Improve your writing with TextSoap

While getting ready for 2020, it occurred to me I can use TextSoap’s regex engine to improve my writing by finding and highlighting common and overused words. There are 3 steps to the process:

• Use the “If Text Matches” action with a list of words I want to highlight
• Format the foreground and background colors of the text
• Set problem words to capitals so they stand out

After checking a couple of websites, I created this short list of words to focus on.

\b(and|or|for example|but|just|other|more|new|good|best|many|first|able|basically|interesting|honestly|literally|very|really|quite|seems|had|even|that|seriously|to be honest|ridiculous|know)\b

From there I used the Set Text Color, Set Background Color filters, followed by the Convert to Uppercase action.

When finished, the “cleaner” can run inside Scrivener itself, so I don’t have to leave my main app to get feedback.

It’s a simple formatter, but I think this will have a powerful impact.