ressia
commented
12 years ago Hi Daniel and Damien,
1.- The problem with classification is that some of them are clear like "allow to" and others are subjective. In any case the tentative severity of the rule is states in the description. For example. "passive voice should be avoided" and "allow to is wrong" Maybe we can model these ratings but I am not completely sure that we can get a uniform rating.
2.- "I noticed there is some feedback specifically for German speakers" I do not know what you means by this.
3.- "After 'an' only words beginning with a vowel are allowed, yes this is a problem of the detector, we need to build a more complex detector.
4.- "Use a comma after the next-to-last item in a series of three or more elements" no idea about this, need to check
5.- About passive voice, as the issue state "try to avoid it as much as you can", if you look at the books textlint was built on they basically say that you should not use it at all. So there is no single answer for this. It depends on the context. This rule spot passive voice so that it could be weighted by the writer. Maybe we have to research to find in which circumstances passive voice should be avoided for sure.
DamienCassou
Some feedback from Daniel Sykes:
I had a quick go with TextLint, first with my writing and then the deliverable. Overall I would say it's a little sensitive. Perhaps each item of feedback could have a severity rating?
Wrong everywhere and always: "allow to" Wrong in formal/scientific language: Contractions like "I'll" Undesirable: Long sentences Undesirable in papers: "not" Personal choice: "in order to", Oxford comma
I noticed there is some feedback specifically for German speakers. Are there any for Latin speakers? There are some mistakes I notice very often, for example: putting a comma after the subject in a sentence, putting plurals within compound nouns, and compound nouns of excessive length.
A couple of mistakes in the feedback:
And finally, about the passive voice, I would say the guidelines are quite subtle. In fact one "should" write (scientifically) in passive voice, but this leads to various problems: (1) it's hard to read; (2) it's not clear what the authors actually did (sometimes this is an advantage). On the other hand, writing completely in active voice is absolutely wrong. If one writes mostly in active voice it sounds incredibly childish to an English person. The ideal is a mix of both, with the active voice making clear what work was done by the authors.