

Ask YC: Feedback on PolishMyWriting.com  - raffi
http://www.polishmywriting.com

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ryanwaggoner
Interesting idea...just for reference, I ran it on a recent blog post of mine:
[http://www.ryanwaggoner.com/2008/08/how-simple-is-too-
simple...](http://www.ryanwaggoner.com/2008/08/how-simple-is-too-simple/)
(sorry for the spam :-)

Overall, I would say that it was most useful when it was pointing out things
like passive voice or cliches, and less useful when telling me to replace
relatively simple words or phrases with even simpler ones. Some of the words
were things like: "feedback", "solicit", "desire", etc. We could certainly
replace these with "opinion", "ask for", and "want", but some of the meaning
and nuance is lost, especially given the context.

I may not be the most eloquent writer, but I'm not writing for a group of 4th-
graders. The "dumbing down" of language leads to dumbing down of thought in
the long run.

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bprater
The human brain prefers the dumbed down language. That's why people take trash
novels to the beach and not Scientific American.

Look at any novel and notice that nearly all the dialogue uses the word
"said". Amateurs always switch this out with words like "exclaimed" and
"retorted".

Pros know that the goal is to simply seduce the reader into their narrative as
quickly and quietly as possible.

~~~
martian
Also, the use of "said" allows for subtlety of dialog that would be lost with
more trite words such as "exclaimed" or "retorted".

Joyce takes it to an extreme: only a dash separates dialog from narration.

~~~
jpd
I think that's an Irish writing style and not particular to Joyce. I know I've
seen Roddy Doyle books use it, at least. Could have been copying Joyce's
style, mind you, but I doubt it.

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bdr
Joyce invented the style. It has since been used by many other authors. Now
that I think about it, it was a kind of refactoring or re-encoding: making a
shorter symbol for a sequence that's frequently repeated.

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mattmaroon
Without spending the time to test out the algorithm, I can tell you this is
sorely needed in the world of blogging. I'm appalled by the atrocious grammar
often found at places like TechCrunch. I can't imagine how the big blogs don't
all outsource copy-editing.

Perhaps an awesome feature would be the ability for them to use your site and
then have the copy-edited stuff published directly to the blog, maybe via xml-
rpc or something.

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JoelSutherland
I really like it. Great work!

The main addition I would like to see is an "accept" option in addition to the
"ignore" button. When a list of suggestions is given, I would like to be able
to select one and see that reflected in the text.

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t0pj
Under settings.slp: _"Click a rule to unignore it."_

This needs no unpolishing, yes?

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jbenz
Very functional. Good tips.

I think the "instant improvement" button should be renamed. I was looking for
a "submit" button or a "show suggestions" button. Instant improvement almost
implies that the changes will be made automatically.

Please try to avoid Comic Sans whenever possible. The background distracts
from your logo a bit. That area could be simplified.

The whole thing is so simple it could look as clean as Google's homepage plus
a couple of ads.

Overall, it's a neat tool.

~~~
jfarmer
Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was a submit button or an advertisement.

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agotterer
Down for anyone else?

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KevBurnsJr
I think we killed it :)

PS. Great service. Definitely has value.

~~~
raffi
Should be fixed soon. There is a change I'm supposed to make soon to make the
rule database shared amongst sessions. Right now its loaded for everyone and
well that makes memory go bye bye real quick.

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jackowayed
I really like it. An "Ignore rule" button would be nice. If you're trying to
demonstrate a strong vocabulary in your paper, you might not ever want simpler
words. (I chose that rule in particular because you seem to have made that
rule too aggressive. A passage of solely simple words, while possibly more
clear, is not as pleasant to read.)

Your suggestions don't always actually fit, but that's true of certain large,
expensive pieces of software (Microsoft Word) too.

Also, allowing people to upload files (at least text files, maybe rtf and doc
if you can parse them into text) might be nice so they don't have to select
and paste it all.

Overall it looks like a very useful site though.

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michael_nielsen
This is a great resource!

I've run a couple of draft essays through it, and it has helped speed up my
revision quite a bit.

Just FYI, about 50% of the suggestions are useful. It's particularly good at
picking up the passive voice. I find the word suggestions less useful. They
work okay on relatively unpolished bits of my writing, but are mostly
superfluous on the more polished bits. The reason, I guess, is that in the
more polished bits the word choice is already quite careful.

I'm spreading word around on my blog, and on FriendFeed.

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hhm
I liked it a lot... but when I tried testing it more, I started getting this:

"Proxy Error

The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server. The
proxy server could not handle the request POST /process.slp.

Reason: Error reading from remote server

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at www.polishmywriting.com Port 80"

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ralph
It's still down at the moment, but are you aware of diction(1) and style(1)?

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raffi
Yes, I reference them on the help page even. Dict has under 1000 rules in it
and style's engine for checking things is pretty simple. When I started
writing my engine I definitely looked at the source code for these.

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hadley
polish != Polish:

polish = "make shiny"

Polish = something related to Poland

I think you need a different name.

~~~
jfarmer
He's hitting the Polish vertical before he strikes out into others: German,
Farsi, Mandarin, etc.

