: Re: Knowing when to disobey the advice of grammar software When writing I try to be my own editor in order to improve the quality of what I write. When I feel happy I use Hemingway to further

@Angela458

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I'm not familiar with Hemingway, but I use a different piece of software called AutoCrit that does pretty much the same thing.

Hemingway, AutoCrit, and their competitors are not to be thought of as the golden standard. Rather, they show you areas where you might need to work on your manuscript.

For example, AutoCrit has taught me I am a master of passive voice and abusing the word "that". Those are more general ideas that are easy to follow without crippling your style (unless you want your style to be in the passive tone with the word "that" everywhere).

Adverbs are a good example of a dilemma. Stephen King has said that "The road to Hell is paved with adverbs." Mark Twain also had a strong dislike of adverbs, but I can't remember the exact quote right now. In generality, I would follow Hemingway's suggestion relating to adverbs. In your example of "highly successful," could you replace successful with a stronger word like prosperous or wealthy? However, with any editing software like this, there will be exception. Some characters might be prone to use adverbs, and you should leave those.

When using software like this, be true to the story. The goal isn't to get a perfect score. The goal is make your writing better, but at the end of the day, you are the judge of what works in your book and what doesn't. That doesn't excuse you from making styling errors, but having styling "errors" could give your book a certain feeling it wouldn't have otherwise. Take for example Cry, the Beloved Country and The Unvanquished. The former disregards all common practices for formatting and dialogue, and the latter alludes to event rather than describing them and leaves off apostrophes. AutoCrit actually had a serious of blog posts where they ran their software on popular books and found those books weren't perfect. You can find the one for The Martian here.

Here's the TL;DR:

The software is a guide.
The software can help you find your stumbling blocks (excessive word usage, adverbs, passive voice, etc.)
The software is not a gold standard
It's your book; you know what's best for it.

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