Microsoft Word makes too many mistakes with collective nouns because only a few are detected by the grammar and style checks. Only US English notices “Subject-verb agreement with collective nouns” with other dialects ignored for no obvious reason.
Many English words have a collective noun to describe a group pf those things. It’s not a ‘group of bees’ it’s a ‘swarm of bees’. A herd of cows, a mob of kangaroos etc.
Word should warn of a collective noun errors with a dotted underline but it rarely does and then only for Americans. Click on a mismatch to see a ‘Vocabulary’ warning “A different noun would be more descriptive and creative”.
That warning is too mild, it should read “Use the correct term to match the noun”
We wondered how many collective nouns Word checks for in its Grammar and Style checks. The answer is ‘not many’ and only in US English!
Only six collective nouns
Our test could only find six collective nouns recognized by Microsoft Word, there are probably more. We found three times that many missing a mention by Word, even quite commonly known ones like ‘pack of dogs’, ‘pride of lions’ or ‘fleet of ships’ aren’t recognized.
US English only
The collective noun checks only work in US English. Other English dialects don’t detect ANY collective nouns in our test list. English (Canada),English (UK) and English (Australia) doesn’t suggest even the common collective nouns, like this.
Microsoft admits this in an FAQ but doesn’t explain why there’s a difference:
“Subject-verb agreement with collective nouns, where the verb is used in the plural form, are not flagged in U.K. English but are flagged in U.S. English”
Both the small number of collective nouns and the ‘US only’ limitation are strange and appear to be just for cost cutting. There’s obvious code to detect collective nouns so adding to the list should not be hard. Extending to other English dialects is a reasonable expectation.
But don’t hold your breath, unless it has the magic words “Copilot” or “AI” Microsoft isn’t interested these days.
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