I am so pleased DT4 has improved, at least for me, as a writing tool.
Throughout my life until about 2 years ago, I wrote without a writing aid. Wondering if it would make any difference, for a while I used Grammarly. but became so fed up (also with its politics) that I closed my account and lost the balance of advance payment. Hoping it would be better, I got LanguageTool Desktop on a rolling subscription, but it too has become annoying, interfering, intrusive, messing up my writing style. I waste disproportionate time undoing corrections it decided upon. Rather than an aid, it slows my writing pace.
Ok*, such aids are useful for pin-pointing two spaces between words when one only should be, and probably very helpful for people whose native language isn’t (British) English or who for whatever reason are unable to spell or just no good at writing. But for anyone else and especially for anyone like me who writes for a living, it is just as quick to correct one’s own typing mistakes and punctuation. For me, preferring to communicate in writing than verbally or visually, the objective is get the point across, often involving detailed explanation, so the reader can follow what I’m saying and decide without having to ask more questions beforehand, so provided I have made myself clear and unambiguous the fact that the sentence might be longer than 40 words doesn’t need re-writing. Of the circa 6500 texts my friend and have sent each other, the only ones that need resent are those that the predictive text has changed without us realising before send.
For me, DT4 as a writing tool/aid from now on is it. With the added advtage of tags and smart groups for filing.
- LanguageTool would’ve underlined this to tell me it’s American English. or vice versa. I can’t tell you exactly what it would say because I never read it, it was just a nuisance to have held me up. Anyone’who’s tried to cancel a LanguageTool subscription isn’t allowed to without 1) the decision queried, 2) having to give a reason, 3) read a "oops something has happened, message. Try again, with a different reason, get the same message. Contact support is hidden so when at last you find it, let off steam to your heart’s content. I’m not into exacting revenge but if i were to be then recommending LanguageTool would be prime candidate!
