5 ms·

You don’t use any kind of spellcheck / grammar checks on documents?

ComputerGuru 4y ago
That’s hardly the raison d’être of Vale and co, and that’s arguably replacing (quite poorly!) the job of an editor not the writer.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  Most people that write content, even more so the target audience of this post, don’t have a editor (other than the software editor).
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Please use editors. I typically get two different people to edit my blog posts...
    - toma_caliente 4y ago
      As someone considering starting a casual blog, I would not use an editor and defintiely not editors. Seems like a weird gate to keep.
      - vorpalhex 4y ago
        One misspelling, mixed metaphor, missing contraction. Nobody writes flawlessly. It is hard to find your own mistakes, much less understand if content will make sense to someone else. An editor is someone who can read your work, help catch errors and suggest improvements. No you don't need to go pay someone, but either trade editing with a friend or find another way to compensate whoever is providing editing for you. I usually buy my editors dinner but adjust based on how much time investment you are asking of them.
        cestith 4y ago
        I see a typo. You do not get to choose when a writer uses a contraction. You might expect that I'd have used "don't" there, but the simple truth is people use the full words even conversationally sometimes. This is especially true when they want to emphasize the "not" part of a phrase like "will not", "would not", or "do not". Your suggested edit changes the meaning of the parent post a shade. Where's the mixed metaphor? You may be able to sell me on "weird gate to keep" being a trite metaphor or perhaps even an awkward metaphor. What's mixed about gatekeeping, which seems to be a single common metaphor? If this is the quality of editing the tool offers, one may wish to stick with spellcheck. Encouraging a particular organization's writing style within that organization can have some nice effects, but you don't get to determine everyone else's writing style.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Editors are expensive and publishers don't really provide that service to authors, anymore. You're expected to have that all taken care of before you submit, even to publications that barely pay (or even some that don't pay at all).
      - vorpalhex 4y ago
        Editors are expensive. There's also a reason most publishers who have stopped using them have experienced a major decline. Skilled labor is expensive. Editors are skilled labor. Those who use them will benefit from that labor.
        corrral 4y ago
        Yes, editors are wonderful and ought to be paid well (even if authors aren't...) but authors who can't afford editors (i.e. all the ones trying to break in to writing but who don't have substantial financial backing) benefit greatly from tools that help them do their own editing more efficiently.
        leephillips 4y ago
        I don’t believe it (but am willing to consider actual evidence, if any exists). Spellcheckers, sure. But until we get an actual AI with general intelligence and cultural awareness sufficient to understand the nuances of human language, even “grammar checking” can not be mechanized. Really, anyone considering working as an author who can’t produce an excellent, polished first draft without an editor should consider a line of work more attuned to his or her talents.
        corrral 4y ago
        Sure, maybe, but the better automated tools get, the higher standards will be before submissions are considered. I bet slush-pile readers were a lot more tolerant of the occasional tranpsosed letter before spell check existed, for instance. Now if there's even one misspelling in a piece it looks like you're not trying at all, since you should have seen the red-squiggle, and into the rejections you go. So it will become (already is becoming) for brevity, clear wording, avoiding repetition, et c. If tools save time or reduce the technical skill required, that seems great to me. Art's about the finished product, not how it gets there, though popular understanding of how artists work and how they actually work may differ substantially. Almost no authors can always recall the exact word they want, the precise wording of that phrase they want to quote, the rule for some particular piece of grammar, and so on—they may have a whole shelf of Brewer's and Roget's and Webster's and Garner's and Strunk & White for that, plus computerized tools, these days. Why not have tools for the other aspects of editing? Why not have a computer find a suggestion for you, before you even think to consult a source or scrutinize a passage more closely? Plus, I guess I don't care much about any sort of purity in the writing process since practically the only accepted style, these days, in English writing at any rate, is fairly rote and prescribed and very simple. Did that sentence seem too complex? Did it have too many clauses? Does your inner editor's voice pipe up while reading it? Yep, exactly—it violates that very-modern style, even if only a bit. May as well take the next step and let a machine enforce those rules. More generally, as a lover of books and reading and writing, I'm pessimistic about the future of the whole enterprise. I think making a living as a writer, outside the usual handful of trust fund minor-celebrity lit-fic authors, is going to involve a lot of machine assistance, to the point that "writing" will mostly be massaging and curating the output of machines. Ghostwriters beware—and/or get ready to quintuple your output, using new tools, just to keep your head above water. In the meantime, a little help from tools like this might get the last generation of small-time authors, with actual ideas of their own but without an eye for editing, to print, before that becomes all but impossible even for the very-talented. It's a good thing there's already enough excellent fully-human-produced writing to last even fairly-avid readers several lifetimes. At least until and unless life extension really gets going. [EDIT] I'm aware, incidentally, that some of these paragraphs disagree with one another. I stand by my contradictions. :-)
    - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
      Ok, rich uncle penny bags. [Or you're and have found a community that edits each other's posts for social bonding]
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
  Should I use an editor for all emails I send, or just the important ones?

That’s hardly the raison d’être of Vale and co, and that’s arguably replacing (quite poorly!) the job of an editor not the writer.

stingraycharles 4y ago
Most people that write content, even more so the target audience of this post, don’t have a editor (other than the software editor).
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Please use editors. I typically get two different people to edit my blog posts...
  - toma_caliente 4y ago
    As someone considering starting a casual blog, I would not use an editor and defintiely not editors. Seems like a weird gate to keep.
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      One misspelling, mixed metaphor, missing contraction. Nobody writes flawlessly. It is hard to find your own mistakes, much less understand if content will make sense to someone else. An editor is someone who can read your work, help catch errors and suggest improvements. No you don't need to go pay someone, but either trade editing with a friend or find another way to compensate whoever is providing editing for you. I usually buy my editors dinner but adjust based on how much time investment you are asking of them.
      - cestith 4y ago
        I see a typo. You do not get to choose when a writer uses a contraction. You might expect that I'd have used "don't" there, but the simple truth is people use the full words even conversationally sometimes. This is especially true when they want to emphasize the "not" part of a phrase like "will not", "would not", or "do not". Your suggested edit changes the meaning of the parent post a shade. Where's the mixed metaphor? You may be able to sell me on "weird gate to keep" being a trite metaphor or perhaps even an awkward metaphor. What's mixed about gatekeeping, which seems to be a single common metaphor? If this is the quality of editing the tool offers, one may wish to stick with spellcheck. Encouraging a particular organization's writing style within that organization can have some nice effects, but you don't get to determine everyone else's writing style.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Editors are expensive and publishers don't really provide that service to authors, anymore. You're expected to have that all taken care of before you submit, even to publications that barely pay (or even some that don't pay at all).
    - vorpalhex 4y ago
      Editors are expensive. There's also a reason most publishers who have stopped using them have experienced a major decline. Skilled labor is expensive. Editors are skilled labor. Those who use them will benefit from that labor.
      - corrral 4y ago
        Yes, editors are wonderful and ought to be paid well (even if authors aren't...) but authors who can't afford editors (i.e. all the ones trying to break in to writing but who don't have substantial financial backing) benefit greatly from tools that help them do their own editing more efficiently.
        leephillips 4y ago
        I don’t believe it (but am willing to consider actual evidence, if any exists). Spellcheckers, sure. But until we get an actual AI with general intelligence and cultural awareness sufficient to understand the nuances of human language, even “grammar checking” can not be mechanized. Really, anyone considering working as an author who can’t produce an excellent, polished first draft without an editor should consider a line of work more attuned to his or her talents.
        corrral 4y ago
        Sure, maybe, but the better automated tools get, the higher standards will be before submissions are considered. I bet slush-pile readers were a lot more tolerant of the occasional tranpsosed letter before spell check existed, for instance. Now if there's even one misspelling in a piece it looks like you're not trying at all, since you should have seen the red-squiggle, and into the rejections you go. So it will become (already is becoming) for brevity, clear wording, avoiding repetition, et c. If tools save time or reduce the technical skill required, that seems great to me. Art's about the finished product, not how it gets there, though popular understanding of how artists work and how they actually work may differ substantially. Almost no authors can always recall the exact word they want, the precise wording of that phrase they want to quote, the rule for some particular piece of grammar, and so on—they may have a whole shelf of Brewer's and Roget's and Webster's and Garner's and Strunk & White for that, plus computerized tools, these days. Why not have tools for the other aspects of editing? Why not have a computer find a suggestion for you, before you even think to consult a source or scrutinize a passage more closely? Plus, I guess I don't care much about any sort of purity in the writing process since practically the only accepted style, these days, in English writing at any rate, is fairly rote and prescribed and very simple. Did that sentence seem too complex? Did it have too many clauses? Does your inner editor's voice pipe up while reading it? Yep, exactly—it violates that very-modern style, even if only a bit. May as well take the next step and let a machine enforce those rules. More generally, as a lover of books and reading and writing, I'm pessimistic about the future of the whole enterprise. I think making a living as a writer, outside the usual handful of trust fund minor-celebrity lit-fic authors, is going to involve a lot of machine assistance, to the point that "writing" will mostly be massaging and curating the output of machines. Ghostwriters beware—and/or get ready to quintuple your output, using new tools, just to keep your head above water. In the meantime, a little help from tools like this might get the last generation of small-time authors, with actual ideas of their own but without an eye for editing, to print, before that becomes all but impossible even for the very-talented. It's a good thing there's already enough excellent fully-human-produced writing to last even fairly-avid readers several lifetimes. At least until and unless life extension really gets going. [EDIT] I'm aware, incidentally, that some of these paragraphs disagree with one another. I stand by my contradictions. :-)
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    Ok, rich uncle penny bags. [Or you're and have found a community that edits each other's posts for social bonding]
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
Should I use an editor for all emails I send, or just the important ones?