Dick Wolfsie
My proofreader, Heidi, quit about a year ago. Just as well. I was going to dump her anyway. She kept correcting me. Who needs that? Then my wife, Mary Ellen, took over the job. That was an easy transition for her; she has been correcting me for 45 years. I could get a little huffy with Heidi if we differed on a grammatical point. I can’t react that way with my wife, who I now call my corrections officer.
Mary Ellen does a good job editing, but I downloaded an app called Grammarly as a backup in case Mary Ellen was out of town, or out of sorts. This is a form of AI. The program suggests different ways to improve my sentences when I write a column. I can accept their suggestion or dismiss it. Being a dismissive person by nature, I only occasionally take their advice. I can also yell at the screen without getting any backtalk, a luxury I didn’t enjoy with Heidi or now with Mary Ellen.
Each month, I receive an analysis of my writing from the previous four weeks. My work is evaluated in several ways. For example, here’s what they told me for September…
They said I used 9,879 different words, even though my weekly column is only 500 words. I have no clue where that number came from. Then they said I didn’t use enough unique words. I wasn’t going to take that writing down (I mean, lying down), so I emailed the company.
Dear Grammar People:
The juxtaposition of ontological paradigms often precipitates a plethora of dialectical conundrums in the realm of epistemological inquiry. Consequently, elucidating such profound philosophical tenets of writing necessitates an erudite comprehension of axiomatic principles and heuristic methodologies.
I sure told them. I just don’t know what I told them.
They also informed me that in the six months I have used the program, they have identified 574 errors. This is obviously another mistake. Unless they had access to all my old seventh-grade book reports?
Also, I was informed that I did not use the question mark correctly. Do they think I am stupid. I hope not?
They did state that I was more productive than 78% of their users. How could that be? Like I said, I only write 500 words a week. What are these other people doing with this app? Name tags for their kids?
They commented that my writing was spreading joy. I knew I was spreading something, but this was a total surprise.
The program also scans the internet to see if someone plagiarizes my column. So far, no one has been that desperate, but (true story here) about ten years ago, I inadvertently learned that someone was stealing my column for a newspaper in Minnesota. The only thing the reporter changed was substituting his wife’s name for Mary Ellen’s. When I called the publisher to report this, he fired the guy and told the readers it was no big deal because “The guy wasn’t that funny, anyway.”
Finally, Grammarly informed me that “Your area of focus for next week is clarity.” Okay, how’s this? Cancel my subscription.
I hope that’s clear enough.
