You're looking for proselint. https://github.com/amperser/proselint

Looks very interesting, but the example given ("John is very unique") and the warning given by proselint for it illustrates why this is a veritable mine-field, and why what sleepysysadmin asks for isn't really possible (but that's ok - having a tool flag possible issues is still great)

The example warning is certainly worth giving, but conversely Merriam-Webster points out that "very unique" is a common construction when "unique" is used in the sense "unusual", though most frequently used in less formal contexts. And so it may or may not be justified depending on what you're writing...

Having gone back and forth with a real editor for a novel, half the effort was a conversation with the editor based on questions about intent and preferred tone and style, in order to come to agreement on things she had flagged as possible issues where it was not clear whether or not a change ought to be made or not.

I'm absolutely going to take a closer look at proselint, though.

Certainly. I think the idea is you pick and choose the plugins that suit you (so it's probably not a perfect fit for OP) based on what you think your strengths and weaknesses are. And taste: I want to slap everyone who sticks an adjective in front of "unique", so that rule works for me. No matter what Black says, all linters are an aggregation of someone's tastes and you are free to tweak as you see fit. Descriptivism beats prescriptivism where language is concerned IMHO.

Scrivener should integrate this.

ProWritingAid integrates with Scrivener and provides grammar checking, repeated words, and much more to help you improve whatever you're writing. http://prowritingaid.com/

Friendly advice: This is helpful to know about, contextually relevant, etc and I'm glad you posted it, but you should probably disclose that you're the CEO.

You'd need a human editor to do all that. Automatically fixing run-on sentences and removing repeated words is possible. Activating passive sentences is challenging; Grammarly gets it wrong all the time, in my experience. Replacing cliches and fixing wordiness would be very challenging without deep linguistic and cultural knowledge.

>You'd need a human editor to do all that. Automatically fixing run-on sentences and removing repeated words is possible. Activating passive sentences is challenging; Grammarly gets it wrong all the time, in my experience. Replacing cliches and fixing wordiness would be very challenging without deep linguistic and cultural knowledge.

Well I don't know why I was downvoted so heavily. I dont disagree.

My goal isn't so much to write a novel but rather improve upon my englitch. Now I have chosen writing a novel in order to improve but I dont know where I went wrong.

I would love a human editor but that costs $. I doubt anyone is giving me a dime for my book. I don't have >$1000 to get my book edited.

Of which any hired editor will just shoot themselves.

For that use, I think "proselint", as zx321 recommended, is probably a perfect start, as it references the source of the recommendation.

(in terms of cost, though, you can get a decent editor for closer to the ~$300 mark for up ~60k-70k words, but of course if you're not intending on putting in a lot of effort - and more money - to market and sell it, that may well be too much too)

>For that use, I think "proselint", as zx321 recommended, is probably a perfect start, as it references the source of the recommendation.

I see that, I will give it a try. Cant hurt.

>(in terms of cost, though, you can get a decent editor for closer to the ~$300 mark for up ~60k-70k words, but of course if you're not intending on putting in a lot of effort - and more money - to market and sell it, that may well be too much too)

Lets say there was a magical machine learning perfect editor for free. I input my trash and I get an amazing copy out.

I might try marketing and selling it. I have put lots of effort into the book. Afterall just getting 75,000 words down is good effort by itself.

The problem is that I put this in grammarly or prowriting aid it finds thousands of problems. You fix them. Then put it in another grammar thing and it finds thousands more.

Yeah, Grammarly etc. is great for short things like e-mails and the like, but it's a massive pain for anything of any complexity...

Thanks for mentioning proselint. I just took a quick look and it looks really interesting. Going to give it a try.

I tried using Grammarly when writing a novel, and just had to turn it off. It gets things wrong so often that it just turned out to be a distraction. I still like using it for e-mails etc. but for anything that will pass through a professional editor anyway it's just not worth the hassle to me.