Paper Rater analyzes your writing surprisngly well
As Paper Rater so eloquently states in HUGE type, it's a free grammar and spelling check, with plagiarism detection thrown in for good measure.
It's actually an interesting study in graphic design: Look at that screenshot. Would you rely on such a website for editing an important academic paper, a newspaper article, or any other important text? At first glance, I sure wouldn't. That "Use now FREE!" button just screams "TACKY". And that's really too bad, because when I finally overcame my distaste and gave the site a spin anyway, I found a surprisingly comprehensive grammar and style editor.
I tested the site with a 3,600-word text on electrical engineering. I found it interesting that the site would not accept short text. When at first I tried submitting one or two paragraphs, it simply let me know that the text is too short for analyzing. I actually like that, because it makes me feel the analysis is more thorough.
The site gave me extensive recommendations for the text, and analyzed word usage and sentence structure. I documented the process with a bunch of screenshots, which you can find after the jump.
After it runs through your text, you get a pane with different aspects of your writing you can click and get concise reports for:
This is the originality detection. Yay, my text wasn't plagiarized!
The Style report is much more comprehensive. You actually need to know how to read it ("so what if I have 171 'to be' verbs?"). The report contains some explanations, but this is where a proper usage guide can come in handy.
This is a sample for an alert my paper got. Apparently, the vocabulary was a bit thin. I wasn't offended because I didn't write it myself. I'm guessing that "Vocab Builder" is a thesaurus, but I didn't test it myself.
The Illusionist's Dream is a simple platformer; you play as a magician who needs to get through each level by transforming into any number of animals that you encounter along the way.
Each animal can do different things; the butterfly can obviously fly, but if it encounters a frog, the frog eats it, and you have to start over again. There's also a fox that runs fast and leaps far, but it eats any rabbits that cross its path. That means that, if you may need to be a rabbit later on, you need to take that into account ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
aidan.cage said 6:15PM on 3-03-2010
from their TOS:
By submitting Material to the Web Site, you agree to grant the Company, its agents, affiliates, representatives, licensors, and licensees, a worldwide, irrevocable, nonexclusive, perpetual, royalty-free right (including moral rights) and license to copy, modify, translate, publish, disclose, transfer, assign, sell, and distribute said Material in any form now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose without limitation, and without any obligation of notice, attribution, or compensation to you or another.
...ew :(
Reply
bknab said 6:23PM on 3-03-2010
That killed it for me...
bwcbiz said 2:52PM on 3-04-2010
With such a comprehensive, unlimited licensing of rights, I would argue (IANAL) that "FREE" constitutes false advertising. Even for an undergraduate paper, I would say that the assigned rights have some value that rises above "free".
Walter said 8:02PM on 3-03-2010
are there any other tools similar to this without the scary 'big-brother' ToS?
Reply
John said 8:05PM on 3-03-2010
Me too. Hogwash Terms of Service. Call my cynical, but I think most of these "helpful" sites are like this.
Like I'm going to let an online site (managed buy God only knows) have access to my writing. Other sites offer to help you manage your money, diary, and any other sort of personal details for free. But where are you details going? Where will they end up down the line?
Reply
PaperRater Staff said 8:48PM on 3-03-2010
Thanks for the writeup about the service. We have been notified by several people about the TOS and we understand their concerns. After discussing the TOS with our lawyer, we'll be removing the offensive portion immediately.
We hope you'll continue to use the service as we work on improvements and new features.
Reply
nikescar said 8:55PM on 3-03-2010
Wow, if this is true I'm amazed.
Maybe this was a case of an over zealous lawyer trying to cover PaperRater's ass in every possible way.
nikescar said 8:57PM on 3-03-2010
I just checked their site and the ToS has been updated. The "offensive" part is gone. Great job guys. And great site.
DeoWulf said 9:34PM on 3-03-2010
Here I was about to label it a scam. That's cool, thanks.
bwcbiz said 3:26PM on 3-04-2010
Nice work. I wouldn't object to a more limited rights license (for example for use in plagiarism detection within the site, plus use of only the version submitted for certain other purposes), but I appreciate the active response. Assuming you have some other revenue stream planned, perhaps give users a choice of how to "pay" to keep you in business with different licensing/rights/payment schemes, for example:
-authorize advertising and data-mining
-grant of license for re-use of material
-cash payment.
djangelic said 12:29AM on 3-04-2010
same here, now i will def use it... pretty exciting
Reply
Richard Frisch said 7:31AM on 3-04-2010
Worthless website!
I tested a totally original blog post I wrote a while back - http://rhftech.com/blog/2010/02/connecting-your-hdtv-to-the-internet/ - and it said it was most likely plagiarized! Who did I steal it from? Myself?
It also had trouble with spelling things like technology words or companies, e.g. Cablevision or HDTV. Its suggested synonyms were also lacked value.
I grade this website a big fat red "F".
Reply
Malaycobra said 8:14AM on 3-04-2010
"Its suggested synonyms were also lacked value"
Maybe you should run your post through and see what it says...
Richard Frisch said 8:35AM on 3-04-2010
@Malaycobra If I could edit the post I would. I can't. It stands.
dracona1031 said 12:03PM on 3-04-2010
I had the same problem when I tested a blog post from a while back. I wonder if it crawls the web for the text? I'd like to know more about how they test for plagiarism.
PaperRater Staff said 8:50AM on 3-04-2010
@Richard F - Thanks for the feedback. If your paper already exists on the Internet, then the originality detector will consider it plagiarized text. This is not a bug -- this is how plagiarism detection works. In the future, perhaps we can enhance this portion of the service by displaying the URL(s) of the matching document(s).
Reply
bballpguardmike said 4:24PM on 3-04-2010
Looks neat, I'll have to take a look. Kudos to the PaperRater staff for keeping an eye on the comments here and responding accordingly, that just made me want to try it out even more on the next paper I write.
Reply
magicfap said 3:49PM on 3-08-2010
Ironically enough, I was about to submit a paper about the importance of analyzing new technologies for big brotherish tendencies when I read the ToS. Too bad, it looked like a good tool.
Reply
lqtinkerbell said 1:37PM on 3-12-2010
i'm a sophomore in college and i have to submit my paper for plagiarism detection on a thing called safe assign. if i submit my paper to paper rater for suggestions, will it come up later as plagiarized after i submit it for class? i think safe assign searches the internet so if i put it out there, it might come up as plagiarized. and if i submit something else i don't want to revoke all rights to my own work...
Reply