From: jtchew@csa3.lbl.gov (Ad absurdum per aspera)
Newsgroups: comp.edu.composition
Subject: So much CS, so little time
Date: 11 Dec 1992 15:30 PST
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA
Distribution: world
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A few newsreader timeout periods ago, someone (our moderator, as I 
recall) spoke of putting technical writing students through what
was essentially computer-science coursework in the design of word
processors, getting their feet wet in data structures and so forth.

At the time, I thought it was a bit excessive, but then I tried out
the grammar checker in Microsoft Word 5.0 for the Mac on a physics
report that I'm about to send to layout.  This was a long and 
frustrating experience for a number of reasons, not the least of
which was that the grammar checker isn't very good at grammar.

As is usually the case when bad things happen with good software,
that may be an oversimplification, but there are a lot of ways in
which the grammar checker (and some large though finite number of
other features) might have benefitted from design-stage input by 
an actual writer.  This input, of course, would be better directed
if the writer understood something about the innards of software 
(if only to know when something really was unfeasible and when the 
programmers were just copping an alibi :) in addition to grammar.

Here's an example.  I wrote:

     Experiments to test the feasibility of a beam-
     conditioning cavity are being planned for the 
     Accelerator Test Facility at Brookhaven National 
     Laboratory.

Word's grammar checker responded, "The word *feasibility* does not 
agree with *are.*  OR  Consider *is* instead of *are*."

I think I have an inkling (tonerling?) of what's going on.  The
grammar checker was groping for strict agreement of number, perhaps,
and would have been happier with "feasibilities."  But that would
have resulted in, at best, the kind of wrong-feeling sentence an
editor usually expects to see from foreign authors.  More to the
point, neither of the suggested corrections would result in a
grammatical sentence -- in fact, taken at face value, they indicate
that the program doesn't know a verb from an adjective.

There are a host of similar problems, which this newsgroup is not
wide enough to contain.  (Nor will I get into the spell checker's 
desire to replace "Tevatron" with "tavern.")  Perhaps a software-
savvy writer or rhetorician might have been able to insist upon
improvements and even suggest how they might be implemented.

I don't suggest that a minor in CS be a requirement for tech-writing
majors, but some of them certainly take that path.  Now:  how to
get them to infiltrate software companies and subvert the programmer-
dominated culture with the requirements of demanding, expert users?  :)

Then again, maybe it will take genuine artificial intelligence,
rather than the kind of limited, deterministic pattern-guessing we
do today (more crudely in some progrms than in others), to build a
satisfactory grammar checker for our complicated language.

Ideas?
--Joe
"Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"