Writing - Editing Software - StyleWriter?

[K1JJ]

Hola,

I wonder if anyone here uses Editing Software for general or professional writing?

I'm in the process of writing up about 40 articles in plain English about day trading and was about to send them out to an English teacher for edting. But, I found  there is software these days to do the job.

I've looked around and came up with "StyleWriter".  Check out the features on this package for $150.  It seems to have a lot of methods to streamline and clean up the writing style of hacker miscreants like me.

http://www.writersupercenter.com/stylewriter/

Can anyone recommend this or other software for the job?

Thanks.

T

[K1JJ]

Hola,
Can anyone recommend this or other software for the job?
Thanks.
T

Yes, I can, Tom!

I bought and downloaded it tonight.  I ran it through a few of my articles that I thought were decent. It was just like an English teacher ragging on you. The three writing measurements were Good-Good-Excellent.  After making at least 30 suggested corrections on each article, I got them all up to excellent ratings.

This is invaluable software if you are writing.  I found I had a lot of trouble with hyphens, passive verbs and long old buzzard sentences.   Amazing software.

I do NOT intend to use it here, so you all will have to continue to suffer with me. 

73,
T

[Pete, WA2CWA]

I’ve been using Microsoft Word for years for most of my “writings”. It has both spelling and grammar tools. But, nothing can be much help, unless you first learn how to develop your thoughts, organization, and then putting them into meaningful prose. Knowing your intended reading audience is important too.

And try not to use ugly fonts when printing.

[K1JJ]

Yo Pete,

Yes, I use Word as the first screener for word check and basic stuff too. But it missed a lot of structure and other important things. The critics on the web don't think too much of it.

BTW, StyleWriter is available for a 30 day free trial.  It might be fun to run your writings through it and see.

After using it for a few hours, I'm definately writing shorter sentences, using simpler words and not making as many "old habit" mistakes.

You're right about the need to start with meaningful prose. All of this software seems to let total nonsense slip by.

Hmmmm...I was wondering what happened to the voice to text software? I figured it would be used by everyone by now??

T

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Yo Pete,

Hmmmm...I was wondering what happened to the voice to text software? I figured it would be used by everyone by now??

T

Here's some insight to your "voice to text", "smart" computer.

http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/93-03/93-03.html

[Tom WA3KLR]

My wife is taking a community college Composition course right now.  I was amazed at the frequency of very long sentences in 3 - 4 page examples from "famous good writers" in one of her textbooks.

The other side to good writing is good reading.  I sometimes think about having Mike Raide write another tutorial, this time on Reading Comprehension 101, for the board.

[W1RKW]

It's one thing to have a sentence that is long but isn't concise, coherent and convey a message.  One can make a sentence that's right to the point but be long too.  It's just a matter of wording  and the overall point.  I've learned that using an active voice usually takes on a direct and right to the point approach. Passive voice has its place but a direct approach usually gets the point across more concisely.