Checking your Greek

So, you have managed to type out a passage of Greek? Now, how do you discover whether you have made any mistakes? After all, it is horribly easy to leave out the odd breathing, accent or embarrass yourself by typing a normal sigma when you should have inserted a terminating sigma! To render you some assistance with the arduous business of checking your Greek, I have included three checking tools which are accessed from the Toolbar shown below.

Checking for missing breathings

If you look at the Greek Toolbar, you will see a button labelled Breathings?. If you click at the beginning of your document, the checking tool will scuttle through the text inspecting the initial two letters of each Greek word. If it finds a place where it suspects a breathing has gone AWOL, it halts in its tracks and a message box cautions you to inspect the point where it has halted. When you have fixed any problem, click the Breathings? button again and the check will continue.

Are you suffering from terminal sigmas?

If you press the button labelled Sigmas?, this tool takes a quick look at each of the words that end with a letter sigma and tactfully inserts terminal sigmas wherever needed. So, no more embarrassing faux pas with that dratted sigma! Words in non-Greek fonts are ignored to avoid false alarms.

Checking those Accents

It is all too easy to omit an accent when typing Greek. I have designed a tool that will help detect a missing accent. If you click on the button labelled Accents?, the program scrutinises every Greek word in your document. If it finds that a word has no accent at all: (i) it consults a table of common Greek words that do not usually boast an accent (e.g., the definite article); and (ii) if it does not find the word with an accent on the list, it warns you that something may be wrong. This is, of course, a crude check and will not save you if more than one accent should have been present or if you have got the accent(s) wrong! Nevertheless, within its limitations, you will probably find it a good ally in your quest for faultless Greek...!