
Nitpicker - an overly picky language style checker - albertzeyer
http://nitpickertool.com/
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languagehacker
I for one wholeheartedly disapprove of an app like this. We don't need things
enforcing old, arbitrary modes of prescriptivist grammar. If you spent time
writing this, and you didn't realize along the way that natural language is
far too complex and nuanced to support such reductivist, Cartesian attitudes,
then you're entirely missing the point of how natural language works.

You're sending the wrong message and masquerading as a language expert, when
really you're just codifying meaningless, pedantic complaints about how other
speaker groups utilize a roughly identical system using shared constructions.
Those attitudes lead to unnecessary prejudice against others at best and
bigotry at worst.

You want to know the best way to determine whether or not a construction is
grammatical? Whether someone said it, and another person understood it.
Because well-formedness is ultimately determined on a gradient scale, and not
a categorical one with a series of by-laws like some kind of rulebook for a
secret club.

~~~
cynicalkane
Someone posts a really neat language tool, and the top-voted post is not
talking about the technical merits or interest of the tool, but is instead a
pretentious rant about how real language is what ordinary people speak and
understand. You know, phrases like "Cartesian attitudes" and "identical system
using shared constructions". This is the descriptivist-approved language for
the masses. Using 'whereas' instead of 'while' is an elitist habit that must
be stopped, whereas name-dropping dead philosophers out of context is the mark
of a humanist.

Anyway, I'm primarily interested in hacking, not in seeing some angry nerd on
the Internet make excuses to take down someone else's technically challenging
work.

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jsnell
The framing of the site as overly picky is brilliant. I disagreed with maybe
90% of the suggestions it made on some example text. But no matter how silly
the errors and suggested fixes are, the criticism can be defused by noting
that the site stated up-front it was going to be nitpicking.

(That said, I can't imagine actually using this except for the humor value of
seeing suggestions like replacing "half" in "half a year" with "one-half" or
"moiety".)

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tom_usher
Nice, but why tell me to 'Avoid using British English.'? Maybe a one-off
misuse could be caught, but if you see multiple instances of British English
in a text block, maybe you can assume the writer intends it to be that way?

~~~
derleth
> Maybe a one-off misuse could be caught, but if you see multiple instances of
> British English in a text block, maybe you can assume the writer intends it
> to be that way?

Ah. No. This is clearly in Full-On Prescriptivist Peeving Mode, which means
The Author Is _WRONG!!!!_ (Yes, all of those exclamation points _are_
required.) It's fundamentally more important to hew to the dictates of someone
who thinks English must needs be used according to the rules of Latin than it
is to express yourself in a clear and concise fashion. Anyone who disagrees
would likely use the non-words 'Electrocution' or 'Television'.

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jrajav
It would probably be better for usability to just have the tool on the front
page. The first two steps of the tutorial - "Enter your text." and "Submit to
Nitpicker." - will already be clear to anyone who has used a few web forms.
You could then include a hint on the Analyze step that one can click on the
issues to pop up the menu.

This would lower the barrier to using the tool, and reduce the amount of text
and exposition new users have to slog through.

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FuzzyDunlop
Ironically, the image at the top says 'replace by' when it should be 'replace
with'.

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
Actually, all the text across the site needs a thorough edit (by a human).
Here are just a few examples of what the tool likely passed but that would
have been flagged by a competent human editor:

"Nitpicker was written by Niels Lohmann during the final stages of this
thesis." > ... his thesis

"At that time, every second page looked like the one on the left when it came
back from his supervisor. " > ... on the right.

~~~
a1k0n
And if you feed the site's own copy into the analyzer, it complains not only
about the use of passive voice, but also that "Unnecessary specification of
gender is widely regarded as sexist. Probably recast the sentence."

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cheald
I want an API for it, so I can write the world's most annoying IRC bot.

It'd reuslt in the kline heard 'round the world.

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d0m
Small bug: Html tags can screw up the interface. I pasted an e-mail containing
a couple of <a href=".."> and it was then unusable.

~~~
mindprince
That is why whenever I paste text now I almost always use Cmd+Shift+V.

~~~
d0m
Actually, my e-mail contained _escaped_ html tags; I was explaining something.
The _paste_ was alright, the problem was how it got rendered.

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thisishugo
I pasted in an article I wrote for a publication with a reasonably competent
editor a while ago and the number of false positives was, I thought,
surprisingly high. Many of the 'errors' it flagged simply wouldn't be
considered as such in the context I was writing, and in fact the proposed
changes would worsen the reading experience for the intended audience. I
realise it's overtly supposed to be nit picking, rather than providing a
realistic overview of what an intelligent reader may actually consider errors,
but there's no substitute for simply having another human read what you've
written when trying to eliminate mistakes.

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Zenst
This is what I want/need, alas it failed my to/two/2 and their/there/they're
as well as long sentence punctiontion and multiple and's.

But early days and can only get better. But hey if you chuck shakespere at any
modern day spelling check it will barf more than what I have put the english
language thru, so it's no easy challenge.

If anything there are more exception in the english language to the rules than
there are rules and there be a lot of rules.

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xtreme
I would like to know the privacy aspects of this - does the text gets stored
in the server? What about the "report false positive" button- is it entirely
algorithmic or actually goes to a human? If the latter, how much of the text
is visible to him/her?

Of course, I am not going to use it for anything confidential, but knowing how
much privacy I can expect would be nice.

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neumann_alfred
English is my second language, I will learn _so_ much from this, I love you.
That's all :P

~~~
advisedwang
Be careful, they aren't kidding when they say "Nitpicker". Many of the
mistakes covered (for example while/whereas) are extremely common and are
acceptable in all but the most stringent circumstances.

~~~
neumann_alfred
Sure, but I can still make up my own mind in those cases. For example, I don't
see myself saying "do not" instead of "don't", but with while/whereas, I'm
happy to have that pointed out.. It never occured to me, _because_ I learned
and learn English from reading/hearing English, so it's very easy to pick up
sloppy habits. I think "whereas" is a neat word and should be used more often,
at least by me :)

As Orwell said: "If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if
they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them." I like
nitpicking, I love being corrected. But maybe this would be even better as a
list instead of an online application.

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NinetyNine
Possible opportunity charging students facebook credits to get their essays
checked.

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drbig
Now we can all fight the Grammar/Style Nazis around!

On the serious side - should be useful, I'd certainly like to have a local
offline version to add it right after aspell in my editing pipeline. Just to
see if I agree with the results.

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Stratoscope
I'm a bit skeptical of a style checker that introduces itself like this:

> Nitpicker is a language style checker which compares your text with a large
> database of style warnings, common errors, or warnings indicating that you
> may have once more used the wrong word or preposition. Nitpicker’s goal is
> to implement the old proverb “shame on you if you fool me once, shame on me
> if you fool me twice”: the moment your supervisor, colleague, reviewer, or
> local native-speaker finds a mistake in your text, any repetition is just
> embarrassing.

Let's nitpick:

> Nitpicker is a language style checker which compares your text with a large
> database...

I'd probably write "that" instead of "which" - it's easier to say - and maybe
"writing" instead of "text"? Not sure if "compares" is the ideal word either,
but these are just nitpicks. Rather than tweak these I'd probably rewrite the
whole thing.

> ...of style warnings, common errors, or warnings indicating...

Major bug: "or"? Does it check for one of these problems or another, but not
necessarily all of them? It should be "and".

Repeating "warnings" twice is confusing too. This second group of warnings:
are these style warnings too, or not?

> ...that you may have once more used the wrong word or preposition.

I've read this at least a dozen times now and my brain still slows way down
around the "may have once more used" part. I have a few guesses about what it
means, but I'm not sure which if any are right.

Also, "word or preposition" doesn't make any sense. A preposition _is_ a word.
It's like saying "a parrot or a bird".

> Nitpicker’s goal is to implement the old proverb “shame on you if you fool
> me once, shame on me if you fool me twice”

Ugh. Way to mangle a beautiful and poetic saying. This version has no power:
it's like the nursery rhyme translation, and it's confusing too.

Here's how it really goes:

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on _me_."

Now _that_ is writing.

But what does fooling people and and who should be ashamed have to do with a
style checker anyway? And how would Nitpicker "implement" the proverb? Make
people feel ashamed when someone has fooled them twice?

> the moment your supervisor, colleague, reviewer, or local native-speaker
> finds a mistake in your text, any repetition is just embarrassing.

Is it embarrassing to you or to them? And are we saying that the first mistake
is not embarrassing, only when you repeat it?

I'm trying to connect this with the proverb, which is all about _who_ should
be ashamed, not _when_ the shame happens. It is all very confusing.

Enough nitpicking. How would I write it? Maybe something like:

> Nitpicker helps you find and fix common mistakes in your writing. It checks
> for thousands of style errors and questionable wording and offers
> suggestions to improve them. Let Nitpicker find your mistakes before your
> friends and colleagues do!

~~~
gbog
Agree, but in your position: "find your mistake" could be written "help you
improve your writing".

~~~
Stratoscope
Very good - that's much better than what I wrote.

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pseingatl
Click on "Analyze", screen flashes and no output. Using Google Chrome.

~~~
ansman
Same here, tried Chrome, FF and Safari.

~~~
xorgar831
Yep, on an ipad Chrome, safari and whatever instapaper uses did't work.

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dbaupp
It appears to munge newlines, entering

    
    
      A
      B
    

(with any number of empty lines between them) outputs

    
    
      AB
    

Other than that, I like how the output is presented.

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jvdh
If you want to be even more picky, try submitting the same content to
<http://afterthedeadline.com>

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niklaslogren
Interesting service, will definitely try it out the next time I write
something. A heads-up, though: the "blog" link in the site's menu doesn't
work.

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tremblanc
These three lines did not flag any errors:

These things are always mired with troubled.

These things are always mired with trouble.

These things are always mired with troubles.

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kepano
This is a neat tool, I hope it continues to improve. Suggestion: allow users
to choose from the major style guides.

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chris123
Serious or joke? Or trying to be serious, but failing, in which case props for
trying to scratch your own itch.

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guptaneil
Any plans to add an API? I know it's a work-in-progress but it could still be
quite useful in some cases.

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jstalin
The name itself has an error. It should be "An overly picky language style-
checker."

~~~
evincarofautumn
Why? A hyphen isn't necessary there. It's just apposition: a checker of style
of language.

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foobarqux
Can anyone suggest books that will improve a person's writing?

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lysol
I used a positive anymore and it didn't even care.

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zapt02
Es not working señor..

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lucian303
Nice. Just needs an API and HN to tie into it and reject posts that are
grammatically incorrect that come from English speaking countries, especially
people who think that knowing their programming language is more important
than knowing their native language and English (regardless of one's native
language).

