Improve Your Writing Using a Bot That Echoes the Advice of E.B. White and More

A new program wants to help you up your writing game. Proselint is an automated writing editor that reveals how your writing adheres to the practices of some of the world's best literary brains, Boing Boing reports.

The style bot has a checklist of functions designed to help you purge your prose of incorrect usage as well as airline industry jargon, sexist language, archaic words, cliches, and anything else that might be dragging down your work. It'll even advise you to try substituting "damn" every time you're tempted to use the word "very" or remind you that "brb" is chat-speak and should be written out.

“We aim for a tool so precise that it becomes possible to unquestioningly adopt its recommendations and still come out ahead—with stronger, tighter prose,” the creators write on the site.

The computer program pulls advice from literary masters like David Foster Wallace, Mark Twain, George Orwell, William Strunk, and E.B. White, as well as "the editorial staff of the world’s finest literary magazines and newspapers, among others,” according to the creators.

Proselint highlights the incorrect words and style that pop up in your writing and provides a clear explanation of where you’re going wrong through pop-up text.

For now, the program is in the beginning stages, meaning you can only see a demo online or download it to use with other editing programs. If you’ve got some coding skills, check it out on GitHub.

[h/t Boing Boing]

All images via Proselint