You fail to take steps necessary to maintain trade secrets when you allow ANOTHER party to access them (subject to various exceptions).

Using your own service doesn’t cause these issues (assuming things are properly secured, etc. etc.)
 
Not to mention there is a big difference between using it for internal work vs legal requirements. And for some legal requirements, using a service like G Suite or Sharepoint can make some compliance easier than if you did it yourself.

But a lot of what Cmaier mentions is more strict than the sort of compliance things I’m thinking of.
 
Nycturne said:
Not to mention there is a big difference between using it for internal work vs legal requirements. And for some legal requirements, using a service like G Suite or Sharepoint can make some compliance easier than if you did it yourself.

But a lot of what Cmaier mentions is more strict than the sort of compliance things I’m thinking of.
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Yeah, for things like retention requirements, etc., these cloud services can be beneficial, in that they may be more easily achieved than if you try to do it yourself. But in a bunch of other situations the law doesn’t care about your convenience :-)
 
A lot of former classmates relied heavily on Grammerly to get through grad school. I’ve never tried it. MS drives me crazy with its underlining things that it feels need to be changed. Fortunately, my grasp on the English language, spelling, and grammar is pretty good.
 
Alli said:
A lot of former classmates relied heavily on Grammerly to get through grad school. I’ve never tried it. MS drives me crazy with its underlining things that it feels need to be changed. Fortunately, my grasp on the English language, spelling, and grammar is pretty good.
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It has always frustrated me as well, if I want to use a comma where a semicolon should go I don't need some AI software package going all grammar nazi on me.
 
My grammar tool is the voice of my 5th-grade English teacher, Ms. Dallman. She never let anything slide. I recall some examples in particular. If one turned in a paper that confused “your” with “you’re” or “there” with “their“ or “they’re” she would return the paper and require it to be fixed before she would even grade it. I believe “too,” “to,” and “two” were part of this rule as well.

I still make mistakes anyway, but it has been a long time since the 5th grade.
 
SuperMatt said:
My grammar tool is the voice of my 5th-grade English teacher, Ms. Dallman. She never let anything slide. I recall some examples in particular. If one turned in a paper that confused “your” with “you’re” or “there” with “their“ or “they’re” she would return the paper and require it to be fixed before she would even grade it. I believe “too,” “to,” and “two” were part of this rule as well.

I still make mistakes anyway, but it has been a long time since the 5th grade.
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We have an entire proofreading department. I rarely send them anything because what comes back is always a bunch of style suggestions that I reject. Nobody’s ever found a grammar error in my writing, at least. Once or twice there’s been a typo that spell-checking couldn’t catch.
 
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