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Is a grammar program good enough?

jefftrip16 🚫

Hello all,

I am not an author yet. So here is my situation, I am one of those people that was in special education at school. A combination of not the highest I.Q. and a physical disability. Winner, hopefully there is a trophy for that, being that we are in the era of everyone getting a trophy for something.

I hated spelling and grammar at school because I sucked at it!! Getting back to why I am here. I enjoy reading stories on this site, actually a paid up member.

I once had and idea for someone's else's story, I sent it off to the author, as I thought it was a good idea. The author was polite in his reply. A little miffed I decided to have a go at writing one chapter at seeing how it would work, I soon realized he was correct it didn't fit. But I have kept on writing, a little slow at times when you only have two fingers and voice to text doesn't work for me.

Sorry for be long winded, my question is: Is a grammar program good enough if I decided to post my story?

Thank you in advance
J

Replies: Michael Loucks Switch Blayde Diamond Porter Pixy I Marc Nobbs Ezzy Mushroom

Michael Loucks 🚫

@jefftrip16

Sorry for be long winded, my question is: Is a grammar program good enough if I decided to post my story?

Even with decent grammar and vocabulary and using Grammarly, my editor and proofreaders still find errors because some things are difficult for algorithms to catch.

That said, it's likely sufficient, though having a proofreader would be a good addition.

Replies: jefftrip16

jefftrip16 🚫

@Michael Loucks

Thank you for your reply. Once I am finished I will look for a proof reader.

Switch Blayde 🚫

@jefftrip16

Is a grammar program good enough

Grammar programs aren't always correct. You have to analyze what the grammar program is suggesting and make the final determination. But it's good to be told what to look at. Sometimes the program is correct.

I would put the effort into learning punctuation, especially the punctuation for dialogue. When I find it difficult to read a story it's usually because of bad punctuation.

Replies: TheDarkKnight jefftrip16

TheDarkKnight 🚫

@Switch Blayde

I've been using Grammarly for the last couple of years, but I always keep in mind that it is primarily intended for business use. I usually ignore most of the suggestions "it" makes about dialogue.

jefftrip16 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Thank you, this is where I do struggle, punctuation and where it goes. Hopefully the program will help.

Diamond Porter 🚫
Updated:

@jefftrip16

jefftrip16, I think you are too negative about yourself. Your message is of the same quality as most stories posted here (and much better than some) so whatever you used to write the message will be adequate. By that I mean, if you can write a good story, this quality of grammar will not cause any readers to give up on it or even to think worse of it.

I do see half a dozen spots where I would recommend different punctuation, or maybe a different choice of word. Grammar-checking software would probably catch many of the same spots, but would also flag things that you don't need to change. If you want to use it, and are careful about checking its suggestions, you might end up with something more polished. A good proofreader will also catch many of the same issues, but is less likely to try to change "blow job" to "blow away." Proofreaders and editors also catch story-level problems that software generally cannot catch.

Returning to my main point: If you write a story the way you wrote your message, then the spelling, punctuation, and grammar will not be a problem.

Replies: Switch Blayde jefftrip16

Switch Blayde 🚫
Updated:

@Diamond Porter

Returning to my main point: If you write a story the way you wrote your message, then the spelling, punctuation, and grammar will not be a problem.

[The following is addressed to the original poster]

But using a grammar tool and/or editor will help make it better. You always want to strive for the best you can be. (Now I sound like a U.S. Army advertisement. Or is it the Marines?)

And I stand by my comment about learning punctuation. If you don't get into the weird stuff, it's relatively easy and will make a big difference. And it's not the weird stuff that will make a difference. It's the simple stuff like:

"Let's eat, Grandma."
"Let's eat Grandma."

Replies: Dominions Son jefftrip16

Dominions Son 🚫

@Switch Blayde

"Let's eat Grandma."

Grandma is too tough and stringy. :)

Replies: Marc Nobbs

Marc Nobbs 🚫

@Dominions Son

You're eating the wrong bit. ;)

jefftrip16 🚫

@Switch Blayde

Thank you for you comments and the sample you provided. Big help. I will work on it.

jefftrip16 🚫

@Diamond Porter

Thank you for the encouragement. Many years of not performing well at different school leaves it's mark, but this makes me who I am. I am going to find a program to help with punctuation, this is where I don't remember the basics. Then the story I think will hold its own. Author here I come.

Pixy I 🚫

@jefftrip16

I feel your pain Jefftrip, as I was also a 'slow' learner at school. I was fourteen before I could fully recite (but badly) the alphabet. Up till that point I used those plastic letter and number stencils that everyone seemed to have in those days, to know what letters went where.

I'm also a two finger typist, however, I circumvented that somewhat by buying a tablet, stylus (which was terribly slow, so I changed to an electronic one...) and a handwriting-to-text program.

Replies: jefftrip16

jefftrip16 🚫

@Pixy I

Hi Pixy,

Thank you for sharing. There is less pain in knowing you're not the only one.

I have found while we are not good in grammar or spelling, we have other special (in a good way) talents.

Marc Nobbs 🚫

@jefftrip16

Grammarly is very good, especially the premium version, but you can't rely on it 100%. It's primarily a business tool and behaves accordingly. Although you can tweak it to your style, it does require a lot of effort.

I've found that the best way to use it is as a visual cue for parts of the text I need to examine. Sometimes, the Grammarly suggested fix is suitable; other times, it isn't. As with everything related to writing, it's a matter of judgment. There are no quick and easy fixes.

The same goes for using ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Grok to help with proofreading/editing. They are tools, not quick fixes, and they are only as good as the effort the person using them is willing to invest in making them work for them.

Replies: jefftrip16

jefftrip16 🚫

@Marc Nobbs

Thank you for your reply regarding grammar programs. Hopefully the errors that are highlighted are the ones I need.

Ezzy 🚫

@jefftrip16

No. (Notice the period)

It's OK though. What you want here is an editor. When I first started writing I was pretty awful, but I had a good story.

If you have a good story to tell, there are resources on SOL where you can request help from volunteer editors. I found a few (yes every chapter of every story required three editors to look at it.) Certainly I got better as I went along. Also I did a lot of brushing up on grammar and such.

If you have a good story there is help available right on the sight.

Replies: Michael Loucks

Michael Loucks 🚫

@Ezzy

right on the sight

Site. 😎

Mushroom 🚫

@jefftrip16

For about three months I did give Grammarly a try, to see if it would improve my writing. And in the end, I simply decided it was not worth it and that the tools built into Word 2007 were all that I really needed.

A significant number of changes it suggested were outright wrong, and others were not appropriate (especially as it was spoken in quotations). Dialogue in quotations was a particular problem, as in real life almost nobody speaks in "proper English". And it insisting that I correct that every time was annoying.

But the best way to improve your writing I feel is like it is most other things. Just do it. I started about three decades ago, and I often look back at my earlier works and cringe. But over time I did get better, as do most people.

Replies: Michael Loucks

Michael Loucks 🚫

@Mushroom

And it insisting that I correct that every time was annoying.

I've gone the full 15 with Grammarly support on their claim that clicking 'Dismiss' makes Grammarly 'smarter'. Not even close.

Worse, they close tickets as 'resolved' when all they've done is (per their own claims) sent them to the development team. No further feedback, no release notes, just radio silence.

They've finally stopped sending me the canned responses because I call them out each and every time and ding them on the feedback they insist on requesting for every ticket they effectively blackhole.

I finally offered to send them 1,000,000 words of text I'd run through Grammarly and which was now completley correct, despite Grammarly thinking there are thousands of problems with the text (a mix of grammar and prose).

I turned off my renewal because it's actually getting worse, not better.

Replies: Mushroom

Mushroom 🚫

@Michael Loucks

I've gone the full 15 with Grammarly support on their claim that clicking 'Dismiss' makes Grammarly 'smarter'. Not even close.

Worse, they close tickets as 'resolved' when all they've done is (per their own claims) sent them to the development team. No further feedback, no release notes, just radio silence.

And I don't see how it can get better. And I can pretty much see a huge problem with AI in general, and it can be described in two words. Feedback Loop.

I take part in several forums dedicated to science and military topics. And the amount of AI being used to write the articles now is almost frightening. At least 3 "authors" I have found of articles relating to geology have now come back as 100% AI. I first realized this when I was reading an article about something in San Francisco geology, and a few months later a different article from a different author was saying almost the same thing about a city in China. I plugged them both into an AI detector, and both came back as AI.

Now we all know that AI learns through searching other things. How much of the very "learning models" they say they are using are learning from other AI? That is pretty much guaranteed that they are not learning anything, but are in a loop that will keep it stagnant and even regress.

As an IT person, I have been playing with AI for over four decades now. And I see it as no better than Eliza was in the 1970s. I've seen the video game bubble, the dot com bubble, now I believe we are in the "AI Bubble". And eventually people and companies are going to realize it is all smoke and mirrors and it will crash.

After all, if it really is "learning", why did they have to lobotomize it to stop telling people to use gasoline in recipes? That is just one example of the problem with AI. Somebody asked about cooking with gas (meaning natural gas), and it returned suggestions for cooking with gasoline as an ingredient. That got passed around, more people started to "troll" the AI, and the developers realized that no matter what they tried to do, the AI kept insisting that gasoline was fine in a recipe and you could safely eat the food it was used in.

They finally had to lobotomize AI search engines to simply ignore the question. Use any AI powered search engine like Google or Bing, they shut off the AI response because it insisted gasoline was safe to consume.

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Is a grammar program good enough?

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