tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81811829618491163602024-03-10T23:15:33.302-07:00Paper RaterUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-3618791566913582582017-08-23T09:24:00.000-07:002017-09-20T07:24:29.601-07:00How to Revise a Draft<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated September 20, 2017</span><br />
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Of course, an essay usually requires a few revisions once the first draft is complete. Let's look at the professor's comments on Lois' first draft:<br />
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As you can see, Lois needs to provide more evidence to support her thesis. Here are a few different ways to revise a draft:</div>
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<ul>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Take a break and come back to it</span> - it is always important to read the draft a few times, but it is better to take a break and read it the next day. You are more likely to notice subtle differences when you have a fresh outlook</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Read it out loud</span> - oftentimes you catch incorrect grammar or awkward phrasing better if you read it aloud to yourself</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Have a friend read it</span> - it is always great to get a second opinion on what you wrote. Bonus: have your friend read it aloud and maybe you will notice wording that you want to change</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Run it by a teacher</span> - if your paper is for a class, many teachers give students the opportunity to turn in a first draft. Always take this opportunity because it gives you an idea of whether you are on the right track, and the teacher might have a great idea you never considered</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Take it to the Writing Center</span> - many high schools and universities have a writing center with trained students who can sit down with you for a bit and give you advice on your paper. This is a great opportunity to really talk about your paper with someone else and make sure that your transitions are effective</li>
</ul>
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The last point to note is that a paper is never truly finished. You could revise it ten times and it still would not be done. By then, it is certainly ready to be turned in and read by an audience, but it is not finished. If you think about it, our world is constantly changing. New data comes in every day. People change every day. You might feel differently about a topic from one day to another, which could alter the tone and content of your writing. So in essence, a piece of writing is never finished because it can always be altered. Just some food for thought before your next project.</div>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-5548902688638226522017-08-23T09:15:00.000-07:002017-09-18T05:11:57.322-07:00How to Write a Conclusion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated September 18, 2017</span><br />
At last, you have reached the final phase of the writing process for your essay. The conclusion can vary depending on the style, purpose, and intended audience of your paper. For example, if you are writing primarily for a science class professor the traditional, “In conclusion” followed by a summary of your findings may work perfectly. If you are writing a persuasive paper for a communications class then you might want to end with a call to action. Whatever the case, the best thing you can do to make your paper stand out is to go beyond the normal conclusion.<br />
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Just as the purpose of the hook of your paper is to bring the reader in, the purpose of your conclusion is to leave your reader thinking. For example, if you are analyzing motifs in two different Victorian novels, start your conclusion with a brief summary and then discuss why (or why not) these motifs are still relevant today. It is great when applicable to give your audience a reason to relate to your paper. <br />
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If you are careful to thoughtfully analyze the content of your essay, you might even be able to end your paper with a question, which is the easiest way to ensure that your reader will continue to think about the topic once they have finished reading. Of course, this is not always accomplished successfully so make sure to analyze whether or not it goes with the style, purpose, and audience of your paper.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-79156589089682989452017-08-23T09:10:00.000-07:002017-09-18T05:10:33.444-07:00How to Include Counterarguments<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated September 8, 2017</span><br />
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At first, it might seem like a bad idea to include an argument that goes against the whole purpose of your essay. Yet, this is exactly why it is important to include one. First, it shows that your thesis is arguable, which is necessary if you are writing an argumentative or analytical paper. Second, by adding a counterargument you are able to both acknowledge that another opinion exists and refute why it is not valid for the purpose of your paper. It is also acceptable to agree with part of a counterargument as long as you explain why your essay argues the topic differently. This step of the essay writing adds credibility to the writer and makes your argument even more powerful since you have addressed opposing views. However, make sure that you do not linger too long on explaining a counterargument because you do not want your reader to get confused on the intended meaning of your paper. In general a few sentences to a paragraph should be sufficient space to address the issue. Try to use transitional phrases such as “although” and “however” that make it easy to turn the attention back to your argument.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-9510391085522727182017-08-23T09:06:00.002-07:002017-09-14T07:37:17.273-07:00How to Transition Between Ideas<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated September 14, 2017</span><br />
Once you have a good grasp of what you are writing, the next step is to link the different ideas together as you write. Many of the points mentioned in <i>How to Develop A Thesis</i> and <i>How to Develop Topic Sentences</i> are going to come into play during this part of the writing process. For the sake of this explanation, let us use the typical essay outline:<br />
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<ol>
<li>Intro-Thesis (XYZ)</li>
<li>Body Paragraph 1 (X)</li>
<li>Body Paragraph 2 (Y)</li>
<li>Body Paragraph 3 (Z)</li>
<li>Conclusion</li>
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As previously discussed, the thesis consists of the main idea of your paper written in subject, verb, object form. In addition to these three components, your thesis should have details about how you are going to analyze or argue the main idea. In the example above, there are three details (X,Y, and Z). Each body paragraph is assigned one of these details. Now, you have to figure out how to link them together.</div>
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Think of all five sections as separate puzzle pieces. The first sentence of each paragraph will be the topic sentence. The topic sentence must accomplish two things: refer back to the previous paragraph and give insight into the present paragraph. Thus, each paragraph will have a piece of the previous paragraph, and all five pieces will fit together to complete the puzzle. This step ensures that all of the content is connected on a paragraph by paragraph level.<br />
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In order to ensure that all of the wording is connected, it is necessary to focus on individual paragraphs. Here are a few tips to link ideas together on a sentence by sentence level:</div>
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<ul>
<li>Use complex sentences (and, but, or, ; ⎼ ) </li>
<li>Use transitional words (since, so, however, furthermore, similarly, thus)</li>
<li>Use transitional phrases (In contrast, For example, On one hand, On the other hand, In this case, For instance, etc.)</li>
<li>Use synonyms - For example, if the verb of your thesis is explores, come up with a few synonyms to use throughout the paper such as analyzes, examines, evaluates, considers. This simple tool will help keep your reader engaged AND focused.</li>
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Once the sentences are linked together in each paragraph and the content of all the paragraphs is connected, you have mastered transitions. Even though an essay is thought of as one cohesive idea there are a variety of small components. Making those components line up is what makes the paper cohesive.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-35073234164828471922017-08-23T08:55:00.000-07:002018-07-23T09:48:26.879-07:00How to Begin Writing an Essay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated September 7, 2017</span><br />
Here is perhaps the most daunting task of them all. Coming up with a topic and even writing out a thesis can be fairly simple to do, but it is oftentimes difficult to sit down and actually begin writing the essay. So, here are a few pointers that should help alleviate the process.<br />
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<b><span style="color: blue;">Outline / Sketch</span></b> - Have an outline or sketch handy to help guide your thoughts as you write. Outlines are great to keep your thesis and topic sentences structured. Sketches are useful if you are more of a visual learner. These can be done in various ways. For example, you can make a scattered list of some ideas and link the ones that are connected to form a web-like structure. This would also be a good place to arrange your outline cut outs (Refer to <i>How to Structure an Essay</i>).<br />
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<b><span style="color: blue;">Freelance </span></b>- This type of starting process is very similar to brainstorming. After taking a look at your outline and notes, simply start writing. For this style, it does not matter if you repeat words. Simply go with whatever comes to mind and keep going for about 10 minutes. Afterwards, you can look back and see the different ideas you came up with, as well as edit out anything that you feel is unnecessary. <br />
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<b><span style="color: blue;">Keep track of time</span></b> - breaks are your friends! Taking a 20 minute break every few pages or so really helps you focus and keep up your energy.<br />
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<b><span style="color: blue;">Set goals</span></b> - unless it is a shorter paper, you are probably going to need more than a day to complete the paper so make sure to set goals for what you want to accomplish during your writing session.<br />
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The most important thing to keep in mind throughout the writing process is to always refer back to your thesis. Make sure that every paragraph is somehow linked to your thesis. If you notice that many of your paragraphs have a different main idea, maybe you need to refer back to your thesis and do some tweaking.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-33267946758183146252017-08-23T08:47:00.001-07:002018-07-23T09:49:15.372-07:00How to Structure an Essay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated August 31, 2017</span><br />
Essay structure is perhaps one of the most difficult components of writing an academic essay. Always have the structure of your paper in the back of your mind. More often than not you will have to go back and alter sentences and sometimes even change paragraphs from one place to another to adhere to the logical flow of your claim, which brings us to the main idea of essay structure: logical flow. The structure of your essay relies on coherence. In other words, logic is the spine of your essay, and your claim, ideas, and supporting evidence rely on the spine to properly function. Without the alignment of logical flow throughout your essay, your readers would be confused as to what you are analyzing, explaining, or arguing and would be unable to grasp the overall message of your paper. Whether the reader is a teacher, a student, or the world of academia, you want them to be able to read your paper <i>and </i>understand it.<br />
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So, here are a few ways to make sure that you stay on track. First, make an outline. It never hurts to have an idea of where you want to go as long as you are willing to make changes along the way. Start with your thesis and continue with the topic sentences for each paragraph ensuring that they are in logical order. Make sure to add in any supporting evidence that you think goes well with each idea, and of course, finish with a conclusion. If you get confused during the writing process, check back with your outline. Most importantly, if you feel that your paper is going in a different direction that you had initially planned or if you feel that your second paragraph would go better after the third paragraph, make those changes. For a full explanation of this step see <i>How to Begin Writing an Essay</i>.<br />
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The second step is one that requires a little more knowledge on what you are going to write. After you have written your first draft, tear your paper apart. Yes, you read that correctly. If you write by hand like I do, make a copy (take a picture or type it out on a computer). If you already typed it out, then just print out a copy, grab a pair of scissors, and cut each paragraph of your essay (if your essay is really long you might want to write out the topic sentence and last sentence of the paragraph instead.) Now that your essay is literally in pieces, have some fun with it. Try putting paragraphs in different places to see if they make more sense there. Chances are that once you are finished you will have a better idea not only of where each piece should go but also of the purpose that each piece serves for the writing as a whole.<br />
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The last step to staying on track is the most simple one. Have a friend or classmate read your paper. There is nothing better than getting a second pair of eyes on your paper because they can give you a fresh outlook that you might have never considered. Maybe have them read it aloud so that you can both listen to your writing. If something sounds off, there is probably a clearer way to say it that will make more sense for your reader. Remember that even if something makes sense to you, you always want to think about whether it makes sense on the page. Essays are informing, analytical, or argumentative in nature and are written to be read, so always strive for the reader’s utmost understanding.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-40720977333025541052017-08-23T08:34:00.000-07:002018-07-23T09:50:05.672-07:00How to Develop a Thesis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated August 31, 2017</span><br />
So you have read through the assignment and have a general idea of what is expected for this academic essay. Now what? Well, now you have to decide what you are going to write about and how you are going to write about it - this will essentially be your thesis.<br />
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Here are a few different ways to figure out the topic of your paper.<br />
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<ul>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Brainstorm </span>- have a brainstorming session. Grab a piece of paper or open up a new document. Read the assignment sheet once more and simply write down whatever comes to mind. Even if some of your ideas seem silly, write them down anyway. You never know if they could turn into something great.</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Pro/Con List</span> - If you are having trouble deciding between certain topics, make a list of pros and cons for each one. If you have a lot of cons against an idea, it might be a really difficult one to explain/analyze/argue.</li>
<li><span style="color: blue;">Refer to the text</span> - If your academic essay is related to a text you have read in class, by all means look back at the text or any notes that you have on it. Chances are that you will find something meaningful to write about or that your teacher has hinted at good essay topics beforehand.</li>
</ul>
Always remember to refer back to the assignment sheet. It is easy to get carried away once you have found a topic that you like. Just be sure that your topic follows the qualifications laid out in the assignment sheet before moving on to crafting your thesis.<br />
<br />
Once you have a topic picked out, it is time to craft your thesis. Normally, a thesis will look something like this: <i>F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <u>The Great Gatsby</u> explores the disillusionment of 1920s American society particularly through diction, imagery, and allusions</i>. The thesis takes sentence formatting a step up. We have a <b>subject</b>, <b>verb</b>, and <b>object</b>. The subject is what you are arguing about. It can be a text (in this case, The Great Gatsby) or it can be a person, a character, or even a thing. Next, the verb tells your reader what kind of essay they are about to read. The example above uses the verb “explore,” which tells us that this is an analytical essay. The object, “disillusionment of 1920s society,” demonstrates that there might also be some argument involved on the writer’s part. <br />
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Now the thesis goes a step further by adding how you are going to explore the disillusionment of 1920s society in this novel: diction, imagery, and allusions. The detail section is a very important and oftentimes overlooked component of the thesis. Without the “how” details, the reader has no idea how your paper is going to develop. This component adds clarity to your analysis or argument and adds a sense of credibility to your writing. There does not always have to be three details, but the idea is that each detail will be the topic of one or two of your supporting paragraphs in your paper. In general, just make sure that you have enough details to give yourself and your reader a roadmap of where the rest of your paper is going.<br />
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Looking back at your thesis is crucial throughout the paper writing process. Very rarely does a thesis stay exactly the same as when you first wrote it. Usually, you will have tweaked or maybe entirely altered parts of it to match your paper as you continue to write. Know that that is normal, healthy even. A thesis that is flexible enough to alter different sections is a strong thesis because it shows that you have a good understanding of the format. The thesis is your guiding tool as you write the paper and in turn the paper will continue to shape the thesis as you develop the different ideas of your topic.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-84109710919476508482017-08-23T08:29:00.000-07:002018-07-23T09:50:47.995-07:00How to Read an Assignment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated August 31, 2017</span><br />
First, don't panic! Before you even think about what you want to write or how you want to write it, you have to read the assignment sheet clearly and carefully. The key here is to take your time. If you rush, you are much more likely to skip over a minute detail that actually has a huge impact on the essay so go slow. Secondly, make sure to have a highlighter, pen, pencil or whatever you prefer to use on hand. Mark any details that directly affect your essay. Look for the <i><b>when</b></i>, <i><b>what</b></i>, and <i><b>why </b></i>(chances are that the <i>why </i>is what you will have to figure out!)<br />
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Let's look at a quick example: <i><span style="color: blue;">For this assignment, students are required to pick one of the two novels that we read in class. Analyze a theme that we discussed in class from one of the novels. Make sure to include a clear thesis as well as at least three examples to support your argument. The first draft will be due Sept.14 and the final draft will be due Sept.21.</span></i><br />
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It is important to keep in mind that assignment sheets vary by class. You will most likely receive more background information and perhaps even a few examples of what to write about, but it all depends on the class and the teacher. The brief excerpt above allows us to practice reading the assignment sheet carefully. The <i><b>when </b></i>is Sept. 21, but I would strongly urge you to take advantage of drafts! Turning in a draft early shows the teacher that you take his or her class seriously and want to do well. Also, you will get feedback on what to improve, which increases your chances of getting a higher grade on your final draft. Next is <i><b>what</b></i>, which refers to a theme from one of the novels discussed in class. This <i><b>what </b></i>will be your topic throughout the essay. Lastly, <i><b>why </b></i>are you writing this paper. In this case, the assignment asks you to both analyze and make an argument with at least three examples to support your claim. Therefore, you are ultimately writing this paper to analyze a novel and to make a claim about it. You get to figure out all the details as you write.<br />
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Keep an eye out for any dates that are listed on the assignment sheet as well as any examples regarding how to write the paper and what to write about. If anything in the assignment sheet is confusing, ask the teacher! Their job is to help you learn and being able to clearly understand what you are asked to do is a very important part of the learning process.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-47866321594335580812017-08-23T08:20:00.000-07:002017-08-31T06:37:33.830-07:00How to Develop Topic Sentences<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated August 31, 2017</span><br />
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Once you have developed a working thesis, it is time to start thinking about topic sentences for your paper. A topic sentence is usually the first sentence of a paragraph. Sometimes it can be two sentences long. The primary purpose of the topic sentence is to relate the content from the previous paragraph and to introduce the content of the new paragraph smoothly and efficiently. It is important to always include both parts in the topic sentence to really clarify your writing. For example, let us use the sample thesis from the previous essay:<i> F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <u>The Great Gatsby </u>explores the disillusionment of 1920s American society particularly through diction, imagery, and allusions. </i>Notice the subject, verb, object structure as well as the detail at the end. Here is an example of a good topic sentence to follow this thesis: <i>One of the tools that <u>The Great Gatsby</u> uses to emphasize the disillusionment of 1920s American society is diction.</i> In addition, make sure to mention if your are focusing on a certain character’s diction. Notice that the topic sentence follows the structure of the thesis with a narrower scope. Since this topic sentence immediately follows the thesis, it reminds the reader of the subject, verb, and object. It is good to have a few different words to rotate for your main idea throughout the paper. For example, you would not want to use disillusionment every time in your paper. Perhaps use a variation such as disappointment or facade to further describe the object of your paper. Make certain that you do not stray too far from your original idea in these variations. They should enrich your thesis, not take away from it.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08385807462711122474noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-70340491252736442962016-12-13T06:56:00.002-08:002018-07-23T09:53:07.553-07:00Search API Price Hike Impacts Plagiarism Checking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When PaperRater first "opened its doors", we were excited to find that Yahoo offered a cost effective Search API to power our free proofreader's plagiarism checking technology. Google later offered a free API as well, and Bing too would eventually jump on board. In just a few years, the search API landscape changed dramatically with Yahoo dropping out completely and Google replacing its free search API with the most expensive option (read <b>prohibitively</b> expensive). Fortunately, Bing remained steady offering an option of decent price and solid results, which granted us another couple years of free <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" target="_blank">plagiarism checking</a> integrated into our automated proofreader and <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/" target="_blank">grammar checker</a>. Yay!<br />
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I can say with great conviction that offering high quality tools for free is a wonderful way to spend my days, which is why it pained me to receive notification recently that Bing was increasing the cost of their search API. Moreover, because the specific search package we are using will no longer be offered, the cost of the API to which we are forced to migrate is <b>2.5X higher</b> than the current pricing. The bottom line of this very sad news is that we can no longer bundle free plagiarism checking with our automated proofreader. Only premium members will have access to plagiarism checking when using the automated proofreader. The good news for our users is that we have no plans to increase the cost of our premium service even in spite of the cost hike we are facing, and we will continue to offer plagiarism checking as part of our <a href="http://blog.paperrater.com/2016/08/announcing-free-premium-edu.html">free premium EDU service</a> for teachers to use with their classrooms. PaperRater also still offers our standalone (w/o automated proofreading) <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" target="_blank">plagiarism checker for free</a>. We will continue to work at our mission of offering the best free automated proofreader and for those interested in additional features, thank you for supporting us via our premium membership. Use the button below to learn more about our premium subscriptions.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-9768268593486277212016-11-30T13:12:00.001-08:002016-12-27T11:39:40.750-08:00Feed a Hungry Child While Improving Your Writing<br />
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Better Writing + Feeding Hungry Kids</h2>
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<i>UPDATE 12/27/2016: We raised over $1000 for food-insecure children! Way to go! </i><br />
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For the month of December, we want to empower patrons of PaperRater to make a difference in the world of someone in need while improving your writing. So today we are announcing a partnership with <b>GO Pantry</b>, a charity that feeds needy children who slip through the cracks of other social institutions and programs within the United States. Schools do a fabulous job of feeding children who are food-insecure via free or reduced lunch programs, but what about weekends and the summer? The sad reality is that many of the most at risk children go without food for extended periods of time when school is not in session. Through food drives, corporate sponsors, volunteers, and charitable individuals, GO Pantry sends "GO Boxes" and "GO Bags" full of food to children identified by their school as being the most at risk.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-59918229646408801822016-11-23T06:01:00.000-08:002016-11-23T06:01:15.626-08:00Can paraphrasing be considered plagiarism?<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.04in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, serif; line-height: 100%;">Every
writing task usually implies reading. Whether it's an academic paper,
blog post or newspaper article, it rarely gets written from scratch.
Even subject matter experts consult sources and other experts before
writing.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">In
this situation, how do you draw the line between original and
borrowed ideas? And if an external text has been rewritten in other
words rather than simply copied, is it still plagiarized? Finally, do
</span></span><a href="http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page342055" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><u>well-knownfacts</u></span></span></a><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">
require citation? In this article, we’ll give the answers to these
and other important questions.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.08in; margin-top: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What
is a paraphrase?</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.03in; margin-top: 0.17in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">According to
</span></span><a href="http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/paraphrase" target="_blank"><span style="color: #376ba4;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><u><span style="background: #ffffff;">Merriam-Webster</span></u></span></span></a><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">,
a paraphrase is “a restatement of a text, passage, or work giving
the meaning in another form.” In other words, authors who want to
paraphrase someone's ideas should interpret them in a new way, yet
keep the original meaning. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.03in; margin-top: 0.17in;">
<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">In
academic papers, paraphrasing is preferred over quoting. By avoiding
copying the exact wording, students get (and demonstrate) a deeper
understanding of the subject. It makes sense to use quotation instead
of paraphrasing only when an original text is so impactful that it
would lose its value when rewritten.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.08in; margin-top: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Paraphrased
text is plagiarized when</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b>1.
It doesn't contain proper acknowledgement. </b></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">By
re-expressing someone's idea in our own words, we don't make it ours.
A reader should be able to distinguish our insights from those that
belong to someone else. The right way to do that is to provide proper
attribution to the relevant source. If authors don't give credit,
they end up taking it and thus plagiarizing, whether it's been done
intentionally or by accident.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b>2.
It's too close to the original version. </b></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Paraphrasing
is a fresh expression of an idea, not a trivial rewording. It's not
enough to change some words here and there and leave the main text
unaltered. Instead, authors should completely restate the original
passage using their own vocabulary. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Superficial
changes often consist of a simple synonym replacement or altered
sentence order while keeping the original sentence structure. In
academic writing, this situation may show that students don't have a
significant understanding of the subject.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i>If
an author fails to articulate an idea in a new way, then he is
plagiarizing even if he's provided a reference.</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">
As a rule, good rewriting implies that there are no identical
sequences consisting of 7 or more words. When checking for plagiarism
with </span></span><span style="color: #1155cc;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><u><a href="http://paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" target="_blank">PaperRater's plagiarism checker</a></u></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">,
you can find a list of such matching phrases.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.08in; margin-top: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Paraphrased
text is NOT plagiarized when</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b>1.
It's formatted properly. </b></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">On
the contrary, paraphrasing cannot be considered plagiarism when
applied correctly. This means that an author should both cite an
external source </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i>and
</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">use
as few words as possible from it.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">Quite
often, rephrasing leads to a reinvention of the original idea.
Therefore, when checking provided sources, it's a good idea to see if
an author has actually succeeded in conveying the original meaning. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><b>2.
It describes widely-known facts</b></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">It's
pretty clear that ideas and interpretations need to be cited, but
what about well-known facts that can't be attributed to anyone? Let's
say a paper contains this sentence: "Gravity was discovered by
Sir Isaac Newton, an English mathematician and physicist who lived
from 1642-1727." Yes, there are many similar and even identical
phrases on the Internet, yet it cannot be considered plagiarized, as
it's common knowledge.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;">While
there's no clear boundary on what common knowledge is, the two
general criteria are ubiquity and anonymity. Before considering a
fact common knowledge, try to find it on five independent and
reputable sources. If none of them gives a credit to a certain
author, then it's common knowledge.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0.08in; margin-top: 0.25in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The
bottom line</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">Paraphrasing
can be both plagiarism and a way to avoid it. When correctly cited
and </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i><span style="background: #ffffff;">expressed
in original words</span></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">,
paraphrasing is absolutely legit and even welcome. If any of these
conditions hasn't been met, then plagiarism has taken place. For
example, if an author </span></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><i><span style="background: #ffffff;">provides
a reference</span></i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">
but his language is too close to the original, it's plagiarism.
Alternatively, even if an author distills a borrowed idea into his
own words, he still needs to give credit rather than take it.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">At
the same time, paraphrased well-known facts can be used without
citation and shouldn't be considered plagiarism, as they convey
common knowledge. Practically everything we know and write about is
somehow based on these facts. That's why when getting a plagiarism
report, it's wise to check if matching phrases express stolen ideas
or well-known facts.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">This
blog article was written by Linda Emerson from </span></span></span><a href="http://www.ispringsolutions.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #1155cc;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><u><span style="background: #ffffff;">iSpringSolutions</span></u></span></span></a><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Calibri, serif;"><span style="background: #ffffff;">,
an e-Learning software development company.</span></span></span></div>
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<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 107%; margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
<br />Related Content
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.11in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker">Plagiarism checker for teachers and students</a></span></li>
<li><span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><a href="http://www.paperrater.com/page/plagiarism-consequences">Consequences of plagiarism</a></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 17.12px;"><br /></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-38505927468062910012016-08-09T08:26:00.003-07:002017-03-01T08:03:22.521-08:00Announcing Free Premium EDU SubscriptionsToday is a historic moment in time for PaperRater. It represents the convergence of our mission with the work we have put in to offer accessible automated writing instruction. We began this mission several years ago by unrolling our <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader" target="_blank">AI proofreading</a> and<a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" target="_blank"> plagiarism checker</a> for free -- something unheard of at the time. We take the next step on our journey today by publicly announcing a 100% free subscription to our <b>premium service</b> available to high schools and middle schools. Teachers and students can now get state of the art grammar checking, plagiarism detection, automated scoring, and automated writing instruction for <b>FREE</b>. To schools that are already paying for similar services, this represents an opportunity to save thousands of dollars per year. For institutions that could not afford the excessive costs of automated proofreading and plagiarism check, we now provide a free way to tap into these benefits of an indispensable tool for the modern writer.<br />
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<h3>
<b><span style="color: #b45f06;">How it Works</span></b></h3>
Our EDU subscriptions reduce the hassle that schools typically encounter when setting up services for their classrooms. Our system does not require any logins, student rosters, or admin accounts, yet still provides premium benefits to both students and teachers. <br />
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<b>Better than Basic</b></div>
<div>
The premium service allows you to submit longer documents, receive enhanced plagiarism detection, access premium-only modules, and more. Competing companies are charging as much as <b>$8 per document</b> for these same premium-level benefits. Your students and teachers can gain access to this technology for <b>free</b>. To get started, <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/contact" target="_blank">email us</a> with your contact info, name of institution, and number of students; and we will provide you with all the info you need to begin using our premium service.</div>
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[<a href="http://www.paperrater.com/page/premium-edu" target="_blank">more info...</a>]</div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.paperrater.com/page/edu-signup" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2L55Up1mBX8Mda7QbUTCOwUCiS7zZlI9YS_gc2zQWruMgnW0x6ARIVXnzInMbjxC__XQDOoE8FrKYN2FCzOBCCFUvLrP9-IlrxbF7vm7ssj020J-MrILCdeaVhzXulS-oEEpamGbLg14/s1600/signup.png" style="border: 0;" /></a></div>
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<h3>
<b><span style="color: #b45f06;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />FAQs</span></b></h3>
<br />
<b>Q: How long are you offering this for free? Is this just some sort of temporary promotion?</b><br />
A:
Our intention is that all schools that sign up will be "grandfathered" in to the free premium service. Eventually, we may stop allowing new schools to sign up, but that should not affect any school that has already taken advantage of this offer. <br />
<br />
<b>Q: What is the difference between the Free Premium and the Basic membership? </b><br />
A: For schools, both are free and ad-supported, but the Premium accepts longer documents, includes better plagiarism detection, and additional benefits listed <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/premium" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Q: Are there limits on the size of the educational institution?</b><br />
A: We welcome schools of all sizes. We work with high schools of 500 students and entire school districts with 10,000 students. All are welcome to signup.<br />
<br />
<b>Q: This sounds neat, but I'm still confused by the whole thing. What can I do to understand better how this works?</b><br />
A: If you are new to our service, please use <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader" target="_blank">our basic service</a> first to understand how it works and what it does. Missing premium features will be posted visibly throughout the basic service. The Premium EDU subscription will function similarly to the basic service but with the premium benefits mentioned <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/premium" target="_blank">here</a>. More documentation on the <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/page/premium-edu">Premium EDU service is here</a>.</div>
<div>
<h3>
<b><span style="color: #b45f06;"><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />Additional Questions</span></b></h3>
Please don't hesitate to <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/contact" target="_blank">contact us</a> with any additional questions that you have. </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-19498729257194029422015-09-23T04:52:00.000-07:002016-11-30T07:20:58.655-08:00Automated Essay Scoring UpdatesToday, September 23rd, 2015, we are rolling out the most significant change to our <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader" target="_blank">Automated Essay Scoring</a> system in its history. This involves many improvements summarized below:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Enhanced usage of grammar features in our predictive models</li>
<li>Ensemble methods for increased accuracy and reduced variability</li>
<li>Elimination of length bias</li>
<li>Additional predictors</li>
<li>More uniform distribution of scores</li>
<li>Incorporation of other Machine Learning and NLP techniques...</li>
</ul>
<div>
Although these changes represent an improvement in our AES technology, we recognize that classrooms as well as individuals may track changes in a score on a thesis or other written work over time, and that these changes could disrupt that process. To mitigate this issue and ease the transition, we are blending the scores from our previous AES model with scores generated using our new scoring models. As always, we welcome any feedback on the new scoring system.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
We hope to continue with another round of major enhancements to the automated grader in the summer of 2016 when it will likely be less disruptive to most users of our service.</div>
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<br />
<br />
Related<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://blog.paperrater.com/2014/12/automated-essay-scoring-myths-part-1.html">Automated Essay Scoring Myths</a> - Part 1</li>
<li><a href="http://blog.paperrater.com/2015/02/automated-essay-scoring-myths-part-2.html" target="_blank">Automated Essay Scoring Myths</a> - Part 2</li>
<li>Free <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/" target="_blank">grammar checker</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-46313267613292282252015-09-21T14:01:00.003-07:002015-09-21T14:24:24.931-07:00Anatomy of a Plagiarism Checker<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYEZXSbc2VIFjiV82jdKBB-Ywzide47XYjeZvvZgYAhWTpKL2faS4cY0njNK_nx-rTsm353p91-uqx_h_Hfo-GiITvnR6ifUx9YRDKex30Dl632C40RjsBNRPKsl61b7fwdb7gDXW-xQM/s1600/plag.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYEZXSbc2VIFjiV82jdKBB-Ywzide47XYjeZvvZgYAhWTpKL2faS4cY0njNK_nx-rTsm353p91-uqx_h_Hfo-GiITvnR6ifUx9YRDKex30Dl632C40RjsBNRPKsl61b7fwdb7gDXW-xQM/s320/plag.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div>
If you've ever wondered how our plagiarism checker works on the inside or what our <i>originality score</i> means, then this article is required reading. The green plus icon and the "100% originality" are a wonderful reassurance for writers that submit their work to our service, but what does it mean? Similarly, if you receive an Originality of 70%, should you be concerned? Each of these questions will be answered as we take a look under the hood of our plagiarism detector.</div>
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<b>A Daunting Task</b></div>
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<div>
When we say that we are <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" target="_blank">checking for plagiarism</a>, we are attempting to discover if portions of the given text might have been taken from other previously written texts. Fifty years ago a teacher may be concerned that a work was taken from a book, or perhaps from another student in the same class or from a class years earlier. Today, there are many reasons to want a measure of a text's originality, and this task is as daunting as ever. While our ability to process text has improved dramatically from the scenario fifty years ago, so has the availability of text to would be plagiarizers. In fact, the text that is publicly available on the Internet already exceeds trillions of pages and continues to grow exponentially. The task of plagiarism detection is all about finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. </div>
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<div>
<b>How It's Done</b></div>
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<div>
For the curious, precise details of storing and rapidly searching massive amounts of text can be found under the field of <i>Information Retrieval</i>. But for our purposes, high level details will suffice. As stated earlier, we wish to search trillions of documents efficiently, so we turn to the companies that already do exactly this -- search engines. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo maintain the software and thousands of computers necessary to track, store, and search the massively growing index of Internet content. They offer to us the ability to search their content via an API. By using their search APIs, we tap into their vast data stores without the overhead of attempting to crawl the entire Internet ourselves. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
Specifically, when a document comes into our plagiarism detection service, we chop it up into small snippets of text and run a sample of those snippets through the search APIs. Consider the following snippets pulled from a paper on Abraham Lincoln:</div>
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<div>
<ul>
<li>Lincoln grew up on the western frontier in Kentucky</li>
<li>confronted Radical Republicans, who demanded harsher treatment of the South</li>
<li>remaining land he held in Kentucky in</li>
<li>became an able and successful lawyer with a reputation as a formidable</li>
<li>compensation for the owners, enforcement to capture fugitive slaves</li>
<li>....</li>
</ul>
<div>
Imagine pulling 100 snippets from this document and then running a Google phrase search on each of these snippets. How many of the 100 snippets would match a document on the Internet? Since these excerpts of text come from the Wikipedia page, we would expect all (or nearly all) of them to have at least that page in the search results. If these excerpts came from a completely original source, then we would expect all of the search results to come back with no matches (or perhaps a few false positives). This is approximately the approach taken by our plagiarism detection service. The originality score that you receive is represented by this simple formula:</div>
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1 - (Number of Searches with Matches / Total Number of Searches)</div>
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According to this formula, the originality is 0% when all of the searches have matches, which is exactly what we expect. Now this is a simplified overview of what is actually a much more complicated process, but it conveys a general appreciation of the methodology used at <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/" target="_blank">PaperRater</a>.</div>
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<b>Checking Against Past Submissions</b></div>
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<div>
One question we receive from time to time is whether past submissions are used in calculating the originality score. The answer is 'No', but this deserves an explanation. Sites like TurnItIn bank previous submissions and check against these in addition to using search APIs. This creates concerns for false positives as well as privacy that we would rather avoid. Imagine submitting an original paper to our service before you turn it in and then being accused of plagiarism when your teacher checks it with the same service one week later. Rest assured that PaperRater checks papers using only the search APIs.</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-30519950026015071102015-06-30T13:50:00.000-07:002018-07-23T09:56:02.879-07:00Sentence Beginnings<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just how do we start that perfect sentence? It can be a tough decision. Sentence beginnings are like first impressions, and we want to make sure they’re right. And while there’s no single correct way to start a sentence, we need to vary them to ensure our writing doesn’t get stale or boring. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b id="docs-internal-guid-e320969d-30ca-c88d-0fa5-9649188dab5d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, what makes a bad sentence beginning anyway? Are there rules? Well, no, but let’s look at some examples of how repeated simple sentence openings can become stilted and tough to read. For example:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John went to the store. Anthony went with him. They bought food and drinks. They bought flowers for John’s mother. The man at the cash register smiled at them and gave them a discount. They returned home and put away the groceries.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What do all these sentence beginnings have in common? As we can see, each one consists of a noun followed by a verb. Unfortunately, these simple sentences quickly become boring, decreasing the impact of our writing. Let’s see what happens when we vary them a bit.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">John and Anthony went to the store, where they bought food, drinks, and flowers for John’s mother. Smiling, the man at the cash register gave them a discount. Returning home, the two put the groceries away.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See how much better this flows? Here, we’ve left the simple noun-verb structure for the first sentence, but, in the second, we’ve used “smiling” as a participial or transitional word. And in the third, we’ve emphasized the action of returning home, rather than the two boys.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s look at some other ways to rearrange simple sentence beginnings (e.g. common noun-verb constructions) and add some variety to our work. Remember, our goal here is not only to minimize the use of simple sentence openings - it’s to become better writers! </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example #1</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The dog barked with great ferocity. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With great ferocity, the dog barked. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, we’ve placed “with great ferocity” at the top of the sentence. Notice how it highlights the action of the dog barking rather than the dog itself.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example #2</span></h3>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The car’s engine made a loud boom from around the corner.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">From around the corner came the loud boom of the car’s engine.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, we’ve rearranged the sentence so the initial subject (the car’s engine) is placed at the end. The second sentence highlights a location and a sound rather than the car’s engine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example #3</span></h3>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Billy stayed home from school, sad about the loss of his grandmother.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sad about the loss of his grandmother, Billy stayed home from school.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, we’ve started with an adjective. In a normal noun-verb sentence opening, the adjective would follow, rather than lead, the noun and verb.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example #4</span></h3>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Briana danced the night away.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here we have a very simple sentence, which may work well. However, you could try adding a present or past participle to the beginning, describing a little more action or detail.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Laughing at her own silliness, Briana danced the night away.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not only does it paint a better picture, it breaks up the noun-verb opening.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example #5</span></h3>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The furious man shook his fist at the car turning the corner.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enraged, the man shook his fist at the car turning the corner. </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In this example, we can actually leave the sentence intact, but add a transitional word or phrase to the front for little variety.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We can also try this with an adverb.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Furiously, the man shook his fist at the car turning the corner.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Or, an appositive.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A furious old man, Robert shook his fist at the car turning the corner.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example 6</span></h3>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, let’s synthesize some of the above examples in the context of a full paragraph. First, let’s read a paragraph made of simple noun-verb sentence openings.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Jacob ran into the street. Anne met him. They ran together down the block. Their shoes flew off the pavement. A car passed by and nearly hit them. They didn’t care. They held hands and kept running. They swerved out of the street and onto the grass. They each grabbed onto the giant oak tree trunk and climbed up. They sat there, catching their breath.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did you notice that you started to tune out while reading? While the actions described in this paragraph are clear, we lose interest, because each sentence has the same structure. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Anne and Jacob met in the street and ran together down the block, shoes flying off the pavement. Around the corner came the car, nearly hitting them, but they held hands and kept running. Suddenly, they swerved out of the street and onto the grass. Up the giant oak tree they climbed, then sat there, catching their breath.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See how this paragraph keeps our attention? Varied sentence beginnings emphasize different actions and locations, whereas a simple noun-verb construction </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">always emphasizes the subject</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our goal is to keep our sentences diverse, which makes for more interesting reading. Remember, sentence beginnings (and sentence structure in general) create a tone and rhythm for the reader - and that tone is as important as the content itself!</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For more modules and other helpful instructional writing pieces, visit our blog at: </span><a href="http://blog.paperrater.com/" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">http://blog.paperrater.com/</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-59459046306660360652015-05-19T08:54:00.001-07:002018-07-23T09:57:09.102-07:00Passive Voice vs Active Voice<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 10pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #999999; font-size: x-small;">Updated September 29, 2017</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teachers love to tell students to use the active voice because it tends to make sentences shorter, clearer, and more impactful. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">But is it really a crime to write in the passive voice? Absolutely not. In many cases, the passive voice is actually preferable to the active voice. However, it does present many dangers that could make our writing wordy or unclear. Let’s define the active and passive voices, then discuss some potential problems with passive writing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieDWuq2bcgU5gKS9SQm1B2caUa22g-IgMsYVJiDioxdWAwdkKF9ueb6RvhtBVTqUtNpWjwzMIJ0LzBj0EMl6wlD5B-_pUmp2quitaEixN9n5VwJDaJKGU_bSYeEMOh3Yzsgf7RAUZ7q4g/s1600/active-vs-passive-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="625" data-original-width="959" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieDWuq2bcgU5gKS9SQm1B2caUa22g-IgMsYVJiDioxdWAwdkKF9ueb6RvhtBVTqUtNpWjwzMIJ0LzBj0EMl6wlD5B-_pUmp2quitaEixN9n5VwJDaJKGU_bSYeEMOh3Yzsgf7RAUZ7q4g/s320/active-vs-passive-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; white-space: pre-wrap;">Examples of Active and Passive Voices</span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Whether a sentence is active or passive depends on the relationship between the verb and the subject. In the active voice, a subject </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">performs</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a verb. For example:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 38,387 points in his career.</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (subject) scored (verb) 38,387 points (object).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the passive voice, the subject is switched, so the object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #6aa84f; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>38,387 points were scored by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his career.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Unlike the subject in the active voice, the subject in the passive voice </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does nothing</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. In other words, the subject, points, takes no action. Instead, the points are </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">acted upon</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another example of an active sentence:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>My parents bought groceries for my sister’s birthday party.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The subject of the sentence, the parents, performs the action of buying groceries. The parents are the</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> focus</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the sentence.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, in the passive voice, the subject is switched, so the object of the active sentence becomes the subject in the passive.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #6aa84f; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Groceries were bought by my parents for my sister’s birthday party.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The subject, or focus, of the sentence </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">takes no action.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Instead, the groceries are </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">acted upon</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> by the parents.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; white-space: pre-wrap;">Problems with Passive Voice</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">A passive voice can create confusion; it often disrupts rhythm and makes a sentence harder to understand. In many cases, verbs and subjects become vague or ambiguous.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #6aa84f; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Evidence was presented to support the idea that homelessness is experienced by more than 600,000 people.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A couple questions: Who is presenting this evidence? And how is the number of homeless people an </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">idea</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? Also, because the subject, the evidence, doesn’t perform any action, the sentence is inherently confusing.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s clarify this sentence with a few simple fixes:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the number of homeless people at 600,000.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here, the U.S. Census Bureau becomes the subject who </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">drives</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the estimation of the number of homeless people. The focus of the sentence has shifted, creating a simple, straightforward structure. Another example:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #6aa84f; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>A talk was given by the college professor; she cited a paper that said homelessness went down last year.</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again, the subject of the sentence, the “talk,” doesn’t </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> anything. Here, the passive voice creates a clunky break that requires a semicolon to keep the sentence grammatically correct. The subject of the first part of the sentence is the “talk,” but the talk doesn’t cite the paper, the professor does. See how confusing the subject can become in a passive sentence?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #cc0000; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>The college professor cited a paper stating homelessness decreased last year.</b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">By changing the subject of the sentence to the doer of the action (the college professor), we get a simple, easy to read statement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; white-space: pre-wrap;">How to Identify the Passive Voice</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">The easiest way to identify the passive voice is to look for the following in any sentence:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #6aa84f; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>passive voice = form of “to be” + past participle (verb)</b></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A past participle is a verb that takes the past tense form. Look for it in conjunction with a form of “to be,” which usually includes words like </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is, are, am, was, were, has been, have been, had been, will be, will have been</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">being</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also, look for the need to attribute the perceived doer of action with the word “by.”</span><br />
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<b><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the car was driven </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the racer, he sped out of control and hit the guardrail.</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Reasons to Use the Passive Voice</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Remember, we want our writing to be clear. So when we talk about passive versus active voices, keep in mind that either voice can work, depending on the situation. </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here are a few occasions where the passive voice may be preferable to the active voice:</span><br />
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the agent is more important than the subject.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Take the example: “My car was hit.” We want to focus on the car itself, since we care more about the car being damaged than we do about who damaged the car. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When the agent of action is a secret or an authoritative figure.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Take common disclaimers like “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” or “Access is denied.” </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When we want variety in our writing. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Any kind of writing, no matter how active, tends to grow dull after awhile. Sentence rhythm and structure will feel stilted and repetitive, especially when each sentence is focused only on the drivers of action.</span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-51186466671616950802015-05-05T11:58:00.001-07:002018-07-23T09:57:37.266-07:00Effective Use of Sentence Length<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The issue of sentence length leaves many writers scratching their heads. Short, long, medium length sentences - which are better? Does it make a difference? Why should we pay attention to sentence length anyway?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">For one, it adds as much meaning to a text as the words you choose. Sentence length conveys a specific mood and rhythm and matches the actions being described. For example, if you were writing a tense car race, shorter sentences may help heighten the suspense of the scene. On the other hand, longer sentences may work better when writing about complex philosophical abstractions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s look at a couple examples. </span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b id="docs-internal-guid-f8db0018-2571-7010-da88-466e09936396" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“As the number one car slammed its brakes around the turn, my foot hit the gas, and I swung around him, crossing the finish line and winning the race.”</span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">It’s not bad, but let’s see what happens when we break it up into several sentences.</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f8db0018-256a-b7af-7fee-d090fe211119"><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-f8db0018-256a-b7af-7fee-d090fe211119"><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“The number one car slammed its brakes around the turn. My foot hit the gas, and I swung around him. I crossed the finish line, winning the race.”</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We find that shorter sentences help tighten the action, accentuating the descriptions of “slamming the brakes,” “hitting the gas” and “crossing the finish line.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Other texts may demand longer sentences:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Descartes stated that the mind is mental. The body is physical. Mind and body are, therefore, not identical. This is the mind-body problem. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Philosophical problems are often complex and may work better with longer sentences and more description:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Descartes stated that since the mind is mental and the body physical, the two cannot be identical. This dilemma is known as the mind-body problem.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See how much clearer this version reads? The longer sentence length creates a nice, flowing structure that leads logically from one idea to the next.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s look at more examples in which short and long sentences can be problematic, followed by some strategies for correcting them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Short Sentences</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Short sentences are useful for supplying small bits of information. They cut to the chase and emphasize one, maybe two, points. But, their stop-and-start rhythms can make them difficult to read:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Short sentences are hard to read. They stop and start. What happens when you read them? You feel like you’re stuttering. They break up the thought process. Sometimes they’re useful. Other times they’re not. They’re frustrating. Right?”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How do we stretch out these short sentences so they’re not so clunky? Try lengthening them with </span><a href="http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/conjunctions.htm" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">conjunctions</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which are words that join</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">two sentences, or independent clauses, together.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Specifically, let’s look at coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Coordinating conjunctions include words like </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and, but, or, nor, for, yet</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">so</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Common subordinating conjunctions include </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">although, because, once</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">unless, wherever</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and many, many more. Read a complete list of them </span><a href="http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/conjunctions/conjunctions.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s rework our short-sentence paragraph:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Short sentences are hard to read because they stop and start, making you feel like you’re stuttering. Although they’re useful for breaking up the thought process, they can be quite frustrating to read. What do you think?”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See how conjunctions create a simple chain of ideas to help </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">round out</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> the sentences’ rhythms? Try using them the next time you find yourself writing sentences that are too short or do not reflect the proper mood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long Sentences</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Long sentences provide more detail and information than shorter sentences and are used to investigate in-depth ideas. However, they, too, can be problematic, for repeated use of long sentences can bore the reader. They may also become difficult to read, since the reader must hold several ideas in his or her head at once.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let’s look at an example of a long, somewhat complicated sentence:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Although I prefer to write long sentences, they are also problematic, as they quickly become boring and long-winded; in turn, their inherent difficulty can disengage the reader, causing him or her to stop reading.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not a completely terrible sentence, but it is long, complex and may be more effective if we break it up into several sentences:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Although I prefer to write long sentences, they quickly become boring and long-winded. They’re also difficult to read and may cause the reader to stop reading.”</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">See how our points become sharper? Instead of five or six ideas, each sentence contains two, making them easily digestible. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms"; font-size: 17px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How Can PaperRater Help You With Your Sentence Length?</span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Check out PaperRater’s FREE sentence length module (part of its </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://paperrater.com/free_paper_grader" style="text-decoration: none;">online proofreader</a></span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/">grammar correction</a>) to help keep your sentence length within an acceptable range. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By analyzing the amount of short </span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="font-family: "calibri"; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> long sentences in your document, we’ll show you where you might need improvement on lengthening or cutting down your work. Instantly improve your writing by combining our sentence length tool with our spelling, grammar, transitional phrases module and more!</span></div>
</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-6403788631491683062015-04-21T12:29:00.002-07:002015-04-21T12:30:31.235-07:00Readability Indices<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s widely known that easy and enjoyable reading helps learning and comprehension. Most people prefer reading “plain English,” and tend to turn off when a passage is too difficult to read. So when we speak of a text’s readability score, or of a readability index, what we mean is: </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">How easy is it for readers to understand?</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Measuring readability is important for a number of reasons. For one, teachers need to know if their students are capable of writing at their grade level, or whether they need more schooling in a particular area. Readability scores also help teachers and school systems grade whether a textbook is right for their students. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Writers also need readability scores - especially those who write for children and pre-teens. They’ve definitely helped me make sure I’m writing for the correct audience; plus, they’ve taught me how to increase or decrease my usage of complex sentences depending on my readership. Never write outside your audience!</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 17px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">PaperRater Premium-Only Module: Readability Scores</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PaperRater is proud to offer a NEW series of twelve readability scores as part of our </span><a href="http://paperrater.com/premium" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">premium service</span></a><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Just sign in, visit our </span><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><u><a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader" target="_blank">proofreader</a></u></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, enter your text, and receive a full, side-by-side comparison of the most common readability indices. </span><br />
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Why do you offer twelve indices? Shouldn’t I use just one?</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Each readability index uses different criteria to create a score. As you’ll see, some use input based on syllables, and others based on word length. Plus, the equations used are slightly different. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So we give our users a set of twelve to eliminate bias and to provide you a wider range of input. That way you can choose for yourself which ones you want to incorporate into your work.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here’s a quick breakdown of each index we provide:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Automated Readability Index (ARI)</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The ARI grades text based on a combination of word and sentence structure. Computers find it difficult to analyze syllables, so the ARI uses a formula based on the number of characters per word, although it’s debatable whether counting characters or syllables is more helpful.</span></div>
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/xoYtohPE1rJ4hilltfUcF3y0q5hf8BMdq_5HaXINH1M8qiZtKKnG9h3Xy0KxpF5152ZYaLPzVjLU0bZi6w6xUlaahPwrwtMaZC1QN2oLFd3IwVBmpCBxstwRN50Biy_ZgWIF-LI" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="34px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/xoYtohPE1rJ4hilltfUcF3y0q5hf8BMdq_5HaXINH1M8qiZtKKnG9h3Xy0KxpF5152ZYaLPzVjLU0bZi6w6xUlaahPwrwtMaZC1QN2oLFd3IwVBmpCBxstwRN50Biy_ZgWIF-LI" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="258px;" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Coleman-Liau Index</span></h3>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Creators Meri Coleman and T. L. Liau constructed this readability score for the Office of Education to standardize textbooks in the United States. Like the ARI, it operates on the assumption that characters per word is a better indicator of readability than syllables. From </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman%E2%80%93Liau_index" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Wikipedia</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">: “L is the average number of letters per 100 words and S is the average number of sentences per 100 words.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/C1GONr9j0MpPMqijHrzPcJ84gKVJG7Yi7qykkN5aLUYUjE0duo9JWcUuJgejQ-obAZMq7up83dphlxCYpDUHdrzIbUxqVHCVcXc-_BUswcaYv568CiVlraSjycuUzhyAxiMDu28" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="15px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/C1GONr9j0MpPMqijHrzPcJ84gKVJG7Yi7qykkN5aLUYUjE0duo9JWcUuJgejQ-obAZMq7up83dphlxCYpDUHdrzIbUxqVHCVcXc-_BUswcaYv568CiVlraSjycuUzhyAxiMDu28" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="272px;" /></a><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dale-Chall Readability Formula</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Dale-Chall Readability Formula uses a different kind of input. Instead of using the number of characters in a word, it calculates the approximate grade level of a text by measuring “hard words.”</span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What exactly are hard words? </span>The Dale-Chall list<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> contains a list of about 3,000 words known by at least eighty percent of the children in the fifth grade. Words considered difficult are those not listed. The higher the score, the higher the text’s grade level.</span></div>
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<a href="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ASTN0B1d3ABZuS_pmFL3uD_XbUmYwJH2RJK_vF7dpDnV9SQpbwMi6SJJU0Y5zg-mD1zT4y_DFJT_FmMpQi1h8nkTP6yerYO2ymQFj8Mg6AOcUhJSNQkg-gpfqQF1OsDbEhuYyJY" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="36" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/ASTN0B1d3ABZuS_pmFL3uD_XbUmYwJH2RJK_vF7dpDnV9SQpbwMi6SJJU0Y5zg-mD1zT4y_DFJT_FmMpQi1h8nkTP6yerYO2ymQFj8Mg6AOcUhJSNQkg-gpfqQF1OsDbEhuYyJY" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
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<span style="line-height: 1.38;">Flesch Reading Ease</span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline;">Unlike the first two indices, the Flesch Reading Ease calculates readability by the average sentence length </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline;">and</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; vertical-align: baseline;"> the average number of syllables per word. Text is rated on a scale from one to a hundred; the lower the score, the harder the text is to read. Plain English is set at 65, with the average word containing two syllables. The average sentence contains 15 to 20 words.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By the way, the above passage received a score of 73.7 on the Flesch Reading Ease, which means it’s slightly easier to read than plain English.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><img height="30" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/7Bi9c6hgBIFNZF-uzGuRBs5gqJ8BPrD_7qZ01aKjitozlQ2y2LSkPbsd6lLvsjsJQAfsIlWHJQ98Sxj8Xh_Y2tBPq-bbEGG25nBIu8Q1qHkB9xchdZ4SXk90Bd_Bq0pxzvryb4g" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></b><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is a companion index to the Flesch Reading Ease, and uses the same inputs (average sentence length + average number of syllables per word). However, the measurements are weighted differently, and so it produces a score as an approximate grade level (e.g. 1-12, or higher). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="line-height: 22.0799999237061px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><img height="32px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/rJonqNnJIrQfCYXpcziKdQETN0ZaRxrtC_IpqaXYZvgJRaBBYomcRKhUF7K62VnB3M818xA87IOJm2vc4AqlzVimI8-4RBDXaqqM4pJ1-QC4eRDh54DCj0vfjQbRwUy5e6jWNQo" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="293px;" /></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fry Readability Formula</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of taking a complete word count, the Fry Readability Formula randomly chooses three 100-word samples throughout the text. It then counts the average number of syllables and the average number of sentences per hundred words, and plots them onto a graph. The intersection of the two averages represents the appropriate reading level. It is used widely in the healthcare industries.</span><br />
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<img height="204px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/nTaxlu1Jv6O5nMsb1jSMPekb87qbPbAsgrpvbRji6wrQCfAeGOrwfKNfJ3WfRD5lnhQ5FzNN1h-7cWRwFH7uFrvRC4dISqCxikKXpGWbpdWTtXLilE4fV-Y-Pj-I-2CQJC6fZho" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="317px;" /></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gunning Fog Index</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Gunning Fog Index is calculated by the average length of a sentence and the percentage of complex words. Its inventor, Robert Gunning, complained that then-current writing was too complex (had too much fog) and needed to be simplified. Complex words in this case are described as having three or more syllables. Yet while complex words can be a good indicator of readability, it fails to account for the fact that words with three or more syllables are not necessarily difficult to comprehend. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><img height="44" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/qF0WZvB1HIc8-LbLhySSrMu6QEqTbsIwsKZg5yvTFP7j82Zb2LxYhHGS6CAs_8bXu3xT7I248FH5-c-aQ7jXVB4KL1eqsMDdCiEYj3BXcC1VDQieD51fFYNjijaIkbn4jNle-AI" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LIX</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">LIX, or the Lasbarhetsindex Swedish Readability Formula, was specially designed for the readability of texts in foreign languages. Its formula uses (a) the number of words; (b) the number of periods; and (c) the number of long words (more than six letters). Multicultural teachers prefer its emphasis on long words and average sentence length to predict readability.</span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><img alt="\text{LIX} = \frac{A}{B} + \frac{C \cdot 100}{A}" height="49" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/mkOESn6H10kQ1IGHZ65nadwsJys6MFnsiPqVH3kt7-1s-uNXmpYEd94ru7PtKBw6Cq2hO1qOeqkLYB0bnlLBXsG5jfqLmCDIjiyzX4n2IVoUZMCCh0WMQSZVpD3zMYizFhZ32KA" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="200" /></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Linsear Write</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Similar to the Flesch readability indices, Linsear Write helps calculate a text’s readability by sentence length and the number of “hard words” - words with three or more syllables. It was adopted by the U.S. Air Force to grade the readability of their flight manuals. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<h3 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Raygor Estimate Graph</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A simple readability estimate, the Raygor Estimate allows you to calculate an approximate grade level by taking 100 words from your text and counting the number of sentences. Then you count the number of words within your sample that contain six or more letters. Plot your points on the graph below, and you will receive an approximate U.S. grade level. </span><br />
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><img height="246" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/71--kUggaCGAMU58ozpw6bbgsh5hLtkMK3oFHebgA-1YkI-Y7ICa-27-Cia7guqwt3miEgqUwzOY97uhEBJBvGueZt5tniI2juqyS1Ct1j5MlJwyuUt0-l8JZSXAjE23E9gGF3E" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></b><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">SMOG</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">SMOG is a playful acronym for “Simple Measure of Gobbledygook,” and was developed as a replacement for the Gunning fog index. It is estimated by taking three 10-sentence samples from a piece of text, counting the words with three or more syllables, estimating the square root of the number of words, then adding three.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><img height="26" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/OlbPzTkRE6en-1AXZNI6Mbp_3fbXmMXDNgSeTs2XwOSlDCI4nizTQFxh6knBfQzVP1pzqrsJ2Bomi4CFwyJg4ZMkNw0xEaUr5c8E2gGOTqsWYQVCrKc8xX_faqQ7y41PjRrUVtw" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="320" /></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spache Readability Formula</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This formula was designed for third-grade texts or below, comparing the amount of “unfamiliar words” to the number of words per sentence. “Unfamiliar words,” in this case, are determined to be words that those in third grade or below do not understand. It is recommended to use the Space Readability Formula for those in third grade or below, and to use the Dale-Chall Readability Formula for those in fourth grade or above. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<h4 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 8pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ready to get started using PaperRater’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://paperrater.com/premium" style="text-decoration: none;">premium services</a>,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">including our twelve readability indices? </span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-13999305628277523472015-04-20T11:28:00.001-07:002015-04-20T14:32:04.079-07:00Free Alternative To TurnItIn<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Just visit our </span><a href="https://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FREE plagiarism checker page</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, upload your file (or copy and paste your text) and click the “Get Report” button to immediately receive a full plagiarism analysis. We check your paper against more than 10 billion online documents, and will alert you to any potential problems in a detailed report. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teachers love us, too! Not only do we give them a head start on their grading, we help them teach their students how to improve their writing, with:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.paperrater.com/">Free grammar checks</a>.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Proofread text directly in your browser, with errors underlined in green. You can also edit your text using PaperRater’s free grammar suggestions, then copy and paste the corrections into a new draft.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Style check</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Learn more about your usage of </span><a href="https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/Transitions.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">transitional phrases</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, and receive help with adverbs, conjunctions and prepositional phrases.</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sentence length</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. A fantastic tool for bloggers </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">academic writers! Increase your readership by ensuring you have the right sentences for the right audience.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Academic vocabulary. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PaperRater also grades work based on the quality and quantity of scholarly vocabulary words found in the text. Which is great for seeing how your students measure up against others at their educational level! </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Free auto-grading.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Finally, we present an overall grade of your piece, based on your initial style, grammar, vocabulary and sentence length results. Note that this grade does </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> account for the meaning of words, the structure of your ideas, or how well you support your arguments. Therefore, you don’t need to take it </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">too</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> seriously. However, our auto-grader is a supremely helpful tool that will help improve your grammar and spelling overall.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">PaperRater: The Free Alternative To TurnItIn</span></h3>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Additionally, PaperRater caters to both students </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> teachers. Unlike TurnItIn, we allow and encourage students to check for accidental plagiarism before turning in their papers. And we don’t charge $8 a paper, like our competitors. Yikes!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Analyze your essay today for FREE with PaperRater’s </span><a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">plagiarism, grammar and spelling checker</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 16px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">! Become a better writer with instant results on style, grammar, sentence length and more. We aren’t just an alternative to TurnItIn - we’re its replacement!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-87416528076866678352015-04-09T11:55:00.000-07:002018-07-23T09:58:56.719-07:00Announcing our $1K Giveaway<span style="font-size: large;"><b>$1K Giveaway for Educators</b></span><br />
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Every business has the unenviable task of announcing their services to the world. In reality this often means tracking down the people most likely to find value in your service and then flashing ads in front of them until they buy your wares. But at PaperRater we wondered if we could forego traditional marketing and come up with ways to enrich the lives of the people that use our services. What better place to start than the classroom?<br />
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Today we are announcing our $1K Giveaway, a contest that puts money in teachers' pockets in order to enrich their classrooms. The idea is simple, tell us how you are using PaperRater in your classroom. How do you integrate it into your assignments? How have you and your students benefited from it's use? Any stories of how our <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker" target="_blank">free plagiarism checker</a> and <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/" target="_blank">grammar check</a> have transformed your classroom?<br />
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In order to give everyone time to participate (including teachers that are new to PaperRater's services), we are announcing this contest in the Spring of 2015 and we will begin accepting submissions in the Fall of 2015. A special submission form will be setup at that time and contest rules will be finalized. At the time of this writing, we are anticipating the following prizes:
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<li>1st Place: $500</li>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-56396752965233800382015-02-05T13:17:00.000-08:002018-07-23T09:59:42.713-07:00Automated Essay Scoring Myths: Part 2<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Automated Scoring Myth #2: Jobs Will Be Lost</b></span><br />
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This is our second article in this series, so please <a href="http://blog.paperrater.com/2014/12/automated-essay-scoring-myths-part-1.html">click here</a> if you missed Part 1. Note that I will be frequently using the abbreviation AES to refer to Automated Scoring / AI Scoring / Automated Essay Scoring. Let's begin...<br />
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After making the case for the accuracy of Automated Essay Scoring (AES) systems in Part 1, it may seem that the natural consequence of AES would be the loss of jobs. In particular, teachers and graders (called "readers") may feel vulnerable, as is evidenced by the <a href="http://humanreaders.org/petition/index.php" target="_blank">petition</a> created by a group of readers in 2013. Each of these roles is worth examining separately since they are quite different in purpose and activities. <br />
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<b>Teachers</b><br />
In Part 1, we discussed the role of AES in high stakes testing, but AES is also an important trend in the classroom. When I tell people about my work on AES, the response that I get is sometimes to the effect of, "So, you are creating technology to replace teachers." This couldn't be further from the truth. If 10% of a teacher's time is spent grading essays, would this enable us to have 10% fewer teachers? It's not illogical to jump to that conclusion, but the math doesn't add up when it comes to teaching students how to become excellent writers. The reality is that writing is a craft that takes practice and feedback, just like any other task. But the time that is required to grade papers causes writing instructors to offer fewer writing assignments with less feedback than is optimal. Enter AES -- a valuable tool that empowers teachers to give <i><b>more</b></i> writing assignments and similarly allows students to receive <b><i>more</i></b> feedback. AES does not replace the teacher, it's just another tool that the teacher can use. In fact, it may be the best tool! Some teachers have told us that they mandate usage of PaperRater by their students before the teacher even sets eyes on each paper. PaperRater takes care of <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/">checking grammar</a>, spelling, word choice, and more, which frees the teacher up to help each student express themselves with clarity and develop their own distinct flair. <br />
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<b>Readers (a.k.a. Graders)</b><br />
The issue of jobs in regards to readers employed by testing institutions is a bit more opaque. It is true that when a computer scores a response, then that is one less response that will be scored by a human reader. But that is not the whole story. AES systems must be "trained" for each prompt that they are expected to grade, and this process requires that human readers score a number of responses (perhaps 600-2000). The computer then uses this training set to build a model that it can use to score future responses. This means that human readers are inextricably tied to the AES technology for each and every prompt. Because of the expense associated with human readers, writing assignments have been excluded from most standardized tests that students take each year. But, thanks to AES, this may be changing. Large groups of school systems in the U.S. and abroad are evaluating AES technology and vendors with the intention of incorporating written assessments (short answer and essay) into standardized testing in a wide variety of subjects from Biology to English Composition. If successful, this will represent incredible demand for the scoring of written responses by both humans and computers. Essentially, AES would be "growing the pie", rather than just taking pieces of the pie away from human readers. So, it's my belief that AES will result in more jobs for human readers, rather than less jobs. However, I do concede that the future is much less clear in this area.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">About PaperRater</span></b></div>
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As in Part 1, I am including a shameless plug for our free <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader">Automated Essay Scoring tool</a>. Students and teachers appreciate the immediate feedback that they receive from PaperRater. You will not find another free tool that offers so many benefits including grammar check, spelling check, analysis of word choice, automated scoring, and plagiarism detection. We hope you will <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader">give it a try</a>! </div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-41005692356420392222014-12-16T13:03:00.000-08:002014-12-16T14:03:21.025-08:00Automated Essay Scoring Myths: Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In educational institutions across the globe, there is an ongoing debate over the use of Automated Scoring systems. I use the term "debate" rather loosely, as it seems more like a clattering of voices at times, often from people completely unfamiliar with Automated Scoring. The most contentious question is whether these systems should be used in the scoring of high stakes tests. At PaperRater we've sat on the sidelines and watched this discussion unfold, but feel that now might be a good time to add our 2 cents. Today we are launching a blog series entitled "Automated Essay Scoring Myths". This series will examine some of the myths surrounding this technology and explain how it works in the process. We welcome your feedback.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Myth #1: Computers Can NOT Grade as Well as Humans</span></b><br />
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This is one that I hear a lot both in print and when talking to people about Automated Scoring. Just look at what some people are saying:<br />
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<li><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/25essay-grader.h33.html" target="_blank">Les Perelman</a>, former writing professor at MIT: "My main concern is that it doesn't work."</li>
<li><a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2014/06/13/what-online-students-need-to-know-about-automated-grading" target="_blank">Mark Shermis</a>, University of Akron researcher: "It can't tell you if you've made a good argument, or if you've made a good conclusion."</li>
<li><a href="http://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/03/why-computers-should-not-grade-student-essays-2/" target="_blank">Diane Ravitch</a>, research professor at NYU: "Computers can’t tell the difference between reasonable prose and bloated nonsense."</li>
<li><a href="http://humanreaders.org/petition/index.php" target="_blank">Petition of Human Readers</a>: "current machine scoring of essays is not defensible, even when procedures pair human and computer raters."</li>
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Meanwhile, others are saying things that might suggest the opposite:</div>
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<li><a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2014/03/25/why-computer-scored-essays-could-eliminate-the-need-for-writing-tests/" target="_blank">Mark Shermis</a>, University of Akron researcher: "A few of them <i>[AES systems]</i> actually did better than human raters."</li>
<li><a href="http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/03/13/25essay-grader.h33.html" target="_blank">Sandra Foster</a>, lead coordinator W. Virginia: "We are confident the scoring is very accurate."</li>
<li><a href="http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2014/03/25/why-computer-scored-essays-could-eliminate-the-need-for-writing-tests/" target="_blank">Judy Park</a>, Utah Associate Superintendent: "What we have found is the machines score probably more consistently than human scorers."</li>
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Which is the correct answer? Mark Shermis, the researcher quoted in both sections above, offered a study that analyzed results from Automated Essay Scoring competitions sponsored by the Hewlett Foundation in which several AES systems competed against each other. A public competition later followed, and the results were stunning. Both private and public systems were able to score at or above the level of humans! The Mark Shermis study can be found <a href="http://www.scoreright.org/NCME_2012_Paper3_29_12.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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Of greater weight than Shermis' study, are the real-world results that are being seen. During my time working for an AES vendor, I participated in the development of AES technology that was used as a "2nd reader" for a particular US state. What this means is that a human reader scored each response and the computer offered a 2nd score. If the 2 scores were substantially different, then a 3rd human would set the final score. Our system graded thousands of responses on over a dozen prompts, grade levels, and of varying topics and lengths. Amazingly, the computer was more accurate than the human readers on EVERY prompt for EVERY grade level. However, not every project was this successful. One trial project for a particular country yielded results where the computer was slightly less accurate than the human readers on some traits, although within reasonable measures of error. Regardless, the message could not be more clear: <b>Even in it's infancy, Automated Scoring technology is comparable to humans and it is only going to get better</b>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Why All the Fuss?</span></b></div>
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From what I've read and the conversations that I've had, the issues and fears about the quality of computer grading stems from two points:</div>
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<b>Humans and Computers Grade Differently</b><br />
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Anyone that has proofread a paper has an intuitive feel for how a human grades. We start from the beginning and read through a paper looking for errors in mechanics. We breathe in the words and take note of how it makes us feel based on the expressions presented. We grasp the subtleties (usually) and also take note of how well arguments are made and supported...</div>
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Computers share many of the same approaches to grading, but handle some things differently. While they do scan the paper for errors in grammar and proper usage of appropriate vocabulary, they may estimate other things like logical arguments, by using statistical analyses of the presence of certain word sets, or the similarity of a given response to another response that the computer has already seen graded. This can make a skeptical audience a little uneasy, but the results show that it works. If a simpler physics equation can accurately model a complex physical process, would you demand that an exact simulation be used instead? No. Similarly, research and real-world usage are showing that AI Scoring systems are every bit as accurate as humans, even if their approach to grading is different. Furthermore, emulating a human grader has it's drawbacks, as discussed below. </div>
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<b>Humans Do Not Grade as Well as You Think</b></div>
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This one may sting a little bit, but it has to be said. Let me explain. You may be picturing a teacher thoughtfully reading over an essay with a red pen -- pausing for a moment to scribble some wise advice in the margins and then continuing on. This picture is all wrong when it comes to testing. Graders, called "readers", are given only a few minutes to read an essay and assign a score, usually on a small scale (e.g., 1-6) and they must adhere to a rubric. Considering these restrictions, they do remarkably well, but we mustn't forget Alexander Pope's poignant observation: "To err is human". For all the criticism and fears that I've read regarding Automated Scoring systems, I'm amazed at how we hold ourselves in such high-esteem. I see the same response to the autonomous vehicles being developed. I get the feeling that people do not realize that machines do not need to be perfect, just better than the comparable human. Here are just some of the errors that human readers are prone to:<br />
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<li><b>Bias.</b> We are easily influenced by things in the response that should not matter. For example, something about the writer might remind us of a loved one and that affects the way we score their writing. That is just one example, but there are many more.</li>
<li><b>Dynamic State = Mixed Output.</b> We are a complex, chaotic system and this is a nightmare when it comes to scoring. Computers win when it comes to being rational and consistent. How is a score affected by a reader who is hungry? Sad? Sleepy? Hungover? Where is the public outcry over these human "machines" that offer different grades based on their ever-changing internal state? </li>
<li><b>Drift</b>. A number of psychologists and behavioral economists have studied the way that humans lack an objective measurement system. Everything is comparative. The perceived shade of a color is different when next to a darker vs lighter color. The length of a line seems shorter if it is next to a longer line. How well written does an average essay seem after having just read five poorly written essays in a row?</li>
<li><b>Egregious Inconsistency</b>. The previous two items deal with inconsistency, but this deserves it's own bullet point. A computer will always give the same output for the same input. This seems like an obvious and basic prerequisite for any grader; yet, for short answer responses, it is common for human graders to give different scores to the exact same answer. Let me repeat that, "<b>It is common for human graders to give different scores to the exact same answer.</b>" In fact, I once saw the same answer receive the absolute lowest score from one human reader and the absolute highest score from the other reader. This seems to me to be the epitome of a poorly designed grading system and yet it is something that is quite common for human readers. </li>
<li><b>Lack of Precision</b>. Humans are great at generalizing and connecting relations, but very poor at making calculations in terms of speed and accuracy. Forcing a human to quickly grade an essay and adhere to a lengthy rubric is simply a mismatch of a human's innate capabilities. Computers, on the other hand, are quite adept at scanning and processing information, tallying items, counting matches, and making calculations with both speed and accuracy. This is a key advantage of a computer when a detailed rubric is used and time is limited. </li>
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The point of this section, is not to bash us humans, but to offer a candid view of our flaws, and to help us recognize that combining the different approaches of humans and computers offers us the best path forward. And this is precisely the approach that Automated Scoring systems are taking.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What About PaperRater?</span></b></div>
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I would like to end this article with some information on our own FREE <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader">Automated Essay Scoring engine</a> affectionately named Grendel. Grendel is a general scoring system that is not calibrated to specific prompts, such as the systems used in high stakes testing. It is also designed for speed and limited usage of resources, so the accuracy is below that of a human grader. Nevertheless, we do plan on offering a more accurate system in the future for premium users. In the meantime, Grendel offers a general score along with automated feedback on grammar, spelling, word choice, and much more. We have received hundreds of emails from educators that are using PaperRater to allow their students to receive on-demand feedback before turning their papers in. My favorite message came from an English teacher who said that PaperRater is the most useful tool that she has used in 25 years of teaching. We hope you will <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/free_paper_grader">give it a try</a>! </div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-40429726038481765242014-07-09T14:14:00.001-07:002014-07-09T14:14:50.138-07:00Even Easier to Use!<br />
<b>CAPTCHA Woes</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO-0vH8b2d7vAHYx-K3zaA-qshq1GU-6MK8vs6ynXvlaosnbANe6vH4TJEQ9ALotfi2Sy2ipEU5pOZK9FoGKWMbIWPH4raUy7oazFpYJpw4OjYKASEm_i_f3TsXQD3etYt9u1BdxdAs2g/s1600/hate_captcha.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO-0vH8b2d7vAHYx-K3zaA-qshq1GU-6MK8vs6ynXvlaosnbANe6vH4TJEQ9ALotfi2Sy2ipEU5pOZK9FoGKWMbIWPH4raUy7oazFpYJpw4OjYKASEm_i_f3TsXQD3etYt9u1BdxdAs2g/s1600/hate_captcha.png" height="128" width="320" /></a></div>
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One of the guiding principles at PaperRater is to make things simple and painless to use. No signups, no logins, no payments, no three minute wait for results... We fancied ourselves rather satisfactory in this regard. That is, until you told us otherwise. We were shocked to discover that you do not like squinting at images and typing in crooked letters. And we were at least a small bit saddened when we heard that you do not share our joy in deciphering blurry house numbers. So, it is with mixed emotions (and sarcasm) that we officially announce the end of reCAPTCHA for most users of our <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/">automated proofreading</a> and <a href="http://www.paperrater.com/plagiarism_checker">plagiarism detection</a> tools.<br />
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<b>What exactly does this mean? </b><br />
A week ago, all users of our site were confronted with the dreaded reCAPTCHA before submitting text into our automated proofreader or our plagiarism checker. As of today, it has been removed from these tools. However...this does not mean that CAPTCHA is completely gone:<br />
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<li>Other parts of the site may still use reCAPTCHA (e.g., contact form)</li>
<li>reCAPTCHA may still be displayed if you are suspected of spamming (either by the content you submit, or by the number of submissions coming from your IP address)</li>
<li>We may use a less annoying CAPTCHA in the future (one that is not reCAPTCHA), if needed</li>
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<b>Why was reCAPTCHA used in the first place?</b></div>
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CAPTCHAs are used to identify a visitor as a human, rather than a bot. Bots represent a definite problem for our site because 1) we are free, and 2) our services require a lot of computing power. In other words, bots cost us more money than they do most sites. Nevertheless, we have plans to defeat the bots w/o forcing most human visitors to enter a CAPTCHA.</div>
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<b>Other news in usability</b></div>
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Perhaps not as celebrated as the end of reCAPTCHA...we have also decided to remove the title field. For most users, we believe this field is unnecessary and just one more obstacle to a quick and painless submission process.</div>
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Thanks for reading this far!</div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8181182961849116360.post-15099087432545933272013-11-04T08:10:00.000-08:002013-11-10T18:49:49.775-08:00Plagiarism Detection ChangesIf you've been a regular user of PaperRater, then you may already be aware that we've been struggling with issues in the plagiarism detection module. We first ran into problems when using a 2nd-tier search API that powered this feature, but we were able to switch to Google and restore service. This was great for a time, but led to even worse problems as Google accidentally killed our subscription at one point, and, more recently, they have set a very low limit on API requests, which has caused our plagiarism check to have issues later in the day, while working flawlessly in the mornings.<br />
After temporarily disabling the plagiarism check for the past few days, we are rolling it out again today with the Bing Search API powering it under the hood. We hope this will yield better uptime, but we have already found bugs with their phrase queries, about which we've contacted them. Feel free to contact us with any feedback regarding this rollout. Thank you for the patience you've shown as we continue to work through these issues. And please continue to spread the word about this free resource. Our team is working hard to deliver a top-notch product that is accessible to all. But all funds are currently devoted to development and operations, so we need your help to spread the word! Linking to our website wouldn't hurt either. :-) Thanks!<br />
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<i>UPDATE Nov. 10, 2013</i>: We received a lot of feedback in the few days after this was posted (thank you!). We responded to this feedback by making further enhancements to the plagiarism detection, which we released near the end of this week. Results are not optimal, but the dissatisfaction rate has dropped significantly. We will continue to rollout other enhancements to the plagiarism checker in the weeks ahead that should help address accuracy. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com11