Daily Prose 4+

No caps, no keeps

There’s no way I could bear to keep an app that purports to be aimed at writers yet doesn’t automatically add caps after a full stop or a return. Very irritating as well as sloppily written — or plain illiterate.

Either way it suggests this is not a serious tool for serious writers, no matter it’s claims or how prettily it’s wrapped up. There are other excellent apps out there that really do meet the needs of a serious writer, Roller Journal and Day One among them. Both of these are excellent, attractive and genuinely useful apps, and both allow you to add your own randomly-presented prompts tailored to your own specific needs to those already in the app (for example, perhaps, ‘What will your protagonist need to learn about themselves in your current chapter?’) an option I find very helpful.

But even if this app could match those other apps function for function I’d still prefer them rather than having to remember to add a capital letter every time I hit return or end a sentence. I thought that irritating task had disappeared back in the dark ages before word processors were invented.

So until this app climbs out of the 1980s I’ll stick to using apps that meet the needs and expectations of 21st century writers. A pity, though, because there were some otherwise very attractive aspects to the app and it might have been very useful.

If you are a free spirit who just doesn’t care whether you write with capital letters at the start of sentences or not, then you may find this app useful. Serious writers, on the other hand, are likely to find it too infuriating to use, despite its otherwise good intentions.

Developer Response ,

Hi there,

Just wanted to drop in and say this is really useful feedback. The capitalization bug should have been fixed in the latest version but happy to look into that some more since I know that it's pretty annoying.

In terms of the prompts and adding in more specificity, I 100% hear where you are coming from. That's actually something I'm currently working on releasing improvements for, so the examples you listed are super helpful. I'm curious to look into some of those other apps you mention to learn more about things that they might be doing well that I could build on.

The app is still in early stages (it's normally a web application that's being ported over slowly to iOS), so I am expecting some of the edges to be rough but am very open to hearing how I might improve the experience. I appreciate if you wish to move on but also like your honest critique of what I have so far.