Shosho - An editor to remove the clutter from your writing.

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!

@timfee Thank you Tim! Appreciate it. That one slipped, as we rushed the changes before launch. Will change that - still in Beta :P

@esanueugen I hear you ;) Errant apostrophes are my Kryptonite!

@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.

@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.

@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

@esanueugen This example makes it clear. Hemingway does not show word replacements and spelling mistakes like Shosho

@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.

@esanueugen Thanks for the reply!

@jasonrados How's the product so far for you? Enjoying it, something is missing, some flaws maybe, etc?

@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 :)

@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

@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

@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.

@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 :)

@shosho @esanueugen wowww can't wait for the mobile app! 😍 Keep up the awesome work

@shosho @anna_0x Can we use your review for our future version of the website? That would help us a lot :)

@iice89 Hi Daniel :) Thank you, we are working on friendlier versions of nicknames

@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

@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.

@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

@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

@esanueugen Great! Excited to see the release of the browser extension!

@huuas_apps Hi. It’s JavaScript and Python. And a lot of English, of course :)

@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

@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.

@ben_gubler Got it, thank you! We already have something similar on our roadmap

@cristina_crucianu Thank you Cristina! Much appreciated :) Soon we will add grammar and spellchecking too. Once we are done with Beta, grammar should come And many more collaboration features :P

@deja_vuu Thank you! We used Draft.js

@saradhi241995 Thank you! :)

@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 :)

@shosho @esanueugen Cheers, I replied via email to you, and many thanks for a quick response back.

@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

@mmkontis Depends :) I hate the gibberish when I read something like "In my opinion I beleive that", "It's very important to remember that", "With all due respect". All of this nonsense kills a brain cell every time I read one. So I decided to make something that will remove them The app is not something you should follow religiously. Look at it as guidance, and decide by yourself what's important. In writing you don't need the empty words (except if you write dialogue), but when you speak, you can use them. Otherwise you will sound like a robot

@oneandonly_alexhales Thank you Alex! Funny that we don't have anything from Grammarly yet :P we will add some grammar stuff later

@royjason thank you! I thought it sounds much better than "writing app" :P Shosho sounds catchy

@dan_safkow Hi Daniel, sorry but this was already answered 3 times in the comments. See the upper ones