Allow spelling and grammar to understand the phrase "et. al."

[Guest]

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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[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

FWIW, neither "et.al" nor "et. al." is correct. The correct spelling is "et
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

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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."

----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...343f94&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[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 al.). 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.