Feature

Feature #1: INSTANT ACCESS
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Call StyleWriter up by clicking a button in your word processor's toolbar. StyleWriter displays all your editing problems at the same time. As you begin editing, StyleWriter offers intelligent alternatives and sound advice to help you edit your document into simple, concise, plain English.
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Feature #2: FULL-SCREEN EDITING WITHIN YOUR WORD PROCESSOR
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With a split screen of StyleWriter and your word processor, you can go through your document at

your own pace. You can click on any style or usage problem with your mouse, or click back to your word processor to edit your text.

StyleWriter displays all 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.
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Feature #3: MULTI-FACETED EDITING
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StyleWriter edits any document. Articles, press releases, resumes and cover letters, technical manuals, speeches, ads, sales letters, proposals, legal documents, corporate communications - you name it,

StyleWriter can help edit it. Within seconds of launching, StyleWriter has analyzed your documents for thousands of style and English usage issues including:

Complex Words, Overused Words, Jargon/Abstract Words, Wordy Phrases, Passive Verbs, Foreign Words, Qualifying Words, Confused Hyphens, Clichés, Legal Words, Long Sentences, Sentence Variety, Misused Words, Confused Words, Hyphenation, Sexist Writing, Common Grammar Slips, Miscellaneous, and Preferred Spelling.
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Feature #4: INSTANT ANALYSIS AND RATINGS OF EVERY DOCUMENT
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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.

• Poor Style Index measures all the plain English problems in your text, including a weighted score for long sentences. It then converts this measure into an index. The best writing consistently scores below 20, equivalent to two poor style faults for every 100 words.

• The Average Sentence Length is a guide to how readable your writing is. If you have a high sentence average, look for ways to cut out unnecessary words and phrases or split the long sentences into shorter sentences. As you move through your document in the Main StyleWriter window, you'll see your long sentences highlighted so you can edit them.

• The Passive Index shows whether you have used too many passive verbs and helps you decide how many you need to change into active verbs. If you can keep your Passive Index below 25, you're using an excellent writing style.

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Feature #5: CONSTANT UPDATING OF ADVICE, ANALYSIS AND RATINGS
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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.
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Feature #6: ANALYSIS ADAPTED TO THE DOCUMENT TYPE
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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. There are 12 writing tasks from which to choose to fine-tune StyleWriter's analysis.
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Feature #7: INSTANT GRAPH OF SENTENCE VARIETY
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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.
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Feature #8: SUMMARY OF WRITING HABITS BY CATEGORY
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Identify your writing habits in every document. The left-hand side of StyleWriter's Category Summary Screen shows all your style problems in the document you're checking. You'll find this a great way to know if your style is passive and wordy, abstract or stale.
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Feature #9: FOCUS ON SELECTED CATEGORIES
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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 only on those problems.
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Feature #10: ADD YOUR OWN WORDS TO CHECK AND ADVICE TO GIVE
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You can add your own words/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.
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Feature #11: DELETE ANY PROGRAM ADVICE
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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.
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Feature #12: CONTEXT-SENSITIVE EXCEPTIONS
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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'.
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Feature #13: POWERFUL PATTERN RECOGNITION

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.
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Feature #14: EXTENSIVE HELP SCREENS
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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.

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.
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Feature #15: TRACK YOUR IMPROVED WRITING SKILLS
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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.
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