MICROSOFT WORD SHOULD NOT BE RACIST

[Guest]

When I enter the word "Muslim" in lower-case in Microsoft word, it does not
automatically capitilize it. However, when I enter any other faith, like
Christianity, or Judaism, or even Hinduism, it automatically capitilizes the
word. I would like to know why this is. I'd appreciate a quick response or
else I will go to the media.

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[Patrick Schmid]

Hello Ak786,

I don't know why Microsoft Word does this. I can see though that it
marks "muslim" and "islam" as spelling errors without automatically
capitalizing them.
The vast majority of the people posting here are not Microsoft employees
(including myself). Therefore we can only speculate as to why Word does
this. We also cannot get the situation addressed because of that.
Microsoft employees do stop by in these newsgroups, but it can be quite
some time until someone does. I would suggest to be patient with this.
I'll try myself if I can't get in touch with anyone at Microsoft to get
an answer to your question. This might take a few days though. I hope
you understand.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hello Aj786,

Let me add to my previous post. According to my Merriam-Webster
Dictionary, Muslim means "an adherent of Islam" and could also be an
adjective. I don't have any other dictionaries here to check against,
but I believe that the religion itself is "Islam" and not "Muslim".
Therefore you'd have to check the automatic capitalization against words
such as "Christian", "Hindu", etc. and not "Christianity", "Hinduism",
etc.
However, that means that Word should capitalize "Islam", which it does
not. I'll try to find out why and if it is an error whether this can be
fixed in Word 2007.

Patrick Schmid

 

[garfield-n-odie [MVP]]

For what it's worth, Microsoft Word does automatically capitalize
"moslem", which was the common English spelling until maybe 10 or
15 years ago I think. Word apparently hasn't caught up with
political correctness in this regard.

If you feel so strongly that "muslim" should be capitalized, then
I think you should type it that way to begin with as a matter of
principle, or you can add a plain-text AutoCorrect entry to Word
to automatically change "muslim" to "Muslim".

 

[Tony Jollans]

I wouldn't describe this as racist but it does seem a little inconsistent -
if not downright bizarre. There seem to be a lot of hardcoded AutoCorrects
which capitalise proper names, and many which are not capitalised but which
are flagged as spelling errors with the capitalised version suggested as a
correction. Amongst the latter category is "jesus".

--
Enjoy,
Tony

When I enter the word "Muslim" in lower-case in Microsoft word, it does not
automatically capitilize it. However, when I enter any other faith, like
Christianity, or Judaism, or even Hinduism, it automatically capitilizes the
word. I would like to know why this is. I'd appreciate a quick response or
else I will go to the media.

----------------
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/community/en-us/default.mspx?mid=aafdf60a-16
a3-41c8-a40a-8414b18dd267&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[OM]

When I enter the word "Muslim" in lower-case in Microsoft word, it does
not
automatically capitilize it. However, when I enter any other faith, like
Christianity, or Judaism, or even Hinduism, it automatically capitilizes
the
word. I would like to know why this is. I'd appreciate a quick response or
else I will go to the media.

Spell it with a capital yourself you lazy twerp. Or go to the media - we can
all do with a good laugh...

OM

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

What version of Word are you using? In Word 2003, Word does not (unless it
is the first word of the sentence) capitalize any of these words, although
it does mark them as misspelled and suggest the capitalized version as a
correction. If your version of Word AutoCorrects "christianity," "hinduism,"
or "buddhism," it is because someone has added those words as AutoCorrect
entries. You can do the same, if you like, with "muslim" and "islam." You
might, however, want to note that, among the suggested spelling corrections
for these words are "muslin" and "island." Unless you're sure you'll never
type "muslim" when you mean "muslin" or "islam" when you mean "island," you
might want to hold back on adding these entries.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

When I enter the word "Muslim" in lower-case in Microsoft word, it does not
automatically capitilize it. However, when I enter any other faith, like
Christianity, or Judaism, or even Hinduism, it automatically capitilizes the
word. I would like to know why this is. I'd appreciate a quick response or
else I will go to the media.

----------------
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...8dd267&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[Greg Maxey]

Ah, so it is possible that there has been a conspiracy after all. I
still think that the clown should hurry off and inform the media. I
suggest he start with National Review.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

I have heard back from Microsoft on why this is happening. Word has an
AutoCorrect feature that automatically corrects text that you type. For
example, Word will automatically capitalize the first letter of a
sentence. It has a few other automatic correction settings to deal with
such specific issues. You can find them all in Tools, Auto Correct. This
dialog is language specific as you can see in the dialog title.
In that dialog, you will also notice that there is a table showing
certain text that should be replaced with certain other text. For
example, in English (U.S.) the table tells Word to replace "abbout"
automatically with "about". These are the AutoCorrect entries Suzanne
referred to in her reply. As she correctly noted, none of the names of
religions are in that list. If you want to have Word replace "muslim"
with "Muslim" and "islam" with "Islam", you can force Word to do so by
adding these pairs to that list.
However, if the names of religions are not in that list, why are some
still capitalized by default in Word? I don't know what the earliest
version of Word that had this feature is, but Word for sure capitalizes
"christianity" by default in 2003 and 2007.
The explanation is the setting on the bottom of the AutoCorrect dialog:
"Automatically use suggestions from the spelling checker". If that
settings is checked, then Word will replace "christianity" with
"Christianity", hence automatically capitalize the names of some
religions, but not all. What this setting does is replace a misspelled
word automatically with the suggested correct spelling, if Word can only
find one suggestion. To see what I mean, type e.g.: "Is christianity".
Then press the space bar. Word now automatically capitalizes the Word.
Now go into Edit you'll see that Undo is now called "Undo AutoCorrect".
Press it and Word will undo the capitalization of the Word and you'll
see the word underlined with the typical red squiggles of a misspelled
word. If you right-click on the word and see what spelling suggestions
Word offers, you'll notice that it only offers one, namely the word in
capitalized form. As Word was only able to find one spelling suggestion,
AutoCorrect changed your misspelled word automatically into that single
suggestion.
As Suzanne pointed out, "muslim" and "islam" come with more than one
spelling suggestion. For "muslim", Word suggests "Muslim" and "muslin",
for "islam" Word suggests "Islam", "island", "slam". As there is more
than one suggestion, Word does not automatically capitalize the words.
Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism are all words for
which Word cannot determine any other possible spellings except their
capital versions.
Therefore it might appear that Word discriminates against Islam, whereas
it just happens to be that the words are relatively short and have other
possible words "nearby", meaning Word can't assume that the user just
wanted the capitalized version.
My contact at Microsoft has already suggested to the person who is
responsible for this feature to have Word automatically capitalize a
word if the only difference between the word and one of the suggestions
is capitalization. It is probably too late though for this new feature
to appear in Word 2007.

I hope this explains why Word is behaving like that. If you have any
other questions about it, please let me know.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Thanks for the feedback on that. Since I would never dare give AutoCorrect
permission to use suggestions from the spelling checker, I was not seeing
this behavior.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Opinicus]

or else I will go to the media.

Go right ahead and make an even bigger fool of yourself.

 

[Tony Jollans]

Thank you for that feedback, Patrick.

 

[Guest]

May be because the right spelling is "Moslem" and Word is capitalizing it
correctly. But I agree with you about suggestions. When you type "muslim"
there should be suggestion "Moslem".

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I don't think "Moslem" has been the preferred spelling for a long time.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

May be because the right spelling is "Moslem" and Word is capitalizing it
correctly. But I agree with you about suggestions. When you type "muslim"
there should be suggestion "Moslem".

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...8dd267&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[Guest]

When I enter the word "Muslim" in lower-case in Microsoft word, it does not
automatically capitilize it. However, when I enter any other faith, like
Christianity, or Judaism, or even Hinduism, it automatically capitilizes the
word. I would like to know why this is. I'd appreciate a quick response or
else I will go to the media.

----------------
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...8dd267&dg=microsoft.public.word.docmanagement

 

[Guest]

"Rascist" is the adjective pertaining to "race", not religion;
"capitilizes" is correctly spelled "capitalizes";
why do you say "or even Hinduism"? Are you implying that Hinduism is
inferior to the other religions mentioned?
Please "go to the media" and expose your ignorance even further!

 

[Cindy M.]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?c2Vja2xlYmVu?=,
In my version of Word (2003) it's marked as "incorrect" and the spelling
suggestion is capitalized. It's just not in the AutoCorrect, but it wouldn't be
any big deal for you to put it there...

And as a side note: I don't think "racist" is the correct descriptive term. As
far as I know people of many races are Muslim. It seems to me to be racist to
expect only certain races would belong to that (or any of the other listed)
belief... You might accuse the software of being religiously discriminatory, but
certainly not racist.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

I don't know why somebody dug this several months old thread out
again...
The answer why Muslim is not automatically capitalized is because there
are two alternatives spell check suggests for it (Muslim and muslin).
Christianity and Judaism are automatically capitalized for the OP,
because spell check only sees one alternative to the lower case spelling
(the upper case one) and the AutoCorrect setting "Automatically use
suggestions from the spelling checker" is on.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
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http://pschmid.net
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