What follows is a very long quote, heck actually the whole article from the NY Times. This scares me more than you know.. ever read 1984? There is something wrong with leaving words out of a dictionary just because you don't like them. After all who's to say that it isn't a good word. I don't care for a word therefore you shouldn't use it. While I am sure there is a time and a place for certain words, and places where they don't belong. That decision should be made by the person using the word. Not categorically by a corporation.

This is really just one of my issues with Microsoft. Their grammar checker, seems innocuous enough..but it makes you write in their preferred style or it throws errors all over creation. You can't write fiction and have it turned on... you just can't it throws errors on almost every sentence.

Bowdlerized by Microsoft

October 23, 2001

By MARK GOLDBLATT



I was hard at the grindstone, crusading against hypocrisy
and chaos, armed with my laptop and Microsoft Word 2000.
I'd just typed: "Only a fool would believe." But "fool" did
not seem right. So I hit Shift-F7 to call up the thesaurus.
The lone synonym that Word provided was a verb: trick.

Where were the nouns? Where was idiot? I typed "idiot," hit
Shift-F7, and got the message "not found." Then I tried
goon. Again, not found. No luck with ninny, nincompoop or
numbskull. Or with nitwit, halfwit, dimwit or twit. Or
dullard, dunce or dolt.

"Jerk" called up yank, jolt, tug and twitch. "Dummy"
produced mannequin and copy - still not what I was looking
for.

So I phoned a friend who also uses Word and asked him to
test the phenomenon. He typed "fool," hit Shift-F7 - and
was provided a hearty menu of synonyms that included not
just idiot and ninny, but such exotics as dunderhead and
ignoramus. We realized the difference: He was working with
Word 97, not the Word 2000 I was using.

Concluding that I had found a glitch in the updated version
of Microsoft Word, I decided to inform Microsoft. I called
and asked to speak to Bill Gates, but was directed to a
cheerful person named Tim.

Tim transferred me to Kate, also cheerful, who promised to
look into the matter. Several days later, Kate sent me an
e-mail message with an explanation: "Microsoft's approach
regarding the spell checker dictionary and thesaurus is to
not suggest words that may have offensive uses or provide
offensive definitions for any words. The dictionary and
spell checker is updated with each release of Office to
ensure that the tools reflect current social and cultural
environments."

Was the world's foremost software designer worried about
offending dullards, dunces and dolts? Are there actually
people out there who identify themselves that way? Even if
so, you wouldn't think they'd represent Microsoft's target
demographic. More troubling, if an acute sensitivity to
people's feelings had winnowed down Word 2000's thesaurus
options, what changes loomed in the future? Word 2000
already changes "thier" to "their" as I type. Would the
next generation evaporate "moron" from the screen the
moment it appeared?

But maybe this isn't oversensitivity. Maybe it is what
postmodernists call erasure: since language creates
reality, if we erase every noun connoting below-average
intelligence, the world instantly becomes a smarter place.

Now, if only Microsoft would erase "hypocrisy" and "chaos"
. . . .


Mark Goldblatt, who teaches writing at the Fashion
Institute of Technology, writes frequently about politics.
He is the author of the forthcoming "Africa Speaks," a
novel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/opinion/23GOLD.html?ex=1005112041&ei=1&en=62698c9b5e00d294