How can I use Microsoft Word's spelling/grammar checker programmatically?

Question

I want to process a medium to large number of text snippets using a spelling/grammar checker to get a rough approximation and ranking of their "quality." Speed is not really of concern either, so I think the easiest way is to write a script that passes off the snippets to Microsoft Word (2007) and runs its spelling and grammar checker on them.

Is there a way to do this from a script (specifically, Python)? What is a good resource for learning about controlling Word programmatically?

If not, I suppose I can try something from Open Source Grammar Checker (SO).

Update

In response to Chris' answer, is there at least a way to a) open a file (containing the snippet(s)), b) run a VBA script from inside Word that calls the spelling and grammar checker, and c) return some indication of the "score" of the snippet(s)?

Update 2

I've added an answer which seems to work, but if anyone has other suggestions I'll keep this question open for some time.

Answer 1

The note at the bottom of the summary seems to indicate that this is not possible.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/262605

Answer 2

It took some digging, but I think I found a useful solution. Following the advice at http://www.nabble.com/Edit-a-Word-document-programmatically-td19974320.html I'm using the win32com module, which allows access to Word's COM objects. The following code demonstrates this nicely:

import win32com.client, os

wdDoNotSaveChanges = 0
path = os.path.abspath('snippet.txt')

snippet = 'Jon Skeet lieks ponies.  I can haz reputashunz?  '
snippet += 'This is a correct sentence.'
file = open(path, 'w')
file.write(snippet)
file.close()

app = win32com.client.gencache.EnsureDispatch('Word.Application')
doc = app.Documents.Open(path)
print "Grammar: %d" % (doc.GrammaticalErrors.Count,)
print "Spelling: %d" % (doc.SpellingErrors.Count,)

app.Quit(wdDoNotSaveChanges)

which produces

Grammar: 2
Spelling: 3

which match the results when invoking the check manually from Word.