Posted on by seasonsshadow

Spellcheck and AI

For those of you who don’t know, I get paid for writing. I know I’m lucky and I wouldn’t change what I do or the company I work for. Even when people tell me AI is coming for my job and how programs like chatGPT will make me irrelevant in my field.

Now, maybe you’re intimately familiar with AI programs. Maybe you’re laughing to yourself about how the technology is promising but it’s far from being able to replace writers in long-form content. Or maybe you’re biting your nails because you’re the kind of person who knows very little about AI writing programs and it seems like they WILL take our jobs from us.

Either way, for laughs or reassurance, please allow me to tell you about a very frustrating thing that AI is fully capable of, but doesn’t do.

Spelling and grammar checks.

When I was growing up, we were assured computers were only as good as the information we put in them. It seemed kind of like casting a spell because you had to be really specific, you had to give it all the raw data or ingredients for what you wanted, and you needed to make sure it had the capabilities to actually process/think/calculate the thing you wanted it to do.

In today’s day and age, EVERYTHING is online. Including dictionaries. Including encyclopedias. Including translation rules. Including grammar. Including very detailed timelines of the evolution and modifications of the English language.

SO WHY THE HECK CAN’T AI SUCCESSFULLY CHECK MY SPELLING FOR ME!?

I have Grammarly installed, which is great for spelling and basic grammar. I write my drafts in Google Documents, which has spellcheck built in.

The other day, I submitted a draft and the word “accidently” got through Google’s spell check. (I believe they use Oxford but I have my suspicions.) When it got flagged by a coworker I panicked, thinking I had submitted the draft without doing my regular check. Pulling the original up, I re-ran it through the spellcheck and…

nothing

Nothing? Why wasn’t it at least flagging the “accidently” I KNEW was there?

Well, turns out “accidently” is defined by Merriam-Webster! It’s in the dictionary! MW, how could you do this to me!? Hopped into the Oxford Dictionary, and it was there too! Just to be thorough, I jumped into the Cambridge Dictionary, but it was completely absent! Same with dictionary.com. This, of course, sent me down a rabbit hole of searches.

What is the difference between “accidently” and “accidentally”? Where has “accidently” been used before? Why, when you google “accidently” vs “accidentally” does it not give you the concrete information that it’s incorrect?

Essentially, it has cropped up enough times in enough publications that “accidently” has now been defined and added to dictionaries.

Out of curiosity, I also searched for “nevermind”, which is one of my personal pet peeves. Oxford? It’s in there. And NOT JUST for the singular usage of “pay it no nevermind”. Merriam-Webster? No entry. Cambridge? Also no entry. The last one I checked was dictionary.com and to my delight, it was in there as JUST for the use of “pay them no nevermind.”

So, what I’m proposing is teaching AI English. All English. Every English. It’s a HARD language to learn, and honestly, that’s where I want AI’s powers of logic to go. Not into creating a procedural story with WAY too many keywords. Play around with an AI pickup line generator sometime! It’s a lot of fun, and the lines you get are SO STRANGE. Like, it takes all the information you give it, but it doesn’t understand how an actual human brain would take that information and put it together in a way that makes sense. No one would swoon over those lines.

This is fine. Styles are different across all writers. Why are we trying to make AI replicate THAT when it would be a million times more useful to make it tell us when we’ve used a word that’s only technically in the dictionary because SO MANY PEOPLE mess it up?

I’d love to set my location to “Canada” and have it ACTUALLY tell me how things are spelled in Canada. We have this gross soup of British English, American English, and French Canadian spellings, and it’s ROUGH to navigate! Especially when my location is set to Canada, but my work needs to be submitted in American English, preferably only using words that are in circulation as of this century. Can I please set my location to “Portland, OR” and have it prompt me to correct spellings and remove all my extra Canadian letters?

So here we are. This is where I think AI should be utilized. Please help everyone like a strict teacher, instead of like that weird kid who you pay to do your homework and only get a C.

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Make a “Top 5 Tracks” List

Jobs that pay by the word are common. In those cases, bust out your inner Victor Hugo or Kronk from the Emporer’s New Grove. “And here you have a moment of confirmation – the poison. The poison for Kuzco. The poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco. Kuzco’s poison. That poison?” Some companies pay 3 CENTS a word. THREE cents. If they’re going to be like that, pull out all the stops. Craft beautifully written, 12-line sentences.

I want to talk about one of my favourite editing techniques for when the word count does not influence your pay. The “Top 5 Tracks” technique.

By default, I am a fairly wordy writer. I write things out like I am talking to someone face to face. My punctuation tends to indicate where, in my mind, a speaking voice would pause. I’m sure my university professors loved receiving my essays that were NOT concise and NOT succinct.

Please take a moment of silence for the head writer in my department. She is likely one more instance of a comma splice away from throwing her whole computer at me.

So what is this editing technique that from the sounds of things, has nothing to do with punctuation?

Have you ever been speaking with someone and suddenly noticed they say ‘um’ or ‘like’ a lot? This technique is like calling yourself out for exactly that behaviour.

Pick five words that “weaken” your writing. Ones you know you are bad for. Here are mine:

WORD:WHY’S IT BAD:
ThatNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
Sort ofNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
JustNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
VeryNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.
ReallyNine times out of ten, when I delete it, the sentence doesn’t change. At all.

Do you see where I’m coming from?

If we were to talk in person, I’m SURE a quarter of my vocabulary would be those five. (Not really, but it feels like it.)

Now, you may be thinking to yourself “yes. There are many words that water down sentences.”

I agree! A quick google search of “weak words” will show you hundreds of articles detailing which words you should or should not use, ways to catch yourself, things to replace, etc. I have a problem with absolutes, so I don’t like this. Case in point, many guides out there will tell you not to use adverbs ending in -ly. At all. Because it’s telling instead of showing. Okay, but sometimes it fits the tone! Sometimes I’m going for a tone! Or sometimes, the moment is not important enough for me to expect the reader to pick up on the subtleties of the context cues! For example, what if the maid gently excused herself? What if I just want to say that and move on, rather than describing her movements when she’s not an important character?

With that being said, this is where the Top 5 Tracks comes in. Review your writing. Read a few articles about weak words. I’m sure you will find one or two you KNOW you overuse. If you don’t, try using CTRL + F on something you’ve written recently, and start testing words. The results might SHOCK you.

The articles you may read during your research will outline anything from 4 to 600+ words experts and professionals caution not to use. Know what’s going to be impossible to remember? An arbitrary number of words you may or may not be in the habit of using. This is why you pick the biggest offenders.

Biggest offenders are going to fluctuate depending on genre and style, but should be fairly (Adverb ending in -ly, take that list!) stable for each individual. Pick five of the ones you have trouble with, and focus on those.

CTRL + F within your document for each of the 5 offenders and delete them, or judge them an exception.

“What? Don’t just delete them!?” No! Because look! There’s a “just” in that sentence, and if you deleted it, you’d lose your meaning! “Don’t delete them” implies that you keep them all! “Don’t just delete them” implies that there are additional steps to consider before the action is taken. I guess you could reword it. “What? Don’t delete them without consideration!?” Which I guess gets the point across, but all this to avoid the word ‘just’? Why?

Especially when the words you are using are common, you can’t wholesale delete things.

So.

Read a bunch of your work, pick your Top 5 Tracks, and happy editing!

References

Posted on by seasonsshadow

Change Paragraphs Every Time You SPIT

Have you heard the “Tip Top” trick for knowing when to break paragraphs? Create new paragraphs each time you change – TIme, Place, TOpic, Person.

TIme – Make a new paragraph any time that you are skipping either forward or backward in time.

Place – Make a new paragraph any time that you are moving to a new place. If your piece was a film, this would be a transition. If your piece was a play, this would be a set change.

TOpic – Any new topics, ideas, or subjects need to have their time to shine and grab the reader’s attention. Do this by introducing them in their own paragraph.

Person – When you are writing in an omnipotent point of view and change focus to a different person change paragraphs. When a new person is speaking, new paragraph. When you are introducing a new character then guess what? New paragraph.

I have one I like a little better than that.

Change paragraphs every time you SPIT.

Or, for a catchier/morally questionable option –

SPLIT WHERE YOU SPIT.

S – Speaker

You HAVE to break paragraphs each time a new speaker takes the spotlight, or every time the speaker changes within a dialogue. I know this is a modern rule but it was implemented for clarity. Dante did not follow this rule. I never knew if he or Virgil were speaking in the Divine Comedy. I would punch Dante if I had that power. It’s hard to follow and in modern writings can stall the flow of the text.

P – Place

Please change a paragraph when the focus of your narrative moves to a different place. Place is not just geographical. It can also be emotional or a state of mind, if you care to debate philosophy. This point is nearly identical to the one in TIP TOP. If your piece was a film, a new paragraph would happen every time there was a scene transition. If your piece was a play, a new paragraph would happen every time you struck the stage. When I refer to the emotional place or state of mind, I have found that it can be helpful to really accent and emphasize that change or difference between the two states when you break.

I – Introduce

“Introduce” is kind of my cheater point. If you are introducing a speaker, a place, a state of mind etc you likely already have made the necessary paragraph breaks. Consider this though, I needed a vowel to make my acronym work.

Okay but on a more serious note, I wanted a catch all for introducing new ideas, new plot points, new non-speaking characters, and anything else that you would care to bring into your work in progress. “Introduce” is a fairly good way to emphasize that everything in your writing, if it is worth mentioning, is worth a proper introduction and should be relevant to your work. If you are struggling to give the element its own paragraph, consider if it is really necessary or if there is a way to acknowledge it in an alternate way.

T – Time

This point is the same as the one in TIP TOP. Any time you are moving either forwards or backwards in time, you should be creating a new paragraph. If nothing else, the new paragraph will force your reader to pause which can create enough mental space for you to ease your reader into the alternate time stream.

I used a couple of references to help me lay out the above thoughts.

I would love to hear thoughts on the above, or what other writers (regardless of genre) have found helpful in their paragraph splitting journeys!