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Screenshot: Microsoft 365/YouTube

In case youd missed it, Microsoft Office has a wokeness editor that will flag your writing if it contains insensitive phrases. Welcome to the dumb culture wars, Office settings.

The software suite will call out your writing for being non-inclusive or containing offensive language. In the same way a spellchecker looks for typos and grammar mistakes, this inclusivity editor, available to Microsoft 365 subscribers, scans your work for inappropriate terms.

The feature goes beyond flagging ethnic slurs and will highlight when youve used words or phrases containing age bias, cultural bias, sexual orientation bias, gender bias, racial bias, as well as gender-specific language.

Some examples include changing blacklist and whitelist to accepted or allowed list, or swapping the gender-specific postman with postal worker. Similarly, humanity or humankind is recommended over mankind, and expert is suggested when the software flags master, a term linked with slavery. (In 2020, Microsoft-owned Github removed master and slave from its website.)

Microsoft says the goal isnt to correct all of societys issues but to make people consider more inclusive ways of writing. The company hired native speakers and linguistic experts in 20 languages to determine which inclusiveness critiques would be unwelcome in certain markets.

We verified that the feature is already available to Microsoft 365 customers but is turned off by default. And rather confusingly, Microsoft gives you the ability to turn off some inclusivity features while leaving others off, so you can have it check for gender bias but ignore ethnic slurs. When enabled, inappropriate terms are underlined in purple and an inclusive alternative is presented.

Microsoft told Daily Mail that the spellchecker might not be suitable for all scenarios and emphasized that it could be turned off if needed. While there are surely scenarios where people dont want a nudge toward political correctness (say, if you were referencing a quote like One giant leap for mankind), you can also just ignore the purple underline.

Microsoft understands that not every Editor suggestion may be suitable for all users and all scenarios, the company told Daily Mail. Thats why we let users be in control of their final output. Editor is a completely optional tool that users can turn on or turn off at any point. Editor does not make any autocorrections. The user has control over which suggestions they choose to use, if any. They will be able to turn on and off each one of them individually.

It seems like Microsoft is tip-toeing, afraid to potentially anger folks who consider wokeness to be toxic, or whatever. If Microsoft wants people to know how woke it is, the company should stick to its convictions and make this a default feature that can be turned off when needed, instead of hiding the tool deep in the settings.

For now, to enable the feature, you have to go to the Editor tab in the top ribbon and select Settings near the button. From there, choose Proofing and Settings... then Grammar and Refinement from the drop-down. Here, you can select which categories of inclusivity youd like the editor to include.

The spellcheck tool is available in the latest version of Microsoft Word in Microsoft 365, the companys productivity cloud subscription service. Unfortunately, those who use the free browser-based version or the standalone one-payment Office 2019 will not be able to access the editor.

Update on Jan 14 at 2:20pm E.T.: Microsoft told Gizmodo that Editor was first made available in March 2020. A previous version of this article suggested the feature was new. Weve updated the piece accordingly.

Here is the original post:
Microsoft Offices Woke Spellchecker Is Perfectly Fine and Will Cause Nobody to Freak Out - Gizmodo