Whizzy little macro I created in Word 2007 to count the words in
each sentence and plot them in Excel.
The blue vertical lines are the number of words in each sentence,
and the horizontal (wavy) black line is a 250-sentence, moving
average, trend-line...
The graph clearly shows that on average each sentence is 15 words
long but also highlights my wordiness with far too many peaks in
the 40 and 50 word mark and those in the 60's are just unbelievable
- one sentence with 60 words?! Terrible!
I can also see quite clearly (by looking along the bottom - where
the blue line hits just above the zero mark) the chapter
delineations and I can see that one chapter, near the middle, is
*very* pacy with an average of (roughly) 10 words per
sentence.
Although, I also may have got my code very wrong...
He he he
Perhaps to illustrate where all the fun is happening (incidentally,
where are all the excerpts from this book on goblin gods and
dragons and stuff? Hmmm...)
Rapid Ninja combat? Stumpy little blue line and a trough in the MA
that you could bury the protagonist in.
Long, languorous, sensual, face stroking, buttock grabbing, tonsil
tickling, heavy breathing weight training sessions? Long, erect
blue line and a distinct lump in the MA.
But I fail to see the purpose. So you can find the interesting
bits? They're in the book. You know where they are. You don't need
a graph to show you. You wrote the frigging thing after all!
Honestly, some people couldn't find their own arse with both hands
and a map.
Looks more like a points per hour movement of the FTSE100 for the
last 3 months if you ask me. But you didn't. So I'll shut my
face.
Jazus, Ez - this is pretty fucking cool. Whatever about the actual
content, your little algorhthym could actually help people write
better. You just need to feed in samples of some top-notch prose to
establish ideal sentence & paragraph length (plus how many long
words per sentence) and you really could be onto something.
AW; I was bored... sitting around waiting for you lot to comment on
me blog, or answer me show an' tell or... or... or just say "hi". I
was lonely. So I did stuff. Which may well be useless but it took
my mind off the boredom.
The rest of the novel will come - I'm just refining it. My novel is
just like oil; It takes millions of years to make and they still
call it crude. And, as my novel is blasphemous in certain circles,
it too will ultimately destroy our beloved planet.
Pimlicokid; I love Word but it is *business* orientated - so I'm
writing some "author wanted" widgets. This one helps me work out
the books pace; the high bits are baaad for a fast paced kill 'em
off like mine. The whole graph shows that I have a long way to
go.
Aonghus!
I love you even when you take the piss. (and you AW). And if you
are not taking the piss... do you think I could make money from
it?! LOL. Ahhh, anyway I refer to my previous statement; I was
bored waiting for you lot to turn up. Now that you have. It's my
turn to disappear; the cup final beckons - Go... um...
thingies!
This is what it has found:
"As the cavalry raced past the enemy lines they became more
peppered with arrows, some comically resembling a porcupine with
the vast number of shafts arrayed in their back, but not so funny
was when the riders finally slump forward over the neck of their
noble steeds, eventually succumbing to the life robbing drain of so
many minor infractions."
And more...
You had to write a VB script and use two of the most sophisticated
and complete desktop programs on the planet to produce a graph to
find that?
I could hear it screaming in pain from the kitchen for pity's
sake!
You should have seen some of the stuff I pulled from one of my MS's
last week mate - truly cringe worthy and definately crude... (did I
mention lascivious?)... Difference is, I didn't need 400 quids
worth of software and a degree in VBScript to find it, heh. I was
skim reading and it poked me in the eye and started shouting
profanities at me so I killed it. I killed the AI too but that's
another story...or another planet... or something large and grey
with pockmarks and...
That said, I agree with Aonghus. If you could put together an
authors toolkit for word etc. it may well sell man. It's certainly
worth a try. And you have a large beta test group available,
although you might want to keep it to the MCSE's in case you
accidentally kill a few desktops with buggy code...
That was just my point - I am on PF42 now, that's *at least* 42
iterations through. But when you read it, as the author, you can
miss these things. And I missed far too many sentences over 50
words! SO this just helped me see clearer. I now have a macro that
finds them and lists them; page and paragraph number help me find
'em and sort 'em out.
LOL. Be careful what you kill! Sometimes they come back to haunt
you!
I think the biggest change I could make is a better dictionary
interface; the custom one is pants - the words I create have rules,
and therefore if I create a noun, it needs to act like a noun and
be subject to noun rules. And, as I mentioned on another thread -
my main aim is to run a highlighter over the MS and show up all the
adjectives. Although Tony has explained a bit, and I'm just
researching all the words I didn't understand - noun, verb,
adjective etc. ... :o)
As for buggy code.. the words "error trapping" are dim and distant
echo's of a former life... bwah ha ha ha haaaaaaa.
Apparently Munchy Un-tied is losing to Barkin Loner. But I may have
misheard some of that... :o) Hey ho - it's footy, and EzBird is
soapless so I get the remote! Yay, me!
"As for buggy code.. the words "error trapping" are dim and distant
echo's of a former life..."
Yup - stack overflows, infinite loops etc. I remember programming
in hex (not even mnemonic, just a hex editor) on the Z80A series
when I was a kid. Got my first job on my 16th birthday (they
couldn't lawfully employ me earlier than that) as a games
programmer in London.
You any idea the damage you can cause to a 16 year old Glaswegian
by sticking him in London? My social skills atrophied and are
shrunken and pale even to this day. The skinheads wouldn't even
talk to me for pity's sake!
Like you said, it was a previous life. Nowadays I would be soooo
sorted if it were not for the recession. Still, I got a big chunk
of land with planning and I figure what goes around comes around,
right?
Damn, I'm going to have to go back to heavy end server systems
management at this rate :(
Now where did I put that gnome...?
AW
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11 Comments
Whizzy little macro I created in Word 2007 to count the words in each sentence and plot them in Excel.
The blue vertical lines are the number of words in each sentence, and the horizontal (wavy) black line is a 250-sentence, moving average, trend-line...
The graph clearly shows that on average each sentence is 15 words long but also highlights my wordiness with far too many peaks in the 40 and 50 word mark and those in the 60's are just unbelievable - one sentence with 60 words?! Terrible!
I can also see quite clearly (by looking along the bottom - where the blue line hits just above the zero mark) the chapter delineations and I can see that one chapter, near the middle, is *very* pacy with an average of (roughly) 10 words per sentence.
Although, I also may have got my code very wrong...
He he he
Ez
Perhaps to illustrate where all the fun is happening (incidentally, where are all the excerpts from this book on goblin gods and dragons and stuff? Hmmm...)
Rapid Ninja combat? Stumpy little blue line and a trough in the MA that you could bury the protagonist in.
Long, languorous, sensual, face stroking, buttock grabbing, tonsil tickling, heavy breathing weight training sessions? Long, erect blue line and a distinct lump in the MA.
But I fail to see the purpose. So you can find the interesting bits? They're in the book. You know where they are. You don't need a graph to show you. You wrote the frigging thing after all!
Honestly, some people couldn't find their own arse with both hands and a map.
Looks more like a points per hour movement of the FTSE100 for the last 3 months if you ask me. But you didn't. So I'll shut my face.
AW
AW; I was bored... sitting around waiting for you lot to comment on me blog, or answer me show an' tell or... or... or just say "hi". I was lonely. So I did stuff. Which may well be useless but it took my mind off the boredom.
The rest of the novel will come - I'm just refining it. My novel is just like oil; It takes millions of years to make and they still call it crude. And, as my novel is blasphemous in certain circles, it too will ultimately destroy our beloved planet.
Pimlicokid; I love Word but it is *business* orientated - so I'm writing some "author wanted" widgets. This one helps me work out the books pace; the high bits are baaad for a fast paced kill 'em off like mine. The whole graph shows that I have a long way to go.
Aonghus!
I love you even when you take the piss. (and you AW). And if you are not taking the piss... do you think I could make money from it?! LOL. Ahhh, anyway I refer to my previous statement; I was bored waiting for you lot to turn up. Now that you have. It's my turn to disappear; the cup final beckons - Go... um... thingies!
:o)
Ez
"As the cavalry raced past the enemy lines they became more peppered with arrows, some comically resembling a porcupine with the vast number of shafts arrayed in their back, but not so funny was when the riders finally slump forward over the neck of their noble steeds, eventually succumbing to the life robbing drain of so many minor infractions."
And more...
:o(
You had to write a VB script and use two of the most sophisticated and complete desktop programs on the planet to produce a graph to find that?
I could hear it screaming in pain from the kitchen for pity's sake!
You should have seen some of the stuff I pulled from one of my MS's last week mate - truly cringe worthy and definately crude... (did I mention lascivious?)... Difference is, I didn't need 400 quids worth of software and a degree in VBScript to find it, heh. I was skim reading and it poked me in the eye and started shouting profanities at me so I killed it. I killed the AI too but that's another story...or another planet... or something large and grey with pockmarks and...
That said, I agree with Aonghus. If you could put together an authors toolkit for word etc. it may well sell man. It's certainly worth a try. And you have a large beta test group available, although you might want to keep it to the MCSE's in case you accidentally kill a few desktops with buggy code...
There's a cup final tonight?
AW
That was just my point - I am on PF42 now, that's *at least* 42 iterations through. But when you read it, as the author, you can miss these things. And I missed far too many sentences over 50 words! SO this just helped me see clearer. I now have a macro that finds them and lists them; page and paragraph number help me find 'em and sort 'em out.
LOL. Be careful what you kill! Sometimes they come back to haunt you!
I think the biggest change I could make is a better dictionary interface; the custom one is pants - the words I create have rules, and therefore if I create a noun, it needs to act like a noun and be subject to noun rules. And, as I mentioned on another thread - my main aim is to run a highlighter over the MS and show up all the adjectives. Although Tony has explained a bit, and I'm just researching all the words I didn't understand - noun, verb, adjective etc. ... :o)
As for buggy code.. the words "error trapping" are dim and distant echo's of a former life... bwah ha ha ha haaaaaaa.
Apparently Munchy Un-tied is losing to Barkin Loner. But I may have misheard some of that... :o) Hey ho - it's footy, and EzBird is soapless so I get the remote! Yay, me!
Ez
Yup - stack overflows, infinite loops etc. I remember programming in hex (not even mnemonic, just a hex editor) on the Z80A series when I was a kid. Got my first job on my 16th birthday (they couldn't lawfully employ me earlier than that) as a games programmer in London.
You any idea the damage you can cause to a 16 year old Glaswegian by sticking him in London? My social skills atrophied and are shrunken and pale even to this day. The skinheads wouldn't even talk to me for pity's sake!
Like you said, it was a previous life. Nowadays I would be soooo sorted if it were not for the recession. Still, I got a big chunk of land with planning and I figure what goes around comes around, right?
Damn, I'm going to have to go back to heavy end server systems management at this rate :(
Now where did I put that gnome...?
AW
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