Decided To Step Up My Stamp Description Game

This is NOT a paid endorsement. Just something I did today.

The descriptions I do on my stamp pages are less than stellar. So, I stepped up my game and wanted to get a grammar checker.

I looked at the 100 pound Gorilla, Grammarly. I liked it, but I was not willing to pay the $112 a year to use it. And without paying, the free version became just a glorified spell checker.

I went looking for alternatives and discovered ProWritingAid.com. It's free version did more and helped me clean up my stamp descriptions. Most of the features of the app are available for the first 500 words of your writing. It did more for free.

I saw how much premium costs. And unlike Grammarly, it was only $60 a year. Pricey, but much better that the competition.

At this point I did a Google search for ProWritingAid coupon code and I discovered the code KINDLE40, which knocked 40% off the price, only $36 for the year. I felt it was more than reasonable and bought it.

Again, not affiliated with the product, but thought I should pass this along, in case anyone else is looking for a grammar checker.

.
I would not have thought that a grammar checker would be all that useful, because the descriptive text collectors add to album pages has traditionally been pretty terse; perhaps now that handwriters & typewriters have gone the way of all flesh, our ability to select compact fonts has led us from terse to verse.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey

Descriptions can be long.  The ones I do for souvenir sheets can be 2-3 paragraphs.

I was impressed with how much better the stamp descriptions sounded after I ran everything this grammar checker had available.

Read a lot, write a lot, and buy Fowler's English Usage and The King's English. Much more satisfying than trusting a little Californian inside your computer.

Apast -

Any before and after examples to share?

I can do some from older descriptions I haven't done yet. I'll dry do some after I have dinner.

Ok, I really ran this through every single piece of their grammar checker.

Orginal Description:




After ProWritingAid

Apastuszak, a couple of comments in reply to your first and second posts. Since we're talking about grammar here, I hope you won't be offended when I point out a grammatical error in your first post. It's a fairly common one, I see it all the time, even in printed books and magazine articles, and involves the difference between the words "its" and "it's." In your statement "It's free version did more...." the first word is meant to be the third person gender-neutral possessive pronoun, and as such should not have an apostrophe. The only correct usage of the word with the apostrophe is when being used as a contraction of "it is." In regard to your second post in which you state that descriptions can be long, I completely agree. Some pages in my Art Deco collection might only have one stamp on them, but I try to find out as much as I can about the event being promoted and often have 5 or 6 lines of text. I try to proof read what I've written before hitting the print button, only to find on a few occasions that something is wrong and I've just wasted a sheet of paper that cost me $20 (plus tax) for a hundred sheets.

The "after" version is not much better. To cite a few specific examples,
1. Unnecessary to state the obvious: "souvenir sheet has four stamps"
2. Inconsistency from stamp to stamp: the first and second stamps are described tersely with incomplete sentences. The third and fourth have complete sentences.
3. Grammar error in center stamp description: "Chatskiy Head is .... rocks".
That is enough to point out that nothing substitutes for manual read-through.

It takes a LOT to offend me. Very good observations.

I think the second is better than the first. But I agree to most of your points. That's why I will still have my wife look it all over before I post on my website. There is only so much a computer can do. I'm going to edit it again and see what you think.

While perhaps grammatically correct, I find myself wondering whose 'whose' we are talking about, eg, is it Oleg's main attraction?

I think this sort of stumble - which probably only happens the first time you read the sentence, if at all - is best addressed by breaking the word flow with a comma, to wit:




Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who knows that he over-commas, but likes it that way)

Do you not think that one might best avoid ambiguity by creating a new sentence, along the lines of "Its main attraction ... "? I shouldn't like to inhibit your use of the comma, however, and also have high hopes that you will develop an unAmerican love of the hyphen.

When Peter Mandelson was Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, his office would routinely remove all commas in draft letters submitted for his signature. A little essence of Gertrude Stein in Westminster.

.
My sister (z"l) was my go-to for advice on English (summer scholarship to Stratford-upon-Avon, one thesis short of a PhD at Stanford) and she taught me that commas are like ketchup (or catsup, if you must), to wit:




Okay, that was my example, not hers ...

What she also taught me was that English had steadily morphed & evolved, century after century, with everyone doing pretty much exactly as they pleased, and each of us imitating & adopting whatever appealed to us.

Enter compulsory mass public education, and suddenly there was a need for a Standard English (if we are all going to be teaching something, it needs to be the same thing) and all of the 'rules' that came down to us are merely that frozen moment.

Therefor, there is little reason to honor any of those 19th Century 'rules' that me & you were taught.

Upshot: if the commas correctly guide the reader, they are correctly used.

I prefer the improper use of the ellipsis to any use of a hyphen - ever - but that's me.

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey