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Smart Edit (for Novelists & Creative Writers)
Curt:
I am very fond of the humble PageFour ("Software for Novelists and Creative Writers"). Now the same company, (Bad Wolf Software, Manchester, U.K.), has launched a stand-alone piece of accessory: Smart Edit ("Editing Software for Novelists & Creative Writers") - for any editor.
However, the price is $70, so I haven't yet tested it...
Smart Edit
SmartEdit is new software, first released in December 2012. Though minor upgrades are free to licensed users, the software is sold ‘as is’, for what it does today, not for what it might do in the future.
SmartEdit Checks:
Repeated Phrases List
Repeated Words List
Adverb Usage List
Monitored Words List
Dialog Tag Counter
Cliché List
Separate Dialog & Prose Checks
Misused Word List
Foreign Phrase Usage List
Profanity Usage List
Suspect Punctuation List
Proper Nouns List
Acronyms List
Sentence Start List
Sentence Length Graph
Smart & Straight Quote Checker
Dash and Hyphen Checker
Word, Character & Page Count
What Does SmartEdit Do?:
SmartEdit runs a series of 20 individual checks on your work and highlights areas that might need to be looked at. These checks include: highlighting repeated phrases and words, producing a list of every adverb used, flagging possible misused or misspelled words such as “complement” instead of “compliment”.
SmartEdit also examines your sentence structures: highlighting common phrases you use to begin sentences, monitoring sentence length, as well as flagging possibly incorrect punctuation, such as multiple exclamation marks (“!!!?”), or inconsistent use of smart quotes and straight quotes.
What Does SmartEdit NOT Do?:
It does not tell you to remove or replace a word. It does not make any automated changes for you. It does not tell you whether your work might be good, bad, or somewhere in between.
These decisions and interpretations are yours, and only yours to make. Software cannot make them for you, and should not even try. After all, how many repeated phrases are to be found in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech? Would that speech be remembered today if Dr. King had removed all but one of those “I have a dream” phrases in response to a software prompt?
http://www.smart-edit.com/
--- End quote ---
http://www.smart-edit.com/
dr_andus:
However, the price is $70, so I haven't yet tested it...
-Curt (January 06, 2013, 07:21 PM)
--- End quote ---
There is also a free version with limited features, if you scroll down: http://www.smart-edit.com/download.html
helmut85:
Curt, please allow for an irrelevant criticism, then for a (useful?) hint.
Re PageFour: I couldn't resist the free offer on bits some days ago, but I didn't even install the prog, because (and I knew this when downloading it):
On first sight, it seems to be a 3-pane outliner, with PM (project management), but then, of course, this very first, additional little window there (that's missing from competing sw) is NOT some sort of a PM window, into which you could clone parts of your tree, but it's simply a de-compacting of the tree itself: Could come handy here and there, but is false promises at the end of the day, and I so much long for a real PM additional window that I couldn't bear this simili one. Rant off.
Re word count / word listing tools. First, you must distinguish between the word count and the word listing variety: These categories appear similar, voire are often mixed-up in the web, when in fact it's totally different sw:
Word counting sw (as do MS word, or translating sw, but external tools count more words!) is for translators paid by the word (hence them paying for additional tools, after so many translations, those pay over what they would have got for free in Word or their translation sw), whilst word listing tools build up lists of any word used (i.e. they count them separately), e.g. by decreasing frequency.
My hint being, such sw can be really helpful, in order to detect misspellings, for one, by way of just looking at the terms further down in such a list: Also, here, you'll find rare words / (too) rarely used synonyms of more general terms used more frequently, and some of which you then might wish to replace by some of the rarer ones, and also all these misspelled words. I admit the utility of checking for these here isn't as important when you use in-built spellchecking functions in Word or whatever, but then, there are people like me who are fed up with all those false hits such in-built spellchecking functions produce, and for these such word listing tools like this one are more than handy!
Curt:
-the program's full name is PageFour - Software for Novelists and Creative Writers and has nothing to do with a personal informations manager.
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Have you tried the 'pro' version of AskSam? I think its search functions may satisfy you.
https://www.asksam.com/brochure.asp . It is merely $395 :-[
helmut85:
Curt, many people use it as such, and vice versa, many novelists and creative writers could do very well with such a replicating function, too: e.g. for material they'd use here, but then again, believe to use over there, and which ends up not at all in the waste bin, but in a special "to be used later where it goes more smoothly than here" drawer. For all such jumbling around, such a function would be pure gold, but we agree it'd cost more than 40 bucks.
As for AS, I'm one of those AS specialists out there, using it by the non-documented(-any-more) internal search codes, and having used it from day 1 or so (Dos day, I think it was Dos version 2 or 3 - in those days, it even had a macro language implemented that was with its Win 1.0 version and never appeared again), and after helping burying it with my constant criticism of its development having gone bonkers (well, it ended up under the rules of their marketing guy, instead of some serious coding person), I now wish it to be resurrected, less your-material-eating buggy, asap. Btw, it's regularly on bits, for under 100 bucks, but prefer the non-prof version, the prof version's indexing feature (and sole feature it's got over the standard version) causing more serious problems than anything else in this once fine program.
Sorry for this surprise (I suppose), but the good news is, if anybody needs help with AS, I'm willing to assist, now that they even have lost their forum.
Don't laugh: It's the best little-enterprise crm there is ("the best" meaning the most versatile and practical, not the most beautiful) - don't import pictures, don't do real links, just do simili-links processed by your own macros external to AS, don't get over 10,000 customers / prospects, and you'll be rather happy with this program, as extraordinarily buggy as it becomes whenever you try to force its limits. Have it as simple as it gets, internally, and it will let you take big advantage of its architecture.
Today, I said, there's many good coders, but lots of very poor sw design. For AS, it's the opposite: It's genious sw, but must be programmed in a way you'd hung yourself by projective shame if ever you saw its code.
Off-topic: I've always admired your "Norwegian" symbol - earnest: your own, or copied somewhere? Not really important, it's top-class in either case.
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