Are we all redundant?

No, I've kept one step ahead and retired.

aghh double posts aghaaagh

A US-Israeli software company says it can turn garbled scrawling into mellifluous prose... As someone (ex-military) who has been on the receiving end of such wonder claims by software genii, I rather think what the programme will achieve is the opposite. Never underestimate the power etc...

No, because the program can't invent turns of phrase, nor can it invent any of things that writers use to tell a story that isn't just concrete description. It wouldn't be able to change the word footstool into the description 'footstool like a sleeping badger'. Nor could it change 'David smelled toast', to 'Reminded of home and his mother, David savoured the urinous smell of slightly burned toast'. Archer is very readable. He's very simple, and grammatically correct. He's just rubbish, and boring. As I understand it, the program can finesse what you've written, it can't put anything new into it. That's what writers do. They use language to make new things. Cheers, Mark

Ahh, but the future... :-/// ;-) pe ps oid What is "the art of tea"? And what does an "odd courgette" look like?

If the only lasting thing to come out of this discussion is the phrase "footstool like a sleeping badger" it will have been worth it; he said sitting on his bed, also, in its own way, quite a lot like a sleeping badger.

Writers had better not become a thing of the past-I hope to make a career out of it!

We're all of us redundant as the last word of this sentence is. Nothing to do with the program, though. Creative writing is unnecessary. That's just its nature. Add to that the fact that authors are producing for a market where supply massively outweighs demand, and the introduction of an automated rival is of no more import than tossing a match into a forest fire.

Programme!

As an addendum, Oscar Wilde when writing about the Americans and English 'a common people separated by language.'

Program! Cheers, Mark

Pogrom!