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Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
About the Editor Program
COMPARISONS
What does Editor do that other spelling and grammar checkers do not?
Extensive investigation shows that no other software can approach Editor's range or accuracy in finding
spelling mistakes and usage problems missed by other grammar checkers, and that no other checker pays as careful
attention to problems of style--a subject that most spelling and many grammar checkers ignore. Detailed
support for these claims is on the
comparisons
page of this website.
Editor can find more than 200,000 mistakes and problems in spelling, usage, mechanics, and style, most of which standard
grammar checkers fail to notice. This estimate may seem extravagant; we explain
its basis
on another page.
Rather than offering to "fix" your mistakes with a few mouse clicks, Editor asks
questions about what you mean and whether words and phrases you use are the ones you want. It seldom tells you
what to say; you remain in charge of your text, but the program makes many suggestions for your
consideration. Editor uses "possible" and "probable" qualifiers for terms that can be mistakes in one
context but not in others, so you can judge their suitability yourself.
Editor offers two levels of assistance to writers. If you want to free your writing from common
mistakes and problems that only the best of writers avoid, Editor will help make your writing better. If
you want, in addition, to become a better writer, you can do that by paying attention not only to Editor's questions
but also to the discussions and examples in Editor's Reference screens and Writer's Manual, incorporating their
information and ideas into your own approaches and using the program to focus your attention on matters of style.
As discussed in "Does Editor check 'grammar'?" under FEATURES, below, Editor does not check full-sentence syntax (sentence
structure), which is what some “grammar” checkers claim to do but no commercial software can do reliably.
USERS
Who uses Editor?
Editor is used by students and scholars at schools, colleges, and universities in the United States and
Canada and by many professional writers of fiction and nonfiction in the US, UK, and elsewhere. Businesses large and
small have bought copies for office use. Our individual customers reside in 50 US states, 9 Canadian provinces,
and 66 other countries around the world. Click
here
for some comments from our customers and reviewers.
Please note: prospective customers whose first language is not English should read the FAQ “Can Editor help
writers whose native language is not English?” and the FAQ “Does Editor check grammar?” below.
If I buy Editor, may I use it on more than one computer?
Yes. Many of our customers install Editor on a desktop and a laptop, or on a home and an office computer, for
convenience. We have no objection, so long as the program is not in simultaneous use by more than
one person at a time.
Serial use by several people--e.g., by members of a family taking turns--is also
fine with us.
Can Editor help writers whose native language is not English?
How much help Editor can give to a second-language writer depends on how well that writer already
speaks and writes English. Editor is not a program for teaching basic English to
speakers of other languages. More particularly, Editor cannot correct poor sentence structure
or fix broken syntax. Please read our
note on ESL
and the FAQ “Does Editor check grammar?” below for more information.
Is Editor useful in teaching writing?
Many teachers, including us, have found it so. Editor’s Standard Version models and encourages the
editing-and-revision procedure used by most good writers, whose essential work of rewriting takes place between
a first draft and a final presentation. Modern word processors may short-circuit that procedure,
especially for inexperienced writers. Working with a draft outside a word processor, Editor
restores it.
Editor's Word Add-In version leads a writer meticulously through a document, examining writing mistakes
and problems one at a time according to the problem categories the writer has chosen for Editor to investigate.
Editor has been used in classrooms and writing labs in high schools, colleges, and universities
for many years. Editor is particularly effective in helping students to develop
thoughtful revision skills and to acquire clear and fresh prose styles.
It is worth noting that lazy students left entirely on their own with Editor will use it to improve their
writing about as often as they will use a spelling checker to improve their spelling: in some cases, not at
all. Teachers may decide not to mandate Editor's use, but they should strongly encourage it
if they wish not to be plagued with low-level writing mistakes and problems when evaluating students' work.
Will Editor help teachers correct and evaluate student papers?
Probably not. Editor extensively supplements the spelling and grammar checkers included in many
word processors. Unlike them, it also searches for stylistic problems. Editor
is intended for use before papers are submitted for evaluation. Using the program to correct
and evaluate student work after submission would be an inefficient way to spend time. If students use
a spelling checker and Editor to revise their work appropriately before submitting it, their teachers will
have many fewer low-level writing mistakes to deal with.
FEATURES
Does Editor check "grammar"?
"Grammar" is a word commonly misused in proofreading-software advertising.
Properly used, the word
refers to "the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the
sentence" (Webster's). "Good grammar" means properly constructed
sentences. The more precise terms for these elements of sentence structure are syntax and
usage (For the misuse of "grammar" to mean "all writing mistakes," see the last paragraph
below.)
Linguists like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker have demonstrated that the number of possible, grammatically correct English sentences
is infinitely large. Since any correct English sentence can usually be made grammatically incorrect in at least
several ways, the problem of analyzing ungrammatical sentences is even greater (yes, there are degrees of infinity), and
nobody knows how to analyze more than a small fraction of them accurately.
The problem for programmers of text checkers is far more difficult than writing software to recognize or produce properly
constructed sentences. A true grammar checker must recognize all improperly constructed
sentences--an infinity of them
--fully analyze them, and produce correct sentences to replace them.
That is the Holy Grail of grammar checking. No such software is available for English, partly because no one has
come close to devising a set of rules that can consistently translate bad sentences into good ones, and partly because, unlike human
editors, computer programs do not understand meaning and cannot figure out what a writer intends to say.
A good text checker can find some syntax and usage errors in parts of sentences without trying to analyze
the sentences as a whole, and Editor has many sophisticated routines to check for such mistakes.
A sad consequence is that writers whose first language is not English will not find software anywhere that can rid their writing
of serious mistakes in English syntax; see our
note on ESL.
In the broader sense in which "grammar" is commonly used to mean "writing mistakes," there are also many types of mistakes,
like contextual spelling errors and misuses of ordinary words, that cannot be caught by rules. They must be
individually identified and listed in a database—not as words but as incorrect phrases—by the text-checker programmers
in order to be caught by the checker. That means extensive, ongoing research and the compilation of very large
databases. At Serenity Software, we have specialized in such research and in the development of such
databases for more than thirty years. We have yet to encounter other "grammar" checking programs with
database collections anywhere close in size and scope to Editor's.
Does Editor include a thesaurus to help find better words?
No. As a recent book on writing college-application essays notes, "using a thesaurus will not make you
look smarter. It will only make you look like you are trying to look smarter." Few words
are exact substitutes for other words, and plugging in alternatives from a thesaurus may obscure, rather than enhance,
what you are trying to say. A thesaurus may help if you feel that a word you have chosen
does not quite express the idea you are trying to convey. Word has an excellent thesaurus that
can be consulted in this situation. But no computer program can pick a good word for you from a list.
Editor often suggests alternatives to words that you are misusing or that people commonly misuse, but
unlike several other "grammar" checking programs, Editor never does this merely to promote meaningless
variety. Editor does show where you might substitute plainer terms for some overly formal or
pretentious ones.
Editor's WORD LISTS option helps you find words and phrases that may be repeated too often in your
work. Those are expressions worth the trouble of finding good alternatives for or rewriting to
eliminate.
Does Editor use natural-language processing?
Sure. All grammar checkers do, in the sense that they all analyze texts written in a human language. Editor
has a unique, proprietary system that identifies English words according to their parts of speech and their properties
and uses those identifications in its analyses. Although this system enables highly accurate identification
of hundreds of thousands of spelling, usage, and grammatical mistakes in documents, it does not extend to reliable analysis of
full-sentence structure—nor does any other system outside (perhaps) a few research laboratories. See our FAQ,
"Does Editor check grammar?" above for more information.
Does Editor check spelling?
Yes, very effectively, but Editor does not duplicate a standard spelling checker’s functions: it extends
them. Editor specializes in commonly misspelled phrases: under stood, dramatis persona,
at anytime, wailing away, different tact, weather or not, principle city, and tens of
thousands more.
These are not grammatical errors: they are contextual spelling mistakes.
Because of the enormous numbers of sound-alike
and similar terms in the English language, the possible number of contextual spelling errors is incalculable, though a great many
are common in writers' work. They cannot be identified by rules, by checking grammar, or by ordinary spelling
checkers. They can be caught only by brute force: they must be individually identified, collected, and included
in a text-checker's database if they are to be found and corrected.
We believe that Editor's database of contextual spelling mistakes in English is the world's largest, by far. In
tests
against not only our competitors' but Microsoft Word's widely touted contextual checkers, Editor finds many
times more of these pesky spelling problems than they do. The sidebars at the right of these pages include examples of
spelling mistakes that Word and some well-known "grammar" checkers do not catch but Editor does.
We did not invent context-sensitive spell-checking, but Editor has been doing it for more than thirty years—far
longer, and better, than Microsoft or anyone else.
Does Editor check style?
Editor is the most comprehensive English style checker available, both in the range of stylistic
categories it looks at and in the numbers of individual style problems listed in its usage dictionaries. The
program checks for wordiness, redundancy, clichés, platitudes, jargon, informality, overworked and trite expressions,
affected language, pompous phrases, empty intensifiers, awkward usage, slang, nonstandard and nonidiomatic diction, rash
overstatements, tautologies, vague terms, outmoded diction, and potentially offensive language.
Each of these checks can be turned off and on in Editor's Preferences list if a writer wishes, and because many
of these elements are used deliberately in fictional characters' speech, authors of fiction (as well as journalists and scholars)
can tell the program to ignore dialogue and quoted passages while checking for mistakes and problems.
Editor can show where your sentence rhythms are poor: too many long or short ones, or strings of sentences that suffer
from structural sameness (no, it doesn't check for awesome alliteration!). The program can find excessive
repetitions of words in a paragraph or on a page, find short phrases repeated perhaps too often in a document, and
find longer passages, anywhere in the text, where you may have repeated yourself unintentionally. It can also
produce a vocabulary list, along with word frequencies, to help you add variety to your expressions.
Can Editor handle British, Canadian, Australian, and other non-US English writing?
Yes. Editor's databases of spelling and usage problems include common British
English (UK) equivalents, so the software can analyze UK texts as well as texts by writers who—like Canadians,
Australians, New Zealanders, Asian Indians, South Africans, and other anglophones—use a mixture of US and UK
spelling conventions. Editor allows users to specify whether they wish to be notified when they write
in one of the two primary dialects of English (US and UK) and, perhaps mistakenly, use terms from the other.
Except for some clichés, platitudes, and proverbs, Editor does not respond to local slang, colloquialisms,
or usage conventions found in English-speaking communities outside the US and UK.
Can Editor find homonym mistakes?
Yes, many of them. Ordinary spelling checkers miss most homonym errors because the individual words are
correctly spelled. Too many grammar checkers address the problem of homonyms (and other words having similar
meanings) merely by listing alternatives without telling how the writer should choose among them. Editor
uses a specially designed form of syntax analysis to catch these mistakes, including misspelled plurals and possessives
as well as the common confusions of its and it’s; effect
and affect; their, there, and they’re; to, too, and two;
alley, ally, and allay; insight and incite; posses and possess; and
many, many more. When it finds a possible homonym mistake, Editor suggests the most likely alternative.
Does Editor check punctuation?
Some punctuation problems cannot be identified reliably by software because they depend on sentence
structure. Editor does not attempt the full-sentence syntax analysis that no computer programs can
do reliably (see our FAQ "Does Editor check grammar?" above. Punctuation can also depend on meaning,
about which computers are clueless.
Editor does know many things about punctuation. For example, it finds some places where a comma
is missing; it catches improperly formed dashes, hyphens, and ellipses; it notices when, in many compound modifiers, hyphens
are missing before nouns; it flags improperly formed dates and MLA parenthetical references; it catches misplaced
punctuation around quotation marks as well as some missing quotation marks, parentheses, and brackets; it finds many
possessives that lack apostrophes; it knows which sentences should be marked as questions; and it knows that if
words like “however” and “moreover” are followed by punctuation, there should probably be
preceding punctuation as well. Despite these features, there are many punctuation problems that
Editor cannot resolve.
Editor avoids the mistake, made by many grammar checkers, of falsely identifying common abbreviations, along with
ellipses and even dashes and parentheses, as sentence endings and wanting to capitalize following words as the beginnings
of new sentences.
Does Editor flag passive sentences?
You do not need Editor's help for that. Word's, Word Perfect's, and other word processors'
checkers will draw sentences in the passive voice to your attention unless you turn off that option. They
may also suggest alternative wording in the active voice.
Passive voice is not always a poor choice, especially when the alternative seems awkward or wordy. In
scientific writing, for example, it is used deliberately and extensively.
The important thing to remember is that computers have no idea of what you are trying to say, and their identifications
of passive sentences, as well as their proposed alternatives, may be unsuited to a particular context.
Can Editor find clichés and trite expressions?
Bet your bottom dollar it can. Editor's collection of 12,000 clichés, overused and
trite expressions, inflated language, and vague terms, expanded to include more than 40,000 additional variant forms, is
many times larger than any other we know of.
Included in this collection are most common proverbs, some of which have become clichés, and many
platitudes--proverbial expressions that overuse has rendered empty and dull.
Editor's purpose is not to forbid such terms, which can be effective when thoughtfully chosen, but to help writers
avoid using them carelessly. The program calls attention to them, so that writers can decide whether to use
them deliberately.
Can Editor check a document for excessive repetition?
Editor has a special set of repetition-analysis functions that allow a writer to (1) check a document for
words repeated four or more times, on average, per page;
(2) look for individual paragraphs that have words repeated three or more times (the words are not chosen beforehand
but depend on the independent vocabulary of each paragraph); (3) find all three-word phrases that repeat in a
document; (4) find passages in a document of six or more words (up to a paragraph) that repeat; and (5) do a
complete frequency count of a document's vocabulary.
Functions 2, 3, and 4 help find passages where repetition makes dull reading or results from careless cut-and-paste
composition. Function 1 is useful primarily for short texts, and function 5 gives summary information
about a writer's working vocabulary.
Does Editor identify sentences that are too long or too complicated?
Yes and no. There are no magic numbers of characters or words that identify too-long sentences, and no
commercial software can reliably decide when a sentence is too complex. Software that claims to make such
judgments can make them only mindlessly, using made-up magic numbers.
Editor lets you choose to view the sentences in a document as a simple, vertical list. Such a list
quickly identifies long sentences that may need revision and reveals dull rhythms in groups of sentences, all of similar
length or similar construction, that might be rewritten for variety and balance. These identifications are not
instructions to make changes, only relevant information laid out clearly for the writer's consideration.
Can Editor handle large documents?
Yes, but. Yes, Editor can handle large documents, but its analytic output can be
voluminous. To give you an idea, on a partial dissertation of 100 pages that we tested,
Editor's detailed comments ran to 70 pages, double spaced. We recommend analyzing such documents
in shorter segments for convenience in editing.
There are ways to fine-tune the program to eliminate many unnecessary comments, depending on the writing
situation. College undergraduates, journalists, dissertation writers, and fiction authors, for example,
differ in their editing needs and purposes, and Editor can accommodate many of those differences.
There is no need to break up and then reassemble a long document in order to analyze it with
Editor. In a word processor, highlight sections of any length, extract them using Save As
into separate documents, and analyze those. Use the results, either as you get them or cumulatively,
to copyedit the original document in the word processor. The Word Add-In has a bookmark
function that allows suspending an editing session and returning later to the point of suspension.
Does Editor check citations, references, and bibliographies?
Professional organizations' rules for formatting footnotes and bibliographies are complex and differ
considerably from one to the next. Editor does not attempt to check them; for the proper notational
and bibliographical formats, scholars should consult the style manuals appropriate to their fields or use specialized
software available from the Internet.
Does Editor check scientific and technical writing?
Yes, with two reservations. The first is that Editor might not read texts with mathematical formulas and
other technical apparatus properly. It is designed to read ordinary prose documents, discarding all nontext items
if it recognizes them. Reading scientific and technical terms should cause no difficulties, but text that is not
composed using ordinary alphabetic fonts and symbols may distort Editor's output or even crash the program.
The second reservation is that Editor does not have databases of technical terms, and therefore cannot tell when such
terms are misused or incorrectly spelled.
Following instructions provided with the program, however, a user can develop a
special dictionary of typical misspellings and misuses of technical terms in the user's field, and Editor will use that
special dictionary in its analyses. Users can also tell Editor if any terms should be deliberately excluded
from an analysis.
Does Editor read e-mail?
Not as such. The emerging conventions of e-mail writing—in spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, and
syntax—are informal and relaxed, so that much of Editor's analytical commentary
is beside the point. Click
here
for a suggestion on using Editor in composing, proofreading, polishing, and sending formal e-mails.
Can Editor proofread blogs?
Much of the writing in blogs is highly informal. Bloggers who aspire to write more-formal
English have choices. Editor reads some HTML files, including blogs, and will offer analyses, but may not
always recognize the latest forms of (X)HTML coding. To make proofreading of blog prose easier and the results
better, we recommend using the same procedure that we suggest for formal e-mails. Click
here
for a suggestion on using Editor in composing, proofreading, and polishing the writing in blogs.
Does Editor provide readability statistics?
“Readability” scores are controversial. We agree with a recent critic: readability formulas
“are based around the average words [per] sentence, and the average syllables used per word. . . .
Being mathematically based, readability tests are unable to determine the likelihood that [a] document
is comprehensible, interesting, or enjoyable. It is possible to obtain good readability scores with
gobbledygook, provid[ed that] the content [is] short sentences made up of monosyllabic words.”
See
The Language
Project's Web site for this discussion.
There is little consistency among the many readability formulas. The Gunning- Fog Index, for example,
says a reader needs 12 years of schooling to read this website's home page, whereas the Flesch-Kincaid index says
8 years is sufficient.
Is there a user’s manual? Is there onscreen help when learning the program?
Editor's “Writer’s Manual,” an instruction manual that is also a handbook on writing
better prose, is available onscreen within the program. The manual can be printed.
Additionally, Editor has more than seventy reference screens with explanations and examples of the writing
problems that Editor's analyses find. Context-sensitive Help screens are available for every
step a user must take.
Error messages on screen explain what to do if the software encounters a problem. Click these links
to see a sample discussion from the
Writer’s Manual
or examples of Editor's
reference screens.
Can I customize Editor--for example, to ignore clichés and slang in dialog?
Yes. Editor looks for writing problems in more than fifty categories, and
most of those categories can be turned on or off to suit a particular writing style or circumstance. For
example, a writer can decide whether the program should flag all contractions as informal. A fiction
writer can instruct Editor to ignore slang, clichés, colloquialisms, and pretentious terms used in
dialogue, or can instruct the program to ignore all text enclosed in quotation marks. US writers are
notified when they use British spelling and usage, but British writers can turn those notifications off and choose
instead to be notified when US expressions appear in their work. Click
here
to see how easy it is to fine-tune Editor's analysis categories.
To suppress unwanted comments about particular terms, a writer can make a list of words and phrases for
Editor to ignore during text analysis. Writers can also develop a supplementary dictionary
of items for the software to comment on and can add to the list of terms that the software counts. Adding
such personal features is easy: they are just plain-text, typed lists. Writers can modify the output
display of the DRAFT sentence-numbering function; Editor will also allow reorganizing its USAGE analysis
comments from a list grouped by categories to a list organized by sentences.
COMPATIBILITY
Is Editor interactive? Will it work inside my word processor?
The Standard Edition of Editor does not work within a word processor, but it can read Word and WordPerfect
documents and many RTF and HTML files directly. It can also analyze any document saved in the plain-text
(.txt) format that any good word processor can produce. Editor's analytical comments are identical no matter which
document format it is analyzing, and they can be used the same way in copyediting text.
Editor for Word, with its Word Add-In option, has all the capabilities of the Standard Edition, and
it can display Editor's analysis output
on screen
in a Word 2003-2010 document, allowing editing directly within those
documents. This version can also directly edit plain-text (.txt) files with Editor's comments on
screen. Editing plain texts has limited uses for Editor for Word users, however, because saving texts from a word
processor in plain-text format loses all formatting information except spaces, paragraphs, and tabs.
Does Editor work with 64-bit versions of Word?
Both the Standard and the Word Add-In versions of Editor install in Windows on 32-bit and 64-bit machines. However,
the Word Add-In does not install in 64-bit versions of Word. Microsoft advises customers that 64-bit Office 2010
and 2013 programs do not support most add-ins developed for 32-bit Office. Many Word macros that you may have used
with earlier versions of Word are also not supported. That is why the 32-bit version of Office 2010 and 2013 is
Microsoft's default ("recommended") installation on 64-bit computers; almost no one needs 64-bit Office to do word
processing or any other Office functions unless they work with massive Excel files. Click
here
to read Microsoft's discussion of this problem for Word 2007-2010, and
here
for the discussion of Word 2013.
If you are using 64-bit Word, have your Microsoft Office installation disk, and wish to change to 32-bit Word, here is a tip
from a customer: uninstall Office, then reinstall it from the disk, choosing the 32-bit option. Nothing else needs to be
changed. When 32-bit Word is installed in the 32-bit directory on Windows 64-bit machines, Editor will
install in that directory with full Add-In capability. If you work with massive Excel files and need 64-bit Office 2010,
then you cannot install Editor's Add-In, though you can install and run the Standard Version of Editor in the 32-bit directory,
and it will read your 64-bit Word files.
If you're not sure whether your installed copy of Word is the 64-bit version, find the tab or link labeled "About Microsoft Word";
it should have a Version line giving the bit information.
Does Editor analyze other text files than Word's and WordPerfect's?
Yes. Because Editor can analyze any plain-text (.txt) file, and any modern word processor can save
files in that format, Editor can analyze any document written using any modern word processor. The
program's output is a set of plain-text files that are identical no matter what document format it analyzes, and
the output is used in the same ways when revising and correcting any word-processor file.
Some word processors, like Open Office, WordPerfect, and Works, can save and reopen documents in
Word 2003-2010 format. If you have a copy of Word 2003-2010 available, therefore, you may be
able to compose documents in your preferred word processor, save them in Word format, edit them in Word
using Editor for Word, and reopen the edited documents in your preferred word processor
without losing formatting information. You can find out whether that procedure would work for you by getting
a free 10-day
trial copy
of Editor for Word to experiment with.
Which style manuals and reference works does Editor use?
Editor's general reference for style in English is the Chicago Manual of Style, probably the most
widely used writer's handbook. Our chief manual of US usage is Bryan Garner's Modern American
Usage. Our US dictionary is Webster's Collegiate, a standard resource; we use the
Concise OED for British spelling and usage. For British style conventions, we also consult
The Economist Style Guide and several Oxford University Press publications. The MLA Style
Manual and the Publication Manual of the APA are specialized resources on academic and scholarly
writing. Where authorities disagree, especially in rules for punctuation and other
mechanics, we note the disagreements in Editor's Reference screens and analytical comments. NOTE:
Editor can (optionally) check MLA parenthetical references for correct form but does not do that for APA references'
alternate format.
In the continuing development of Editor, we consult many additional sources, including the New York Times's and
London Times's style and usage guides, the AP Stylebook, Cassell's Spelling Dictionary, the Longman
Dictionary of Common Errors, New Hart's Rules, New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, and dozens
of Internet collections and other published resources.
Professional manuals' rules for formatting footnotes and bibliographies are complex and differ considerably
in detail among the professions. Editor does not attempt to check them. for proper notational
and bibliographical formats, scholars should consult the style manuals appropriate to their fields or use specialized
reference-formatting software available on the Internet.
Must I be connected to the Internet while using Editor?
No. Editor is a self-contained program that resides on your hard drive, available for use at
any time, and runs in your computer's memory. You decide how much of a document--whole or part--to analyze
at one time. Our rigorous
comparative tests
show that Editor is far more comprehensive and powerful than the many online cut-and-paste grammar
checkers, even when they run on powerful, multitasking computers.
Is there a Macintosh version of Editor?
There is no native-code Macintosh version of Editor, but Editor can run on a Mac using special software
that either runs Windows on a Mac or imitates Windows functions on a Mac. Some of the special arrangements
require the user to have a copy of Windows to install, others do not.
CodeWeavers publishes
CrossOver,
software that allows Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Linux software to run on a Mac without a copy of
Windows. CodeWeavers' tests of Editor are favorable, and they have added it
to their "compatibility" list with a "Gold Medal" designation, meaning that Editor runs well under CrossOver with
at worst a few minor bugs. At least one experienced Mac user is happily running both Editor and the
Word Add-In on a Mac, using CrossOver and Word 2003, with and without the Compatibility Update to
2007. A major university uses Editor with Crossover in a Mac lab, "a cart with 32 Mac laptops that we can
roll into any classroom in our humanities building" to help teach writing.
We understand that the Macs using Snow Leopard 10.5/10.6 or later and Boot Camp can run Windows XP (SP2), Vista,
and Windows 7 applications if the user has a copy of Windows. Wikipedia has
more information about Boot Camp.
We have customers using the Standard Version of Editor successfully on Macs under Parallels’s
Desktop for Mac
and both the Standard and Word Add-In versions under VMware's’s
Fusion,
both of which will run Windows XP (SP2), Vista, and possibly Windows 7 (the user must have a copy of
Windows).
Customers report that
Editor can analyze files from Microsoft's 2004 edition of Word for the Mac as well as files from
Word for Windows. We have no reports yet on Word 2008 or 2011 .docx files, but Editor
can read and analyze .docx files produced by Word for Windows 2007 and 2010, and we expect the files to be
compatible.
The website
macwindows.com
has a list with descriptive information on all of the above, plus other emulators, including free ones.
Serenity Software does not sell a Macintosh version of Editor or provide customer service to Mac users running
the program in various configurations mentioned above. Mac users interested in these possibilities are
welcome to download a free 10-day
trial copy
of Editor for Windows from the Internet and try it.
Another way to use Editor on a Mac document is to save the document on a PC-formatted disk or stick drive as a
plain-text (.txt) file and run that file through Editor on a Windows machine. Editor isn't interested
in anything except the text itself—it discards all non
text formatting before analyzing the document—and the
output it gives you is identical to what you would get if you could run Editor on a Mac directly. You
can use Editor's output to mark up your draft, then go back into your Mac word processor and make the desired
changes. There is an extra step or two involved, of course, and you would need to have access to a Windows
computer with Editor installed to use this method.
OTHER QUESTIONS
Can I download Editor after I buy it?
After paying for a copy of Editor or of Editor for Word, within twenty-four hours you
will receive an e-mail containing a link to download the program from the Internet. The downloaded file can
serve as your backup: keep a copy on a removable medium like a thumb/stick/flash
drive or CD.
What about upgrades?
Editor is upgraded regularly, with additions to its database of writing problems, new or improved analysis
routines, and improvements to the user interface.
Every new customer receives the most recent published
version. Anyone on our list of paid customers can upgrade to the
latest version
of Editor inexpensively.
See our
upgrades
page for details.
My computer crashed. Can I get a replacement for Editor?
In most cases, Editor has moved on, so a free replacement would amount to a free upgrade. What
you can do is purchase an upgrade, a new copy of the program, for considerably less than the new-copy
price. See our
upgrades
page for prices and payment links.
When you download an upgrade installation file, put a copy of it on a stick drive or other portable medium, and
you will have a backup in case of another computer fatality.
If Editor does not suit my needs, can I get my money back?
Under some circumstances, yes. Anyone can download a free 10-day
trial copy
of Editor, so if you are not sure that the program will suit your needs, try it before buying it. We
especially recommend a trial copy to every potential customer whose first language is not English. See
the FAQ "Can Editor help writers whose native language is not English?" above for more information.
If you think your circumstances warrant a refund, e-mail editor@serenity-
software.com explaining the circumstances.
Last revised 11 March 2013
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Word and WordPerfect do not recognize the following problems. Slide
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The Weather Chanel forecast was ominous. |
| After college, she joined the Peace Core. |
| The police car turned into my driveway. |
Florida weather is pleasant
excepting for hurricanes. |
Good jobs are far and few
between. |
| He was a trusted confident of the Queen. |
| There is little differential between the candidates. |
| We lived in Honduras between 1975 through 1988. |
| My grandmother is still hail and hardy. |
You are seriously disconnec-
ted to reality. |
Those efforts are doomed
to defeat. |
He should not be demur
about his abilities. |
I once met J.D. Salinger,
the writer. |
They were contemptible of
our offer. |
| The course I want has perquisites. |
| The market was in eminent danger of crashing. |
| We had greatfruit and serial for breakfast. |
| He had rewrit his essay many times. |
| I try to stay au currant with the news. |
| My birthday was June 31, 1986. |
| My father could not afford being seen at the jail. |
| We must appraise her of the danger. |
| Afterward we went home to dinner. |
Good things come to them who waits.
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