The dinosaur evolves.

I used to spend hours searching for words I guessed were overly used in my manuscript. No more.

Now I have AutoCrit. Yes, the dinosaur bought a writing app! 

I’m only just discovering AutoCrit’s multiple features. So far, one of its beauties is that it searches for those deadly adverbs—the (mostly) unnecessary modifiers of verbs. “The road to hell is paved with adverbs,” says Stephen King. Let’s pick effective verbs and let them carry their own weight of meaning.   

And AutoCrit generates a personalized list of overly used words, many of which never occurred to me. After my own search and corrections, I still had repeat words happening within the same paragraph. 

Granted, I didn’t have to handwrite the lists from AutoCrit, as you see in the image. There’s a simple way to edit manuscripts in the program and migrate it back into my system, but I just haven’t taken that step yet. 

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh, I’m slipping back down the evolutionary scale! 

…………..

Bonus word for the garbage bin: whom. “As far as I’m concerned, ‘whom’ is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.”  Calvin Trillin