TIL that condenscending is not a word · 9:24am Aug 30th, 2016
Alternate title: I sometimes make the most terrible mistakes when it comes to grammar.
I passed my fics through Grammarly—which incidentally suggested some hypercorrections, which I ignored.
Anyway, some egregious errors that Grammarly (correctly) found were not great.
A teapot, and two porcelain cups filled with a reddish-brown liquid sat in the centre of the room.
Why the heck is there a comma after ‘teapot’?
This time he rolled his eyes.
Wait, why isn’t there a comma after ‘time’?
The pegasus then snuck her head into the container, groping for something in the darkness.
Sneak one’s head into something? What.
“I thought it tasted like grapes,” Twilight said as she eyed Pinkie, skeptical.
Wherein I suddenly become American for the last word (sceptical/skeptical).
“Spike? Spike!” the alicorn cried, but the dragon only weeped softly in response.
Shouldn’t it be wept?
Bleh, they’re all fixed now. I should probably get an editor next time.
4181399 Believe it or not, Grammarly does account for American/British spelling differences. It figured out that I was using British spelling for the majority of the fic and thus suggested I replace ‘skeptical’ with ‘sceptical’. There was also a few cases, where I put a comma in places where there shouldn’t have been one, where it found my terrible punctuation abuse. And as with the case of ‘condenscending’, it was quite helpful in rectifying these typos.
The site does have its caveats, though. Its “possibly confused word” feature, although it correctly found the snuck example above, is very hit-or-miss. Examples:
--> “a light-hearted snort” be short instead
--> “Its pitch-black curtains, hanging from the far wall, were closed tight, leaving the room pitch-black.” be It’s instead
It also made some hypercorrections, like suggesting that the with in “what’s with” be removed (“So, what’s with your cutie mark on the chest?”), and not recognising a possessive at the end of a sentence (She glanced around the room, keeping her gaze away from Woodchuck’s.)
I agree that a pre-reader and/or editor would definitely be the better option for more thorough checking. But I’d still recommend Grammarly as a way to pick out the most egregious mistakes, especially in simpler cases like typos and incorrect punctuation.
On a side note, I know that this is a bit too early to ask, but would you happen to be a pre-reader or editor-y person, in case I finish another fic (which would be eventually!
) and need another pair of eyes checking it?
My main issue with Grammarly is just the fact that I see their advertisements at all.
4181771 Oh! I’ve almost forgotten about that. There used to be very pesky Grammarly ads on thefreedictionary.com that for some reason uBlock Origin (best adblocker) hadn’t blocked yet. It’s probably been rectified, but the website’s since changed all the ads so I can’t give you a screenshot of what it looked like.
Or perhaps you were talking about advertisements on the Grammarly site itself. I’m not sure if there are; I haven’t used any sites lately with my adblocker turned off, because I really dislike seeing online ads in general. Like, if I see one I forget about whatever I was doing and block it.
4185209 Nah, I'm talking about Youtube ads that assume an aspiring professional author doesn't know how to compose a letter to a colleague and make it sound professional.
4185210 Oh god. YouTube ads. I swear those 30-second nightmares are directly shipped from Hell.
4185222 Can't be. Hell has some modicum of class. Grammarly is a pedestrian piece of uni-student crutches.