(Sorry mods if this is in the wrong sub forum - can't find a thread on this software) As I researched Grammarly alternatives I found what I believe is a better product: ProWritingAid. Signed up for a year long subscription and was very impressed. It was a game changer and now I want to talk about it. ProWritingAid was bursting with suggestions for how my scripts could be improved. Clearly structured and well explained. I learned things I wish they'd taught in school - and I'm still learning. This was revolutionary. One area of improvements was particularly challenging: Sticky Index / Glue words.I did not even know what this was, but ProWritingAid's articles and videos explained why it's a problem. Turned out I'm a glue word junkie at >50% glue words, on average. Getting down to below 40% glue words is a time-consuming challenge. Have you experienced this? Do you feel like ProwritingAid is helping you, or being too strict? Which areas have been struggles for you?
I've never found any of these to be any good... the issue with all of them that ive tried (HW, PWA, Autocrit and Grammarly) is that they've been programmed by literal minded wombats who aren't actually writers, so they are very black and white on adverbs bad, passive voice bad etc without any allowance for nuance. Glue words are a classic case of this... you shouldn't be worrying about what proportion of glue words you have in your piece, but rather whether each sentence is either properly constructed or deliberately improperly constructed for character purposes.... focusing on eliminating glue words is wrong headed because often they are needed. My overall experience of PWA is that its better than autocrit (which was woeful) and Hemingway writer (which was even worse), and grammarly (which is okay for business correspondence but not for writing)...but that said it doesn't come close to using a good human editor and proofreader. these days i tend to use it as a spell checker and grammar checker only with the other suggestions turned off.
Hi Arcadia, I find PWA a useful tool as it makes the process of editing much quicker than doing the job manually. It also does some things that would be impossible manually such as the length report which gives average number of words per sentence and a great visual representation of sentence length variation. However you have to appreciate the basis of PWA is only to highlight potential problems. You, as the writer, have to decide if the problem is valid or not. It will therefore highlight many false positives. Passive voice is one example. You will have to ignore those where the use of passive voice is correct. In my view false positives are fine as they can be quickly ignored and I would rather have lots of false positives than a false negative. Most of the reports are valid but some are not and the sticky words report is one that, in my opinion, simply is not meaningful. When I first started to use PWA I scanned a few extracts from top writers from my genre and converted them to text using OCR. I then ran all the PWA reports on those extracts. It gave me a real feel for the validity of the reports and how meaningful the targets they set within the reports. For example all the extracts met the length report targets but all spectacularly failed the glue words target, initial pronouns target, and diction and vague words. The PWA team are all writers and most are published authors across several genres. They are currently developing to improve existing reports and introduce new features. Unlike Grammarly the reports mostly, about 95% of the time, respect the dictionary you select ie my UK English spellings and single quote dialogue are recognised. So I find the product a very useful tool. Of course PWA does not match an experienced editor/proofreader but not everyone can afford to go down that route. The vital element is to understand that you have to make the decisions on whether to accept/reject the potential problems the reports highlight and that the targets in some reports are dubious.
Not according to their about us page https://prowritingaid.com/en/Home/AboutUs The people who are actually writers appear to be on the marketing and client relations side... the people who actually do the coding and create the product not so much. Also some of the quotes on their site are more than a little misleading - like Joanna Penn "I've just published my 35th book using PWA" - I know for a fact that Jo uses a human editor and a proof reader, so if she's using PWA its as part of the early self editing process before the work goes to her editor, not as the replacement editor PWA tries to position itself as. On the issue of false positives, they aren't harmful to an established writer who knows what they are looking at and when to ignore the reports, but they can be highly damaging to beginner who blindly accepts them thinking that the 'experts' who created the product must know best.
I've no doubt the coders are just that but the design is driven by their creative team and feedback from end users. I can't comment on their marketing quotes but PWA staffers emphasise how to use the product and how not to use the product ie don't just accept report highlights. In my experience they do not try to hide the limitations of the product and do try to guide users on the best approach. I agree though that a beginner might struggle to know what to pass by and might fall into the trap of trying to hit their sometimes impossible targets. Perhaps a better tool for the more experienced writer unable to afford a human editor/proofreader.
Have a lifetime subscription for it I got on sale. Works fine if you're experienced enough to know which reports are decent and which reports to ignore. Really like the statistics part of it. I mostly use it for personal fun time though and not professional writing.
Honestly, I don't bother with the glue words report unless I know my sentence on its own is particularly clunky to read. Then I turn it on just to get a hint of why it's so clunky. Some sentences are completely fine with lots of 'glue' words. To me, there's no such thing as ProwritingAid being too strict because Prowritingaid is nothing but a very strong guideline/suggestion box. I can look at their suggestions, reflect on how it will impact my writing and I can take it or I can, as I most often do, just leave it as is.
I have begun to use Ginger and Hemingway, but I don't follow the suggestions verbatim. Moose is right to be cynical but I do like the process of reconsidering my choices. I think the real danger is that it will influence writers into a stale place as people edge their work into some encompassing formula. Most of these programs are not focused on fiction writing and that is a big issue. Consider when you write a third person POV - you want to keep the character at the forefront of the readers mind. That will lead to passive sentences - which are flagged. An interesting exercise is to drop text of a good writer into one of these programs and see what comes out. With caution, I find it gives me some measure of confidence and enables me to identify problems I was too close to.
Hemingway writer is especially bad....i took the first page of 'Hills like white elephants' by Hemingway, and ran it through it and it came up with a bunch of suggestions which would have completely ruined the piece
You're right. If you were to take it's advise all the time, it would take the life out of the piece. I like it because it says 'Here is a complex sentence - is it clear, could it be simpler?' I normally do that in the course of writing but sometimes, in knowing what you want to convey and putting it into words you can muddy the sentence. I use it for that. What I don't like is that it grades your work according to what it thinks is good writing. I put in some Steven King and some GOT and it filled with 'Difficult to read sentences'. It may be good for writing essays, I suppose (hedging ).
Yeah, making art just can't be reduced to an algorithm. But the AIs are here now. Nobody will learn anything about writing anymore, all homework will now be done by AI. The only way to avoid it would be to make people write in a supervised room where they have no access to computers and must write with pen and paper. Barbaric!
Pen and paper! Barbaric! I assume, of course, you're talking about ballpoint and legal pad. A nice oblique nib on paper from the mills at Étival-Clairefontaine, well, that would be a different story, of course.
It is/was a very useful tool to use and write with. I gave me a HUGE insight of better writing skills. BUT, Hemingway Editor is the preferred tool I like to use. Using both, this is my preference.
One aspect I like about PWA is you can select the type of writing you are doing, and tune it with the style of particular authors. Though the list of authors is limited. I use the ignore option often in PWA, since it doesn't get context, especially with references to past events, it just says passive voice.
