Sunday, September 04, 2011

Grammar

I'd always thought that a former boss of mine had a very poor style of writing, so in an idle moment I decided to lift a sample of his prose from the internet and run it through one of those grammar-testing sites. Sure enough he only scored 43% and the prognosis was 'weak - needs revision'. Hah! thought I. Now to try me. Result! I got 73% and the comment 'adequate - needs revision'. Of course I had to run my greatest rival Ganching and she got the same comment as me but 7 points more - 80%.

Then I wondered - how would Charles Dickens score? I copied and pasted a paragraph from 'A Tale of Two Cities' and was astonished to see that he only hit 31% and the comment 'poor - needs revision'. Dickens failed majorly on wordiness - imagine! I then ran a passage from 'Mansfield Park' through. Jane Austen did rather better than Dickens as she scored 61% and got 'weak - needs revision'.

So Final Scores were:

1. Ganching - adequate
2. Nelly - adequate
3. Jane Austen - weak
4. Former Boss - weak
5. Charles Dickens - poor

4 comments:

ejh said...

I got horrifically bad results for my blog posts. I'd say I'd try harder in future, but instead I think I'll blame thon grammar website for being pedantic.

Nelly said...

Or maybe for trying to persuade under-confident types to sign up for the paying version. I know what Charles Dickens would have said, "Humbug!"

By ex-boss is still crap at writing

Ronni said...

Both Charles and Jane wrote in an era when there was more time to write and more time to read. I had a college English professor tell me I write at a high school level...I'll have to try your grammar site!

Nelly said...

Tell us your score!