Grammar checker can lead you far astray…
One day not long ago I was working on a new letter set. This one was for prospecting to tenants. I was writing about how house payments can now sometimes be less than rent payments for comparable housing.
In the call to action, I wrote an invitation to call, and then said “I’ll tell you what the market has been doing
and what you really can buy for less than you’re paying today.”
Word’s Grammar checker immediately chimed in to tell me I had made a mistake.
Instead of saying “you’re paying today” it wanted me to write “you is paying today.”
Ouch! Awful! Bad, bad grammar! You’d never write “is” after “you” unless your sentence was something like “You is a subject word, never an object word.” In other words, unless your sentence was defining the word “you.”
So what can you do if you aren’t sure about your grammar and you can’t trust the checker? Find a friend who IS sure and ask them to proof read your work. And of course, you could begin to study grammar. Before long you will be sure.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles @ freedigitalphotos.net
