Roger Hawcroft
2 min readJan 4, 2022

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I meant to mention one other thing in my previous comment and apologise for having to make a second one.

I refer to that seemingly pervasively advertised too, Grammarly. It seems that I can rarely write online anywhere without an advertisement for this tool popping up.

I have tried Grammarly and it is an appallingly inadequate and intrusive tool. I cannot see that it can originate from anywhere other than the USA because, contrary to its name, it seems, all too often, to provide a curious version of grammatical correctness.

I suspect that, as with Google Translator, the major flaw with Grammarly is its inability to understand the human mind and the nuances, complexity and beauty, that a human hand can give to a piece of prose or poetry.

As excellent as these tools are at matching words and even accounting for some contexts, they do so, nonetheless by dint of machine implemented algorithms. They have little, if any ability to understand style, context, mood, satire, inflection, point of view, characterisation or any such facets that may determine what is appropriate and what is not.

Furthermore, those that have designed these applications, as technically brilliant as they may be, I suggest are unlikely to have been or to be, writers. Thus, such applications may do a fairly good job of picking up common word reversals and inappropriate mixing of word endings, parts of speech and such but they do not with any degree of sensitivity accomplish little more.

When this failing is coupled with the North American abuse of the English language, the situation can soon become dire and the tool such a frustration that one can only disable it if one wants to remain sane enough to write well or free enough to permit the flow of stream of consciousness reflection.

Yes, please throw stones if you wish. No, I am not anti North American. I marvel at Hemingway's conciseness and mastery of conversation; at Steinbeck's observation, Russell Hoban's facility over many genres and Judy Bloom's particularly brilliant works for children. as well as many others.

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Roger Hawcroft
Roger Hawcroft

Written by Roger Hawcroft

Expat Tyke in Australia. Dismayed & depressed at World conflict/poverty/disadvantage/hatred. Buoyed by music, art, literature, nature, animals & birds.

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