StyleWriter's Features
Full-screen editing plus your word processor
StyleWriter's displays all of its editing
advice at once. You can expand the screen to show a page of your
document, with each problem or issue highlighted. The top of the screen shows
you how to edit your document into concise, clear English. You can make most
changes by just clicking the blue alternative shown. If you want to make more
extensive changes - and you will - just click StyleWriter's Edit button and
you're in your familiar word processor with all its advanced editing
features.
 Instant analysis
and ratings of every document
StyleWriter gives you instant, relevant analysis and
scores. Most
other writing aids offer you simplistic readability formulas. These measure,
often inaccurately, your sentence length and a syllable count to define long
words. There's more to good writing than sentence length and word
length.
Click
here to learn more
When
you edit with StyleWriter, you'll discover that StyleWriter shortens sentences
and strengthens words. Readers can easily take in and remember your message and
as they find your writing style easy and understandable.
 Constant
updating of advice, analysis and ratings
As you edit, StyleWriter updates the text,
analysis and ratings for your document. Each time you shorten a
sentence, cut a redundant phrase or simplify your word choice, StyleWriter
updates the text, reanalyzes your documents and give you new scores and
ratings. This real time change helps you see your writing style
improve.

Fine-tuning the analysis to your
document
You can adapt StyleWriter's analysis and ratings to the type
of document you're drafting. An advertisement needs to have a
punchy, direct writing style; a manual needs to be clear and simple; a report
can carry more complex ideas. So you can tell StyleWriter the type of document
you're drafting and it will alter its analysis and ratings to reflect the
different styles expected. For example, you'll get a higher Style Index and
stricter ratings if you tell StyleWriter you're writing an advertisement rather
than a report.
Choose from 12 writing tasks to fine-tune StyleWriter's
analysis.
 See an instant graph of sentence variety
StyleWriter gives you an instant graph of
your sentence variety so you can see if you're mixing long and short sentences
to add interest to your style. While short sentences make easy
reading, good writing contains good sentence variety and a readable average
sentence length between 15 to 20 words. The program will even pop-up a warning
if your sentence average drops below 12 words - a sign you're taking the idea
of short sentences too far.

Use
sentence variety to add interest to your writing style. See a
breakdown of your writing problems
Identify your writing habits in every document.
The left-hand
side of StyleWriter's Category Summary Screen shows the style problems
in document you're checking. You'll find this a great way to know if your style
is passive and wordy, abstract or stale.

Use
StyleWriter's summary of writing issues to identify your writing
habits. StyleWriter puts
you in control
StyleWriter puts you in control of the problems it
highlights in your writing. For example, if you find your main writing
problems are passive and hidden verbs, you can ask the program to switch off
all other categories and concentrate on these problems.
Choose which problems you want
StyleWriter to highlight.
 Add advice to
StyleWriter
You can add advice
to StyleWriter to increase the power and accuracy of the program.
The more you use StyleWriter the more your writing and editing skills improve.
Learning the main techniques of good editors makes you think like an editor and
you'll soon spot other ways to improve your writing. For example, suppose you
notice you are overusing the words 'provide', 'involve' and
'undertake', you simply add them to the program and ask the program to
pop up some relevant advice. It's as easy as using search and replace on your
word processor. But StyleWriter searches for everything you add and its 35,000
style and usage patterns check every time you run the program.
Add
any editing advice to StyleWriter
 Delete any advice that annoys you
Deleting advice from the program is easy. Anything that annoys you -
perhaps because it has a different industry-specific meaning - you can easily
remove.
Fine-tune StyleWriter's advice to suit your writing
needs.
 Make
context-sensitive exceptions
You can make
context-sensitive changes to StyleWriter's advice to fine-tune it to your own
writing needs. For example, StyleWriter suggests replacing
'purchasing' with 'buying' to simplify your style. But what if
your job title is 'Purchasing Manager'?. You can make 'purchasing
manager' an exception. Then every time StyleWriter checks a document it
highlights all occurrences of 'purchasing' unless the next word is
'manager'.
Fine-tuning StyleWriter's advice is
easy.
 Review the changes
made to the program
StyleWriter
records any changes you make to the program so you can review and even reverse
them. Most users delete or make exceptions to between 10 and 50 of
StyleWriter's 35,000 patterns. StyleWriter's Review Changed Patterns
feature lets you view every change you've made.
Review your changes to StyleWriter's
database.
 Bring StyleWriter's power to your documents
StyleWriter looks for patterns in language
and uses wild cards to find thousands of variants of problems in writing. This
gives the program immense searching power. StyleWriter has 35,000 style and
English usage checks designed to reflect patterns in the English language. For
example:
| Before
StyleWriter |
| Mr Jones has reached his decision and will take his retirement option next year. |
| After
StyleWriter |
| Mr Jones has decided to retire next year. |
Editors
recognize 'reached his decision' and 'take retirement' as hidden
verb - expressions you can turn from nouns to verbs to improve style, add
action and save words. Because StyleWriter uses wild cards within its pattern
searches, it doesn't matter if you write 'reached his decision',
'reaching different decisions' or 'reached my decision'.
StyleWriter finds each variant hidden verb and thousands of other possible
hidden verbs with just a few coded patterns.
StyleWriter, by using wild cards to match
with patterns editors spot in text, is the world's most powerful writing
aid.
Bring the power of StyleWriter to your
writing. Use
StyleWriter for different writing tasks
You can call up
StyleWriter's extensive help screens for different writing tasks. Perhaps you
have to write a sales letter for the first time. Simply click on
StyleWriter's Writing Tips and you'll find expert advice. You can also
call up this advice from your word processor's help menu so it's available when
you first draft your document..

StyleWriter helps you tackle different
writing tasks. Use
StyleWriter's help screens for more editing
advice
If you want more advice,
just click your mouse on the problem and up pops the relevant help screen with
more editing advice.
For
example, if you've used a grammar checker you'll notice it stops on passive
verbs. But you probably don't understand why using passive verbs are a problem
or what to do with them. StyleWriter, with its accurate and comprehensive
search for passive verbs, explains why passive verbs are such a problem and
shows you simple techniques to switch them to the shorter, more direct active
style.

Look at this example. Changing the passive
verbs (shown in red) into active verbs (shown in blue) saves 18 per cent of the
words.
| Before
StyleWriter |
It was
estimated by the research that half of the states would adopt the
approach, and that savings of up to $900 million a year would be made. However, to make sure these savings
are guaranteed estimates will need to
be recalculated by the Department of Labor
for accuracy. (49 words) |
| After
StyleWriter |
The research estimated half of the states would adopt this approach and could save up to $900 million a year. The Department of Labor
will need to recalculate this estimate to guarantee these savings are accurate. (36
words) |
Switching passive verbs to active verbs
is easy with StyleWriter's expert editing advice. Keep track of your improved writing
skills
StyleWriter's
Statistical Archive lets you record the word count, style index, average
sentence length and passive index of every document. StyleWriter records your scores when it
first checks the document (the original draft score) and when you finished
editing (the redraft score). The Statistical Archive lets you measure the
improvement you make to each document. By looking at the original draft score,
you can see how your general writing standard
improves.

StyleWriter keeps a record of the writing scores for every document
checked. |