Bronte Follower: Blog

I recently submitted the appendix that was supposed to show the floor plans of the two houses occupied by Beth and her varied family, but the graphics for the appendix did not come through the process. I have received multiple messages letting me know that, but I'm working on it and hope to have it resubmitted and working soon.

Chapter 158 is in the queue, and Lazeez and I have a solution for the chapters problem. Hopefully, we'll have that completed by the end of the weekend.

The problem goes throughout the story, with the most recent two chapters (156, 157) being the text from the actual chapters 154 and 155. I know not what happened, but I will have to resubmit all chapters between 37 and the current end.

I've just found that two chapters of Beth are duplicated in the 30s, such that subsequent chapters are all two off of what they should be. I'm working to fix that, but haven't yet found the problem, and it might be a while. This is probably a problem germane only to those readers that have not reached the late 30s of chapters.

For a long time, now, various widely available word-processing programs have provided what many call "spellchecker" or "Spellcheck." Now, there are programs available, some at no or little cost, that also provide suggestions to improve grammar and syntax. For the past few months, I've been using Grammarly. While I appreciate that it finds stuff like words I'd meant to include but which my fingers didn't get around to typing, it also exposed -- to my mind -- the same problem that Spellcheck provides, but the same problem writ much larger. To wit, they already require the writer to have some familiarization with and skill at words and writing.

Spellcheck cannot find the mistake a writer made when he/she/they wrote "threw" when "through" was intended; the same with "peak," "peek," and "pique." Additionally, Spellcheck cannot know precisely which of the possible solutions is correct with a butchered spelling. As an example, if one types "partiple" into Word, it provides the options of "participle,""particle," and "partible," the first two of which are very different words (I have no idea about the last one!).

While grammar-and-syntax-correction programs can find the above mistakes, at least the free version of Grammarly does not deal well with the shortcuts, some contractions, and other facets typical of dialogue. It also does not deal well with complex sentences that include multiple clauses (both dependent and independent) and commas. I can certainly imagine a capable, but non-learned, writer with good ideas and a good story whose writings could be decimated by not understanding the limitations of these programs.

The solution? Pay attention and apply yourself in English (or whatever language) and grammar classes during primary education. If it's too late for that for a particular writer, many colleges offer remedial English classes these days (almost certainly due to students skating through elementary and high school without learning nearly as much about their language as they should have).

There is nothing of true worth that is not paid for with effort.