How does this affect you?

If you made an account since Friday afternoon, you’ll need to reregister it at some point.  This won’t affect you until you try to validate your key and WordPress complains that the key is not valid.  My apologies for this.

Rule Updates

This week was more about tweaking the rule base.   I’ve added determiner agreement rules for “there’s” to reflect the existing rules for there are and there is.  I  added a rule for its vs. it’s which caught several errors in the Wikipedia simple corpus I test with.  I also added a few redundant expressions (“innovative new”) and updated some complex expressions.

Buzz

A few bloggers have written up their impressions of After the Deadline this past week:

• http://networking.seadvd.com/after-the-deadline-polishes-your-writing-online/
• http://www.barrysbestblog.com/2009/06/after-deadline-improve-your-writing.html
• http://kjctech.net/Blog/archive/2009/06/16/web-application-that-helps-blog-better.aspx
• http://buildanichestoreblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/wordpress-grammer-spelling-style-missed.html
• http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/06/16/after-the-deadline-polishes-your-writing-online/

At first I was surprised to see write ups and traffic but few referrers in my server logs.  It looks like many are linking to www.polishmywriting.com and to the WordPress plugin repository directly.  No problem.  I appreciate the love for After the Deadline.  If you use AtD be sure to share it with your community.

Yesterday, I made a change to After the Deadline and it led to a syntax error in the Javascript plugin for TinyMCE.  For some reason, Firefox chose not to flag this.  The change was so small, I didn’t test it in other browsers.  Let this be a lesson to me.

The next time you try to make a post you’ll see everything is working as expected.  I host the After the Deadline TinyMCE plugin on my server to let you benefit from bug fixes immediately.

Visit http://www.afterthedeadline.com/download.slp?platform=Wordpress to get the latest.

I discovered that the AtD Plugin was leaving its markup tags in published HTML.  I noted in my FAQ I consider this kind of behavior a bug. In short–I fixed this and you’ll want to upgrade your AtD plugin to take advantage of it.  To understand more, read on.

AtD hooks into the TinyMCE editor used by WordPress.  I use the “get editor contents” event as an excuse to strip the AtD markup.  One problem with this is when WordPress does its auto-save, the editor contents is grabbed, and the markup is stripped while you’re editing.  FYI–I checked and the built-in spellchecker has this same problem.

I made a work-around awhile ago to fix this.  Unfortunately it left all that content in the editor plugin.

Today I updated the WordPress plugin to strip out the AtD markup from within WordPress (and not the editor).  This has the advantage that it saves you from the disappearing markup annoyance and if you upgrade, all the old posts with the AtD markup will automatically be corrected for you.

For those of you who don’t upgrade, you’ll experience the disappearing markup issue as I decided this was better default behavior than leaving the AtD markup in the post.  Upgrade to fix it.

New Application: RoundCube Webmail 

After the Deadline is now available for the RoundCube Webmail program.  This thing is a slick web-based client that can talk to any IMAP server.  I tried it with my GMail account and I am thinking of switching over to it.  Having After the Deadline available helps too.  

Since the plugin is new, it needs a patch to the RoundCube code.  Applying the patch is easy and hopefully the RoundCube team will accept my patch as it benefits other TinyMCE plugins.   Visit the Download page to get the plugin.

Rule Updates

Several new rules have made it into the grammar checker.  After the Deadline now checks for simple forms of subject-verb agreement errors:

I has to show you something.
We am far away from home.

AtD also does a better job of picking up wrong verb tenses after to such as:

I have to gone now.  (corrects to, have to be gone or have to go)

I also expanded the rules for the confused words and added more rules for incorrect tense errors.  A solid update this week.

Pricing Updates

I received several emails about the pricing.  It’s nice to know you care enough to communicate.  The confusion came over the casual use term.  I decided to do away with this and follow suit with Akismet.  After the Deadline is now free for personal use.  I don’t care if you use 100 or 1,000 requests in a month, so long as it’s you doing it.  

On the commercial side, I flattened the pricing tiers.  You can purchase 500, 1000, 2500, or 5000 requests per month for $0.01/request. Yes, a penny per request.  Imagine if Microsoft Word was that cheap!  I did this because I plan to expand After the Deadline to more applications and building pricing around how much a blogger uses AtD doesn’t make sense.  

This should clarify things.  Remember, when you buy a service plan for After the Deadline you’re investing in your craft and supporting the continued development of this technology.

Don’t Forget

I’m presenting AtD at the Ann Arbor, MI New Tech meetup this coming Tuesday.  Come out and say hi.  I know I have a few MI users out there.

The format of the event is four companies each with five minutes to show their technology and five minutes to take questions.  All this excitement is followed by networking and other stuff that happens at these events.

The details (including directions) are at http://www.a2newtech.org/

In his essay, Politics and the English Language, George Orwell defines the following rules for clear writing:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Did you know After the Deadline can help you with these rules?  Here is how:

Rule 1: Avoid Clichès

You should avoid clichès in your writing.  After the Deadline flags over 650 worn out phrases.  These phrases lose their power because we’re so used to seeing them.

Rule 2: Use Simple Words

After the Deadline helps you replace complex expressions with simple everyday words.  Examples include use instead of utilize, set up over establish, and equal over equivalent.

Rule 3: Avoid Redundant Expressions

A common poor writing habit is using phrases with extra words that add nothing to the meaning.  After the Deadline flags these so you can remove them.  Examples include destroy over totally destroy, now instead of right now, and written over written down.

Rule 4: Avoid Passive Voice

Like a good copy editor, After the Deadline uses its virtual pen to find passive voice and bring it to your attention.  It’s up to you if you want to revise it or not.  In most cases you will make your writing much clearer.

Rule 5: Avoid Jargon

This is a hard one as each field has its own jargon.  After the Deadline flags some foreign phrases and jargon words.  It’s up to you to try and find the right words depending on your audience.

Rule 6: Remember, rules are meant to be broken

Rules are great but they do not cover every situation.  To help, After the Deadline uses a statistical language model to filter poor suggestions.

Rule Updates

I expanded the grammar checker’s coverage picking up the wrong verb tense.  In this case it’s after auxiliary verbs with a not form.   Here are some mistakes from Wikipedia-Simple:

… samurai didn’t accepted them as noble warriors , because …
He did not left the island after his …

I went on this rule making tangent after reading: “I didn’t thought that …” on a programmer’s blog.  I hope these new rules help some of you out.

I also updated several style rules and added a few new ones.

Welcome PHP List

After the Deadline now features a plugin for PHP List, the open source newsletter manager.  This came after a request from someone on IRC.  I do listen and if something is feasible, will do my best to make a plugin happen.  Of course contributions are welcome too.

Response to AtD

White Shadow has written up his reaction to AtD at his blog.  Bryan at CMS Report published the announcement for AtD.  And we had a lively discussion on Hacker News.

Also, I’m presenting After the Deadline at the Ann Arbor, MI New Tech Meetup on 16 Jun 09 at 6pm.

Click the chart to go to the source, GraphJam.com.

After talking to a few of you, I’ve decided to reinstate casual use as the $5/mo service plan and make that level of service free.  I expect that free service for single writers should lead to greater awareness of AtD.

Thanks for the feedback.