Draft Announcements: Write even better, Twitter Cards, and more…
Hello there. New things in Draft today:
- Write even better with auto-simplification
- Twitter/Facebook Cards
- Folder links in sidebar
- Collaborator refreshes
- Republishing to Wordpress
- Moving comments
Write even better with auto-simplification #
The Simplify button got more powerful. Now when you hit Simplify:
Not only will Draft try and recommend sentences to remove or manually simplify, but Draft will also check for things that complicate our writing:
Passive voice #
Passive voice makes the action of your sentence weaker and usually adds an extra word.
Useless/weak words #
Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
Mark Twain
We are guilty of using empty words to get our point across. Words like very, really, many, and interestingly, elongate our sentences and alert our readers that we are inflating a point. Draft will flag them for removal.
Word overuse #
It’s easy to use the same word too often, even in a single sentence. Draft will alert you to sentences where you might be overusing a word.
Is That/This windup #
A poor writing habit is to preface your sentence with a big windup followed by “is that” or “is this”. Draft locates these and removes the preface making your point faster and stronger.
Duplicate adjacent words #
It’s easy to miss where you accidentally write the same word twice.
Here are a few places that inspire the Simplify button: Matt Might’ weasel word scripts, Jack Kinsella’s Style Scanner, and Richard A. Lanham’s book Revising Prose. Stay tuned for more.
Twitter/Facebook Cards #
Twitter and Facebook are popular places to share Draft documents for feedback. So I’ve improved the way those posts look in your news feeds, especially when they contain images. Here’s a Twitter example:
Folder links in sidebar #
Your most recently used folders are now accessible from the left sidebar.
Collaborator refreshes #
When a collaborator works on your document, they don’t see your changes in real-time. This is on purpose. It’s a jarring experience to edit someone’s work when it moves or disappears entirely.
Until now, a collaborator would need to complete their changes with the “You’re Done Editing” button before they’d get a fresh copy of anything you’ve changed. But sometimes they weren’t done yet, and just wanted your updates.
Now, Draft will automatically merge your recent writing into the copy they are editing when they re-open the document for viewing or editing. This should make the collaboration process easier and less confusing.
Republishing to Wordpress #
I rarely get my post right the first time I hit Publish to my blog. So now, Wordpress publishing supports re-publishing (along with Ghost, Svbtle and Basecamp). Click Publish again and the changes will update your Wordpress post.
Moving comments #
Draft supports contextually aware comments.
But it had some trouble if you moved or modified the text it was attached to. I’ve made improvements to this algorithm. Cut a paragraph, move it around, and the comment should do a better job “sticking” to where it belongs.
I hope you find these things helpful, and thank you for using Draft! It continues to grow way beyond what I expected when I first made something my wife and I could use. And I owe it to all of you who depend on it and send me awesome ideas and feedback. Thank you very, very much.
If I can help with anything, my Twitter account is a great place to reach me:
https://twitter.com/natekontny
Or the official Draft Twitter account:
-Nate