THE BUSINESS OF WRITING
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?
Can editing and proofing be automated? Simon Whaley explores online grammar services.
Simon Whaley
I
grew up in the 1970s and 80s, when grammar was not the primary focus of English language lessons. It’s meant I’ve spent the past thirty years catching up, and I’m still learning today.
For years, Microsoft Word has littered our screens with red and blue wavy lines, highlighting potential errors in our text. But recently, a new army of online tools has emerged that can not only check spelling and basic grammar but also offer more structural editing suggestions.
They can recommend stronger verbs, highlight passive sentences, identify word repetitions, analyse sentence length and point out complicated, hard-to-read sentences. So, are these tools a writer’s panacea, vital for our writing business? Or is there a risk they could standardise our prose and strip away our writing voice?
Free and premium
The two most popular services are Grammarly and ProWritingAid, both offering a free version with limitations, or a paid-for premium version. The free versions can be great for assessing how useful these services are. Both offer plug-ins for your internet browser that will check the basics whenever you type anything online, such as on social media sites and online forms.
While checking spelling and punctuation in these situations is useful, their power lies when assessing longer pieces of text, such as articles, stories or books. Their ability to analyse our text makes some writers think they can dispense with the services of a proofreader or editor. While the technology is amazing, it can’t replace a human editor or proofreader yet.
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May 2021
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