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Clarity comments on Open thread, Sep. 14 - Sep. 20, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 14 September 2015 07:10AM

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Comment author: Clarity 18 September 2015 03:24:04PM 1 point [-]

Many LWers, myself particularly, write awkwardly. Did you know Word can check your writing style, not just your spelling with a simple option change. I'm learning how to write with better style already.

Comment author: Dahlen 19 September 2015 12:19:15PM 3 points [-]

This is a good occasion for relying on natural rather than artificial intelligence. Here's a list of style suggestions that can be made by Word. It checks for a lot of things that can be considered bad style in some contexts but not in others, and to my knowledge it's not smart enough to differentiate between different genres. (For example, it can advise you both against passive voice – useful for writing fiction, sometimes – and against use of first-person personal pronouns, which is a no-no in professional documents. If it needs mentioning, sometimes you cannot follow both rules at once.) There's plenty of reason to doubt that a human who can't write very well can have an algorithm for a teacher in matters of writing style; we're not there yet, I think.