Would this program help with sentence structure when it comes to using tenses since there are 12 styles of tenses. As a fiction writer I find this tricky to find as I edit my work myself. Yet, others see and find the misuse of tenses in my writing. I know the basic use of tenses, but many editors tend to dive deeper into using the other styles of tenses.
This is such a good question I was wondering that as well! I write stories in past tense and present tense and sometimes get them mixed up so it would be great if it caught those issues!
Watched the first 5 minutes of this and it actually put me off getting this. 2/3 of the corrections it suggested were simply wrong. "The problems are't finding a good idea..' - Needing the s on problems removing and are't changing to isn't. It didn't see the s as a problem, and made no sensible suggestion for are't. 'For a book, it can take years and a series to see fruition in the form of an engaged readership.' - it wanted you to change 'in the form of' to 'as'. This changes the tense and the sentence now makes no sense. I get it's a tool, and that you can ignore suggestions. But it is surprising how rubbish it was frankly. If someone without a good sense of English used this, I could easily see how they could turn writing that made sense, into writing that made no sense.
What annoys me is that Pro and Grammarly disagree on punctuation and on readability. Als it's not faire if copy editors take your money and just put your writing through a machine.
@@rudemusicncs It is handy for editing long tracts of prose. I still think professional editors are so expensive they should be able to edit without the tool.
Ha ha...if you think copyeditors "take your money and just put your writing through a machine," you have a lot to learn. You are *way* off on that one.
I use it, It has minor advantages. Very minor. But in many ways it is just ridiculously, idiotically terrible, all at the same time. No actual authors were apparently consulted on creating this app. AT ALL! The advantages? It can spot repeated words, like 'the the' which we can easily miss. But of course it can't actually decide if that is an actual mistake. 'In in', for example, is commonly used legitimately in a certain context, and doesn't always need a comma. It can spot double spaces, something also pretty invisible. That's really about it. It also can spot 'missing' or 'unnecessary' commas. Sort of. Comma rules are very fuzzy, bc comma usage, while fairly uniform in certain areas, really depends on the context in many other areas. And context is the Achilles Heel of computers. Computers can't think. AI is not 'thinking' at anywhere near the complex level of a reader or a writer. Computers have a limited ability to consider context, for that very reason. All they really can do is rudimentary pattern recognition, meaning if they see a sequence of words that fits some pattern, maybe, or maybe not, they can spot where a comma should or shouldn't be, to a very limited degree. And what really limits that is they can't see complex patterns such as those in writing, bc they can't look farther ahead or farther behind for more than just a few words. It takes quite a bit to create pattern recognition of 3 words and then determine what is 'always right' or 'always incorrect', especially when the vocabulary contains 200,000 words. That increases exponentially. 4 words would be 10 times as complex a task. Consider that sentences in fiction average 9-15 words, and a great deal of them are 30 words long or longer. Now imagine an app in 2023 having the wherewithal to parse that in order to 'decide' where a comma might go or might should not go, based on the context. Not gonna happen. PWA also can't understand things like pace, and tone, and attitude of a character or voice of an author. PWA is completely tone deaf to context. It's a computer program! Of course it can't parse context! I still find PWA's comma suggestions at least worth considering, bc while 95 times out of 100 they are completely wrong regarding missing or unnecessary commas, sometimes those suggestions can make one stop and think and re-evaluate whether a comma is missing or belongs, which we humans do BASED ON THE CONTEXT. So it's annoying as all get out, but still has limited worth. But PWA is poorly written. It does not have a vocabulary, to speak of, of more than about 5,000 words, so you have to train it to recognize very common words out of the normal English vocabulary we all have of about 200,000 words. So they are not batting 1000, they are batting ~.025. That's annoying. It also does not like split infinitives. The hatred of split infinitives likely came from the dead language of Latin, where the infinitive is one word and can't be split. In English, they are often two words, and placing an adverb or adjective between those words, such as 'To boldly go where no man has gone before' (eventually changed to 'no one', thank you) is absolutely acceptable in fiction today. Why? Because it does not break the cardinal rule of: 'Don't Confuse the Reader'. Studies show that people use split infinitives 3 times more often today than they did a generation ago. We get it. We understand it. Split infinitives are now acceptable. But PWA is adamant that we should use terminology that only made sense (and only possibly made sense) a century ago. Wake up and smell the propane, PWA. PWA has 'settings'. IOW, it can be set to things like 'casual' and 'academic', but those settings do absolutely nothing, just like the 'door close' button in an elevator, which was disconnected in 1990 due to the disabilities act. PWA also does not like infinitives in general for some stupid reason. It also seems to have a complete hatred of gerunds and participles and participial phrases, all of which are an integral part of good fiction. What it also does not understand is that fewer words are NOT better if they don't convey the message as well as the words they want to replace them with. PWA doesn't even understand what a comma splice is, or that comma splices in short sentences are absolutely acceptable. PWA thinks a compound sentence with a comma and a conjunction, is a comma splice(!) It also makes tons of other boneheaded mistakes. it really boggles the mind at how incredibly stupid it can be. So, even though it has an IQ of about 19, I use it (free version) for the minimal advantages, I ignore the stupidity it brings, and they will never see dime one from me until they hire people who know what they are doing and completely revamp the program, top to bottom.
Have you used any other similar editing software that you prefer? Am thinking Grammarly, Autocrit or others etc? Just figuring out an editing workflow at the moment. Was thinking about ProWritingAid, but this video has actually put me off a bit, as 2/3 of the first suggestions were simply wrong.
@@stuartbrown5012 don't let anyone sway your opinion, you can try the software out for free. See if you like it and if it fits your needs. I'm learning how to write so it's very, very helpful for me despite what people say (obv I don't trust it 100% but for what it does for my use case it's plenty helpful) .
As person who is challenge in this skill, I like the style & passive assist and it looks more robust than Grammerly.
Would this program help with sentence structure when it comes to using tenses since there are 12 styles of tenses. As a fiction writer I find this tricky to find as I edit my work myself. Yet, others see and find the misuse of tenses in my writing. I know the basic use of tenses, but many editors tend to dive deeper into using the other styles of tenses.
This is such a good question I was wondering that as well! I write stories in past tense and present tense and sometimes get them mixed up so it would be great if it caught those issues!
No, it will not help. At all. If you write in present tense, for instance, it will attempt to scold you for using present-tense verbs.
I don't see the affliate link. Is it still available?
Sorry, try becomeawritertoday.com/try-prowriting-aid/
how can we get the discount
He has a link to get 20% off below the video
Great review. Thanks so much.
They have cost it through the moon at the moment. They obviously reckon every author out there has landed a $1m book deal....
Watched the first 5 minutes of this and it actually put me off getting this. 2/3 of the corrections it suggested were simply wrong.
"The problems are't finding a good idea..' - Needing the s on problems removing and are't changing to isn't. It didn't see the s as a problem, and made no sensible suggestion for are't.
'For a book, it can take years and a series to see fruition in the form of an engaged readership.' - it wanted you to change 'in the form of' to 'as'. This changes the tense and the sentence now makes no sense.
I get it's a tool, and that you can ignore suggestions. But it is surprising how rubbish it was frankly. If someone without a good sense of English used this, I could easily see how they could turn writing that made sense, into writing that made no sense.
What annoys me is that Pro and Grammarly disagree on punctuation and on readability. Als it's not faire if copy editors take your money and just put your writing through a machine.
But is their machine? And their product? What's not fair about that?..
@@rudemusicncs Because you could do it yourself, also they don't say.
@@willowbell3756 Yeah but if you can do it yourself then there's no need to buy the tool. It's mostly for people who are uncapable of that.
@@rudemusicncs It is handy for editing long tracts of prose. I still think professional editors are so expensive they should be able to edit without the tool.
Ha ha...if you think copyeditors "take your money and just put your writing through a machine," you have a lot to learn. You are *way* off on that one.
I use it, It has minor advantages. Very minor. But in many ways it is just ridiculously, idiotically terrible, all at the same time. No actual authors were apparently consulted on creating this app. AT ALL!
The advantages? It can spot repeated words, like 'the the' which we can easily miss. But of course it can't actually decide if that is an actual mistake. 'In in', for example, is commonly used legitimately in a certain context, and doesn't always need a comma. It can spot double spaces, something also pretty invisible. That's really about it.
It also can spot 'missing' or 'unnecessary' commas. Sort of. Comma rules are very fuzzy, bc comma usage, while fairly uniform in certain areas, really depends on the context in many other areas.
And context is the Achilles Heel of computers. Computers can't think. AI is not 'thinking' at anywhere near the complex level of a reader or a writer. Computers have a limited ability to consider context, for that very reason. All they really can do is rudimentary pattern recognition, meaning if they see a sequence of words that fits some pattern, maybe, or maybe not, they can spot where a comma should or shouldn't be, to a very limited degree. And what really limits that is they can't see complex patterns such as those in writing, bc they can't look farther ahead or farther behind for more than just a few words.
It takes quite a bit to create pattern recognition of 3 words and then determine what is 'always right' or 'always incorrect', especially when the vocabulary contains 200,000 words. That increases exponentially. 4 words would be 10 times as complex a task. Consider that sentences in fiction average 9-15 words, and a great deal of them are 30 words long or longer. Now imagine an app in 2023 having the wherewithal to parse that in order to 'decide' where a comma might go or might should not go, based on the context. Not gonna happen.
PWA also can't understand things like pace, and tone, and attitude of a character or voice of an author. PWA is completely tone deaf to context. It's a computer program! Of course it can't parse context!
I still find PWA's comma suggestions at least worth considering, bc while 95 times out of 100 they are completely wrong regarding missing or unnecessary commas, sometimes those suggestions can make one stop and think and re-evaluate whether a comma is missing or belongs, which we humans do BASED ON THE CONTEXT. So it's annoying as all get out, but still has limited worth.
But PWA is poorly written. It does not have a vocabulary, to speak of, of more than about 5,000 words, so you have to train it to recognize very common words out of the normal English vocabulary we all have of about 200,000 words. So they are not batting 1000, they are batting ~.025. That's annoying.
It also does not like split infinitives. The hatred of split infinitives likely came from the dead language of Latin, where the infinitive is one word and can't be split. In English, they are often two words, and placing an adverb or adjective between those words, such as 'To boldly go where no man has gone before' (eventually changed to 'no one', thank you) is absolutely acceptable in fiction today. Why? Because it does not break the cardinal rule of: 'Don't Confuse the Reader'. Studies show that people use split infinitives 3 times more often today than they did a generation ago. We get it. We understand it. Split infinitives are now acceptable. But PWA is adamant that we should use terminology that only made sense (and only possibly made sense) a century ago. Wake up and smell the propane, PWA.
PWA has 'settings'. IOW, it can be set to things like 'casual' and 'academic', but those settings do absolutely nothing, just like the 'door close' button in an elevator, which was disconnected in 1990 due to the disabilities act.
PWA also does not like infinitives in general for some stupid reason. It also seems to have a complete hatred of gerunds and participles and participial phrases, all of which are an integral part of good fiction. What it also does not understand is that fewer words are NOT better if they don't convey the message as well as the words they want to replace them with. PWA doesn't even understand what a comma splice is, or that comma splices in short sentences are absolutely acceptable. PWA thinks a compound sentence with a comma and a conjunction, is a comma splice(!) It also makes tons of other boneheaded mistakes. it really boggles the mind at how incredibly stupid it can be.
So, even though it has an IQ of about 19, I use it (free version) for the minimal advantages, I ignore the stupidity it brings, and they will never see dime one from me until they hire people who know what they are doing and completely revamp the program, top to bottom.
Have you used any other similar editing software that you prefer? Am thinking Grammarly, Autocrit or others etc? Just figuring out an editing workflow at the moment. Was thinking about ProWritingAid, but this video has actually put me off a bit, as 2/3 of the first suggestions were simply wrong.
@@stuartbrown5012 don't let anyone sway your opinion, you can try the software out for free. See if you like it and if it fits your needs. I'm learning how to write so it's very, very helpful for me despite what people say (obv I don't trust it 100% but for what it does for my use case it's plenty helpful) .
Talks too fast at times.
The Irish talk fast. That's normal.🍀
Or he's a new Yorker 😅
THEY TOOK MY MONEY BUT I CAN'T LOG ON!!! 3 DAYS OF TRYING EVERTHING-ENGLISH SHIT!!!