As both detectives dig into Andi’s life, one thing becomes clear: Andi’s friends and family may have loved her for her honesty, but her outspoken integrity threatened others, including, perhaps, her killer.
Kim Hays is a citizen of Switzerland and the United States
who has made her home in Bern for thirty-six years. Before that, she lived in San Juan, Vancouver, and Stockholm, as well
as around the US. Pesticide, the
first book in her Polizei Bern series was published by Seventh Street Books in 2022 and was a finalist for the Crime
Writers’ Association Debut Dagger Award and the Falchion Award for Best
Mystery. The second book in the series, Sons and Brothers, came out in
last year, and A Fondness for Truth was released this month.
In today's guest blog, Kim offers a solution, or at least an aid, to one of the most trying jobs in writing...
It was to
help these non-native speakers whose studies or professions demand that they
write complicated texts in English that “Grammarly” was invented. First
released in 2009 by three Ukrainians and now used by over thirty million people,
the software application edits any piece of writing on your screen that you let
it read and suggests grammar, spelling, and punctuation changes. It also
corrects for increased clarity and what it calls “engagement” (using more lively
words and phrases) and “delivery” (removing qualifiers and making your writing
more authoritative.)
Within a
few years of its release, the app wasn’t only being used by the foreign
speakers it was created for but also by us native English speakers. There’s a
free version with a limited correction service; there’s also one for 144 euros ($155) a year that offers the whole package. Just
before I hunkered down to proof the final manuscript of A Fondness for Truth,
the third book in my Polizei Bern series, I bought it.
Like everyone who
has taught English as a foreign language to high school students and adults, I’ve
had to answer many questions about English grammar. My copies of Oxford
University Press’s Practical English Usage and the Oxford Guide to
English Grammar are dog-eared with use. The idea that I needed an app to
correct my English began to dawn on me when I received the copyedited version
of Sons and Brothers, my second manuscript, back from my publisher. I opened
the file to see if I agreed with the countless corrections the press’s
copyeditor had made and found—pristine pages! Some red typeface was scattered in
the first few chapters; after that, the corrections and suggestions dwindled to
almost nothing!
Far from
rejoicing, I was horrified. The book had a schedule, and there was no time to
send it back and ask for a more diligent copyeditor, so I would have to be that
person. What followed were endless readings and re-readings of the copyedited
manuscript and later its page proofs by me and three ever-to-be-praised friends
who pitched in to help. We caught plenty of spelling, grammar, and
clarity mistakes, not to mention missing and repeated words.
Did I buy
Grammarly at that point to help us cope? Sadly, no. But about a week before I had
to send in my most recent MS for final approval and copyediting, I remembered the
panic of the previous year and had an epiphany. In case of another copywriting
disaster, I’d buy Grammarly and be forearmed. As it turned out, there was a new
person on the job, and she did much better work. Nevertheless, I was grateful to
have used Grammarly, as well.
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| Screenshot showing how it works |
The app’s detractors complain about its mistakes, and I’d agree that perhaps 10% of its suggested corrections are wrong—either because it doesn’t appreciate my deliberately chosen word order or misinterprets what I’ve written. When Grammarly suggests a nonsensical correction, I double-check to make sure the mistake isn’t mine and then dismiss it without incorporating it. This is no big deal—it still leaves the app with a 90% success rate of catching genuine errors.
Another criticism
of Grammarly is that it “reduces writers’ freedom of expression.” I laughed
when I read that. I’m the writer. If a piece of software suggests
replacing my words with a phrase or a sentence to make my writing clearer or
punchier, and I don’t like it, I don’t use it. If I like it, I take it up and am
grateful for a helpful editing suggestion, as any writer is.
I would
never dismiss authors’ fears of AI out of hand. But Grammarly reminds me that helpful
suggestions from a machine can be terrific—as long as they remain only suggestions.
