: 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

@Phylliss352

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You mention two often unhelpful complaints of such software, against adverbs and moderately challenging sentences. The point is not so much that such things are bad as that, if you read a lot of bad writing, you'll see they tend to over- rather than underuse such things. Of course, that will change if the "robotic" bad writing you describe becomes commonplace because today's writers trust such tools too much; but a lot of "do X instead of Y" best practice is a symptom of people taking older advice like that too seriously.

For example, why are adverbs condemned in the first place? In the 1800s writers got carried away with showing off variety in dialogue tags, because for whatever reason it was decided such diversity was lacking. Before we knew it, every character was either doing something synonymous with saying, or when they something (or did something synonymous) they did so adverbially. This overlaps with purple prose, and funnily enough also a little with another common error no writing tool will ever pick up on unless the AI gets amazing. But some research suggests it's the -ly adverb count that matters more than the total adverb count, and even then they're probably far more damaging in dialogue tags than anywhere else.

As for hard sentences, that too is because we spoiled them with these, and with look-I-own-a-thesaurus words. Do yourself a favour: read "children's" books from a century or so ago, e.g. the Just William Books, and ask yourself how many of the adults you know would find them inaccessible due to the author shirking what we nowadays consider their comprehension-inducing duties. But good writing must feature sentences that vary in complexity, which means your most complex sentences will be the kind you shouldn't be using all the time, but then you aren't. If I were you, I'd worry more about the grade level you're averaging; if that's low enough no number of only-moderately-hard sentences should take priority over your other writing duties.

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