Over the Desk website

Its just your browser complaining that the site is HTTP rather than HTTP/ I wouldn't worry about it

Thanks Laura

ProWriting Aid.

Some interesting conversation here about using grammar etc checkers to assist the writing process, particularly for those for whom English (either version) is not their mother-tongue. So, I decided to have a “play”, using ProWriting Aid.
Found it easily and didn’t have to register or anything like that, which is always a bonus for me. Fed in my latest Avatar story ( “Avatar 4, Halloween”, short, very rude and currently with LSF for loading). The story is 2,700 words and ProWriting came up with 90 suggestions. That’s one for every 30 words.
It could be very useful to me in suggesting alternative uses of full stops, commas, and semi-colons. As such usage is, in great part, a matter of preference, I was not insulted by its suggestions and would have adopted some of them! Some were corrections to genuine, unnoticed errors on my part.
I was, however, distinctly unimpressed by its other suggestions, particularly that I should use active verbs (he lifted her dress) rather than passive verbs (her dress was lifted), which seemed to be an algorithmic obsession. Using passive verbs is a matter of choice and style, not right or wrong.
Then there were word choices

ProWriting Aid continued (which I would discuss if this message would let me. Seems I have reached a word limit or something). In essence it wanted to change my vocabulary and style. Not good. But hey, you can ignore those suggestions.

Geoffrey Stirling.

A while back this was posted "When you think about it, spelling and grammar checking should be a task for computers - not humans."
Balderdash.
If you can't spell and/or use proper grammar, you need to go back to school and learn how to do so...before you offer stories to the unsuspecting public.

Like all things, the spelling and grammar checker can be useful, can be ignored and can be unhelpful. For typos, it is invaluable. I am not very good with the keyboard and little red lines under the likes of 'spinking' are very useful. Suggestions for rephrasing are more often annoying than not, and Geoffrey's complaint above, about suggesting changes between active and passive is a good example. Another annoying one is suggesting replacing 'more + adjective' with a comparative ending '-er'. When I use 'more' it is deliberate!
Where it is unhelpful is when I mistype but accidently make a recognisable word (e.g. typing 'bit' for 'but'). More often than not, these are not picked up, so the intelligence involved, artificial or otherwise, seems to be limited.

The problem with these grammar checkers is that they were originally designed for office reports and formal business letters, so they try to make any piece of writing sound like an office report or a formal business letter, whether it's a page of dialogue, a description of an erotic scene, or a poem. The ProWriting one is, indeed obsessed with putting active verbs in place of passive ones. I've also noticed examples of it underlining words it doesn't recognise - apparently I have a wider vocabulary than it does!