Confidence booster or crasher?

[Jay Aitch]

I found this "Free Manuscript Checker" on the Ghostly Publishing website. It recorded a whopping 576 publishing errors on my manuscript.

I wonder if anyone else has tried it, or knows how such errors are measured or identified?

http://www.ghostlypublishing.co.uk/...e accept our terms and conditions to continue.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

You cut (copied) and pasted an entire manuscript into it? Like, how big was it? On a test of 426 words, it said 20 publishing errors. But nothing specific, no spelling errors, so I think its a grab to enrol into their 10 week course. Sus I say

 

[Carol Rose]

Okay. Just for fun, I pasted the prologue from my series, The Weathermen, into it. This is the same prologue that is now in 6 of the 12 books in the series already published, and will be the same in the last 6. Here's what it said:

Your Score Has Been Calculated
Thank you for your submission. Your score has been calculated and assiged the following rating:

Detected Publishing Errors: 2
Length of Manuscript: 186
POV changes:
Adverbs: 2
Dialogue Errors: 0

Based on your word count, we would consider this submission:

Not Ready
Please be aware that we do NOT check basic spelling and grammar at this stage. That's what your computer is for. If this manuscript were to progress to publication, it would undergo other checks like spelling and grammar before a publishing decision was made.

If you would like to improve this score, we recommend taking our 10 week writing course which will cover how to improve this score and become a published author.
************

Right. I'll just sign right up for that 10 week course. LOL!!!!!!!!

Oh, and did anyone catch the SPELLING ERROR??? Assiged???? HA!!

@Jimithyh, don't waste anymore time or energy on this one. It's a commercial for their product, and obviously they need some instruction themselves.

OOPS!! Guess no one fell for the course promo yet. The link to it goes to a domain name that's parked at GoDaddy.com.

http://www.howtobecomeapublishedauthor.com

 

[Jay Aitch]

Glad everyone else thought as I did ... though when I saw that "score" my heart did skip one.

 

[Bernard Stacey]

Is it a coincidence that the number of 'publishing errors' is the same as the number of adverbs? Or is this just a rather simple computer programme being flogged?

And there was I thinking that writing was a human occupation and engendered emotions not calculable by a machine. How daft was I?

Carol - you must be gutted.... ;-)

I'm off to take their 10-week writing course.

 

[Alistair Roberts]

Damn I missed that spelling error, but I saw the red flag

 

[Carol Rose]

Is it a coincidence that the number of 'publishing errors' is the same as the number of adverbs? Or is this just a rather simple computer programme being flogged?

And there was I thinking that writing was a human occupation and engendered emotions not calculable by a machine. How daft was I?

Carol - you must be gutted.... ;-)

I'm off to take their 10-week writing course.

I wondered that, too. LOL!!

 

[Jason Byrne]

Okay... just for fun... I'm going to have to try. Pasting in 463 pages...
Detected Publishing Errors: 5,941
Length of Manuscript: 270,051
POV changes: 36
Adverbs: 4,938
Dialogue Errors: 0
HAHAHA! There are no POV changes, but that is hilarious.

Let's try just the first two paragraphs...
Detected Publishing Errors: 4
Length of Manuscript: 187
POV changes:
Adverbs: 2
Dialogue Errors: 0