Politeness isn’t everything
I accidentally clicked on a bookmark in my browser a couple of days ago.
I have a habit of finding a site, thinking it looks interesting, bookmarking it for a later occasion and then forgetting about it entirely. As a result I have hundreds of useless bookmarks floating around the place.
The one I rediscovered was a "politeness test" to check just how polite and friendly my writing is.
Apparently my meanderings are not very friendly. I stuck in the stuff I typed last Friday and it scored "Contentious". What the fuck? Apparently I use too much of the First Person. Of course I use the First Person! I'm writing about my own brainfarts and thoughts so I'm hardly going to use the Second or Third Person? Do they think I'm the fucking Queen or something? We are not amused.
One of the sentences was marked as using "vulgar language", but the only word I could find that could possibly triggered this alarming message was the word "hole" as in "the UK will disappear into a black hole if they fail to follow the wishes of the EU masters". Do they think I am referring to a Negro's arshole? If so they would need to clean up their own fucking act before criticising mine.
It seems I am too negative as well? They don't say quite how I am negative but nearly every sentence is flagged. It can only find a few positive words such as "we", "us", "for" [what the fuck?] and “and” [now they’re taking the piss!]. I really must use "positive language" more!
From now on I shall use this test site frequently. My ambition is to score "anarchic", "obnoxious" and "utterly disgusting".
…
Just out of interest I tested the above.
A couple of interesting things cropped up though.
It seems that "fucking" is vulgar and a swear word, but so is "mine"?
One thing it didn't object to is "Negro's arsehole" so apparently that is quite acceptable language?
I think it says a lot about that site!
Frank's sentence "They are purely parasitic on the industries they demonise" came up with "they are on crack" …which seems appropriate when talking about Health Nazis.
Heh! You seem to have found something I missed? I'd like to see how they would "purify" my writing.
Try putting the estimable word floccinaucinihilipilification into a sentence and see whether the test registers something stronger than cretinacious, discombobulating or obnoxious. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/floccinaucinihilipilification
That is very weird! Never heard of that word until a couple of days ago, and here it is again! Now I have to learn to spell it before slapping it into every post.
And remember to Eschew Obfuscation.
The site uses American English – a language where there is a confusion between nouns and verbs.
There is no such thing as American English. There is only English that is mangled, tortured and misspelled at every occasion by those people who live in America.
Your being to kind to the Inglish
What about 'penis'? as in "The penis mightier than the sword."
A typo like that could land you in trouble!
Heaven forbid that your blog should ever be polite, GD. I would lose interest immediately.
I was going to type my comment into that site first just to see what I'd have to do to make it 100% polite and all but after several tries, all of which failed miserably bu the way, I gave it up for a loss. Besides, I began to get sick to my stomach.