I wanted to make use of Matt Might's proofreading scripts, but I'm on a Windows machine most of the time so I rewrote them in Ruby and customized them a bit.
I made sure to handle the case where a suspect phrase (e.g. 'is used', or 'the the') is split between two different lines.
The output has line numbers, includes the suspect words at the beginning of the line, and is more or less readable in the windows command prompt.
It automatically creates a file called feedback-<filename> when run.
If it finds weasel words or passive voice, it adds a couple of short tips from Matt's original blog post after the list of them.
These scripts are finished and working, but if you find any bugs please let me know.
ruby proofread.rb <filename>
For a fun example, I ran this on Matt's original blog post. It acts as a pretty decent test because the blog post itself must contain examples of suspect phrases in order to explain them.
Weasel words results:
73: various - My favorite salt and pepper words/phrases are >various<, a number of, fairly, and
73: fairly - My favorite salt and pepper words/phrases are various, a number of, >fairly<, and
74: quite - >quite<. Sentences that cut these words out become stronger.
76: quite - Bad: It is >quite< difficult to find untainted samples. Better: It is
79: various - Bad: We used >various< methods to isolate four samples. Better: We isolated
85: interestingly - >interestingly<, surprisingly, remarkably, or clearly.
85: surprisingly - interestingly, >surprisingly<, remarkably, or clearly.
85: remarkably - interestingly, surprisingly, >remarkably<, or clearly.
85: clearly - interestingly, surprisingly, remarkably, or >clearly<.
89: surprisingly - Bad: False positives were >surprisingly< low. Better: To our surprise, false
100: very - The two worst offenders in this category are the words >very< and extremely. These
100: extremely - The two worst offenders in this category are the words very and >extremely<. These
103: several - Other offenders include >several<, exceedingly, many, most, few, vast.
103: exceedingly - Other offenders include several, >exceedingly<, many, most, few, vast.
103: many - Other offenders include several, exceedingly, >many<, most, few, vast.
103: few - Other offenders include several, exceedingly, many, most, >few<, vast.
103: vast - Other offenders include several, exceedingly, many, most, few, >vast<.
105: very - Bad: There is >very< close match between the two semantics. Better: There is
117: completely - Bad: We offer a >completely< different formulation of CFA. Better: We offer a
207: few - A >few< words on marketing
Look out for:
Salt and Pepper words (various, fairly, quite)
Beholder words (interestingly, surprisingly, clearly)
Lazy words (very, extremely, several, most, few)
Adverbs
Passive voice results:
141: is guaranteed - Bad: Termination >is guaranteed< on any input. Better: Termination is
141: is guaranteed - Bad: Termination is guaranteed on any input. Better: Termination is
155: were added - OK: 4 mL HCl >were added< to the solution.
211: be accepted - writes has to >be accepted< for publication.
For each use of the passive highlighted, ask:
1. Is the agent relevant yet unclear?
2. Does the text read better with the sentence in the active?
If the answer to both questions is 'yes,' then change to the active.
If only the answer to the first question is 'yes,' then specify the agent.
Duplicated words results:
175: the the - Many readers are not aware that >the the< brain will automatically ignore a
180: the the - Many readers are not aware that >the the< brain will automatically ignore a
181: instance instance - second >instance instance< of the word "the" when it starts a new line.