haphip@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Jeffq) (02/25/90)
Here's a contest, sponsered by Reference Software, that can save you $99!
All you have to do is find 15 errors in the below memo, and they'll ship
you the $99 package AND a booklet called 'The Easiest Way to Improve Your
Writing' free! I came across this ad in a magazine and I figured I'd ask
for y'alls hep on this. (I'm in obvious need!) Here's EXACTLY what the
ad says, as far as rules:
New Grammatik Mac found fifteen errors in this memo in just over a minute.
Circle the same errors, mark exactly what the problems are, and send them to
us. If you find them all and identify the problems correctly, we'll send you
Grammatik Mac absoulutely free.
So here's my plan. Y'all mail me any and all errors you find and, if you want,
tell me and I'll send you the final draft with corrections and explanations,
and who you can write to get your free software package. Or just mail me and
ask... I am not purposly withholding information or anything, I'd just like
some help and I'd also like to give y'all a chance at this. Sounds pretty
good, eh?
There are 15 errors; one of them is in the first sentence of the last
paragraph. ..'what's it done' is passive voice. Only 14 more! Mail
the errors and identify them (ie what KIND of error.. punctual, sp, etc.)
to:
haphip@ucscb.ucsc.edu
Here's the memo:
Memo To: Mac people who would like to write better
From: Ken Dickens, as writer
Re: A great new product, a helpful book, and a contest to get both FREE
I'm a skeptic. So when the people at Reference Software told me Grammatik Mac
could improve my writing, I said, "Right." Faster, fontier, or even bolder I
could believe, but better? Give me a break. I thought, if it was real good,
it might help business people write better letters or memos. Then again, I do
this for a living (not a bad one I might add). So if software can improve my
writing, it's fantastic. And I'm not.
Well, two weeks and a whole lot of humble pie later, I'm here to tell you that
Grammatik Mac is nothing like those desk accessory style checkers you might
have tried. Believe me, it's like an English professor in a box. The thing
actually proofreads each sentence and breaks it down into parts of speach.
It's scary, remember sentence diagramming? Well, that's basically what it does
right on your screen.
I guess that's how it knows if subjects and verbs are in agreement
Prepositions are dangling. Plurals should be possessive. All that stuff I can
never remember and have to look up. For example, Grammatik might stop on a
sentence like "I feel I should have won the Grammatik Mac Contest, it's a real
shame", tell you that "feel" is probably incorrect, suggest "think" instead
and by the way, "its" should be "it's." You can ignore the suggestion and
move on (which is what I usually do, making the excuse that it's my writing
style) or change the offending phrase right then and there. I like that. It
lets me fix my mistakes without cramping my style.
Grammatik Mac catches errors like incomplete sentences, improper use of
homonyms (like "their" instead of "there"), split infinitives, noun/modifier
disagreements, passive voice, and etc. It even flags unbalanced punctuation,
transpositions (like form instead of from, capitalization errors, and
thousands of others I've never even heard of
So what's it done for me? Nothing short of making my writing better. And the
more I use it, the fewer mistakes it catches (could I be learning something
here?). Anyway, I'm happy to report that I I almost never write in passive
voice, that I've solved my its/it's problem, yet I still split lots of
infinitives. And I always start too many sentences with and... but, that's
just my style.
--Ken Dickens
One SP is 'speach', and there are two 'I's (that I I almost never), and
they forgot the close-) in the last sentence of the fourth paragraph ((like
form instead of from), and the 'So what's it done' is in passive voice.
Only 11 more!
-Jeffqnagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) (02/25/90)
haphip@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Jeffq) writes: >Here's a contest, sponsered by Reference Software, that can save you $99! >All you have to do is find 15 errors in the below memo, and they'll ship >you the $99 package AND a booklet called 'The Easiest Way to Improve Your >Writing' free! I came across this ad in a magazine and I figured I'd ask >for y'alls hep on this. (I'm in obvious need!) Here's EXACTLY what the >ad says, as far as rules: I saw this ad in MacWorld (before I bought Grammatik Mac) and when I told a friend about it, he said, "How are they going to know if you used Grammatik Mac on the memo?" -- Mark Nagel UC Irvine Department of ICS +----------------------------------------+ ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu | You are in a twisty maze of little | UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel | newsgroups, all looking alike. |
aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) (02/25/90)
>I saw this ad in MacWorld (before I bought Grammatik Mac) and when I >told a friend about it, he said, "How are they going to know if you >used Grammatik Mac on the memo?" Because if you did, you wouldn't be entering a contest to get a free copy of it! :-) -- -=Alan=- aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) (02/25/90)
aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) writes: >Because if you did, you wouldn't be entering a contest to get a free >copy of it! >:-) Yeah, but I could get all my friends free copies... :-) -- Mark Nagel UC Irvine Department of ICS +----------------------------------------+ ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu | radiation: smog with an attitude | UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel +----------------------------------------+
jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) (02/25/90)
In article <25E72A96.20104@paris.ics.uci.edu> nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) writes: >aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) writes: >Yeah, but I could get all my friends free copies... :-) Or even better, you could get n friends, have them each kick in 1/nth of the price, buy one copy, & use the output to get n-1 legal copies.... JB -- Joe Block jpb@umbio.miami.edu There was a young poet named Dan, whose poetry would never scan, when told this was so, He said, Yes I know, It's because I try to fit every possible sylable into the last line that I can.
aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) (02/25/90)
In article <1990Feb25.013030.1882@umigw.miami.edu> jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) writes: >In article <25E72A96.20104@paris.ics.uci.edu> nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) writes: >>aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) writes: >>Yeah, but I could get all my friends free copies... :-) > PLEASE attribute your quotes better... I DID NOT post this, and do not advocate the copying of copyrighted, commercial software. -- -=Alan=- aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu
nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) (02/25/90)
jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) writes: >Or even better, you could get n friends, have them each kick in 1/nth of the price, >buy one copy, & use the output to get n-1 legal copies.... I guess this is supposed to imply I'd support such an idea. They're the ones who made up this contest. I'm just pointing out how stupid the contest is. I don't believe there's anything illegal about entering a contest using information gathered from someone else's program. I wonder if _they_ have thought of that. -- Mark Nagel UC Irvine Department of ICS +----------------------------------------+ ARPA: nagel@ics.uci.edu | N = 1 implies P = NP | UUCP: ucbvax!ucivax!nagel +----------------------------------------+
jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) (02/25/90)
In article <1990Feb25.031805.19558@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu> aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) writes: >In article <1990Feb25.013030.1882@umigw.miami.edu> jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) writes: >>In article <25E72A96.20104@paris.ics.uci.edu> nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) writes: >>>aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Alan D Danziger) writes: >>>Yeah, but I could get all my friends free copies... :-) > >PLEASE attribute your quotes better... I DID NOT post this, and do >not advocate the copying of copyrighted, commercial software. >-- > > -=Alan=- > aland@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu Sorry, things got a little unclear. You said that you could legally get free copies by using the copy you already had on the memo. What I meant, and now realize I wasn't clear enough about, was that no one person would need to cough up the originally $99, just $99/n. My mistake. (I was up before dawn to wait in line for McCartney tickets, and was tired when I posted that originally). -- Joe Block jpb@umbio.miami.edu There was a young poet named Dan, whose poetry would never scan, when told this was so, He said, Yes I know, It's because I try to fit every possible sylable into the last line that I can.
jness@umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU (Joel Ness) (02/26/90)
In article 52577 of comp.sys.mac, haphip@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Jeffq) says: >Here's a contest, sponsered by Reference Software, that can save you $99! >All you have to do is find 15 errors in the below memo, and they'll ship >you the $99 package AND a booklet called 'The Easiest Way to Improve Your >Writing' free! I came across this ad in a magazine and I figured I'd ask >for y'alls hep on this. (I'm in obvious need!) Here's EXACTLY what the >ad says, as far as rules: > > New Grammatik Mac found fifteen errors in this memo in just over a minute. >Circle the same errors, mark exactly what the problems are, and send them to >us. If you find them all and identify the problems correctly, we'll send you >Grammatik Mac absoulutely free. >So here's my plan. Y'all mail me any and all errors you find and, if you want, >tell me and I'll send you the final draft with corrections and explanations, >and who you can write to get your free software package. Or just mail me and >ask... I am not purposly withholding information or anything, I'd just like >some help and I'd also like to give y'all a chance at this. Sounds pretty >good, eh? >There are 15 errors; one of them is in the first sentence of the last >paragraph. ..'what's it done' is passive voice. Only 14 more! Mail >the errors and identify them (ie what KIND of error.. punctual, sp, etc.) >to: >haphip@ucscb.ucsc.edu I was going to look for these errors, too. And then I noticed that the one they had marked (...'what's it done') wasn't wrong. At least, it's not passive voice. Passive voice required a past participle and a form of the verb "to be." It turns the object of a sentence into the subject. Besides, passive voice isn't automatically "wrong," it serves an important purpose in language (or it wouldn't exist). It just gets overused sometimes in scientific and technical writing, and generally should be avoided if it hides meaning or causes confusion. Anyway, after seeing that the one example they gave wasn't even correctly labeled I gave up. Who knows whether there are really 15 mistakes in the letter, and whether the 15 I'd spot would be the 15 they had in mind? Disclaimer: I've got an Master's in this stuff (tech writing) but it's fading away fast now that I'm the Mac guy her. Joel Ness INTERNET: jness@ub.d.umn.edu Information Services BITNET: JNESS@UMNDUL University of Minnesota, Duluth
gbrown@tybalt.caltech.edu (Glenn C. Brown) (02/27/90)
nagel@ics.uci.edu (Mark Nagel) writes: >jpb@umbio.miami.edu (Joe Block) writes: >>Or even better, you could get n friends, have them each kick in 1/nth of the price, >>buy one copy, & use the output to get n-1 legal copies.... >I guess this is supposed to imply I'd support such an idea. They're >the ones who made up this contest. I'm just pointing out how stupid >the contest is. I don't believe there's anything illegal about >entering a contest using information gathered from someone else's >program. I wonder if _they_ have thought of that. To quote the small type of the add: "Entries using Grammatik will be disqualified." They tried to get around collaboration by adding: "Limit one (1) free Grammatik Mac and book per person/address." Collaboration was not mentioned and is, therefore, legal. --Glenn Brown