Looking for program to help with generating paragraphs with pre-set sentences

Vi Monks

So here's my predicament: I am a freelance writer whose current job consists (partly, at least) of rewriting essentially the same paragraph over and over for search engine optimization. There are a few different paragraphs I might write, depending on the subject, but I write all of them hundreds of times using different sentences to express basically the same idea every time.

What I'm looking for is a program that can make this easier. More explicitly, I'd like a program that will let me input a number of different sentences and will then make a paragraph out of these sentences. For instance, say my paragraph has five sentences. I enter ten possible variations of sentence #1, ten variations for sentence #2, etc. Then the program would spit out a random configuration of these sentences into a coherent paragraph. So I don't need it to do any actual rewriting -- just reconfiguring. Bonus points if I can input multiple phases for each sentence, i.e. phase #1 of sentence #1 has ten variations and phase #2 of sentence #1 also has ten variations, etc.

This seems like a relatively simple program, but apparently my Google-fu is not good enough to dig it up. Free would be nice, but I wouldn't mind paying a few bucks for this. So, anyone have any suggestions? Much appreciated.

EggyToast

I don't know about random generation, but I do know that a lot of, say, bloggers or journalists use a hack of Word's AutoReplace tool to save time on typing very common sentences. For example, if you're a reporter for government transit stuff, you don't want to type the full name of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users bill any more times than you have to, so you tell AutoCorrect to replace SAFETEA with the full name.

Here's how you do that: http://www.ehow.com/how_2063662_key-shorthand-microsoft-word.html There's a couple other sites out there, too -- google "word shorthand."

What you'd do in your case is simply pick, say, a number or unique identifier of some sort for each sentence or group of sentences. So you have 10 sentences that could go in paragraph one, and you'd type, essentially, 2 4 9 1 5 10 (with a space at the end).

Might not be a silver bullet, but could work as a stopgap until you find a different tool.

Monolithic_Dome

This seems like a relatively simple program, but apparently my Google-fu is not good enough to dig it up.

Maybe the results you are looking for would be easier to find if some silly goose wasn't gaming google by spamming similarly-worded paragraphs of spam all over the net.

K, snark aside.


You could do this in excel pretty easy.

In ColumnA, write each version of sentence 1
In ColumnB, write each version of sentence 2
(and so on)

and then you make a formula like

INDEX($A:$A,RANDBETWEEN(1,COUNTA($A:$A)),1) & INDEX($B:$B,RANDBETWEEN(1,COUNTA($B:$B)),1) &
INDEX($C:$C,RANDBETWEEN(1,COUNTA($C:$C)),1)

To take a random cell from each column and concatenate the strings together. Hit 'recalculate' and you get a new paragraph. (more info: http://www.ozgrid.com/Excel/excel-random-pick.htm)

Vi Monks

Both of those solutions sound great. Thank you both. Though to anyone else reading this, if there are other programs that can do something similar, feel free to chime in. Thanks again.

Monolithic_Dome wrote: »

This seems like a relatively simple program, but apparently my Google-fu is not good enough to dig it up.

Maybe the results you are looking for would be easier to find if some silly goose wasn't gaming google by spamming similarly-worded paragraphs of spam all over the net.

K, snark aside.

Actually, my work doesn't do much of this. I can't really get into the specifics, but suffice to say that at least 50-75% of each article I write is unique content. It's just a paragraph or two that is essentially regurgitated drivel. So on the whole, I think I mostly avoid the horrible Google spam. But hey, a living is a living. :P

Seeks

If you happen to be in linux, I've managed to hack together a barely-functional script that does this (I was bored).

Of course, you need to be willing to configure it a little for your own needs.

Vi Monks

Seeks wrote: »

If you happen to be in linux, I've managed to hack together a barely-functional script that does this (I was bored).

Of course, you need to be willing to configure it a little for your own needs.

Tragically, I'm not in Linux. But the Excel thing is working pretty well for most of my needs and the Word shorthand fills the gaps. The only function I wish I had at this point is some more selective grouping. For instance, say I'm making one sentence that contains two phrases. I have twenty variations for phrase one and twenty variations for phrase two. I may divide those phrase variations further -- say two groups of ten for each. I'd like to be able to have it select a variation from phrase two, group two ONLY IF it selected a variation of phrase one from group two. If it selected a phrase one variation from group one, it would only select a phrase two variation from group one. I hope that makes sense. If anyone knows a quick and dirty trick to do that, I would be totally set. I poked around on the Excel site to no avail.

Tejs

I'm confused. Lets go with a simple example:

You have a listing of sentences - so sentence 1, sentence 2, etc. Each sentence has X number of variations, so sentence 1a, sentence 1b, sentence 2a, etc. Each sentence variation has X number of phrases, so sentence 1aa, sentence 1ab, etc.

You then want a random selection:

Find me a random sentence. Once I have that, find me a random variation. On my first selection, select a phrase variation, and use that phrase variation on the rest of my selection picks to generate a sentence?

Assuming this is what you mean, I can probably create a WPF or Windows Forms app to do exactly that, because it sounds simple enough.

Vi Monks

Tejs wrote: »

I'm confused. Lets go with a simple example:

You have a listing of sentences - so sentence 1, sentence 2, etc. Each sentence has X number of variations, so sentence 1a, sentence 1b, sentence 2a, etc. Each sentence variation has X number of phrases, so sentence 1aa, sentence 1ab, etc.

You then want a random selection:

Find me a random sentence. Once I have that, find me a random variation. On my first selection, select a phrase variation, and use that phrase variation on the rest of my selection picks to generate a sentence?

Assuming this is what you mean, I can probably create a WPF or Windows Forms app to do exactly that, because it sounds simple enough.

I'm not exactly sure we're on the same page here. Talking about all these sentences and phrases and whatnot is getting pretty confusing, so let me make an example. I think it will make much more sense then.

Say I'm using this random script to generate a small bit of text (in this case, not necessarily one sentence). This bit of text has two parts. Let's say my possibilities for part 1 are the following:

Man, this is really hard to describe.
This really is very hard to describe.
Since this is so hard to describe,
Since this is very hard to describe,

And let's say the possibilities for part 2 are the following:

Let me make an example.
I'll make an example instead.
let's look at an example.
we need to look at an example.

Now in this case, the first two possibilities for part 1 only make sense when combined with the first two possibilities for part 2, whereas the last two possibilities for part 1 only make sense when combined with the last two possibilities for part 2. So what I'm looking for is a script that will randomly select one of those four variations for part 1, but will then select one of the two possible variations for part 2 that actually make sense, ignoring the ones that don't fit grammatically. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm trying to do a little bit better.

uean

Vi Monks wrote: »

Tejs wrote: »

I'm confused. Lets go with a simple example:

You have a listing of sentences - so sentence 1, sentence 2, etc. Each sentence has X number of variations, so sentence 1a, sentence 1b, sentence 2a, etc. Each sentence variation has X number of phrases, so sentence 1aa, sentence 1ab, etc.

You then want a random selection:

Find me a random sentence. Once I have that, find me a random variation. On my first selection, select a phrase variation, and use that phrase variation on the rest of my selection picks to generate a sentence?

Assuming this is what you mean, I can probably create a WPF or Windows Forms app to do exactly that, because it sounds simple enough.

I'm not exactly sure we're on the same page here. Talking about all these sentences and phrases and whatnot is getting pretty confusing, so let me make an example. I think it will make much more sense then.

Say I'm using this random script to generate a small bit of text (in this case, not necessarily one sentence). This bit of text has two parts. Let's say my possibilities for part 1 are the following:

Man, this is really hard to describe.
This really is very hard to describe.
Since this is so hard to describe,
Since this is very hard to describe,

And let's say the possibilities for part 2 are the following:

Let me make an example.
I'll make an example instead.
let's look at an example.
we need to look at an example.

Now in this case, the first two possibilities for part 1 only make sense when combined with the first two possibilities for part 2, whereas the last two possibilities for part 1 only make sense when combined with the last two possibilities for part 2. So what I'm looking for is a script that will randomly select one of those four variations for part 1, but will then select one of the two possible variations for part 2 that actually make sense, ignoring the ones that don't fit grammatically. Hopefully that clarifies what I'm trying to do a little bit better.

This is pretty easy with excel. You'd need to add a category (call it Grouping), the assign each sentence to it (let's say 1 & 2 are A, 3 & 4 are B from each set). Add the Grouping (A & to the index, and tell it to select A from the second set of A is selected from the first, and randomize within that set.

I'm kinda... enjoying my evening right now, thank you Sangria, so I'm not the one to do this for you, but its very possible.

Vi Monks

uean wrote: »

Vi Monks wrote: »

stuff

This is pretty easy with excel. You'd need to add a category (call it Grouping), the assign each sentence to it (let's say 1 & 2 are A, 3 & 4 are B from each set). Add the Grouping (A & to the index, and tell it to select A from the second set of A is selected from the first, and randomize within that set.

I'm kinda... enjoying my evening right now, thank you Sangria, so I'm not the one to do this for you, but its very possible.

How would I go about assigning these groups? Googling just brings up a bunch of stuff on pivot tables, which, while cool, are not really what I'm looking for. Sorry for being such an Excel nub here. The help is much appreciated. If there is a search term or tutorial that could point me in the right direction, that would work just fine. I'm just finding it terribly difficult to pull up relevant information about all this.