Microsoft has announced the availability of Editor’s Similarity Checker feature in Office preview builds. While the feature is currently limited to Word for Microsoft 365 EDU A3 and A5 customers, it will become generally available next month. Microsoft Editor is an artificial intelligence AI-powered writing assistant that can check your document for spelling, grammar, and style refinements.
Microsoft Editor announces Similarity Checker
Microsoft Editor can also help you avoid plagiarism, courtesy of the Similarity checker feature. Now, this is particularly useful for students. Powering the Similarity checker feature is Bing Search. This feature will help writers learn more about appropriate attribution, courtesy of writing tools that enable relevant citations. This way, Microsoft wants writers to focus more on the content and less on the mechanics of writing.
This feature will also help teachers prevent plagiarism among students while they are still finishing their writing assignments.
“For the first time ever built into Word, the Similarity Checker allows you to write your paper and feel confident that you have the proper citation. Now that’s just how we’re helping people write in Word,” Microsoft said.
Microsoft Editor as a web browser extension
Clearly, Microsoft doesn’t want to keep its efforts around Editor limited to its native integration into Outlook for the web. Microsoft Editor has a web browser extension to expand those capabilities even further. This way, Microsoft is looking to expand Editor’s capabilities across platforms including LinkedIn and Facebook and across more than 20 languages.
Rewrite suggestions
Recently, Microsoft Editor also added new tools like rewrite suggestions. These options can help rephrase a sentence without changing the original meaning. Furthermore, rewrite suggestions can also hop up and open the Editor pane. Aiming to enhance the writing clarity, Microsoft has already added certain new advanced style refinements such as inclusiveness.
“Here you can see a gentleman’s agreement and suggests something that might be better received by a reader, like an unwritten agreement,” the company added.
To help writers avoid language bias, Microsoft Editor’s optional tips can highlight if there’s a more inclusive way of writing something.
