4 ms·

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 w

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. :-)
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  > 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. Really, anyone considering being a programmer who can't write a program without bugs on the first try without an IDE should... Yeah that seems overly harsh and incorrect. Skills take time and practice to develop.

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. :-)
vorpalhex 4y ago
> 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. Really, anyone considering being a programmer who can't write a program without bugs on the first try without an IDE should... Yeah that seems overly harsh and incorrect. Skills take time and practice to develop.