We are writers, not editors

Few of us think of ourselves as editors. Of course, we all want our submissions to be grammatically correct and stylistically clean and easy to read while being true to our voice. It is hard, though, to get it right. The great news is that there are powerful tools that can help, some of which are free.

Where can we find help? We could go to a commercially available editing house. A Google search will list hundreds of them. They usually charge at least two cents a word and offer a universe of possible services (which can cost much more). A simple copy editing of a 3K word story would cost you at least $60.

Worse than the cost, it is difficult to figure out the good from the bad editors, though online reviews can help. In addition, each requires a discrete contract and payment, and a few days to get the job done. Generally, if you are willing to pay a premium, you get your story back faster.

 

An alternative is to use grammar checker software or style checker software

 

My goal here is to provide insight into these SW products, how to use them, and their pros and cons. This is not a full review of any of them, and it is not a review of everything available on the market, though I’ll hit on a few of the biggest. I have not been funded by any of these vendors.

I look at these packages as having one or two distinct functions: grammar checker or style feedback. Some do both.

The executive summary: Not so good as grammar checkers, but very helpful at checking your “style” and usage

Let’s start with the grammar checkers. The first challenge is that sometimes we intentionally use bad grammar as part of our “style” or “voice.” Even if we strive for perfect grammar, sentences are too complex for “rules”-based software programs to identify consistently what is and is not “correct.” I’m sure that someday they will. Technology will continue to advance, and these products will get better. Until then, do not put too much faith in these programs providing complete and accurate feedback on your grammar.

I have a very different view when it comes to their ability as style checkers. These tools can be helpful by making what I call “observations” about your writing. For instance, to varying degrees, they will call out sentence variation and length, frequency of adverbs, how often you start sentences with a pronoun or noun, use of vague and abstract words, instances of given phrases being repeated, use of passive construction, etc.

These types of observations can be extremely helpful, and many of these packages can be customized to zero in on specific things you might want to avoid. For example, if you want to keep your adverbs to one out of every 200 words, then these programs can help.

So you better understand my perspective, let me share how I use the product I purchased. I use a product that has a Microsoft Word “add-in.” Because I’m in MS Word, I can still use the MS Word functionality at the same time. I don’t use the grammar or style checker, though, until I’m on my third or fourth draft.

I am not strong at grammar, and in my early drafts, I pay less attention to sentence variation, excessive use of adverbs, etc. After I’ve gotten through my first drafts and am ready to start optimizing words, sentences and paragraphs to evoke the emotions I’m after, I will use my grammar and style checker to go through my work to start flagging things that could be issues. For the most part, I don’t find it helpful for grammar. For checking style, I use it more aggressively.

My first run with the style checker is usually on a specific aspect, such as looking for adverbs. Then I’ll run the diction report. After I feel like I have those where I want them, I might look at how often I use pronouns to start a sentence. And on and on.

Don’t Panic!

These applications will flag a ton of stuff. So don’t panic or get defensive the first time you see the output. In an “overused words” report, it may say something like “up – consider removing 14 of 17 instances”. And you will see all 17 instances of the word highlighted. If your story includes a scene in which people are lifting rocks up to other workers to load them onto a truck, maybe the frequent use of “up” is appropriate. There will also be “false positives” that you will have to ignore. Again, these tools make observations. It is up to you to decide what to do, if anything.

For those of you that are interested and want to try one or more of these, I’ve provided a high-level survey below of a few of the bigger products: Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and Ginger.

 

 

First, a couple notes on the common aspects and the use of these products:

 

• No two of these programs are the same. They can vary dramatically in the functionality they offer. Keep that in mind if you go shopping for one of these applications. Be sure you know what you are looking for before you make your purchase.

• From my experience, Word, Ginger and Grammarly are better at spotting grammar issues than ProWritingAid (PWA). Conversely, PWA is much stronger at reporting patterns and related stylistic aspects of your work.

• Most of the products I looked at offered both online and MS Word “add-in” options and a few would work with Word but not as an add-in. However, except for MS Word, they all need real-time internet access to work. Even as a Word add-in, your text is actually being scrutinized on a server somewhere. So if you don’t have internet access, none of these programs will work.

• There is also some variation between them as to which OS and which browser and which word processor they support, so be clear on that before you make a purchase decision. I prefer those that work with MS Word so I don’t have to keep copying and pasting big chunks of text back and forth between an internet site and my Word doc.

• Because the actual work is not being done locally, in almost every case you are not buying a complete SW package. You are getting a “front end” that runs locally, so you are paying a recurring fee for a subscription to access the backend. Be sure you understand this before you give someone your credit card number.

• You won’t use these all the time. In all their various forms and interfaces they are an intrusive, mechanistic proofing tool. As such they are at odds with the creative process of writing. Just as a lot of writers turn off MS Word’s grammar and spell checker when they write because their real-time error reporting is too disruptive to the writing process, you will not want these on while you are actually writing. In truth you will rarely use these applications.

• Related to the above, these things run in different ways. Ginger goes sentence-by-sentence while you watch (which takes about half a second per sentence in my experience), and you have to address each flagged sentence before it will go on. Others, such as PWA, will process the entire section before they report anything. These types take some time to run based on a number of variables: How much text you are asking it to proof, how many of the various reports you are asking it to run (more on this below), how much of your work it is going to flag (essentially how well your write), the speed of your internet connection (to include the speed of your wireless router if working wirelessly), the performance of your PC, and how busy their server is at that moment. To provide a very rough estimate, my experience with PWA on my equipment is that it takes about a minute per thousand words when I run eight reports concurrently. Your mileage will vary.

• Almost every site I have looked at has a free online version. With one exception (After The Deadline), I’ve not found a “free” version that is worth the effort if you are writing more than ~500 words. All these free tools will give you a sense of how each different package works and feels, which is good. The better news is that almost every product has a free “trial period” that allows you to download and use the SW for a defined period of time before your credit card is charged. It is a great way to test out the package that most interests you.

• Costs: If you are willing to spend money on these tools, most cost a few dollars a month, but see the various sites for details and for different packages. My experience is that if you register with them for a trial and then let the trial expire, they will likely email you an offer to stay with them at a discounted rate.

• Documentation is weak for all these products. I’m not talking about the grammar rules. They all do a good job of explaining the issues they are reporting. At a high-level these products are intuitive, and you will be able to start quickly. But it will take you some time to find and learn how to use the finer, more nuanced features, and to understand what has changed in subsequent releases. I’ve managed product managers, and I would have been very unhappy with my team if we were putting out such poorly documented SW. So assume you will have a bit of learning to get to the full capabilities of these products.

Specific thoughts and observations on several that I have tried:

• MS Word (I’m speaking to the 2010 version): There is only a very modest style checker, but it includes a grammar checker that does a credible job. It is not customizable (at least not much), but it can be helpful in spotting some basic errors. It does not offer, though, many of the other features the other SW packages offer. Given what it is today, you should always use the MS Word grammar checker (assuming you use Word) as a starting point. If you want more than that…

• ProWritingAid (AKA: “PWA”): PWA is by far my favorite. Nothing is perfect, but it is easy to use as an add-in to MS Word and offers many style and usage reports. It is also easy to customize. It has a Creative Writing mode (and several others as well), but even within that you can further customize it. I like that I can define how often I want it to highlight words and phrases that I default to more than I should. I also found it to be the least expensive. They have some good online discussions about grammar and how their SW works (though they are a bit evasive about some of their specific formulas). I have also found them to be responsive and helpful when I contacted them via email for assistance. Overall, I’m a happy customer, and it has been a huge help.

• Grammarly: I recently tried this one for a week. I had played with it online and decided to give it a go as a Word add-in. One thing that annoyed me from the start was that I could not figure out how to define sections for it to check – it insisted on checking the entire 77K word novel. At least it tried. At about the 40% mark it would stop checking. Perhaps it was a RAM issue with my local PC. I don’t know. I just could not figure out how to get it to check specific areas short of breaking up my file, which I’m not going to do. The grammar checker is better than PWA, or so it seemed to me. It was finding errors in my work that PWA did not. Its other features were much less capable than PWA’s, unfortunately, and I saw no room to customize it, though it also has a creative writing mode. It does have a nicer interface than PWA. One thing I really did not like about Grammarly was that it underlines issues with just a faint line, which was difficult to spot at times.

• Ginger: This vendor released a version that works in MS Word, but it is not an add-in. It does a good job of checking grammar (better than the other programs, it seems). It also did a nice job of identifying instances where I used the wrong word (homophones). It does grind through each sentence one at a time, which you get to watch it do. And it will stop each time it hits something it flags. You have to intervene and tell it what to do before it goes on. Unlike PWA, you can’t jump back and forth between different reports to work on different things. There are some obvious pros and cons to this model. Ginger also has a nice feature that will “read” your work to you, and do a credible job of it, so you can (sort of) hear how your writing “sounds”.

• AutoCrit: This one has a big fan base and a nice web site. I have not purchased a subscription, and I probably won’t test it for another month or so.  I know AutoCrit has a big following for what it is today, so I think I’ll give it a spin, but not until their next rev.

• After The Deadline: This is a free product that seems fast and easy to use. Its feature set is limited compared to PWA, and it offers no metrics. It does not seem to work with MS Word, so I have only played with it. That said, if you like working online in Chrome or Firefox, and $0 seems like a good price, this could be the right product for you.

• Hemingway App: This is another one that is free. And it is limited compared to some of the more comprehensive products like ProWritingAid, but free is nice, and it does focus on a few things that can make our writing difficult such as adverbs, passive voice and sentence length. So the price is nice, and it has a tight focus on a few things that if you get right can be very helpful.

 

Are any of these better than a professional editor? No! Yes!

Professional editors are different from these applications. Humans are not as rules-bound and will have an “ear” for your voice and your style, so the feedback they give you can be far more insightful and helpful. They will tell you when you are wordy, which is something these packages won’t do. And they will tell you when your logic does not follow, and if you are showing action out of order. A human editor can also tell you when you are making confusing POV shifts. These are just a few things a good human editor can tell you that these applications won’t.

On the other hand, you are not going to customize your proofreader the way you can some of these applications. As insightful and thoughtful as a great editor can be, they are not going to count adverbs for you, and they might miss how often you use a favorite four-word phrase that might actually annoy the hell out of your eventual readers. Perhaps most importantly, a professional editor won’t check your 4K word story in four minutes at 11:30 on a Friday night when you’re sitting on your couch in your PJs. And you do not have to put a discrete contract in place every time you use your grammar checker software or style checker software, which you would have to do with a human editor. There is no emotion involved, either. You will not have any expectation that the SW is going to smile at you with a gleam in its eye and tell you that your work will displace Dune in the Science Fiction canon. Your human editor may say this as she hands you a stack of papers dripping red ink, but the twitching under her right eye might make you wonder if she is really thinking, This is incomprehensible crap. Please don’t ever contact me again.

In short, consider these SW packages as tools that can help you proof and improve your work, and help you become a better writer overall. A professional editor (a good one) is a different resource whose feedback would further strengthen your work.

For my own experience, these SW packages are hugely helpful when preparing my work for submission to a fiction workshop and beta readers. Given the convenience of being able to use it any time, and at the cost of a few dollars a month, it is a nice fit for these situations. I would never think, though, of actually self-publishing my work without hiring a highly qualified editor to proof my work for me.

To summarize my thoughts on these SW tools: What I have used are not compelling grammar checkers, though they will catch a few things. As style checkers, they can be very helpful. They do make observations you can review and address. As such, these tools can also help you learn how to write better as you internalize what triggers their rules. But writing is work, part of which is making decisions. These tools won’t do the work for you. Be ready to make your decisions, roll up your sleeves, and do the work after it runs and reports.

For those of you that have also used these and other such tools, please share your own perspectives and elaborate on anything I missed or glossed over.

Here are links to some of the products I mentioned:

ProWritingAid

Ginger

Grammarly

AutoCrit

Hemingway App