12 Things PerfectIt Doesn’t Do
Tom Waddell, Chief Engineer at PerfectIt with James Harbeck, Writer and Editor
One of the joys of working on PerfectIt is the engagement of our users. I love the requests you send, ideas you bring, and the problems you ask us to solve. But what I think makes PerfectIt stand out and makes it so useful is that it doesn’t do everything. We design for professionals.
Ask any professional: Anything that does everything does nothing well enough. The definition of “all-season tyres” is “tyres that have mediocre performance all year round.” Restaurant chefs don’t use handy-dandy kitchen omnitools “as seen on TV”; they use the right knife – or processor blade – for the right job, and they use their own skilled judgement while handling it. And my hope is that a skilled professional editor uses PerfectIt as an automated second pair of eyes to check consistency with a set style – but not to do absolutely everything an editor might want to do from time to time.
Please do keep the requests for new features coming in. We’ve got PerfectIt 6 coming soon. So we want to hear from you. But just to be clear, here are 12 things that you may want PerfectIt to do that will definitely not be included in PerfectIt 6 (or beyond)! Thanks to James Harbeck for having fun with the list!
1. Evaluate Grammar
PerfectIt doesn’t care even slightly if you use dangling modifiers or split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions. It won’t red-flag you for using too many nouns or prepositions, or for using adverbs or semicolons at all. If you use PerfectIt, then you’re a professional applying your professional judgement in context, and you’re perfectly capable of deciding what grammar is and isn’t appropriate for the style of a particular document; you don’t need some automated peever replaying your least likable aunt’s greatest grammar gripes.
But . . . PerfectIt does help you to consistently enforce your decisions on capitalization, punctuation, grammatical parallelism in lists, and similar matters of good textual hygiene that matter regardless of whether you think kids these days just don’t get taught that a preposition is not a thing to end a sentence with.
2. Explain Your Edits to Clients
PerfectIt won’t diplomatically explain to your author why the document was boring and awkward before you applied your skill to it. It won’t sit your client down and make them understand why capitalizing a product name four different ways might be a problem. It also won’t stop you and say “What does that mean?” if you say “This is a ditransitive verb so it requires an indirect object.”
But . . . when you run PerfectIt’s checks such as “phrases to avoid or consider” it will give brief, usable explanations for the recommendations. If you’re using the Chicago style checks, it will cite chapter and section. And if you run your message to the client through PerfectIt, it can also remind you to define your abbreviations when you write “Hi, Greg. Need to fix the PPs; they mixed up the ISBN and the BISAC and it’s missing the LoC data, LOL.”
3. Call Out B.S.
PerfectIt doesn’t check facts. It doesn’t verify that citations are real citations of real articles by real people. It doesn’t point out that this 1000-word “letter from the president” is 900 words of meaningless blither and 100 words of fiscal misrepresentation. It doesn’t let you know if a text is anodyne, or soporific, or syntactically anfractuous, or flagrantly sesquipedalian. It doesn’t say “Those two words don’t rhyme.” It will never say “We know, we know, we know” or “You said this already.” You’re the editor; the substance is your concern.
But . . . PerfectIt can tell you if an abbreviation is defined twice and if words are spelled or capitalized inconsistently. And you can add your author’s worst verbal tics to the “phrases to avoid and consider” checks, so you can efficiently decide which of the 17 instances of “which is to say” to leave in.
4. Keep Your Cat Happy and Distracted
Your cat is your beloved “editorial assistant”? That’s wonderful! Your beloved “editorial assistant” sits on your lap and purrs while you work? That’s great! Your beloved “editorial assistant” wants more attention and is standing in front of your screen and walking across your keyboard? That’s … also something that happens, and PerfectIt does not come with a laser, dangly toy, or squirt bottle to help entice or encourage Sir George Tummyscritchington Purrwell to let you finish this document.
But . . . PerfectIt can help you with some of the errors that might have slipped in during that time when you can’t see your screen. Yes, your spell checker may flag cat-paw keysmashes like “njmghycdxq12,” but it will miss slips such as “free reign” (which you would of course have typed as “free rein” if you could have seen your screen), which PerfectIt will catch. PerfectIt will also catch that spelling or hyphenation inconsistency (perhaps between “pre-existing” and “preeexisting”) that crept in while you were using one hand to administer scritches to your editorial assistant.
5. Suggest that You Not Make That Snarky Comment in an Email
Who doesn’t get a little put out from time to time with the sloppiness, obnoxiousness, or hyper-confident wrongness of some co-workers or clients? Of course you want to vent. And then of course the email somehow ends up being seen by exactly the person you’re venting about. PerfectIt has nothing to tell you about that – why should it? You already know you shouldn’t snark in an email!
But . . . you also know that you shouldn’t leave comments in the text body, lest the final printed version include “maybe tone it down here” or “Is this actually true?” right in the middle of it, and PerfectIt can help you with that. It has a check for anything that looks suspiciously like a comment left in the text. Remember, though, this is a double-check, and it can’t catch everything. It may save your butt, but the best way to protect your butt is not to get it where it needs saving in the first place.
6. Make Coffee or Tea for You
We all know that most editors run on caffeine. The preparation of suitable caffeine-delivery systems is an essential editorial task. And PerfectIt does not do that for you. Sorry. Get up, stretch your legs, take a break. You’ll be glad you did, even if you’re focused intensely on this edit.
But . . . you can start PerfectIt while you go get your coffee or tea, and it will have its first list of checks waiting for you when you come back. And among the things it will check for are the sorts of things you may be more likely to miss due to insufficient caffeination: Inconsistencies of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and number style, not to mention parentheses and quotation marks left open. Speaking of which, did you close the fridge door?
7. Find You a Sub
Sometimes you’re just too busy to take on another job, but you don’t really want to let a client down – and on the other hand, you don’t want to pass the business to someone who will steal the client from you. You need a trustworthy sub. PerfectIt will not help you with finding one.
But . . . PerfectIt can reduce the likelihood of your needing a sub by helping you increase your editorial efficiency with its automated checks. And it can also check your subs … subscripts, that is, and superscripts too, to make sure they’re used appropriately and consistently.
8. Give You Fashion Tips
It’s good for editors to dress presentably when they actually put on clothes and venture out of their homes. You want to make a good impression, right? PerfectIt doesn’t help you with that kind of style – sorry.
But . . . although PerfectIt won’t help you achieve the latest New York style or Paris style or Milan style, it will help you achieve the latest Chicago style, by which we mean the guidelines of the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. PerfectIt has a module available for Chicago Manual subscribers that will check usage against the CMoS guidelines, and even cites chapter and section.
9. Advise You on Table Etiquette
Sometimes you need to go out for lunch with clients or co-workers, and sometimes you may even need to host an event. It’s important to know things like who should sit next to whom, what kinds of foods may be a bad idea (Hint: Things that involve splashing and slurping), and what order to put the forks and spoons in. PerfectIt has nothing to say about any of that.
But . . . it does have advice to give on tables in your documents. Specifically, it can point out inconsistencies in text styling in the tables, and it can check table header numbering and capitalization.
10. Book a Vacation for You
Of course you need a vacation. Everyone needs a vacation. Vacations are great things. You might want to lie on Bondi Beach, or look at art in the Guggenheim Museum, or hide out in a cottage in the Cotswolds, or go skiing at Whistler … You deserve it. PerfectIt is not going to help you with that at all, except, of course, helping you earn the money to afford it.
But . . . although PerfectIt won’t help you travel the world, it can help you with varieties of English from around the world. PerfectIt has style checkers for Australian, Canadian, American, and British English, plus the EU, UN, WHO, and GPO styles.
11. Give You Legal Advice
Why would an editor need legal advice? Not just because sometimes you’re working for or with people who have elastic ethical sensibilities, and not just because you might have had a little lapse of judg(e)ment on your vacation, but because you’re often dealing with things like trademarks, you’re sometimes handling text that might contain statements that could provoke legal action, and occasionally you might find you’re working on text that seems suspiciously similar to something that someone else has published. PerfectIt is not here to give you advice on any of that.
But . . . it can check the formatting of legal citations per Bluebook, Red Book, and Black’s styles. And we do pay attention to your requests. We’re working on features to help with trademarks in PerfectIt 6.
12. Ask Your Boss for a Raise
Sorry, but PerfectIt has no social skills. In fact, it doesn’t have any kind of free will or initiative at all. So it won’t go knock on your boss’s door and put in a word for you.
But . . . it can help you when you want to ask your boss for a raise. How? First, by helping you optimize the quality and efficiency of your editorial output. And second, by helping you double-check the letter you’re writing to your boss. As a bonus, if your boss turns out to be a cheap jerk and you know you can do better, PerfectIt won’t write your “take this job and shove it” letter (or anything else – PerfectIt does not generate text, it just checks it), but it will help you double-check your résumé and job application letters when you start to look for a better place to work. And proficiency with PerfectIt is a nice thing to have in the skills section of your résumé, too.
Keep the Requests Coming
James and I wanted to have fun with this post. But the real point that I want to make is that as we look towards PerfectIt 6, there will be new features (and I can’t wait to show you what we’re adding). But all of those new features will have professionals in mind. PerfectIt is designed to be a precise tool for language professionals and it’s going to stay that way.
And please do keep the ideas and requests for features coming! Our support team logs every single one you send and they make a huge difference in what we develop.