Re: Allow spelling and grammar to understand the phrase "et. al."
Jay Freedman
> The verbiage "et. al.," meaning "and others" or "among others," is
> common use in academic literature. Word's spelling and grammar
> checker appears to have absolutely no recognition for this. "et.al."
> returns a spelling mistake, and "et. al." (the more appropriate way)
> returns two grammar errors, and also attempts to autocorrect the
> "al." to "Al."
>
> Appropriate usage would be to cite an author and his or her
> colleagues, such as "In a study by Briggs-Gowan, et. al. (1996), the
> authors...".
>
> When a citation enclosure with date does not appear, it is correct to
> include the comma immediately following the period which follows "al."
Hi Robert,
You'll solve more than half the problem by removing the incorrect period
after "et". The expression "et al." is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase
"et alii" meaning "and others"
(http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=et%20al.). Because "et" isn't
being abbreviated, it doesn't take a period.
The grammar checker does still complain about a period followed by a comma,
but you can easily ignore that. Maybe a future version will recognize
abbreviations as exceptions to that rule.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Suzanne S. Barnhill
al." (since "et" is a complete word, not an abbreviation). I do not get a
spelling error when typing "et al." Moreover, since "al." is one of Word's
built-in exceptions, I don't get an AutoCorrect action (capitalization)
after it. I would, however, expect to get an AutoCorrect after "et.," since
this is not one of the default exceptions (nor would it be a valid entry).
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
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"Robert Paveza" <rob...@paveza.net> wrote in message
news:3F03423B-B936-415F...@microsoft.com...
> The verbiage "et. al.," meaning "and others" or "among others," is common
use
> in academic literature. Word's spelling and grammar checker appears to
have
> absolutely no recognition for this. "et.al." returns a spelling mistake,
and
> "et. al." (the more appropriate way) returns two grammar errors, and also
> attempts to autocorrect the "al." to "Al."
>
> Appropriate usage would be to cite an author and his or her colleagues,
such
> as "In a study by Briggs-Gowan, et. al. (1996), the authors...".
>
> When a citation enclosure with date does not appear, it is correct to
> include the comma immediately following the period which follows "al."
>
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