I’m not a very good writer. I hope that from time to time I pop out a fairly interesting piece, I can get quite passionate about music and I know a few words. Really, my lack of experience shows. Most noticeably, I overuse certain words and phrases. Especially when proof reading, I swap one phrase for another, inadvertently causing a repetition in the subsequent paragraph.
A thought occured this evening for a useful computer aid. Something to help avoid overuse of sentences that begin with critically, basically and to be honest.
Consider the humble spelling check tool. If I trigger Jeremy Keith’s spider-sense by writing definately, it is underlined by the word processor (usually). Microsoft Word will even have a crack at correcting my grammar, a behaviour made slightly terrifying as my insufficient literacy leaves me unable to check its grammar in return.
So how about a companion to Spell Check that could be trained to highlight our individual, overused phrases? Store a list of traits and highlight them automatically or on request to help out the proofing process.
It could be as simple as this: Spot one of your writing traits as you’re proof reading, highlight it and choose Always Highlight This Phrase from the context menu. To garnish, add the option to automatically, subtly underline your trait phrases (ala Spell Check) and a trigger to do it on-demand (such as when proof reading and editing).
A winner?
Ben is a 24 year old Web Developer from Cambridge and is a computing graduate of the University of Manchester.