I get this error message a lot of times:
Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Consider rewording the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
The
I don’t think it’s that unusual to start three English sentences in a row with a The, maybe the rule should only consider nouns or so, especially since I don’t think I can use a thesaurus to find a synonym for The…
Thanks for your feedback. Could you post a real example, i.e. one where you think the message isn’t useful? I assume it depends on several factors whether the text sounds okay, maybe e.g. on the sentence length.
Sorry for slow reply, my previous examples were from kind of internal memos with klunky office-style language anyways, I finally got this writing a google review for another data point in another genre:
“This is a German chain restaurant for steaks and the overall quality is decent, however, there’s nothing that really stands out either. The prices are average, so not cheap but not expensive either. The place and decor is nice, but nothing special. The biggest problem is,”
I wouldn’t say this is particularly bad language, maybe some may disagree, but in any case.
I see. This is one of the rules that get turned off more often than others. On the other hand, we make it easy to turn off rules. @Mike_Unwalla What do you think? Should we make that rule less strict? Just complain about 4 words instead of 3? Exclude “the” from the words to complain about?
Perhaps, instead of a repeated word we could test for a repeated sentence component
(EG: 3+ consecutive sentences that begin with “The guys” will trigger it, but "the water … " followed by “the rain …” followed by “the plants …” will not)
@dnaber, for some genres, the rule is useful. For other genres, the rule is not good. I think that it is better to have a rule in LT than not to have a rule. If I do not want to use a rule, I can deselect it.