The Gross National Debt

Monday, June 8, 2015

It's a word monger's life

I 'scribe to Grammarly, an online outfit that runs a spell and grammar check on stuff I write. I do this because in my freelance writing, I don't have someone to run behind me and proofread. I also have Ginger as a grammar-check overlay on Chrome. It's free (and often annoying so I may be getting rid of it soon). Grammarly is free too (C&P into their website for the check), but I am a believer that if you use a service regularly, you should pay for it, so I ponied up the spare change to get it.

So, sprise, sprise, I get a weekly report from 'em in my email today. Lemme stress this is a WEEKLY report and it covers about half what I wrote last week. About half. It ain't perfect. It missed some errors, but it also caught some I missed.

ACTIVITY

9765 words written. You were more active than 94% of Grammarly users.
(If you figure that's about half, I knocked down nearly 20,000 words last week. So, write much do you? Factor that and I probably was Grammarly's most prolific writer last week. If not, I want to find that writer and break his fingers.)
 
MASTERY

146 mistakes made. You were more accurate than 89% of Grammarly users.
 (Analysis below. Actual mistakes 1/4 of this amount)

VOCABULARY

1173 unique words used. Your vocabulary was more dynamic than 93% of Grammarly users.
(Aha. I need to bump UP my unique word use. Time to take DOWN that 7 percent!)

OVERUSED WORDS
 
Here are the top 3 words you overused in your writing last week.
(Not valid. These "overused" words are SEO keywords and mandated by the people who are buying this freelance work.)

short

investment

insurance


1 Passive voice. 66 mistakes
 (I call BS. Passive voice being a mistake is nonsense. Knocks out nearly half the mistakes right there.)

2 Missing article. 41 mistakes
(Somewhat valid. It tried to insert articles where none could be used or were needed. F'r'instance "short sale" is a stand alone phrase that Grammarly sometimes insists needs an article.)

3 Unclear antecedent. 31 mistakes
(Ehhh, about half right. In context with the preceding 'graph, the unclear antecedents were clear. Still, I adjusted most of 'em.)

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