Just came across this on a blog:
This online editing software will check your manuscript for overused and repeated words, overused phrases, cliches, pacing, and a few other common writing mistakes.
I ran several pages through the free wizard and was pleasantly surprised at the results.
Autocrit’s checklist of overused words showed I was guilty of a few and highlighted them in my text. The highlights made it easy for me to spot the offenders and allowed me to choose whether to change the sentence or not. It also enabled me to spot passive or weak sentences by highlighting words such as ‘was’ and ‘it’.
The sentence variation tab provided a histogram of sentence lengths, as well as word count. This is a nice tool.
Cliches and redundancies were also revealed. My text contained one cliche and no redundancies.
A number of other diagnostic tools and reports are offered in the packages available for purchase, including the ability to customize the overused words list.
I like the idea and ease of checking for these common errors myself before sending a manuscript to a human editor. Autocrit may also turn out to be a good teaching tool, and I suspect my writing will improve with its use.
Autocrit is membership-based. In addition to the free wizard (which has limits in both tool options and word count), the membership packages range in price from $47 to $117 per year, depending mainly upon word count.
There are other editing software packages out there, including Serenity, Style Writer, EditMinion, and Cliche Cleaner. I’ve read where some writers will run their work through several editing applications to focus on specific issues.
I liked Autocrit‘s simplicity and am planning to purchase a membership. I recommend you check it out.
