Author Topic: Automated Online Editors  (Read 2241 times)

munboy

Automated Online Editors
« on: March 05, 2019, 06:08:11 AM »
There's a number of editing software out there...from Grammarly to Hemingway Editor to Autocrit.

Anybody use them? How much stock do you put into them? Normally I use them as the beginning phase of my line editing...just to check the simple mistakes and typos.

Recently, I jumped on Autocrit for their $1 trial just to check it out. It seems pretty in depth but also kind of useless at the same time because some of the things it flags doesn't make sense. Out of curiosity, I decided to run a test. I ran the first 2300-2400 words of several recent(ish) successful fantasy novels by some good writers (cutting out the prologues and extra texts like chapter beginning quotes). Then I ran the first 2300 words of my unedited WIP rough draft. Here's what it came up with for the overall score

Heir to Dusk (my unedited WIP) - 83.24
Gardens of the Moon (Erikson) - 85.48
Child of a Mad God (Salvatore) - 79.44
Oathbringer (Sanderson) - 82.94
The Emporer's Blade (Staveley) - 88.08

So, what should I take from this information? My unedited work is on par with these guys?  :hehe

Of course, this just "measures" the writing and not the content, but I find it hard to believe my unedited writing is comparable to guys who have been writing for a long time and have a whole team of editors combing over their books before publishing.
 

Bill Hiatt

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Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #1 on: March 05, 2019, 10:23:48 AM »
When I was teaching, I saw a lot of efforts to create software that could critique essays. The same thing happened every time. The software could analyze certain aspects (most grammatical principles, some aspects of style)--and that was it. You'd need full-blown AI to do anything much more than that. Otherwise, whatever program you use isn't actually reading the material. It tries to guess whether the material is any good using its basic structure. Someone tested one of the systems at school by feeding it gibberish, but with recognizable words at key points (like the beginnings of clauses, prepositional phrases, etc. It got an OK score because the program was seeing certain structural cues and drawing conclusions from them.



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Post-Crisis D

Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #2 on: March 05, 2019, 10:38:36 AM »
Someone tested one of the systems at school by feeding it gibberish, but with recognizable words at key points (like the beginnings of clauses, prepositional phrases, etc. It got an OK score because the program was seeing certain structural cues and drawing conclusions from them.

I had a teacher who did the same.

And, by that, I mean he was the one being fed gibberish and giving okay scores for seeing certain keywords and structural cues and drawing conclusions from them. :hehe
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Bill Hiatt

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Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2019, 05:16:14 AM »
Someone tested one of the systems at school by feeding it gibberish, but with recognizable words at key points (like the beginnings of clauses, prepositional phrases, etc. It got an OK score because the program was seeing certain structural cues and drawing conclusions from them.

I had a teacher who did the same.

And, by that, I mean he was the one being fed gibberish and giving okay scores for seeing certain keywords and structural cues and drawing conclusions from them. :hehe
I guess artificial intelligence is better than none! :cheers


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She-la-te-da

Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #4 on: March 15, 2019, 09:27:27 PM »
I think the software can only see what it's been told to see. So it gets some examples of things, and it looks for that, but it doesn't mean it's being an effective editor. And it can't see things like homonym misuse, which is something a lot of writers need help with (judging by all the books I come across with this issue).

In the end, nothing can replace a qualified person, or the experience and skills of the writer.
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munboy

Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #5 on: March 16, 2019, 12:53:12 AM »
I think the software can only see what it's been told to see. So it gets some examples of things, and it looks for that, but it doesn't mean it's being an effective editor. And it can't see things like homonym misuse, which is something a lot of writers need help with (judging by all the books I come across with this issue).

In the end, nothing can replace a qualified person, or the experience and skills of the writer.

My tongue was firmly in cheek when I posted this.

I will say that these editors are good at spotting certain things like the number of times you start a paragraph with the same word. Overused words. Overused adverbs. Stuff like that. Everything else like pacing that it tries to measure is objective.
 

Bill Hiatt

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Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #6 on: March 16, 2019, 01:21:50 AM »
I think the software can only see what it's been told to see. So it gets some examples of things, and it looks for that, but it doesn't mean it's being an effective editor. And it can't see things like homonym misuse, which is something a lot of writers need help with (judging by all the books I come across with this issue).

In the end, nothing can replace a qualified person, or the experience and skills of the writer.

My tongue was firmly in cheek when I posted this.

I will say that these editors are good at spotting certain things like the number of times you start a paragraph with the same word. Overused words. Overused adverbs. Stuff like that. Everything else like pacing that it tries to measure is objective.
Exactly! I still use Grammarly as a double-check cleanup tool, and for that it's very good. But God help anyone who tried to rely on its advice without checking very thoroughly. For instance, it tends to mark a lot of pronouns as reference problems even when there is a clear antecedent. That's one of the things looking at patterns alone can't rely identify accurately. It also sometimes does weird things with capital letters by assuming certain things are proper names in the context when they really aren't.


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RappaDizzy

Re: Automated Online Editors
« Reply #7 on: March 16, 2019, 01:31:18 AM »
I use Grammerly just to find typos or those errors I made correcting something....like forgetting to put the e on one and it will underline the sentence indicating some problem. I ignore the rest of the suggestions. 
 
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