This package has been deprecated

Author message:

Use write-good by btford instead

write gooder

Naive linter for English prose for developers who can't write good and wanna do other stuff good too.

A fork of write-good by Brian Ford.

Use

npm install write-gooder

Important: Do not use this tool to be a jerk to other people about their writing.

API

writeGooder is a function that takes a string and returns an array of suggestions.

var writeGooder = require('write-gooder');
 
var suggestions = writeGooder('So the cat was stolen.');
 
// suggestions:
//
// [{
//   suggestion: "omit 'So' from the beginning of sentences",
//   index: 0, offset: 2
// }, {
//   suggestion: "'was stolen' is passive voice",
//   index: 11, offset: 10
// }]

writeGooder takes an optional second argument that allows you to disable certain checks.

You can disable checking for passive voice like this:

var writeGooder = require('write-gooder');
 
var suggestions = writeGooder('So the cat was stolen', { passive: false});
// suggestions: []

CLI

You can use write-gooder as a command-line tool by installing it globally:

npm install -g write-gooder

write-gooder takes a glob and prints suggestions to stdout:

$ write-gooder *.md
 
In README.md
=============
 = writeGooder('So the cat was stolen.');
"was stolen" is passive voice
line 20 column 40
-------------
//   suggestion: "'was stolen' is passive voice",
"was stolen" is passive voice
line 28 column 19

You can run just specific checks like this:

write-gooder *.md --weasel --so

Or exclude checks like this:

write-gooder *.md --no-passive

Checks

You can disable any combination of the following by providing a key with value false as the second argument to writeGooder.

passive

Checks for passive voice.

illusion

Checks for lexical illusions – cases where a word is repeated.

so

Checks for so at the beginning of the sentence.

thereIs

Checks for there is or there are at the beginning of the sentence.

weasel

Checks for "weasel words."

See also

I came across these resources while doing research to make this module. They might be helpful.

Code

• shell script for avoiding "weasel words" – I based my initial implementation on this
• Academic Writing Check – a perl script similar to above
• writegood mode for emacs
• natural – general purpose NLP toolkit in JavaScript
• WordNet – lexical database of the English language

Prose

• Elements of Style
• Flesch–Kincaid readability
• Fear and Loathing of the English passive

Apps

This is not an endorsement. These apps have similar functionality that you may find useful.

• Hemingway App
• Nitpicker

License

MIT