Shosho
p/shosho
Place To Write, Edit And Collaborate
Eugen Esanu
Shosho — An editor to remove the clutter from your writing.
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Shosho is a writing, editing and collaboration tool that focuses on cutting the clutter from your writing. It allows you to share your stories with others, improve your writing by removing fillers, cliches, adverbs, and simplifying complex words.
Replies
Tom Bielecki
Your app is pretty, but I ran into a few issues. Being colorblind, I wanted to hover over a sentence option and see the sentence change somehow so I could be sure which ones it was referring to. No guidance is given on how to change these complex sentences. The first time I tried a suggestion and clicked "omit" I was unable to undo this action. The grammatical suggestions do not seem to be high quality, and pale in comparison to Grammarly. If I used even half of the suggestions the text would no longer make sense. It would be nice to walk-through and/or hide specific categories of suggestions.
Eugen Esanu
@tombielecki Hi Tom. Thank you for your feedback. Noted. Undo works, you just have to click back on the text. We are working on this small bug. Complex sentences are only up to you how you want to simplify them. Usually, you have to divide them (on average 25 words per sentence is best result). Grammaryl doesn't do what we do as we have a separate goal. We do not correct "grammatical" errors, we correct writing style mistakes. Hopefully that clarifies it :) "If I used even half of the suggestions the text would no longer make sense." - that's a bit confusing because I check everything myself. Could you please show me what you are trying to correct and doesn't make sense? Send me an email at eugen(at)shosho.co Would be glad to assist
Iason Rados
Looks good. Want to give it a try but I have privacy concerns stemming from grammarly. Do you collect data?
Eugen Esanu
@jasonrados for now we collect only basic Google Analytics (how many people are now online, how many are returning, avg time per user) and HelpScout data (only if you interact with us through it. Will be removed later. It's only for Beta). In the future we will add Hotjar to record user sessions. To understand better if there are any flaws in the UX. And I know this is a concern for many, so we are working on finding a way to add an option that "allows/disables" session recording.
Eugen Esanu
@jasonrados How's the product so far for you? Enjoying it, something is missing, some flaws maybe, etc?
Tim Feeley
@jasonrados @esanueugen FWIW, one thing I wasn't able to figure out from reading the product detail pages about Hemmingway (the App) was whether it was able to parse text locally, or if it had to send it out. For business use cases, this might be something worth including in your value prop. I'm severely limited by work policies where I can input text if it goes to another server -- so you may want to highlight your data collection practices, as well as offering a total 'don't track me' kill switch :)
Eugen Esanu
@timfee I heard this from other companies too that want to use the product. And I was thinking to design a "Shosho for Business" with some extra privacy features for a future version. "Don't track me" - added to the list
Tim Feeley
@esanueugen Awesome! I work at a large company where I'd likely just buy a single seat professional account, so I hope you'd make the privacy feature available as a premium add-on for a user account, too :-)
JaneManthorpe
Great tool @esanueugen been testing it out. I have a few suggestions: 1) I need to be able to save the document/article once loaded on the app, so I don't loose the editing. I lost the first attempt since I left the app and came back to it, the article had disappeared and I had to start again. 2) the suggestions of editing hover over the text, so I cannot rewrite it. Very awkward to edit, I had to start writing before the highlighted text and then rewrite it. Still testing it out and will come back with other suggestions. Where is the best place to send the feedback? Here or selecting the "feedback" button on the app. It looks like that is used for support rather than giving feedback.
Eugen Esanu
@janemanthorpe hey Jane! Thank you for your feedback. Could you please send it to me directly on eugen@shosho.co 1) It's weird that your story disappeared. All stories autosave after 3 seconds. Could you please send me the text you had there and more details on what exactly happened? We will take a look at it. Still in Beta, bugs like this may appear :P sorry for the inconvenience 2) This is a bit harder for us to balance because that's the point of the Edit Mode. You either edit with our suggestions or highlight the text yourself and replace it. But I will add it to the list and see if we can find a solution for that The "feedback" button is for both :)
MrJDucky
So what's the difference between this and the "Hemingway Editor"? Looks very... Similar?
Eugen Esanu
@mrjducky thanks for asking! Hemmingway doesn't come close to the number of mistakes Shosho can find. We also go deeper into cliches, buzzwords, weakening expressions, wordiness, redundancy, etc. Shosho scans through 134.753 mistakes. To see the difference try copy/paste this paragraph in Shosho and then in Hemmingway: “Mona had a difficult dilemma. She worked for a caterer, and from 9 a.m. in the morning until 12 noon, her job was to hand out free gifts at the mall. But her close personal friend Myrtle had just given birth to a baby girl, and she had promised to take care of Myrtle’s pair of twins while Myrtle was in the hospital. To Mona, the twins were annoying pests, but she would keep her promise. When Mona explained to her boss that Myrtle’s early delivery had come as an unexpected surprise, she could see the intense fury in his eyes. Silently, he prepared the different varieties of his decorative garnishes. The evil fiend then suddenly exploded and spelled out in detail why Mona was fired. Mona’s future prospects looked dim, as jobs were few in number. Mona now runs her own company, so getting fired may possibly have been her lucky break.” My goal with Shosho is not to become an alternative for Hemmingway, but a hub for writing and editing. We will keep adding functionality for collaboration, sharing, comments/notes, etc. The "Edit" part is only a feature of Shosho
Himanshu Sharma
@esanueugen This example makes it clear. Hemingway does not show word replacements and spelling mistakes like Shosho
Eugen Esanu
Hello everyone! Meet Shosho - a writing, editing and collaboration tool for your stories. I write a lot about design and I constantly juggle between 3 apps. Medium for writing, HemingwayApp for editing and Grammarly for grammar. I thought to design and develop one that combines all 3 and could do better. It took me 1 year to gather a collection of 128,367 style mistakes and put them into Shosho. I researched and added all the mistakes, and can tell you that the app is worth reading over 30 books on editing and style. Shosho is in Beta and I would like to receive your feedback. All beta users have free accounts forever. Some features are missing, but we will be adding them in the upcoming weeks. Some of them are: - Comments/Notes - Dark Mode - Folders, tags - Improved speed - Gamification - Paid plans - And 1-2 months we will add grammar + NLP for better contextual mistake suggestions
Tim Feeley
I dig the concept, but there's a glaring mistake in the last paragraph of introductory text that the engine doesn't catch -- "don't use cliche’s" (one shouldn't use an apostrophe to pluralize!) -- so the product's credibility is severely eroded already out of the gate for me as an evaluator. I'd suggest removing errors your engine can't fix, or updating the engine. Love the concept though and hope to see it take off!
Eugen Esanu
@timfee Thank you Tim! Appreciate it. That one slipped, as we rushed the changes before launch. Will change that - still in Beta :P
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
@esanueugen in addition to what @timfee caught, you also have a section that reads: "Shosho is free for all beta users. If you sign up now, you will keep your accounts free forever. Scan through 128,463 style mistakes and make your story sound better and confident." How many accounts should I create? Also, in a later comment, you say that "Shosho scans through 134.753 mistakes" but in that section you say "128,463 style mistakes". Are you just making up numbers? And why do you use a period in one place and a comma in another? I appreciate what you're trying to do with this app, but I do think these nits harm your credibility, even if you're in beta.
Eugen Esanu
@timfee @chrismessina Hi Chris, I personally add new mistakes to the database daily and weekly. The number keeps growing and I can't keep up with all the places I have mentioned it. Sometimes I remove many because they might be wrong or duplicates. So the numbers jump. Hopefully you can understand :) The updated version, I checked now, is 134.899. Is that ok with you? Regarding accounts, you can create as many as you want. We will introduce paid plans in a week or two.
Tim Feeley
@esanueugen It seems like you're trying to balance showcasing your product's unique personality with demonstrating its functionality. Perhaps the "new user" state could have a few documents on the left: one that includes content designed to show off the heavy duty skills (like you detailed to @mrjducky), as well as a "kitchen sink" example that could be more playful.
Himanshu Sharma
At first, I felt that there is no difference between Shosho and Hemingway. But after trying out an example, I can see the difference. Hemingway does not show word improvements and spelling mistakes the way Shosho does. For those who are looking for an example text to try out - Mona had a difficult dilemma. She worked for a caterer, and from 9 a.m. in the morning until 12 noon, her job was to hand out free gifts at the mall. But her close personal friend Myrtle had just given birth to a baby girl, and she had promised to take care of Myrtle’s pair of twins while Myrtle was in the hospital. To Mona, the twins were annoying pests, but she would keep her promise. When Mona explained to her boss that Myrtle’s early delivery had come as an unexpected surprise, she could see the intense fury in his eyes. Silently, he prepared the different varieties of his decorative garnishes. The evil fiend then suddenly exploded and spelled out in detail why Mona was fired. Mona’s future prospects looked dim, as jobs were few in number. Mona now runs her own company, so getting fired may possibly have been her lucky break.
Eugen Esanu
@heman_shu Thank you! There's even more :P with each sentence written, you will see there's more it does. Soon we will add grammar/spellchecker so the difference will be even more visible
Anna Filou
@heman_shu wow, many differences between what Hemingway and Shosho highlight! Thanks for the helpful example. Shosho is a better guide on improving what you've written and understanding why it needs improvement.
Calum Webb
Hey @esanueugen, This looks really impressive, congrats on the launch! Do you have any plans to have a browser extension with the same features for editing on the likes of Quip and Google Docs?
Eugen Esanu
@calum Thank you Calum! Yes we do plan to release a browser extension but not in this half of the year. We were thinking to release a Beta version for it by the end of the year
Calum Webb
@esanueugen Great! Excited to see the release of the browser extension!
Daniel 💻
Nice product i would probably avoid nicknames such as 'Alcoholic writer' which was given to me when i signed up, seems a bit off given alcoholism is a horrible illness.
Eugen Esanu
@iice89 Hi Daniel :) Thank you, we are working on friendlier versions of nicknames
Dan Safkow
Similar to Grammarly? If so, how different? Thanks
Eugen Esanu
@dan_safkow Hi Daniel, sorry but this was already answered 3 times in the comments. See the upper ones
Anna Filou
@esanueugen did you shut Shosho down without as much as a notice? The website no longer exists.
Anna Filou
I was skeptical at first because the web app looks almost identical to Hemingway Editor. Despite that, I gave it a shot and was pleasantly surprised. Compared to Hemingway, Shosho offers practical advice on improving what you've written and highlights all the redundant words in it. There's also the ability to create an account and save your "stories" which I find helpful. In conclusion, I'll be using Shosho often from now and am delighted I stumbled upon it! ?makers Congrats on the great work and thank you for letting early users use your service for free!
Eugen Esanu
@anna_0x Hi Anna, thank you. Our team appreciates it a lot! You will see many more features in the future :P If you will have any feedback, ideas or maybe you would like to see a certain feature, please send it to me - eugen@shosho.co
Anna Filou
@shosho @esanueugen Update ~2 weeks later: Damn, I love using Shosho! It makes me think more about what I write. It's made me aware of how many filler words and phrases I use and of how long my sentences typically are. Even when I don't use it, I think about its corrections while I type. My only complaint is that it doesn't work well on mobile.
Eugen Esanu
@shosho @anna_0x Thank you Anna! We will clean our mobile version so it's better to edit/write, but it's not a major focus for now. We plan to release a separate mobile app in the future :)
Eugen Esanu
@shosho @anna_0x Can we use your review for our future version of the website? That would help us a lot :)
Saradhi
@esanueugen Congratulations on the launch! The app looks impressive. Looking forward to the launch of new features.
Eugen Esanu
@saradhi241995 Thank you! :)
Ben Gubler
This looks great! A few ideas: 1) A "View" mode would be awesome, alongside the "Edit" and "Write" modes 2) It would be awesome to be able to disregard suggestions (i.e. if a certain one doesn't match your writing style or the tone of the piece)
Eugen Esanu
@ben_gubler thank you Ben! We're already working on point 2. And what do you mean by "View" mode? Something like a present mode? If you could share more details, that would help
Ben Gubler
@esanueugen yes, something like a present mode or the view mode on Google Docs. Essentially, a mode with editing + writing disabled (so no chance of accidental edits). Also btw you can't click and drag on the scrollbar starting at about halfway down the page, looks like the editing boxes are overlapping it.
Eugen Esanu
@ben_gubler Got it, thank you! We already have something similar on our roadmap
Alexander Skibinskiy
Very interesting app. I checked few of my texts and it helps. What will be included in the paid plan?
Eugen Esanu
@skibinskiy hey Alexander, thank you! :) We are still working on that, but an idea is to make one package that would have extra features such as the grammar and gamification, while keeping the others free for use with some limitations. We will still work on that based on the feedback we will receive from the users
Lena Mazhuha
Love the product! I am from a VC fund and would love to talk to you.
Zeynep Ozkan
I loved this product and I was working on an article last summer. It's been a few months I haven't checked and my work was incomplete. I wanted to go back and continue the work but I found out that the website is down which is worrying. Hope it's not permanently out of service.
Florian Poullin
This is a great tool! The UI is fluid and clean. Good job!
Eugen Esanu
@florian_poullin Thank you Florian! Much appreciated :)
Henry Dobson
Looks cool. Signed up already, let's see how it plays out. I'm currently using INK, it's great for SEO but doesn't help you with making your writing richer.
Eugen Esanu
@henry_dobson thank you Henry! We just launched, so we will keep improving the tool with more focused features. If you will have any feedback/issues, send it to me at eugen(at)shosho.co
Alex Hales
Recommend it to try. Cool idea and mix of Grammarly and HemingwayApp
Eugen Esanu
@oneandonly_alexhales Thank you Alex! Funny that we don't have anything from Grammarly yet :P we will add some grammar stuff later
Jason Roy
Congratulation with the launch! The only question : why it is called Shosho?
Eugen Esanu
@royjason thank you! I thought it sounds much better than "writing app" :P Shosho sounds catchy