So I was working on my novel the other day (wahoo!), and I typed a sentence about a child born our of wedlock. A minute later I looked back and saw the blue bad-grammar squiggle mark under the word “bastard.” I didn’t see anything immediately wrong, so I clicked on it, and received a warning that “some of your readers may find this term offensive.” Huh. I’d never seen a warning like this before, and I feel like I’m always typing all sorts of crazy shit. So out of curiosity, I started typing out a stream of inappropriate content. None of it got squiggles. From the gentlest “swears” to the most offensive slurs, no other words got pinged. I thought maybe the Word algorith could sensed I was purposefully just typing a string of slurs instead of casually dropping it into otherwise mundane material, so I tried dropping slurs and swears into regular sentences. Stilll nothing.
Anyhoo, if you get to the part in the Hope the Little Fox series where our fun teen heroine suddenly goes on a foul-mouthed tirade against humanity for no apparent reason, well, here’s your reason.
Helga without the H 