Service finds errors that spell and grammar checkers don’t.
When I write a post for Domain Name Wire, I act as researcher, writer and editor. That’s why you occasionally see a typo or two in articles. I review articles before posting, and always pay attention to that red squiggly underline indicating a misspelled word, but some types of errors are harder to catch.
That’s why I was intrigued to learn about Knowingly, a new company launched by futurist and former Demand Media Chief Innovation Officer Byron Reese.
Knowingly offers Correctica, a tool to scan your website for the types of errors that spell checkers don’t pick up and humans often mess up: compound words, misused phrases, homophones and the like.
How many errors will you find across Domain Name Wire’s 8,000+ posts?
A lot, it turns out. But it’s not as bad as I initially thought.
Correctica scanned my site and the company provided a spreadsheet of errors divided into several categories, including ones that are definitely wrong and need to be fixed as well as ones that are a bit trickier and require case-by-case analysis.
The scan uncovered over 3,000 errors. That’s more than I expected.
Once I started digging into the results, I learned that I haven’t done that poorly. About 95% of the errors are in the comments, where people don’t re-read or check for grammar before they click “submit”.
That said, there were over a hundred errors that were all on me.
I described data as “fairly week” instead of “fairly weak”.
I wrote that something was coming “onto the seen” rather than “onto the scene”.
I also wrote about something without “further adieu” instead of “further ado”.
There was also the “sneak peak” someone gave me of their new software, which should have been a peek, not a peak.
My most common sin is apparently with compound words such as middleman, airtime and hometown.
Perhaps I should take solace in the fact that President Obama’s blog refers to working with both sides of the isle (instead of “aisle”) and the CDC’s website often calls prostate cancer “prostrate”.
Correctica seems like a good service for news organizations and sites that will be embarrassed by mistakes like these (such as corporate and political sites).
Pricing starts at $25 plus $19.95 a month for sites with fewer than 100 pages, which makes it a great deal for businesses with a limited web presence. Sites that churn out a lot of content pay more. For example, a site with 1,000-10,000 pages pays $800 plus a higher monthly fee. (I paid for the service.)
A key issue in today’s world of user reviews and comments is deciding where to draw the line between publisher and user-generated content. In my case, I decided to use the Correctica results to fix over 100 errors in my posts, but I left the comments alone.
That means that if one of my stories “peaked your interest” and you wrote a comment about how “your right” and I’m wrong on the “heals of” reading a story, then for “all intensive purposes” your comment will live forever.
Domainer Extraordinaire says
I like some errors. Proves you haven’t been taken over by a machine.
Andrew Allemann says
Don’t worry, I’ll continue to introduce them to the site 🙂
MichaelBlend says
Byron is one of the smartest and most innovative people you will ever meet, I am very excited to be an investor in Knowingly…
Russ says
Do they offer gift subscriptions? I’d chip in on one for Berkins.
smohnot says
Check out Grammarly for a free in-browser grammar corrector. I think it’s pretty good
smohnot says
Link: http://www.grammarly.com/
Has saved me a few times 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
It doesn’t catch many of the errors like these, though.
Matt says
Actually I kind of like “without further adieu” — it could be used to refer to politicians and celebrities who have trouble giving up the limelight, eg: “Hopefully Sarah Palin remains in her Alaska cabin without further adieu.”