The following sentence raises a warning in MS Word:
Both fields value experience.

When I ask for suggestions, it says I'm missing the possessive 
apostrophe in "fields".  At least it's smart enough to recognize that it 
could either be singular or plural possessive.

However, it is NOT smart enough to recognize that, in this case, the 
noun is simply plural and NOT possessive.

I like leaving the grammar check on (it is legitimately useful, though 
it is not the ultimate authority), but things like this still bug me.

I wonder how often people restructure perfectly legitimate writing in 
order to avoid potential warnings with such grammar checks in word 
processing programs?  After all, we've already seen a "Powerpoint 
effect" in presentations, where people structure their data so that is 
most effective when displayed in Powerpoint (I've even read an 
apocryphal story about a college professor who dropped their favorite 
book from their literature class, because the themes were too complex to 
fit nicely onto Powerpoint slides).

Grr.

...Chambers

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