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alackerson wondered: <<My company is gearing up to buy MaxIT Checker to
clean up our technical documentation. I watched a demo of it today and
I'm not convinced that the tool can replace an eyes-on editor, much
less significant improve bad writers. Has anyone out there had any
experience, good or bad, with this tool?>>
I'm not an artificial intelligence (AI) expert, but I do try to keep an
eye on this field. Thus far, I haven't seen anything suggesting that
anyone has made a breakthrough that will let software parse English
sentences consistently and effectively. Our language is simply to
convoluted and complex for simplistic programming rules and limited
language databases to capture. Semantics technology exists in very
limited contexts, but not for general text. That being the case, I
can't imagine that this software can actually "edit" text.
On the model of computer-assisted translation, what it probably can do
(possibly even well) is act as a validity checker and source of
suggestions: It's comparitively easy to program software to compare
words against a list of valid options, and (to a limited extent) parse
sentence structures based on a limited set of standard patterns so as
to flag suspicious sentences; most grammar checkers try to do this, but
do a poorer job because non-"simplified English" isn't forced to adhere
to a carefully and narrowly defined subset of the English language.
All that being said, such tools must be closely supervised by someone
with good English skills--preferably an editor. Use the software for
what it's designed to do--support the work of a human expert--and you
won't be disappointed, and may even find significant productivity and
accuracy enhancements. Try to use it as a shortcut or substitute for
expertise and you'll be unpleasantly surprised.
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