Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with software and writing

Writer meets arthritis

grumblebee — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:18:40 -0800

Mac voice-recognition software for a writer with arthritis. My father's arthritis is making it more and more difficult for him to type. This is hard for him, because he's been a writer for decades (over 25 books and countless articles). He is considering switching to voice-recognition software.

Here are some things to note:

- He is originally from England but has lived in the US since the 1950s. He is a very clear speaker, but his accent is a mix of British (cockney originally) and American.

- He owns a Mac.

- He is not highly computer literate, but he lives in a university town and could find people to help him set things up if necessary. He probably will have trouble if the voice-recognition software itself is overly complicated to use.

I am looking for any advice and experiences with this. What is the state of the art these days? What's available for the Mac? What is the experience like for people who are heavy users?

Anyone know an online tool that randomly scrambles the order of sentences in a body of text?

holdenjordahl — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 15:04:33 -0800

Does anyone know of a free, online program that, for lack of a better phrase, I'll call a random sentence scrambler? I see there are a lot of anagram makers but I want one for about 500 word bodies of text. Theoretically I could paste in the text and it would spit it out with all the words intact, the sentence structure preserved, just arranged into a new sequence. Thanks.

Software to help do guided outlines with automatically populated fields from previous answers?

miasma — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:20:01 -0800

I'm trying to construct a digital worksheet that will walk someone through an outlining and drafting process for creating a report. Basically, the user should be able to answer the questions I put forward (either in a textfield, list, or textarea) and what would come out is an outline for a technical paper, grant proposal, etc. Is there software or features of software to support this? Microsoft Office or exportable formats are preferable. I could sort of do this right now in Word or PowerPoint. In Word, I simply would put questions and the user could answer them. I would then say something like "Copy and paste your answer to Question 6 here. Name 3 things that would constitute a risk to this item." Unfortunately, that requires alot of cut and pasting on the part of the user. Also, Word kind of lets someone go on and on and on and I'd like to have them focus on outlining and using brief statements.

Alternatively I could do this in PowerPoint, and ask someone to make a new slide with the title of a bullet point from the previous slide. This would force brief statement, but again, lots of instruction and cut and pasting. I would like it if I could automate this process someone. Sort of like how in Excel you can take the data from one cell and put it in another.

So, does some Holy Grail of software exist that supports guided outlining / worksheets with automatic data population from previous answers? Or does someone have a nifty approach I could use instead within Word or PowerPoint? I guess I might be able to construct it with Access with Forms, but that seems a bit complicated.

Automated extraction of the gist of an article?

zaebiz — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:49:57 -0800

I often have a whole bunch of 500-3000 word articles to read - all reasonably plain English with headings and sub-headings (and occasionally images). Is there any software out there which will take an article (or articles) and write a reasonable one or two paragraph summary of the article, or produce a list of key points?

index, book ..... 124460

jessamyn — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:08:02 -0800

Creating my book's own index, crazy or sensible? I'm in the process of negotiating a contract for a non-fiction book I'll be writing. Part of the contract involves the indexer's fees being subtracted from whatever money I get. Indexing costs about $3/page, this is about a 250 page book, I'll be paid the typical small percentage per copy, no advance.

I'm aware of this question from 2004 which, yes, I even answered. I'm wondering whether software has advanced at all since then so that a person with a decent grasp of the tools could create a decent index given the time and inclination? Are there tools you'd suggest?

I'm actually interested in this process, not just doing it to save $750 or whatever. I think it would be fun to create my own index, but I may be wrong about that. Relatedly, since the book will be available in formats that are keyword searchable (I'm presuming) do indexes have the same import as they used to? This is more of an "I'm wondering" question but it's along the same lines. Thanks for any suggestions/advice.

writing in windows?

gcat — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:16:31 -0800

software for writing (i.e., organizing) a novel on a windows machine? my question is basically this one, except for windows, not mac.

it seems that all the highly recommended options in that thread and this one are for mac only.

unfortunately i canot afford a mac at this time, although i seriously *wish* i could.

thanks!

Looking for writing software which can parse my stories..

ceberon — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:39:06 -0800

When I was in high school, we had a writing lab with some type of mainframe-ish type terminals setup, where there was writing software available which would list frequently repeated words, point out large paragraphs, spelling errors, document complexity, punctuation errors, etc. This was awhile ago, is this type of thing freely available anywhere these days? I did find one piece of software online which had some of the functionality I remember, but it didn't list them all. I was hoping since this software must be well over 15-20 years old, that it must have been open sourced by now?

So I'm preferring free, love open source (would like to be able to tweak, put online, etc), etc. Suggestions?

Mac word processor for academic writing in the humanities?

synecdoche — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:13:39 -0800

I don't like Microsoft Word much; it feels really bloated to me, and has so many features I never use. I've been looking for an alternative for some time. What word processor does the hivemind recommend for academic writing? I am a graduate student, about to tackle the beast that is my dissertation, and am hoping to find one word processing program (that is hopefully not Word) that I can use for it as well as the other articles and such that I need to work on. I've been waiting on the official release for OpenOffice 3 (for the native Mac support), but in the current lull in the school year, I was hoping to test the waters and find what works best for me.

My writing is usually pretty straightforward. I have no need for elaborate figures, mathematical symbols, or anything like that. I'm in the humanities, and if it works with MLA format, with occasional forays into, say, Chicago, that's good enough for me. But, on the other hand, I'd like something that produces documents that are portable enough that, if need be, I can use Word or OpenOffice on the school's computers, and can easily send something off to a journal without having to re-format the entire document because it got garbled in translation. I also occasionally receive (and provide) feedback from professors and colleagues who use Word's "Track Changes" and "Insert Comment" features; support for these things would be nice, too.

Oh, and I also use spreadsheets as part of my research workflow.

Am I stuck with keeping Office on my computer? Or can I switch to something else completely? What about Mellel?

Cheap is good, too.

MS Word: Strip all styles while retaining formatting?

yesno — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:14:21 -0800

I have a macro that takes an un-styled document, and tries to put text into the right styles based on what its formatting is. But, if the document already has some scheme of styles, the macro doesn't work very well. So, I would like to transform a Word document into an un-styled version of itself-- but one that retains ALL of the original formatting (italics, small caps, font size, spacing). What would be the most correct way to do this? I have Word 2003 (which the macro needs) and 2007, as well as Word 2008 for Mac. Also-- HTML doesn't work, as it doesn't retain small caps.

The tip of the tongue, taking a trip to the foreignerland.

GrooveStix — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 00:51:23 -0800

I am in a search of a program that will help me memorize words... I am an avid reader, but since English is my second language, I've been using dictionary a lot. I've noticed that I had to look up the same words twice, thrice and so on, so for some time I've been thinking about making a word collection and sticking everything on my wall in a post-it-note fashion. Now, writing every word down will prove a tedious task. For example, I was reading Nabokov's Lolita (which by the way, molested me on more than one level) :) and I can't even remember how many times I had to look through a dictionary per single paragraph.

What I am looking for is software or something, that will automate the whole process, where I copy/paste a certain definition in the program (or whatever) and that would create (PDF perhaps?) pages that I can later print, cut and stick on my wall.

Does anybody know something resembling what I am describing?

What book writing software exists for Max OSX?

Chuck Cheeze — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 10:27:34 -0800

What book writing software exists for Max OSX? I want to write a book that will be likely published at Lulu. This will be a book on how to use a specific website building CMS, so it will be a typical instructional book.

I know about Scrivener and am really tempted to give it a try.

I also might just use my copy of Pages.

What else is out there?

Help me keep track of the time I spend writing

agent99 — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:13:53 -0800

Is there a Mac application that can help me keep track of hours, dates, and time I spend writing? I'm facing a giant writing project in the next six months or so and I want to keep track of how many hours I'm working and when. So, at the end of it all, I want to be able to look at a bunch of data and see that I worked for 35 hours on chapter 1, mostly between 11 pm and 2 am, or that the entire project took me 700 hours of writing.

Ideally it would be some kind of small widget where you just press "start" and "stop" every time you work.

I've checked out a few web apps, like toggl (too simple), harvest (not free), and tick (not enough detail)--are there others that do what I want them to, or am I missing features on the ones above that already do what I want them to?

Desired qualities:

1. Free (ideally)
2. Mac compatible
3. Has a widget interface of some kind (not essential)
4. Keeps track of the amount of time AND the time of day and dates
5. Data is downloadable into csv format
6. Web app is OK but must be able to record time while I'm not connected to the internet (and then upload later).

Does such a thing exist?

Looking for tools to help me get out of the endless reading trap

vizsla — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:04:04 -0800

Can anyone recommend some good research/study/outlining software that assists your writing? Either freeware or paid. Basically I mean software that alows you to collate ideas and notes as you read, as well as lets you do outlining - all this in preparation for writing a report or paper or essay. I find it really hard to write coherently for long periods of time but I love to research and learn and I just don't know when to stop reading. It always feels like there is more to learn. If I could find something that allows me to build an essay incrementally as I read, that would be ideal. If you have any other tips for improving your motivation to write, feel free to add them.

I read it for the articles. No, really. Just help me find them again.

marylynn — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:53:27 -0800

Please help me find a way to electronically organize my magazine article collection. I read a crazy number of magazines and have a habit of pulling articles out to save them for later. So far, they're just filed away on paper but I'd like to organize them electronically and I'd like to store them online if possible (and if I could do it without making them searchable so as to avoid any copyright problems).

I've looked at various academic bibliographic reference managers but none seem quite ... friendly?... enough or have exactly the features I need (or are prohibitively expensive), particularly the one below about uploading the document itself.

Features I'd like:
- ease of citation entry (I would probably have to enter these manually as the cites aren't coming from dbs)
- web-based, though I will consider local software I'd like to be able to access this info from anywhere if I can
- ability to create both URL links to articles (some of what I read it on the web) and to stored PDFs (which I'd upload and preferably not make searchable outside of my domain) - sometimes both
- tags or keywords
- ability to customize the interface display. Since most of what I'm saving are magazine or literary journal pieces some of the citation fields for scientific literature aren't useful to me
- ability to enter in some kind of abstract

So far the closest one I can find to fit my needs is RefBase and while I'm not keen on installing and maintaing the software I have a hosting package that might let me do it. If anyone has any experience using this, I'd be glad to hear of it. I've read the other threads on this I can find but they seem geared more towards the "scientific literature" needs of academics than my own "now what did I do with that article from Vanity Fair...?" more writerly needs.

I guess I just hope that someone has made a super simple, clean interface "writer's" version of the Endnote for less than $100. Well, have they? Or is there some other solution I'm not thinking of?

Should Ulysses make me switch to mac ?

Baud — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 09:44:12 -0800

Ulysses or Copywrite enough to switch to Mac ? Oh wait ! It looks like there's I a am writer busy juggling with several projects. I'm currently using (mainly) OpenOffice on a WinXP machine.

I'm eager to hear from Ulysses and Copywrite users : are these piece of software reasons enough for a switch to the apple side of life ?

I've used Ywriter to outline my nanowrimo novel (I'm a 2006 nanowrimo winner) and OpenOffice to do the actual writing.

Feedback on really good writing software designed for writers on any platform would also be greatly appreciated.

Software for writing poetry?

pracowity — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:43:05 -0800

Has anyone seen software for writing formal poetry? You would specify a poetic form and it would fill in the blanks and make suggestions as much as possible. For example, you select villanelle and it gives you a layout like this (snatched from wikipedia because I'm lazy):

Refrain 1 (a)
Verse 1 (b)
Refrain 2 (a)

Verse 2 (a)
Verse 3 (b)
Refrain 1 (a)

Verse 4 (a)
Verse 5 (b)
Refrain 2 (a)

Verse 6 (a)
Verse 7 (b)
Refrain 1 (a)

Verse 8 (a)
Verse 9 (b)
Refrain 2 (a)

Verse 10 (a)
Verse 11 (b)
Refrain 1 (a)
Refrain 2 (a)

And because some lines are, according to the form, necessarily duplicates of others, you would be able to edit line 1, for example, but not lines 6, 12, or 18, which would be identical to line 1 in a villanelle (and automatically filled in by the software).

For rhymes, it could use color and the like to remind you of which lines your current line must be made to rhyme, and it could use a rhyming dictionary to make suggestions based on what you've written so far.

My characters are running away with my novel!

sperose — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:54:30 -0800

Please help me find something to organize this monstrosity of a novel. Oh yes, there is definitely So I've been doing this Nanowrimo thing for 2 years. This will be year 3. I have a crazy cast of characters, and no actual plot line (aside from a very general idea) to speak of. What I am looking for is some type of free (preferable)/student discounted/super cheap software or internet thingy that will help me track what my characters are doing/what I want them to do. Sort of like putting notecards on a posterboard with lines going horizontally from each of the characters.

Basically, I would like to/need to have some sense of continuity in this novel that started out as a drunken joke. Plus, I'm starting to confuse myself when re-reading it.

Thanks, Mefi.

ps: Windows XP. I dig Word.

Online tools for novel-writing?

tastybrains — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 12:12:23 -0800

Are there any great online tools for working on writing a novel? I've seen previous posts on desktop software for this purpose, but I haven't found any nifty online tools. I want to be able to keep the text of one of my writing projects online so I can access it & work on it anywhere with an internet connection. I also do not want it to be public.

I know I can use things like Yahoo! Notepad or make private LJ posts, but I am hoping that there is some tool more appropriate for what I want to do.

Copywrite hints and tips

sugarfish — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 21:00:24 -0800

So I asked this question about writing software more than a year ago. I finally decided on Copy Write. Now I need hints, tips, or any tutorial you can point me to. I use Linux on a daily basis but I'm fairly comfortable with the Mac -- just not comfortable enough to feel like I'm doing everything the software is able to do. So even if it seems like a dumb thing, feel free to tell me about it, because I probably don't know.

I'm looking for software that will help me write my undergraduate thesis.

anjamu — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:14:07 -0800

I'm looking for software that will help me write my undergraduate thesis. I'm writing an undergraduate thesis consisting of a translation of a number of short stories. I'm currently in the preliminary stages, wherein I'm reading books of stories in order to determine which ones I'll eventually translate.

What I'm looking for is a piece of software that will allow me to jot down citations and tag fragments (for example, note the title of a story and then tag it with some themes) so that when I'm going back through to find possible themes, I can easily see which stories fit what.

TiddlyWiki doesn't quite suit my needs, and I've got a PC. Most of the software that I've found that fits this description is for Macs, so I'm out of luck so far.

Also, any other types of software useful for writing a thesis (citing, documenting, et cetera) would be welcome.

Any such thing as a free DVD/CD writing software?

sublivious — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 14:56:38 -0800

Any such thing as a free DVD/CD writing software for Windows? What I'd really like is an application that works a lot like Nero in its CD/DVD burning functions but free. It should be easy to use, have the ability to burn DVD movies, data DVDs, data CDs, Audio CDs, and Dual Layer support would be a plus. Also it should support newish drives with support for the latest drives always getting attention.

I believe DVD Decrypter could do this, but it's been acquired by Macrovision Europe and distribution has been ended. So far I've found ImgBurn (which apparently is by the folks that brought us DVD Decrypter), DeepBurner (the free version doesn't do DVD video), and CDBurnerXP Pro (may not do DVD video nor support the drive in question). None of them meet my requirements.

resume writing software?

alball — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 15:09:37 -0800

Looking for a good resume writing tool...any recommendations? Maybe something driven by a database and would allow the user to easily upate as work new work experiences happen and old experiences are recalled.

Edit a help file?

dbmcd — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 11:15:21 -0800

Back in the day (about 7 years ago, anyway), Windows came with a utility that allowed the savvy user to edit compiled help files. I cannot remember the name of the utility, or where to find it - does anyone here know? I would also like to know if this thing exists for XP. I'd ask a Tech Writer list, but I'm in a bit of crunch, and you folks are always so great. btw, the files I would like to edit are .chm, and I don't have any of the 'standard' tools available (Robo or Frame). Thanks as always.

How to get LaTeX to ignore a period for spacing purposes?

yesno — Mon, 09 May 2005 18:36:18 -0800

Sometimes in LaTeX I notice bad-looking rivers after the period in someone's title, such as "Mr. Jones" or "St. Thomas." I assume that this is because it is treated the "." in things like "St." as if they are sentence stops, and spacing them accordingly. How can I get this to stop?

What's the best novel writing software for Mac OS X?

sugarfish — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 18:36:25 -0800

What's the best novel writing software for Mac OS X? I'm slogging through a manuscript right now and I realize that I need something to help me organize this thing. I've got ADD and I'm trying to organize my whole life, but I really, really need it here -- I don't know that I could finish it without some structure. I need something to help me with outlines, character sketches, etc. Scribbling in my Moleskine just isn't working out.