Two very different items to help us write mo’ better prose today:
Via Ripley Patton on Google+, Pro Writing Aid. It offers a free web service to scan chunks of prose for editing infractions. I was skeptical, but it caught some items for legitimate concern in the test piece I gave it. And it had me at homonyms – all that analysis does is scan for known homonyms, but by calling them out in red, you can easily see if you’ve got they’re or their in there.
I haven’t investigated their fancy dictionaries or the community on the site, but the editing tool looks like a great addition to the arsenal. Note the word arsenal. As I commented to Ripley, just as the prudent mariner does not rely on one navigation source alone, neither does the prudent writer rely on one editor (human or machine). #sailortalk
Now if I could just find a program that scans for typos that turn into real words. I can’t seem to stop typing form when I mean from. Seriously. It’s annoying.
In other news, this is form from back in April, but Colin Nissan’s The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do is among the most brutally accurate lists of writing advice I’ve read. The items themselves are the usual suspects, but the details. Ah, the details.
Enjoy!
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