I discovered a wonderful editing tool for amateur writers who need to improve their written work. I thought I should share…
Editing your own work can be difficult, especially when your writing skills are limited, but I’ve found a solution to our problems. A day or so ago, I accidentally clicked on a web-page offering a free trial download of an advanced grammar and spell-check tool. Cor blimey, guvnor, I thought – that’s exactly what I need!
So, I downloaded and tested it, using a passage from an article I’d already published on Triond. I picked one I’d thrown together without editing (yes, I admit I do sometimes do that) and this was the corrected result:
I’ve recently made the decision to educate my eldest son at home. He’s been slipping behind academically ever since he started senior school, three years ago, and I just don’t believe he will achieve his full potential there. My son isn’t exactly impressed, but he understands my reasoning and agrees he’ll probably study more productively at home. If there were a better school locally, or I could move nearer to one, I would prefer for him to stay in mainstream education. However, I sincerely believe this is the best route for him. In order to make this decision, I had to look into all aspects of home education to be sure we could implement everything required of us to enable him to achieve the necessary exam results. Here’s a list of the pros and cons involved to help you decide whether this is something you might consider for your own child. (Please note that most of the following information applies only to those in the UK (and England in particular) as rules differ slightly, depending on where you live. Those of you who reside elsewhere in the world should check the local policy regarding home-education before making any plans.)
Please compare that passage to the original, via this link: Why Home School?, to see how helpful this tool actually is. And don’t poke fun, either!
It has a thesaurus; it’s easy to apply corrections with; and it improved my paragraph massively. I also learnt a little from having to correct “negative sentences” and was praised for using no “passive verbs”. All aspects of your work are scored, from word complexity and sentence length, to grammar, punctuation and spelling. It’s a God-send for all amateur writers, and I expect everyone to reward me accordingly, with lots of lovely presents throughout the year! (Okay, clicks, likes and comments will do nicely…)
And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: it’s called White Smoke, and you can get it HERE.
Have fun!
If you enjoyed this article you may be interested in the following:
How to Choose Winning Titles for Your Triond Articles
September 21st, 2009 at 4:41 am
Wow! Thanks for sharing this wonderful tool. I haven’t tried this yet.It’s going to make our editing easier, for sure.
September 21st, 2009 at 5:01 am
You’re most welcome Athena!
September 21st, 2009 at 5:38 am
Wow, this is really great! Thanks for sharing!
September 21st, 2009 at 5:41 am
No worries, Patrick. Enjoy!
September 21st, 2009 at 8:21 am
Thanks! And your gift is in the mail.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Very useful and very cool CaSundara..thanks a bunch!!
September 21st, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Excellent discovery Casundara : ))…I’ll check it out…
September 21st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
You’re all very welcome!
September 21st, 2009 at 3:24 pm
This is awesome! Im actually really excited, this is going to help me both in and outside the Triond world!
Thank you
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
This sounds useful thank you for the information.
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:58 pm
Truly amazing. What will they think of next? The application did not correct the parentheses within parentheses but no one (machine) is perfect.
This is a great find. You are very kind to share it. And congratulations on this article making the popular list.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:27 am
@B.A.MacDonald – I’m glad you’re so happy!
@Glynis – you’re welcome.
@Guy Hogan – I know! I was so pleased to have found it, although I do admit I considered keeping it quiet, for a moment or two. But I believe in sharing information, so here it is. There is an option on the doftware to inform them of anything you think they’ve missed, after which they update the software, so the error you picked up on could be rectified. The problem, I imagine, is not many people with writing skills of your level would use it, and therefore these finer points aren’t picked up on.
September 23rd, 2009 at 8:38 am
@Guy – sorry, I forgot, thank-you! I hadn’t even noticed it was there.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:28 am
now if only triond would modify their text editor to properly present articles, we’d have a winning team.
September 26th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
i agree with dvorah. triond needs to modify the text editor. good article
September 26th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Thanks for commenting, I agree the text editor has some issues. Every time I type a word ending in th, it picks up those two letters as a typo???
November 1st, 2009 at 5:41 am
Ay Caramba, THANKS!
November 1st, 2009 at 5:45 am
LOlz maybe its just me but the program was really annyoing