Pens and Stamps and Grades, Oh My.

Before Alchemist, there was chaos.

I know, it sounds like the beginning of a creation myth, which, I guess it is. In the beforetime, a time every teacher who grades essays knows, all was done with the Red Pen (in my case a blue pen). Teachers would circle, underline, squiggle, and otherwise comment on essays in between lines, in margins, and at the bottom of every essay in order to provide feedback.

And it sucked.

No, really. It took so much time to do all of this, and then to have to do it all again on the next one with the exact same comments ate away at my soul a bit. And I noticed by the end of a grading session that the amount of feedback had dropped sharply with my fatigue. Maybe some day I'll chart out the exact relationship, but suffice to say, the longer a grading session goes, the less feedback will be written.

So I tried to streamline. No, not with Alchemist. This is the beforetime. I wasn't willing to give up my analog ways and embrace the digital. So I created stamps. Not the postage kind. I created customized stamps with checkboxes and a legend of marks I would give on papers. I stamped each essay, went through the checklist for the big ticket items, and wrote customized feedback. It helped streamline the system immensely, but the time savings wasn't as much as I'd liked.

But there was a greater problem. Most of what I had was in codes that required a reference sheet, which I provided to students. Unfortunately most of them never bothered to look at the reference sheet to match up the code with its explanation, so I gradually came to the conclusion that this system, however ingenious (mildly, not really that much), didn't fit the bill.

Flag Spelling Errors Spell Check Can't

Spell check is an incredible tool, and has come a long way since the days of DOS word processors, but it still lets some things through because it can’t read. Spell check assumes that writers basically know what they are doing, that the specific choice of words somehow makes sense because the computer can’t know.

But I’ve been teaching for long enough that I’ve come to recognize certain patterns that are definitely errors, and I’ve seen them often enough to be tired of pointing it out. The solution I wrote into Alchemist was simple, find the errors.

Most of these errors are from misused word phrases that should be compound words, or misapplied phonetic pronunciations transcribed to the document. So now there’s a way to flag ten plus misspellings of nowadays as now a days, now and days, now of days, etc. Alchemist will flag misapplied phonetics for should’ve, would’ve, and could’ve that somehow became should of, would of, and could of, respectively, and many others.

Of course, this is hardly the limit of what it can find, and this feature wouldn’t be much good if these were the only misspellings it could catch. But Alchemist is flexible and allows for users to add new words.

Unnecessary Phrases

People like to ramble sound official (I refer attorneys to Judge Painter). So we use more words than necessary. Strunk said it best, "Omit Needless words," (scroll down to 13) because the excess clouds meaning.

Phrases such as "the question as to whether," "this is a subject which," and "due to the fact that" can be cut in favor of whether, this subject, and because, respectively. The web presents endless other examples of the need to trim the fat from our language.

But we can't see it. These roundabout phrases have become so commonplace that they slide past our eyes, despite the inner editor's vigilance. Alchemist searches out and highlights these phrases, allowing the inner editor the contrast to assess recognize and assess them.

Kickstarter is Live!

This is it. We're officially rolling, now. You can access the Kickstarter page by clicking the banner above or the widget to the right.

If you came from Kickstarter, welcome to the home of Alchemist. Give it a try by clicking the Try Alchemist tab or the animation underneath the Kickstarter widget.

T Minus

I had originally planned to launch the Kickstarter campaign earlier this week, but that fell through. I think it's for the best. I had opportunity to make some much-needed improvements to this site. And now I figured I would make an official announcement.

Alchemist will launch on Kickstarter, soon.

That's vague, isn't it? How soon? Well, if you look to the widget on the right, it's counting down.

Most of the information about Alchemist on Kickstarter is also on this site through the Story, Students, and Instructors tabs at the top of the page.

So what does this all mean?

Well, if you're reading this, then I will ask you to help spread the word about Alchemist. We can generate a little pre-hype before the Kcikstarter officially starts.

So please, tell your family, friends, neighbors, strangers on the street, and even that latest friend request on Facebook about Alchemist.

Homophone Trainer

Homophones are pesky. They trip up even the best of writers. Unfortunately, they're (not there or their) one of those language quirks that takes raw memorization to know which witch is which. For this you can either read over lists of  homophones (an idea that bores even us, and we like language), or try out some games. There are several on the internet that can be located with a quick search, but here's a fast-paced game we like: You Can't Write Proper English Under Pressure.

It's as simple as choosing whether a sentence is right or wrong in the time limit. There are only two (not too or to) problems. First, the music isn't the most supportive, but that can be turned off with the icon in the upper right. Second, it doesn't offer any help when you get an answer wrong.

So if you play this game (and you can share your scores on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to encourage competition) we recommend checking out the OWL page for homophones or the complete list of homophones for explanations.

Pocket Guides

We've been working hard at DocMarkup on some things in addition to Alchemist, and they are ready. Introducing Pocket Guides.

What are Pocket Guides? Glad you asked. Pocket Guides are basically interactive flowcharts, but instead of seeing the whole chart at once, the guide navigates you through the choices you make, and presenting new choices to you.

They're specially formatted PDF files just for your phone. You'll need an app that can read PDF files (we recommend the Adobe Reader App), but there are no other installations to make.

We think that these will be an effective learning tool to help you become better writers. Best of all, they are FREE! Click on the Downloads tab to give them a go.

Right now we have two guides, one for Thesis Statements and one for Arguments.