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February 17, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: MS Word - Well-being vs. well being
Will Flohry writes about his frustrating experience using the grammar checker with Microsoft Word:
Microsoft Word won't give up! When I type in "well being," it tries to correct me with "well-being."
When I type in "well-being," it corrects me again with "well being," sending me through a perpetual cycle of clicking! Broken!
"Bill Gates is broken."
Umm, what does this have to do with the broken product at hand? Bill Gates may have founded Microsoft, but that doesn't mean he's responsible for flaws in the company's products, especially with the size of Microsoft nowadays.
That looks like an earlier version of Word, like Word 2000 or some mess like that. I have Word 2003 and I tried doing it...if I put "well being," it suggests I change it back to "well-being" but it won't go the other way. I guess it took them a version upgrade or two to fix it. Ha!
I read the other day that during his years as CEO, Bill has given away half of his fortune to charity! That's right, 50%!
Yeah, he's a dork, and an agressive business player. But, wow, giving away 50% of all your money.... I don't think Bill's broken.
Bill Gates is entitled to his money. He has earned it. I do not think you would want people to tell you to spend every last dime of your money. I think it is very noble of him to give away half. Just think of the billions of dallars he has given away freely.
I think my copy of Word 2003 is broken. I put in "well being", "well-being", and "wellbeing" and it didn't want to correct any. Hmmm.
It seems that Office 2003 will accept wellbeing, well-being and well being, they are all correct now. I don't know which is but if MS wants to accept all of them who are we to argue with M$. Not broken.
Gates + MS =broken. the dictionary seems to just be a minor flaw, but the OSs are FULL of 'features' etc that inhibit productivity.
try Linux+OpenOffice.Org 2 suite.
on the donation thing... sure he's giving away 50%, but he got it from you in the first place. Why not reduce retail prices and allow you to donate at your discretion?
Broken- word has alot of functions that are broken- In spell check if you're not careful it will correct your document into making very little sense by replacing words and automatically 'correcting' things that are not incorrect; or correcting them into wrong words making it very difficult to make things correct- MS is broken
smartypants: spellcheck is not a proofreader. It's just to make proofreading easier, not to do it for you.
My favorite part of Word's spellcheck (that I may have posted before, please forgive the repeat post) is that it will highlight words that any sensible person would assume is a proper noun, and therefore is not a misspelled word.
If the word is not at the beginning of the sentence and starts with a capital letter, then there's a slight chance it won't be in the dictionary. And I don't care that I can add it to my dictionary. It's an easy enough fix on their side that it shouldn't inconvenience me. Plus, the dictionary is stored locally, so when I open the document on another computer, those words are wrong again.
Plus a lot of Word's auto-formatting crap annoys me, so usually I type up what I need in Notepad or some other plain text editor, then copy-paste it into Word.
Bill Gates and all super rich people should give away money. It's no different than Joe Average giving a few bucks to a fave charity. It's all about proportion..give what you can. Certainly doesn't make the guy a hero.
sorry to wander from the topic thread
I think the "add to dictionary" for names is great. In my line of work, I have to type letters to lots of unusual names and I can add one to the dictionary and make sure I don't mispell it again. I would rather it make me double check than send something with a misspelled name.
I have a comment to make about Bill Gates and his money...So listen up then do some research on your own...What you find out about Him and several other very wealthy people might make you think twice about defending them. Do you know how much Bill Gates pays in taxes...Not as much as you would think considering what he makes. Oh and his income isn't taxed like normal everyday people either. Most very wealthy people use a common loophole in the tax system by paying themselves very little in real money, most of their pay is in stocks and funds that are non-taxable...and they only pay tax on a small percentage of their actual pay not including the stocks, options, and certain other funds...the mid income people foot the bill so the rich get richer and pay less.
Look it up, i did a research paper coveriing all this about 6 months ago.. very interesting learning exactly how our tax system works.
Yea I had this happen when i was wrighting a report it was annoyimg!!!P.S. my report got 5% taken off because I put it well-being
Randall, you gotta look at something here though... he gets taxed on every dollar that goes through an account, since stock earnigs cant go directly into possessions, they first become currency in the bank, when the money hits the bank it hits the system. So the correct way to see this is that "he is taxed on every dollar he has available to spend".
If he sold his stocks and was paid out, he would be taxed on the massive payout of his.
Doesn't anyone realize that you can add words to the dictionary? This guy or someone on his computer probably added it once, and that's why it's there.
You guys are crazy if you actually are defending Bill Gates... May I note he Is responsable for the company's error... Hello! He's the top guy, the owner... Sure he's responsable!!!
As a Mac user, I'm hardly one to default towards defending Bill Gates. However, Bill Gates' charitable work and donations are incredible. I may detest the man's software product, but he cannot be faulted for where he places his money. He deserves the highest of commendations for same.
I found in word if you type in, "Hoididily Doididily Poididily Hoi!" and do the spellcheck thing it will say you are in twelfth grade...
Busterdragon, ye olde professor took off 5 points for lack of a hyphen. Tell him/her if we all followed the rules of grammar we'd still be talking like Shakespeare. Things change. Off with his/her head for not using the Queen's English!
I checked Open Office 1.1.4 and the spellchecker thinks well being, well-being, and wellbeing are all correct. I am pretty sure I have not added any of those to my custom dictionary, but it is remotely possible.
Why is Bill Gates rich ? He hires the smart lawyers and buys up thousands of small companies. You are free to do this as well. With that many employees however, ethics can degrade because you can't watch everyone. MS should have been broken apart into smaller companies, but corporations run the government these days.
Jonathan
I was wondering if there is any water left in the well-being that it has been so hot and dry lately.
(well, being that I was typing too fast, I left-out a letter)
I wonder why people think money from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation comes from Bill and the wife? The PR for that is very not broken.
Ask anyone who works for MS - the dunning for contributions is worse than the United Way.
I'm just here to add more snarky Bill Gates comments...Okay, yeah, he donates a bunch of money, but my mom has met him, because she used to work for Microsoft (poor her) and she said he's the most odious, fowl, creep she's ever met in her entire life. He cusses out his employees if they don't get him coffee right away, and stuff like that. And he never bathes, and he's just really mean to people who didn't do anything wrong. I'd say he's broken.
Okay, Bill Gates did give lot to charity, and 50% certainly does seem generous, but not when compared to some other wealthy people in history. Carnegie had 360 billion after selling his steel mills, and gave 300 to acts of philanthropy (which is why you can't pass a single large building in pittsburgh now without seeing his name.)
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According to The Free Dictionary well-being is correct. Obviously someone at Microsoft was too lazy to pick up a dictionary. Tell your spell checker to accept well-being as correct.
Bill Gates is broken.
Posted by: Confused Shopper at February 17, 2006 12:13 AM