Since the launch of my book, "Verbosity's Vengeance: A Grammarian Adventure Novel" is coming up [on sale NOW, actually! - T.N.], I thought I'd review one of the pieces of software I used while revising it.
The software is "PerfectIt", a product of Intelligent Editing. Some time ago, I was contacted by Daniel Heuman, the managing director of Intelligent Editing, who offered me the chance to put his product through its paces. The software comes in a standard version ($59) and a professional version ($99). I was given the latter. One big difference is that the standard version is limited to documents of 20,000 words or fewer. It might be suitable for memos, letters, stories or individual chapters, but you couldn't run a novella or full length novel with it.
Unlike other grammar and usage checking software, which are standalone or web-based programs, PerfectIt is a Word plug-in. My experience with Word 2007 and Word 2010 was that it loaded easily and had no appreciable impact on how Word ran on Windows 7-based systems. On an older desktop machine or a newer laptop, it ran fine.
For novelists, the limitations of which tests are run aren't nearly as important as the limit on the size of the file to be examined. I can't really see that running a book through the standard version, chapter by chapter, would give you the overall consistency and polish that using the full version would.
So what does the software do? According to the website, it's proofreading software for professionals:
You can have the software run any or all of these. For example, I told it to check for hyphenation consistency, but to disregard "Phrases to Avoid / Consider". My book was run as a single Word file, approximately 108,000 words. (Naturally, I saved a copy of the file to a thumb drive before allowing anything to be done with it.) Processing the file took less than ten seconds before it was ready for me to start reviewing what it had flagged.
Right away, I got a big surprise about how inconsistent I was in my terminology. My superheroes were always superheroes, but the people they fought were either supervillains, super-villains, or super villains. They had superpowers, super-powers, or super powers. The Grammarian's motorcycle has onboard (or on-board) meme projectors (or meme-projectors) that support his crime fighting (or crimefighting) on the streets of Lexicon City.
In a long document, proofreading to match a house style is invaluable, but it's fussy, picky work. PerfectIt did a great job of finding these inconsistencies. For each, it listed all the variations for each phrase along with how many usages each had. By selecting each one, the cursor was taken to where it occurred in the document, so you can make the change by hand. This let me see if a variant usage was actually appropriate, given the context on that particular page. This also let me define and adhere to one standard "house style" for my book, such as using no hyphen when "super" is part of a class descriptor (supervillain or superhero), but using a hyphen where "super" is used as a adjectival modifier (super-hearing, super-strength).
Evaluating the suggested changes was easy and making the changes (or indicating that I wanted the instance left "as is") was straightforward. At the end of it all, PerfectIt generates a report listing exactly what changes it made. For "Verbosity's Vengeance", this report begins:
An experienced human proofreader, working from a standard style sheet, would no doubt catch the kinds of inconsistencies and variations PerfectIt did, and probably more besides. For an easy to install, easy to use Word plug-in, it's quite good.
The program really isn't intended to clean up poor writing. Feeding a first-draft mess into it would generate so many error reports that you couldn't wade through them all. However, it was very good at giving a professional shine to text that was already tuned up. PerfectIt found about 300 items to fix in 108,000 words. That's an error rate of 0.27%. Is it worth fussing over text that's 99.73% perfect?
I think so. Readers notice inconsistencies and variations. Imperfections look unprofessional, an onus that no novelist wants to have on his or her back.
PerfectIt did a great job at spotting a great many things in what I'd thought was a fully polished manuscript. It's certainly worth giving the free trial a spin.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
The software is "PerfectIt", a product of Intelligent Editing. Some time ago, I was contacted by Daniel Heuman, the managing director of Intelligent Editing, who offered me the chance to put his product through its paces. The software comes in a standard version ($59) and a professional version ($99). I was given the latter. One big difference is that the standard version is limited to documents of 20,000 words or fewer. It might be suitable for memos, letters, stories or individual chapters, but you couldn't run a novella or full length novel with it.Unlike other grammar and usage checking software, which are standalone or web-based programs, PerfectIt is a Word plug-in. My experience with Word 2007 and Word 2010 was that it loaded easily and had no appreciable impact on how Word ran on Windows 7-based systems. On an older desktop machine or a newer laptop, it ran fine.
For novelists, the limitations of which tests are run aren't nearly as important as the limit on the size of the file to be examined. I can't really see that running a book through the standard version, chapter by chapter, would give you the overall consistency and polish that using the full version would.
So what does the software do? According to the website, it's proofreading software for professionals:
"PerfectIt helps you deliver error-free documents. It helps you to improve consistency, ensure quality and enforce your style guide."There are ten classes of tests, with sub-sections for each (click the images to enlarge):
You can have the software run any or all of these. For example, I told it to check for hyphenation consistency, but to disregard "Phrases to Avoid / Consider". My book was run as a single Word file, approximately 108,000 words. (Naturally, I saved a copy of the file to a thumb drive before allowing anything to be done with it.) Processing the file took less than ten seconds before it was ready for me to start reviewing what it had flagged.
In a long document, proofreading to match a house style is invaluable, but it's fussy, picky work. PerfectIt did a great job of finding these inconsistencies. For each, it listed all the variations for each phrase along with how many usages each had. By selecting each one, the cursor was taken to where it occurred in the document, so you can make the change by hand. This let me see if a variant usage was actually appropriate, given the context on that particular page. This also let me define and adhere to one standard "house style" for my book, such as using no hyphen when "super" is part of a class descriptor (supervillain or superhero), but using a hyphen where "super" is used as a adjectival modifier (super-hearing, super-strength).Evaluating the suggested changes was easy and making the changes (or indicating that I wanted the instance left "as is") was straightforward. At the end of it all, PerfectIt generates a report listing exactly what changes it made. For "Verbosity's Vengeance", this report begins:
SUMMARY OF CHANGES MADE USING PERFECTITAnd so on, and so on.
In the test of 'Hyphenation of Phrases', PerfectIt found 53 possible inconsistencies across 383 locations. A total of 76 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Hyphenation of Words', PerfectIt found 23 possible inconsistencies across 181 locations. A total of 32 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Spelling Variations', PerfectIt found 8 possible inconsistencies across 244 locations. A total of 37 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Numbers in Sentences', PerfectIt found 1 possible inconsistency across 62 locations. A total of 3 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Common Typos', PerfectIt found 4 possible errors across 6 locations. A total of 2 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Contractions', PerfectIt found 48 possible errors across 2247 locations. No locations were changed.
In the test of 'Compound Words', PerfectIt found 2 possible inconsistencies across 33 locations. A total of 6 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Abbreviations in Two Forms', PerfectIt found 15 possible inconsistencies across 653 locations. A total of 4 locations were changed.
In the test of 'Abbreviations Without Definitions', PerfectIt found 47 possible errors. No locations were changed.
In the test of 'Phrases in Capitals', PerfectIt found 18 possible inconsistencies across 288 locations. A total of 20 locations were changed.
Note: Some results are described as ranges because PerfectIt does not know which version is correct, only that there is an inconsistency.
HYPHENATION OF PHRASES
The following phrases appear with and without a hyphen:
‘arch enemy’/‘arch-enemy’ appears 1 time without a hyphen, but 2 times with. Two locations of 'arch-enemy' were changed.
‘arch-nemesis’/‘arch nemesis’ appears 1 time with a hyphen, but 1 time without. One location of 'arch-nemesis' was changed. One location of 'arch nemesis' was changed.
‘back-flip’/‘back flip’ appears 1 time with a hyphen, but 1 time without. One location of 'back-flip' was changed. One location of 'back flip' was changed.
‘black-belt’/‘black belt’ appears 1 time with a hyphen, but 1 time without. One location of 'black-belt' was changed.
‘break in’/‘break-in’ appears 3 times without a hyphen, but 4 times with. Three locations of 'break in' were changed.
‘crime-fighting’/‘crime fighting’ appears 1 time with a hyphen, but 3 times without. Three locations of 'crime fighting' were changed.
‘em-dashes’/‘em dashes’ appears 1 time with a hyphen, but 2 times without. One location of 'em-dashes' was changed.
‘energy-bindings’/‘energy bindings’ appears 1 time with a hyphen, but 1 time without. One location of 'energy-bindings' was changed.
‘hand to hand’/‘hand-to-hand’ appears 1 time without a hyphen, but 4 times with. No changes were made.
‘heads up’/‘heads-up’ appears 1 time without a hyphen, but 9 times with. One location of 'heads up' was changed.
‘high density’/‘high-density’ appears 3 times without a hyphen, but 5 times with. Three locations of 'high density' were changed.
...
An experienced human proofreader, working from a standard style sheet, would no doubt catch the kinds of inconsistencies and variations PerfectIt did, and probably more besides. For an easy to install, easy to use Word plug-in, it's quite good.
The program really isn't intended to clean up poor writing. Feeding a first-draft mess into it would generate so many error reports that you couldn't wade through them all. However, it was very good at giving a professional shine to text that was already tuned up. PerfectIt found about 300 items to fix in 108,000 words. That's an error rate of 0.27%. Is it worth fussing over text that's 99.73% perfect?
I think so. Readers notice inconsistencies and variations. Imperfections look unprofessional, an onus that no novelist wants to have on his or her back.
PerfectIt did a great job at spotting a great many things in what I'd thought was a fully polished manuscript. It's certainly worth giving the free trial a spin.
||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.
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