How to access Linguistic Focus?

[jwhitten]

I watched a video where they were using Scrivener and using 'Linguistic Focus'. Can someone tell me how to access this mode?

Thanks

[JimRac]

Buy a Mac! That's a Mac-only feature: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=56425

[xiamenese]

Just to pour oil on potentially troubled waters, linguistic focus is provided by MacOS, Scrivener merely has to call it. Windows/Qt doesn’t provide an equivalent. That's why it’s Mac only.



Mark

[tiho_d]

We will provide some of these, like dialogues for example, but this will be at a later stage.

[DavidR]

Out of curiosity, I followed the link that JimRac supplied, and in that thread KB says that this is "a Mac feature that allows apps to ask for all the verbs, adverbs, nouns or whatever in a piece of text." Now I'm curious about what one does with this data. I'm also curious about whether it works right, i.e., whether the Mac, at the OS level, correctly tags words with grammatical info as they are typed. If I type "She cans cans of string beans, and I can too," will it correctly analyze the 3 "can" words, and identify "string" as a noun used attributively, i.e., functionally an adjective?

As for using the data, I guess if I got a list of all the verbs in my text, I could scan through it and say, "Wow, I didn't realize that I used the word 'realize' that often." I might blanch at the list of adverbs and say, "I use too damn many adverbs," and then blanch again because I have to remove "too" and "damn" from that very sentence, and this Adverb Slash-o-Matic seems not to improve it.

OK, sorry. Seriously, how are people using this tool?

[EMPisek]

I would use it to to cut back on the over abundance and reliability of over used words. It limits ones use as with not allowing the growth of thinking of newer or better ways of conveying what's in ones mind's eye because I would be heavily dependent on using just one method and not have any growth of my stories.

How many stories rely on 'get' as an example. Or how about 'it'. Its' (see) so easy to use it over and over again.

[wordjoy]

Looking to redundant words I use ProWritingAid which opens Scrivner files. Shows the whole folder structure etc.
have even been using with with BETA.

[rdale]

Out of curiosity, I followed the link that JimRac supplied, and in that thread KB says that this is "a Mac feature that allows apps to ask for all the verbs, adverbs, nouns or whatever in a piece of text." Now I'm curious about what one does with this data. I'm also curious about whether it works right, i.e., whether the Mac, at the OS level, correctly tags words with grammatical info as they are typed. If I type "She cans cans of string beans, and I can too," will it correctly analyze the 3 "can" words, and identify "string" as a noun used attributively, i.e., functionally an adjective?

As for using the data, I guess if I got a list of all the verbs in my text, I could scan through it and say, "Wow, I didn't realize that I used the word 'realize' that often." I might blanch at the list of adverbs and say, "I use too damn many adverbs," and then blanch again because I have to remove "too" and "damn" from that very sentence, and this Adverb Slash-o-Matic seems not to improve it.

OK, sorry. Seriously, how are people using this tool?

It doesn't seem that sophisticated, but then again, are most grammar checkers all that good? I honestly don't know, because I never ever use them. But maybe I should.

Screenshot 2020-04-09 13.19.18.png (108.13 KiB) Viewed 798 times

[JimRac]

"I'm not a noun, I'm a human being."
- JimRac

[DavidR]

rdale, thanks. Looks like it misses several nouns ("thread" near the beginning, "adjective" at the end), includes proper names, and misidentifies the first "cans" as a noun. It knows "string" is a noun, but can't identify its function as a modifier in "string beans." This doesn't look like tagging but an on-demand algorithm. Not bad for a machine, actually, but unless you were brutally overusing a particular word, it seems like you'd have to scan a lot of screens to find it.

On the whole, meh. I'm with you on grammar checkers and similar. You and John Henry: "before I'd let a machine beat me...." The things I do in nonstandard ways I mainly do on purpose; the actual mistakes keep editors employed, and that's a good thing. There is no substitute for knowing how to write the language you're writing in, in my absolutely non-humble opinion. But if grammar checkers help people do that, working themselves out of a job essentially, that's all to the good.

[konssam]

To people who think Windows cannot handle linguistic focus: something similar is included in the new Microsoft Edge browser, so sure thing Windows can handle it! Glad to hear that it will be coming to the Windows version of Scrivener sometime in the future.

[devinganger]

To people who think Windows cannot handle linguistic focus: something similar is included in the new Microsoft Edge browser, so sure thing Windows can handle it! Glad to hear that it will be coming to the Windows version of Scrivener sometime in the future.

Hold on a moment.

Is it being included in the Windows OS, which the Edge browser is then taking advantage of, or is it being included directly in the new Edge browser?

Because the feature that Scrivener uses in the Mac relies on a function *provided by MacOS to all programs*.

If Microsoft is coding this "something similar" as a part of the new Edge browser, that doesn't mean it's likely to be accessible by other apps unless they integrate with Edge -- not the same situation at all.

[AussieDoc]

It's great to see that the latest beta has 'Linguistic Focus'.

Can't wait to find out what it does - nothing in the manual yet.

But at least it gives me something else to play with

linguistic focus.PNG (2.88 KiB) Viewed 392 times

[krastev]

It's great to see that the latest beta has 'Linguistic Focus'.

Can't wait to find out what it does - nothing in the manual yet.

But at least it gives me something else to play with

linguistic focus.PNG

It isolates the Direct Speech passages in the text so you can focus on them easily.
I love it!

[jje]

It's great to see that the latest beta has 'Linguistic Focus'.

Can't wait to find out what it does - nothing in the manual yet.

But at least it gives me something else to play with

linguistic focus.PNG

It isolates the Direct Speech passages in the text so you can focus on them easily.
I love it!

Me too! As an academic writer, finding all your quotations so easily is excellent (nice easy way to check you've given sources, etc.)