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Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
About the Editor Program
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 62 other countries around the world. Click
here
for some comments from our customers.
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, as 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 is a supplement to the spelling and grammar checkers included in many
word processors. Unlike them, it also searches for stylistic problems, but like them, Editor
is intended for use before papers are submitted for evaluation. Using the program yourself to correct
and evaluate student work would be like using the word processors' checkers yourself on their papers: an inefficient
way to spend time. Students should use the checkers and Editor to revise
their work appropriately before submitting it.
FEATURES
What does Editor do that other spelling and grammar checkers do not?
Editor offers two levels of assistance. If you want to free your writing of many common mistakes
and problems that only very good writers avoid, Editor will make your writing better. If you
want, in addition, to become a better writer, you can do that by paying attention to the discussions 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.
Editor can find more than 200,000 mistakes and problems in spelling, usage,
mechanics, and style that standard "grammar" checkers like Word's and WordPerfect's do not
notice. This estimate may seem extravagant; we explain its basis
in detail
on a separate page.
Our investigations suggest that no other software can approach
Editor's range in finding spelling mistakes and usage problems missed by standard checkers, and that no one
else pays as detailed attention to problems of style--a subject that standard spelling and grammar checkers
ignore almost entirely. We offer brief comparisons with Word, WordPerfect, Grammarly,
Ginger, Writer's Workbench, StyleWriter, RightWriter, and WhiteSmoke in the
"Comparisons" FAQs below. See also our FAQ on excessive repetition, below.
Please note that, as discussed in the next two FAQs, 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.
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 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 that have the intended meanings.
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 syntax into good, and partly because unlike human
editors, computer programs cannot figure out what a writer is trying 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 twenty-eight years. We have yet to encounter other "grammar" checking programs with
database collections anywhere close in size and scope to Editor's.
Does Editor use natural-language processing?
Yes. 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 many tens 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 on the right of these pages include examples of
spelling mistakes that Word and some well-known "grammar" checkers (which do not properly check grammar, anyway: see above
FAQ) do not catch but Editor does.
We did not invent context-sensitive spell-checking, but Editor has been doing it for more than twenty-eight years—far
longer, and better, than Microsoft or anyone else.
Does Editor check style?
Editor is probably 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 versions of English 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. 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.
Does Editor check punctuation?
Some punctuation problems cannot be identified reliably by software because they depend on sentence structure, and
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.
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 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 more than 11,000 clichés, overused and
trite expressions, inflated language, and vague terms, expanded to include more than 38,000 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 invented numbers.
Editor provides an option 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 manuals' 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 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 documents
and many WordPerfect, 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 the 64-bit version of Word. Microsoft advises customers that 64-bit Office 2010
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 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.
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, click the File tab, then Help. Under "About
Microsoft Word" is a Version line giving the bit information.
What if I do not use Microsoft Word as my word processor?
Editor will analyze any document saved in the plain-text (.txt) format that word processors can produce, as well
as most WordPerfect documents through version X5 and many HTML and RTF files. Editor's analytical
comments are identical no matter which document format it is analyzing.
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.
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
that output is used in the same ways when revising and correcting any word-processor file.
Which editorial style does Editor use: MLA, APA, or Chicago?
Editor's principal reference for style in English is the Chicago Manual of Style, probably the most
widely used handbook for professional writing. Our main dictionary is Webster's Collegiate, a
standard resource for US spelling and usage questions. The MLA Style Manual and the Publication Manual
of the APA are our primary references for academic and scholarly styles. For British style and spelling conventions, we
consult The Economist Style Guide and several Oxford University Press publications. Where our authorities
disagree, especially in rules for punctuation and other mechanics, we note the disagreements in Editor's Reference
screens and analytical comments. Editor can check MLA parenthetical references for correct form but does not do
that for APA references, which use an alternative format.
In our 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 resources.
The professional manuals' rules for formatting footnotes and bibliographies are complex and differ considerably in
detail. 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 on the Internet.
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 emulates (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. Code-
Weavers' 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.
We understand that the latest Macs, using Snow Leopard 10.5/10.6 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 VMware’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.
COMPARISONS
How does Editor compare with Word and WordPerfect in checking grammar?
Please read the FAQ "Does Editor check grammar?" above.
Editor supplements extensively, but does not replace, those "grammar" checkers. Editor finds many
grammatical errors but does not undertake full-sentence syntax analyses, as those checkers do--and do poorly. The
sidebars on these pages include examples of bad grammar and other mistakes that Word and WordPerfect
do not catch but Editor does.
"Grammar" is often loosely defined to include matters of usage and style. In attending
to those matters, Editor far surpasses the standard checkers.
Writers who have trouble with English syntax—many
ESL writers,
for example—
must use a grammar checker in conjunction with Editor because Editor is not
designed primarily to correct syntax mistakes.
How does Editor compare with Grammarly and Ginger?
Both Grammarly and Ginger claim in their advertising to "Correct All Grammar Errors." That
is impossible both linguistically and mathematically, so these claims are false. Our FAQ "Does Editor
check grammar?" discusses the impossibility problem in more detail.
These two programs are the most widely advertised English text-checkers on today's market, and their claims are perhaps
the most extravagant, so we have done considerable testing of those claims. Comparative results are given below; some of
them are dramatic, and the reader will have to assume that our tests are honest.
Both programs are poor at finding contextual-spelling mistakes of the kind not identified by standard spelling checkers
like Word's and WordPerfect's. Ginger, claiming to be "the leading contextual spell [sic]
and grammar checker on the market today," found only 10 contextual-spelling mistakes in a document containing 54 common ones
that Word's and WordPerfect's spelling checkers fail to find. Ginger flagged 8 other mistakes
but suggested inappropriate corrections. In the same document, Grammarly found just 1 of the 54
mistakes. Using its list of tens of thousands of contextual-spelling mistakes, Editor finds 52 of the
54.
In a text containing 100 hyphenation mistakes listed in the the Chicago Manual of Style—which says
they are by far the largest category of writing problems referred to its editors—Grammarly found up to 9 and
Ginger found 3. Editor finds 85.
In another test, Grammarly found only 4 of 17 subject-verb errors, and Ginger found 6, in a text taken
from Internet writing sites and print sources. (So much for correcting "All Grammar Errors"!) Word's
checker finds 8 but badly botches the correction of 2 others; WordPerfect's checker performs best, correcting 12 but
introducing a new one. Editor does not look for subject-verb errors because, like Grammarly and Ginger,
Editor cannot match even Word and WordPerfect's notoriously poor performances. (The FAQ "Does
Editor check grammar?" outlines the reasons for such weaknesses, shared by all "grammar" checkers.)
Both programs are abysmally bad at finding wordiness and redundancy. In a test document containing 50 common
redundant expressions like "conferred together," "grew in size," and "small speck," taken from reference sources both printed
and on the Internet, Grammarly found 1, Word found 4, and Ginger ignored them all. Editor
finds 48 of them among the 50,000 or more wordy and redundant expressions in its dictionary. To help with
punctuation, in a made-up test with 39 different mistakes in punctuation and spacing, Grammarly found between 14
and 16 and Ginger found only 7. Ginger is baffled by ellipses and weak on spacing; it ignores important
differences between US and UK punctuation rules, accepting both types indiscriminately in the same document. Editor
finds either 36 or 39 of the mistakes, depending on whether it is set to check for US or for UK style.
A prominent writer on American usage published a text containing 63 "more or less prevalent misusages" he compiled from
modern print sources. Grammarly found 19 spelling mistakes (there are at least 35), 3 style problems, and
12 grammar "issues" in the text. Ginger identified 15 mistakes correctly—but corrected 6 others
wrongly—and ignored many obvious ones like "reek havoc" and "it's own". Editor finds and corrects 53
of the misusages. In a test of 17 sentence fragments (incomplete sentences) using a list from a prominent
university writing lab, Grammarly noted that 9 of the sentences have structural problems but did not mention "sentence
fragments" even though they are one of the checking categories it claims to check. Ginger questioned one
fragment, but suggested replacing it with itself. Editor correctly identifies 5 of the
fragments.
Grammarly has two features that most text-checking programs lack: it looks for
dangling modifiers, and it checks a document for plagiarism. Using Google to find examples, we made up a list
of 56 sentences with dangling modifiers and pasted it into Grammarly's free online-trial window. Out of the
56, Grammarly identified up to 31 as troublesome (we cannot be more precise because, although in its free tests
Grammarly highlights problem sentences, it won't explain the problems unless you buy a license. We're
giving it the benefit of the doubt.)
Identifying 31/56 possible danglers is a helpful feature, because even good
writers occasionally commit them; but a writer cannot be sure that all, or even most, of them will be found by
Grammarly. Ginger and Editor do not look for dangling modifiers.
As for plagiarism, Grammarly noted that over half of the sentences in our list were "unoriginal." (Actually,
all of them were, since we copied them from the Internet.) The plagiarism check might be useful for naive
writers who copy text from electronic sources and inadvertently(?) use it in their documents without acknowledgment.
Though each of these programs is helpful in finding some writing problems, they both fall well short of fulfilling the claims
in their advertising. Editor doesn't claim to correct "all" of anything, but in most error categories, its
coverage far outstrips its competitors'.
How does Editor compare with Writer's Workbench?
Writer's Workbench is the only other software we know of that analyzes texts as extensively and
carefully as Editor, but the two programs' agendas are quite different. A detailed comparison
would take up too much space here. One way to compare the two programs is to say that using
Workbench is like taking a semester course in the elements of composition, whereas using Editor
is like having a professional copy editor scrutinize your writing. Workbench uses many statistical
generalizations in its analyses of texts; Editor sweats the details.
Here's an example of what we mean. Weak writers use too many vague words and phrases. Writer's
Workbench, in their own words, "calculates the percentage of vague words and, if the vague ratio is greater
than 3%, lists those words and the number of times they were used in the composition." Editor
identifies frequently-used vague words and expressions using a database of more than 1000 of them, and points out each
instance within a document. Both kinds of information are helpful to writers. Editor's
approach is to help the writer decide in each case whether to keep, eliminate, or change the term.
Like Editor, Workbench has a Web site rich in information about its features, and we encourage you
to spend time investigating both sites.
How does Editor compare with StyleWriter and RightWriter?
These programs function like Editor in checking writers' spelling, usage, style, and mechanics. The
major differences between them and Editor are in scope, accuracy, thoroughness, and choice of interface.
StyleWriter claims to be "the World's Largest Style and Usage checker" because it looks for "35,000
style and usage faults." Its interface is exceptionally busy, with numerous graphs and colored highlights requiring
cross-referencing by the writer in order to make decisions. Its authors are not in complete command of the
vocabulary they use to promote the product; for example, they offer "free bonus programs" and write of their software's "plethora of
powerful features." Bonuses are free by definition, and a plethora is an excess or superfluity. On second thought. . . .
RightWriter claims it can fix bad grammar; see our FAQ "Does Editor check grammar?" above for our opinion of such
claims. A recent RightWriter promotion says it can find "more than 25,000 writing errors." That
claim has not changed for many years, implying that the program's analytical functions are seldom upgraded. The many grammatical
mistakes and effusive promises ("RightWriter is unbelievably simple to use") in its Web pages do not augur well.
By comparison, Editor can find more than 200,000 common usage mistakes and stylistic problems in all the categories that these
other programs use, including more than 50,000 common spelling mistakes that standard spelling checkers ignore. (For a discussion of how we
derive Editor's numbers, click
here.) Editor's interface is straightforward: for each writing problem identified, the program provides a
descriptive comment and often a suggested revision, with additional discussion available at a mouse click. We believe
that writers using Editor have better control over the editing process and a better grasp of its results than most other
text-checking software allows.
How does Editor compare with WhiteSmoke?
We often receive inquiries about how Editor compares with WhiteSmoke, one of the most widely advertised
text-checking programs on the Internet. A condensed form of our answer is that there is no comparison.
We refer you to a long list of users' comments at
englishforums1.com. The
earliest comments are first, the latest are at the end. It is worth your while to browse among these
comments: they tell you much of what you might wish to know about the company and its software. A few
more-recent forum comments are at
englishforums2.com.
Or you could go to WhiteSmoke's own
trial web page,
which offers free checking of passages you type or paste into a window, and read one or more of the "articles"
on the page. Readers who are native English speakers will quickly discover, in reading the prose on any of
WhiteSmoke's many websites, that the people who developed the sites are not native speakers of English. If
WhiteSmoke is as good as they claim, one must wonder why its promoters cannot use it to correct their shockingly
illiterate writing.
Unlike WhiteSmoke, Editor does not require writers to be connected to the Internet or to cut and paste limited-length
texts into a window in order to analyze them. Editor does not change the contents or formatting of your document
in any way.
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 drive or CD.
What about upgrades?
Editor is upgraded frequently, 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 second-language (ESL) writers?" above for more information.
If you think your circumstances warrant a refund,
e-mail Serenity
Software
explaining the circumstances.
Last revised 22 Feb 2012
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Word and WordPerfect do not recognize the following problems. Slide
your cursor down this column for a digest of Editor's comments.
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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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