I was reading thorough some blogs and forums lately and
noticed a few people talking about some of the programs they use to help with
their writing. From what I made out there are two main types of programs, the
ones that are intended to help with the technicalities of your writing and the
ones that let you store and organise both your writing and your ideas.
Now, the only application I’ve ever used to help with my
writing is MS word, and the benefits of that ‘helping’ are dubious at best. Ok,
so the built-in thesaurus is sometimes worth its weight in gold, and I do use
the spell-checker... but I’ve learned that I should definitely not rely on it.
I’m not too sure about it’s concepts of grammar and punctuation ether. And that
leads me into the programs purporting to help with your technical writing. Now,
suffering from a touch of dyslexia, as I do I was quite interested in context
sensitive spell checking software, although I was also a bit dubious. Would it
detect ‘theme’ instead of ‘them,’ possibly. But how about ‘bed’ instead of
‘bead’ ... probably no so much. Anyway I decided to have a look and begun some
on-line trawling for example/demo applications.
Ok, so first off I’m not going to mention any names heer,
this isn’t an advet, but I will say that a quick Google brings up quite a lot
of programs that purport to be ‘groundbreaking’ in the
field of computer assisted grammar and spelling support. I did try a few demo
versions of these and to be honest, I don’t think they offer much above what is
available with word. The ‘grammar’ part wanted to change my story text to
something I didn’t want it to say, although to be fair some do have a decent
grasp of basic sentence structure and you can set some to look for and correct
(well attempt to correct) common grammatical ‘errors’ like passive sentences etc.
Is it worth paying for something like this if you already use a word processor
with built in checking? It’s hard to say, and definitely is a judgement call.
Some of these programs do look at your writing fairly closely, and do suggest
much more changes than something like work. I can see where these could be a
help for the beginner writer to understand good writing techniques. In quite a
lot of cases it’s offering the same type of thing that critiques often say to
beginners about voice, tense, and sentence structure etc. How much benefit
there is to this entirely depends on you. I would say have a look at a few of
these and see if you think it’s for you.
The second type of ‘helper’ programs promised to get rid of
all those scribbled notes and held together with bent paperclips. They said you
could give me a clear and concise way to outline and organise my work as well
as providing a versioning system... not concepts I’m overly familiar with as
far as my writing is concerned I have to admit. So again I decided to trawl the
internet for some demo software...
I think this type of program is even more subjective. There
are quite a few decent things out there if you like organising things, but to
be honest I don’t think much of these commercial packages offer much more than
is available of free to join critique sites like CritiqueCircle.com.
I use free versioning software for my day-job (programming web
sites) and this type of thing could equally well be used properly time-stamp and
store different revisions of your writing. Yes some are quite good at allowing
you to outline your story or novel, and have things like chapters built in. But
most people could probably do a similar thing in pre-existing software like
word or even (god forbid) an excel spreadsheet. Please don’t think I’m flatly
dismissing these types of program here. On the contrary, I think they can be useful,
and there are people who would be much more at home using an all-in-one system
like many on offer instead of fabricating a roll-your-own system from
pre-existing applications. If you think you may find a use for this type of
app, another quick Google will find many examples to be getting on with.
So what have I deduced for all this Goggling and playing?
Well, nothing startling really. And I do have to admit that I was sceptical
coming into this little experiment. Although I would have to say yes they can
be a help, if you are willing to put in the time to use them properly. But, for
what it’s worth, my advice would still be not to rely solely on any software
for vetting your writing. Don’t use them as a substitute for real-peoples
opinions. A good critique group, ether on-line or face-to-face, is still the
best option IMO. But don’t let that put you off having a look. You may find
something that works for you and both types of ‘helper’ program can indeed
help-out, just remember it’s ‘help’ and not a magic fix to replace hard-work,
planning, and diligence.
I’d be very interested to here what you think,
especially if you do, or have used, one of these programs.
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