Another Two Chapters down and I am getting used to Grammarly

Well I have gone through two more of my chapters and got them into final draft. I think I am close on 24 hours of work this weekend and maybe more. That is actual time working on them. The editing process is interesting. Anyone who has ever proof edited or read an unedited essay by me will know that there is something "odd" about the way I use language. Actually it has been known about ever since I was in school but in those days nobody thought that a bright child might have special learning needs.

That meant that I had to get over myself long before I started my PhD. It is also why all my essays were proof read. I am finally putting together a proofed version of my thesis. So far what I have done is to take the amendments by my proof editors, go through them and then put the whole thing through Grammarly. Now I put it through on academic settings and I am not slavish to the demands. For instance Grammarly will pick up any use of the passive voice. However in a lot of academic writing the passive voice is actually necessary. The other item is the use of impersonal second person pronoun instead of "one". Now I can introduce "one" into the text but really that sounds more artificial than "you". What Grammarly does not pick up is my nervous tick of using "I" when I want to say "this is my opinion, you are free to have yours but.." Most of the time I just need to remove them from the text.  There are legitimate uses of I, such as when writing about how I am going to structure the text but these apologetic-Is are not  good.

However probably far more useful than the grammar checker is the synonym suggestion. I go through each and everyone of those and this is necessary. The point is when you get to looking at synonyms you can only decide which are best when you have a clear idea what the sentence is saying and how that word works in the sentence. This has regularly drawn to my attention sentences that do not make sense. They might have perfectly good English grammar but they fail to convey any meaning. No doubt at some time in my brain those sentences meant something but it is not there now. So I have to sit down, work through in detail what the sentence probably originally said and recreate the sentence so it conveys something.

So far in draft are Tradition, Location and Flows. Next week I would like to tackle Community and Belonging, at least in part because I think there maybe overlap. The week after is the long weekend and must work out what time I want off to finish other the chapters. If I manage to keep this pace then I should be ready to send to my supervisor on time.