I’m generally happy with ProWritingAid. The software program catches many little typos while you’re writing and/or going through an initial edit.
ProWritingAid, however, is not free from ideological overreach.
For example, I recently had a passage in which I referred to the “opposite sex” in a routine manner. PWA immediately sent up a flag saying that this language could be hurtful to some, and that I should use more inclusive language.
I rejected the suggestion. Now, I’m not going to be a total curmudgeon about this one. I understand how a suggestion like that could be relevant while drafting certain legal documents. But for common, everyday usage, “opposite sex” is just fine.
Then there is the issue of the “master bedroom”. ProWritingAid also scolded me on this one, informing me that the term “master bedroom” is “associated with slave ownership relationships”.
What? Yes, really.
The software once again advised me to use a “more inclusive term”. ProWritingAid’s suggestions included such awkward concoctions as “control bedroom” and “primary bedroom”.
I suppose that “primary bedroom” makes sense; but I have never heard anyone refer to the main bedroom of a house as the “control bedroom”.
“Master bedroom” is the common term for the main bedroom in a 21st-century suburban home. Why conflate a meaning that was never intended to be there, that no one even vaguely thought about before you brought it up?
Is any use of the word “master” now to be deemed a winking reference to slavery and oppression? What about “master file”? If I say that I want to “master a new skill”, am I really implying (wink, wink!) that I want to set up a slave-based plantation here in 21st-century Ohio (where such plantations never existed anyway?)
I don’t go out of my way to offend anyone. But this is how political correctness became such a joke. “Master bedroom” is not a racial epithet. ProWritingAid should not treat it as such.
-ET