I dread those darn purple lines

A few weeks ago, Nan signed me up for Pro Writing Aid.
Think Microsoft Word’s grammar and spelling checker on steroids.

Missing commas or misspelled words? Easy-peasy…

Split infinitives, dangling modifiers? All in a day’s work…

Weasel words, like “maybe” and “very” and “tend to”? Flagged with a little squiggly orange underscore…

It’s those darn purple lines – see the screenshot of a page from “Losses” that I’m currently working on – that I don’t look forward to.

Because they are slapping me up alongside the head saying, “This is passive voice, you dummy!”

Which I use too much of.

And which is a big no-no for writers, because it’s draggy and slows down the reader.

Don’ get me wrong: Pro Writing Aid is a real godsend for a writer.

Ninety percent of the time – well, perhaps more liked two-out-of-three – I accept their recommendations and make the rewrite.

What Pro Writing Aid doesn’t seem to like, though, are the colloquialisms and contractions we use in everyday conversation.

It consistently suggests my character ought to be saying, “I am going to kill you,” rather than the much more realistic, “I’m gonna kill you!”

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© 2021 David F. Ramacitti writing as Dave Lager