MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Why don't people use professional copy editors?

William Campbell · 10-22-2010, 07:56 PM

It's smart, if you can stand the interface. Too bad they don't make it more seamless.

But the smarts, yeah, I like it. I use fragments a bit, so there's a few message about that, but one thing I really like is its intelligence with commas. Very nice. I'm pretty good with my commas (formal in my use though casual with lots else) and the software seems to like most of my uses. What is cool is that a few places where I slaved over comma or no comma, it comes along and says, "hey, where's your comma?" I like that. No more agonizing over it. The software gets to play tie-breaker in the contest between me versus myself.

What was that line by a famous author? About taking all morning to put in a comma, and all afternoon to delete it. Something like that.

Anyway, already in a short sample I'm testing, it also caught a lit/lighted, and a was/were error. Very nice. Clumsy to use, but I guess you just have to get used to it. I'll play with it more over the weekend (editing book 3 as we speak).

EDIT: Oh yeah, and like I was saying earlier, how I don't like "and then," and make many cases simply "then," the software isn't complaining. Someone else agrees.

10-22-2010, 07:56 PM	#107
William Campbell Connoisseur Posts: 94 Karma: 100001 Join Date: Feb 2010 Device: Kindle	It's smart, if you can stand the interface. Too bad they don't make it more seamless. But the smarts, yeah, I like it. I use fragments a bit, so there's a few message about that, but one thing I really like is its intelligence with commas. Very nice. I'm pretty good with my commas (formal in my use though casual with lots else) and the software seems to like most of my uses. What is cool is that a few places where I slaved over comma or no comma, it comes along and says, "hey, where's your comma?" I like that. No more agonizing over it. The software gets to play tie-breaker in the contest between me versus myself. What was that line by a famous author? About taking all morning to put in a comma, and all afternoon to delete it. Something like that. Anyway, already in a short sample I'm testing, it also caught a lit/lighted, and a was/were error. Very nice. Clumsy to use, but I guess you just have to get used to it. I'll play with it more over the weekend (editing book 3 as we speak). EDIT: Oh yeah, and like I was saying earlier, how I don't like "and then," and make many cases simply "then," the software isn't complaining. Someone else agrees. Last edited by William Campbell; 10-22-2010 at 08:07 PM.