There are so many Google products out there that even I, a professional Google enthusiast, sometimes miss a few. One of the neat products that I’d never heard of before is Google Scribe. While this cloud service is superficially a writing tool, Scribe goes beyond that by offering autocompletion of your text (at the word, phrase, and even sentence level) and semantic proofreading that can catch grammatical or word-choice errors. And now, thanks to a set of new features released yesterday, this Google Lab offers even more.
The most critical new feature is likely the expansion of the autocomplete concept that works as Scribe’s core. First, theautocompletion now allows for “multiple suggestions.” To enable multiple suggestions, just click the pen icon in the top-left corner and click on “Show Multiple Suggestions.” When you type, Scribe will give a drop-down box of commonly used phrases which you can navigate through with the up and down arrows on your keyboard. To complete the phrase as suggested, just hit the right arrow – or left arrow if you write from right to left. That “left arrow” option is also more vital now because Scribe’s suggestions have expanded into 12 different languages.
Two additional features have made formatting and correcting your content even more intuitive. First, the semantic proofreading feature that examines text for word-choice foibles or grammatical missteps now underlines the text in blue. You can simply click on the underlined phrase to see a suggested spelling or alternate word choice. Second, when you select any text in the body of your content the formatting bar will drop down right next to your selection, allowing you to quickly adjust text styles (bold, italics, etc.), font size, typeface, and more.
And last, but certainly not least, Google Scribe now has an “automatic anchor text” feature. When you type or copy in a URL, Google will automatically select a link for the site’s anchor text. For example, if you type in http://facebook.com, Google will just set “Facebook” as the anchor phrase associated with the URL. Users can still modify the anchor text afterward if Google’s selection doesn’t suit them.
You can check out the new features in Scribe for yourself by checking out the Scribe lab or Scribe extension for Chrome.
[via the Google Research Blog]
