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In response to Krey, Sundin, Bluhm, etc.... some additional information about RightWriter (version 4.0). Like Corporate Voice, this version of RW uses the Flesch-Kincaid, Flesch, and Fog readability indices. F-K is the default; you can turn on the others if you want. The information about DOD requirements and the insur- ance industry is paralleled in RW's manual. Grade level estimates run from 1 to 50 (50 is totally unreadable). You can get just a summary of a document or you can get every nitpickin' flag you want. RW allows you to customize the writing style analysis to five pre-set styles. These include fiction, business, manual, proposal, and technical. You can turn grammar, style, usage, and punctuation rules on or off. You can specify the statistics (words, syllables, etc.) in the summary, and you can turn sentence structure recommendations on or off. My assessment of RW 4 versus Grammatik 4 on a recent paper: G4 made many error flags and gave little advice. RW 4 gave better advice, fewer errors, (I do know the difference between affect and effect, G4), and offered substitute words that I often accepted. My advice is to test drive the software with a few known files with specific errors and to customize the settings for your own purposes. My copy of RW4 is several years old. Newer versions may be improved for both RW & Grammatik. disclaimer: These are my opinions and not necessarily those of my employer, etc. etc. etc. [Bob Kamper kamper@nervm.bitnet]
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