I used to be proud of my spelling, and to an extent, grammar as well. It’s better than at least half the people I interact with.
For example, I’m quite particular about punctuation. Space after the full-stop, not before; on either side of the dash, but not the hyphen; around braces and quotes, not within. With all
Until I installed Grammarly.
I didn’t know that we have to write “7 am” instead of “7am”. For example, I often write “Thanks Naveen” instead of “Thanks, Naveen”. Extra commas, incorrect spacing, … the sheer number of errors that I spot today is a humbling experience.
“But at least my style of writing is very readable,” I wrote to myself. (And in the process, corrected the punctuation by placing the comma before the quote, not after.) My sentences are short. They have short paragraphs. My words are simple. And I use active voice more than passive.
That’s until I started blogging on blog.gramener.com, which has the Yoast SEO plugin that analyzes readability. In my last blog post, I discovered this:
Consecutive sentences: I didn’t realize that I begin most of my sentences the same way. Yoast highlighted that I’m beginning most of them with “I”. (And here I was, proud of my humility.)
Transition words. I did realize that my statements are abrupt, and don’t directly flow from one to another. That’s partly intentional. But I didn’t know that I was violating a rule called “Transition words”, or even that this was a thing.
Of all things that AI could teach me, I didn’t expect it to teach me grammar and humility. God bless the machines.
PS: I used Yoast SEO to reduce consecutive sentences. But I’m yet to change my style to handle transition words yet.
This was interesting to read Anand, didn’t know about the Yoast plugin. I enjoy using http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ — named aptly after Hemingway’s succinct writing style — which gives similar readability score in terms of which class/grade student would be able to read it. The grade metaphor makes it exciting to simplify your writing as much as you can!