The following screencap comes from my book, What’s Your Pronoun? Beyond he and she (Liveright, 2020), which traces the history and politics of gendered and genderless pronouns. I unleashed Microsoft Woke, as its right-wing critics might call it, on some passages about gendered and genderless pronouns to see whether it could read for inclusivity better than a human can. The goal is to replace the sensitivity readers that some publishers use to vet manuscripts for conscious or unconscious bias and anything else that might offend an audience.

If you check the appropriate boxes in the drop-down menu, Word will scan your writing for age and cultural bias, ethnic slurs, gender bias, gender-neutral pronouns, gender-specific language, racial bias, sexual orientation bias, and socioeconomic bias. Click the Spelling and Grammar option, then Grammar & Refinements. Microsoft has added a diversity checker to its Office 365 spelling and grammar tool (h/t Tony Thorne You can find it by going to Word’s Preferences menu.

Ms word grammar checker not working