StyleWriter is the best word processing add-on on the market. It teaches you to write in the style of top authors and journalists by checking every document for thousands of style and English usage faults. Many times more powerful than any other writing aid, StyleWriter improves your writing style instantly.

New Features of Stylewriter 4

Unique Copy-editing Software

StyleWriter’s editing advice shows you how transform your writing into clear, concise and professional writing style.

Unique Jargon Buster™

StyleWriter highlights jargon phrases, difficult words and acronyms and abbreviations to help you write in a jargon-free style.

Unique Smart-Spell™ Technology

StyleWriter’s technology finds spelling errors and spelling inconsistencies missed by Microsoft Word and other programs.

Advanced Writing Statistics

StyleWriter uses a revolutionary 200,000 graded wordlist to offer meaningful statistics and ratings you can use to become a better writer.

Individual & Corporate Customization

StyleWriter is the only writing aid you can fully customize to your unique writing needs.

Audience & Task Editing

StyleWriter lets you select from 20 writing tasks and three audience types.

StyleWriter lets you select from 20 writing tasks and three audience types. The program then adjusts its measure and other ratings to reflect the different task and audience selected.

StyleWriter is the only writing aid you can fully customize to your writing needs. Add, remove, ignore and make exceptions to editing advice. Add new categories or turn off existing categories to suit your writing needs. Organizations can computerize their existing house style rules.

Check for your own style rules and proofreading issues:

• Choose the issues to highlight
• Add advice to StyleWriter
• User-added capitalization check
• Different checks for different audiences or writing tasks
• Delete unwanted advice
• Review changes made to StyleWriter
• Add user-defined categories
• Corporate house style service
• International versions – American, British and Australian

Organizations can also use StyleWriter’s with our Electronic Writing Course to train staff. StyleWriter, the plain English editing software, backs up the training by showing you how to edit your writing into a model of clear English. The Electronic House Style means you can guarantee employees write dates, product names, numbers and so on consistently.

Standard readability formulas are simplistic and easily fooled. They only measure sentence length and word length – usually measured by the number of characters. So a conventional readability formula considers following, tomorrow and Wednesday as difficult words but after, today and Monday as easy words.

StyleWriter solves this problem by using its graded dictionary and offers meaningful statistics and ratings you can use to become a better writer.

StyleWriter has three key scores and ratings shown at the bottom of the program’s screen.

1. The Bog Index™ – an overall score of the clarity of your style.
2. The Average Sentence Length – an important readability measure.
3. The Passive Index™ – a measure of the most common writing problem.

When you edit with StyleWriter, you’ll discover that the program shortens sentences and improves word choice making your writing style clear and understandable.

However, conventional spellchecking technology often misses many contextual spelling errors. Here are some examples of ‘words’ accepted by Microsoft Word:

• the firm’s pubic image when promoting our products in the United Sates,
• which fag to fly when the Quean opens our new offices,
• the sprit of staff when asked to forego the end-of-season bonus, ad
• the meeting to asses the affect of new laws on corporate disclosure.

StyleWriter also has a revolutionary Smart-Spell™ technology – a way of finding errors missed by conventional spellcheckers. The program knows each word’s frequency of use and the probability of it being an error even if spelled correctly. The program’s Questionable category is a filter on the main spellchecker wordlist highlighting words that often fool other spelling checkers. The program’s other categories of Confused Words, Misused Words, Difficult Words, Unusual Words and Miscellaneous categories also find thousands of errors missed by conventional spelling checkers.

The only editing software to guarantee you write in a jargon-free style:

• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Jargon Phrases
• Difficult Words
• Unusual Words and Unknown Words

StyleWriter uses its graded dictionary and several style categories to highlight jargon in your writing.

ENLARGE

Most jargon consists of abbreviations and acronyms, jargon phrases and difficult words. StyleWriter comprehensively searches and highlights these problems in your writing.

The program checks a 10,000-word document in 12 seconds against a 200,000 graded wordlist and a 50,000-word and phrase style and usage checker. StyleWriter analyses and highlights:

• Words you can change or cut to simplify your style so your reader effortlessly understands your message.
• Long, complex and wordy sentences to help you trim the fat and write in a clear and concise style.
• Passive and hidden verbs which make writing tedious, long-winded and ambiguous.
• Sentence variety which makes writing more interesting and enjoyable to read.
• Questionable words such as spelling variants and errors that fool other proofreading tools.
• Jargon such as abbreviations and acronyms, difficult, unusual and unknown words and abstract phrases that confuse and turn off readers.

StyleWriter then highlights problems, measures and rates the readability and writing style and offers editing advice and graphs to show you where and how you can improve your draft document.

StyleWriter also finds and measures words and sentences that make the reader’s job easier and more enjoyable such as interesting verbs, nouns, names, conversational style, pronouns, direct questions and short sentences.

StyleWriter offers you professional advice to improve your writing skills.

The Opening

Make your first paragraph do something; it is both a headline and lead for your message.  Plunge straight into your reason for writing.  Don’t begin with something your readers already know or by stating the obvious.

After the first couple of paragraphs, your readers’ attention may fall off if you haven’t already made your main points.  Newspaper reporters call the first paragraph “the lead”, and they always try to make it effective and interesting.  You can learn to do the same.

Don’t waste words in your opening.  If you are writing to ask for information, ask for it in the first sentence.  If you want people to do something, say so in your first paragraph.  If you are writing a report, give the readers the most relevant information – often the conclusions to the report – in the first paragraph.  Business writing often fails because of poor openings such as:

In reference to your recent report…
Please be advised that at the last planning committee meeting…

Learn to write a key first paragraph by giving the information most relevant to the reader without delay.  Ask yourself this question: What do my readers need to know?

For example, if a 50-year-old woman wants to know if she is entitled to a widow’s pension, don’t spend the opening paragraph quoting the regulation that applies.  Answer the key question in the first sentence and then go on to explain the reason.

We’re sorry but you cannot receive a widow’s pension until you are 60 years old.

In a report you need to give the essential information in the first paragraph.  This often means summarising the whole report in a couple of sentences.  To do this, imagine that your readers only have time to read your first paragraph and so place all the information they need to understand the report in that paragraph.  For example:

Over the last 12 months, our sales of breakfast cereals through supermarket chains have grown by 12 per cent.  However, between December and February our sales are 15 per cent below the average of all the other months in the year.  Our advertising agency has provided figures showing how we could spend $1.2 million next winter to turn around this poor performance.  Their solution is simplicity itself – advertise cereals with hot milk.

The Close

The closing couple of paragraphs are your last chance to influence your readers.  If written well, the closing paragraph is the one your readers will remember.

In a report, a good summary paragraph at the end should bring all your arguments and evidence together and sway the readers to your point of view.  In a memo, the last paragraph might tell the readers what you want them to do or might include recommendations.

In a letter, make your closing sentences polite and to the point.  If you want your readers to take some action, show clearly what you want them to do.

Don’t end weakly or apologetically or let your writing fizzle out.  A strong closing is as important as a good opening and well-developed points throughout your writing.

Use Direct Quotations

Use this journalistic technique of selecting suitable quotations.  This is particularly useful in giving reports the human touch.

Use Direct Questions

Direct questions are an effective way of breaking up the text and keeping the reader’s attention.  Try this tip in your letters and reports.  Look for the word “whether”, and try to recast the sentence into a question.  For example:

It remains to be seen whether the company can profit from investing in precious metals.

Redraft:

Can the company profit by investing in precious metals?

Use Examples, Statistics, Facts and Asides

You can make your writing come alive by giving plenty of examples to explain the point you are making. Often it is the well-chosen fact or statistic, the interesting anecdote or aside that your reader will remember and act upon.

Don’t assume your reader will understand what you know

Nothing explains itself.  You have to generate the interest of the reader and then take time to point out why the information is relevant.  Guide your readers through the information, pointing out what is relevant and why.  Don’t just refer to other pamphlets,  graphs, tables or appendices.  The chances are your reader won’t give them more than a cursory glance unless you point out what is relevant, interesting or important.

For example, if you are writing instructions for filling out a government form, you might stress the most important information in your covering letter:

Please make sure you put your national insurance number in the box on the right-hand side of page one of the Housing Aid Registration Form.  This will make sure we don’t confuse you with anyone else with a similar name.

Take Time to Explain Difficult Information

While your aim is to keep your writing brief and to the point, you should take time to explain difficult points or translate technical terms.

It is essential to go through difficult points step by step, looking at the problem from the reader’s point of view, trying to find ways to illustrate the information.  See what difficulties your readers face and edit or rewrite to overcome these problems.  For example, if someone wants to know how to calculate their pension, don’t just write:

Your pension is based on the equivalent of 56% of your last full-year salary, plus an additional bonus of 2% for every five-year period of continuous service with additional benefits applying as shown under Schedule 7 of the Salaried Employees benefits tables in the Conditions of Employment Booklet obtainable from the Personnel Department.

This is lazy writing.  The writer simply gives the general policy and hopes the reader will look up more sources of information. Compare the original with a suggested redraft where we answer the reader’s question and take time to explain and illustrate difficult points.

We calculate you will receive a pension of between￡9,450 to ￡9,750 when you retire next January.  We have calculated your pension from your basic salary of ￡15,200 for the last 12 months of employment with the company.

	￡
1.  Basic pension of 56% of last full-year salary:	8,400
2.  A 4% bonus for 12 years’ continuous service:	600
3.  Other entitlements: * A 3% bonus for a three-year overseas tour:	450
Total pre-tax, inflation-linked pension	9,450

While we have quoted ￡9,450 as your expected pension, this may increase to ￡9,750 depending on any salary increase before your retirement next year.

To help you in this style, use

• contractions, and
• personal references.

Contractions

Use contractions (it’s, doesn’t, I’m, you’re, we’re, they’re, isn’t, here’s, that’s, that’ll) in everyday writing.  You don’t have to use them at every possible opportunity or in formal writing – only where they feel natural.  They give a personal and human style to letters and memos.

Personal References

Use words such as I, we, you, your, my, and our in your writing.  Don’t be afraid to identify yourself or your organisation in your  writing – it makes writing much more readable.  This is especially important when writing letters or memos because it affects the tone.  Many reports could benefit from some use of personal pronouns.  You can present facts and findings in an objective and accurate way without being anonymous or impersonal.

Using active verbs with personal references is a quick and dramatic way to improve readability and impact.