May 11, 2016 at 3:34 am

@morgoodie I completely agree that if editing is turned off even for posts saved as drafts, then having the option to save a draft is pretty much useless. It should simply be disabled until the user reaches a sufficient rank to have access to editing.

@lookat and @kaka135 You may be interested in the Hemingway editor (http://www.hemingwayapp.com/) which can be used online or downloaded as a desktop app. I believe you pay a small fee (under $10) for the app, but you can use the online version free. It checks word count, readability level, grammar (including use of adverbs and passive voice) and a few more things. It will not catch everything, but it will help with the kinds of problems you mention.

Just a quick note, if you try to close the tab or navigate away from the page, you’ll get a “leave page/stay on page” alert. That’s just to save you from losing an open text! Don’t worry, the app isn’t looking to hijack your browser 🙂

May 11, 2016 at 3:39 am

@morgoodie If you are in need of a free word processor for your laptop, check out LibreOffice. It’s very similar to Word in what it can do, though some of the functions are accessed differently. It does allow you to save to Word *.doc and other formats, as well as saving in the *.odt (OpenDocument) format, which is apparently preferred in some places because it’s more universal and less proprietary.

Unlike the MS Office suite, the LibreOffice suite is free. It’s available in a number of languages too! you can download it at https://www.libreoffice.org/. Includes spreadsheets, database, a drawing app, slideshow creator, etc.

May 11, 2016 at 4:07 am

@ruby3881  Thanks for the tip. I just downloaded it and will see how it works for me. I have Word on my desktop but I am not using that very much because I do not have a desk for it. I think this will be very helpful to me.

May 11, 2016 at 5:44 am

There are some help files you can download to install, or you can always Google anything if you aren’t sure how it works in LibreOffice. But if you’re comfortable in Word, you will probably find your way quite well, @morgoodie 🙂

May 11, 2016 at 8:55 pm

This is good information. I will check it out.

Are you using Grammarly.com?

May 11, 2016 at 9:53 pm

I have used Grammarly but only the free version which just checks spelling errors. I am not able to pay for any type of service such as this right now.

@ruby3881  I just started using the LibreOffice and it looks very much like Word but I can see there are quite a few differences as well. I will have to play around in there, but for now it is going to be easy to write my posts in there then paste them here in LB. Thanks again for your help.

May 11, 2016 at 10:19 pm

@morgoodie If you get stuck on anything specific, just give me a shout! And if I don’t know, there are plenty of resources if you just Google whatever you’re trying to do.

This page is where you’ll find documentation for LibreOffice. Remember that you also have the option to install a help module, so you can look for info right in the app 🙂

https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

May 12, 2016 at 2:34 am

@morgoodie I think the draft feature might need to be updated, as it’s not serving its functio at the moment. Now, the draft just parked in my dashboard, but I can’t do anything with it at all. 🙂

@morgoodie @lookat I am sorry for recommending wordcounter.net earlier. I just found out it slowed down my computer performance a lot as there are many ads and even video ad. LiteracyBase does load quite slow to me, so with the wordcounter.net page, it made my computer really slow, though I like the features it provides, such as reading level, reading time, speaking time, keyword density, it also saves what we copied and pasted inside the space, but these are not so important to me actually. Speed is more important.

I was searching for another wordcount tool online, and found this, with just a text ad: http://www.charactercountonline.com/

@lookat How did you manage to do that? With the help of support? Good that you have got them fixed now.
Thanks for sharing grammarly.com. It’s so nice to learn so many good tools just from this thread!

@ruby3881 Thanks for recommending the Hemingway editor. It looks good, and there’s no ad, so it will not slow down my computer, and I think the page loads quite fast as well. Also, thanks for mentioning LibreOffice. I always knew the alternative to be OpenOffice, but I didn’t know about LibreOffice. It’s good to know something new. 🙂

May 12, 2016 at 2:53 am

I just started using LibreOffice and I like it well enough. It is much like Microsoft Word, so now I just make my draft in there and then post it in LB. It gives the word/character count so I do not need the website anymore. LibreOffice is free to download too and it only took a few minutes to do it. I love free stuff.

I did not find that the WordCounter website slowed my computer down, but maybe that was why LB was loading so slow. I doubt it though. Glad you found something else though and hopefully it will work better for you.

May 12, 2016 at 9:43 am

@kaka135 From what I understand, LibreOffice is just the updated version of OpenOffice. My FIL told me some years ago there had been some creative differences in the development team. I guess some left the original company to continue working on the app, but they changed the name to LibreOffice.

May 13, 2016 at 12:59 am

@morgoodie Good to know that you like it so much. My computer is quite low, I can’t afford to install any other programs, so I prefer to just check it online. I have Microsoft Office installed as well, for working purpose mostly. I will remember LibreOffice, so whenever I need a free version, I know where to go to. 🙂

@ruby3881 There are many stories about the staff leaving a company, and start their own. Have you used OpenOffice before? Which do you prefer?

May 13, 2016 at 2:30 pm

@kaka135 I used OpenOffice for years before LibreOffice became available. I have always loved this app, and could never figure out why more people don’t just ditch MS Word, especially with Microsoft charging so much for it.

As OpenOffice is no longer being updated (at least, not to my knowledge) I stick with LibreOffice now. It’s essentially the same app. They just renamed it when the two groups split off from one another.

May 14, 2016 at 12:07 am

I basically will use Microsoft Word to do my word counting. I will eventually get the feel for longer posts. After all, at previous sites I used to write for only wanted writers to provide a minimum of 300 characters and that is such a small amount that it hardly qualifies for more than a discussion or a comment in terms of substance and information. So with this in mind, as far as writing more substantive content here at LiteracyBase, it helps us become better at writing and staying focused on the topic or topics we are writing about and provide a bit more insight to the topics we choose to post about.