When I was just out of law school, I thought I had things figured out. As the years pass, I realize the things I know could fill a thimble and those I don’t a lake. There are many smart people in the world who have skills and abilities I can only dream of. But instead of worrying about what I don’t know or can’t do, I’m always looking for tools, techniques and strategies that help me do better, faster and more efficiently what others expect of me.
I write a lot. There are tools out there that help you write better, faster and more efficiently. Years ago I ran across one called StyleWriter – the Plain English Editor. It’s not cheap – currently they’re asking $160 for it – but if you write a lot, it will definitely help you write better. I’ve been using it ever since and can’t imagine writing without it. I’ve used it for technical tax materials, business letters, web site copy, corporate white papers, legal documents, editorials, handbooks, and sales materials. I’ve even used it to write our annual family Christmas letter.
It touts itself as:
the World’s Largest Style and Usage checker – is the world’s most powerful editor. It plugs directly into all versions of Microsoft Word, Word Perfect or any Windows application through the Clipboard.
StyleWriter searches for thousands of writing faults, including complex words, jargon and abstract words, wordy phrases, hidden verbs, passive verbs, clichés and long sentences.
It then pops up advice showing you how to edit each sentence. Using StyleWriter typically cuts 25 percent of the words from the document and removes the stale writing habits so common in organizational writing. It’s just like having a professional editor sit down and highlight the writing problems in any document.
Let me show you how it works, using this article as the guinea pig.
I’m using Word 2007 on my laptop, so I first go to the “Addins” tab on the Word ribbon.
StyleWriter installs itself into a custom toolbar so all you have to do is click on the icon.
The program then offers to save the word document you’re working on (if it has not been recently saved) and then checks your document against 35,000+ language ‘problems’ and offers you alternatives.
Here it shows the ‘pattern’ it checked and provides advice. I do have a tendency to use ‘that’ like it is going out of style – probably a carryover from law school. If you click on the blue ‘the’ StyleWriter replaces ‘that the’ with a simple ‘the’.
Click the ‘Next’ button to go to the next issue. Here the problem is “Overused Words.”
StyleWriter also looks for words that are often confused. It tells you what the difference is between the two and, again, you can change what you’ve written by clicking on one of the words in blue. If you’re sure that you’re right, click on the ‘Ignore’ button. If you’re sure you’re always right, click on “Ignore All” and the program skips that problem for the rest of the document you’re working on. If you’re absolutely certain that you’ll never confuse the two words, you can delete that pattern and StyleWriter will never bother you about it again.
Is the program perfect? Absolutely not. For example, the program has a tendency to misread the use of words like “you’re” as somehow being two separate words – “you” and “re” and politely tells you that you don’t really need to use “Re” in a title or heading. I finally told it to delete that pattern.
You’ll notice that at the bottom of the StyleWriter screen it gives you a running summary of the number of words in your document and rates your “Style Index”, the length of your average sentence and your use of passive voice both numerically and qualitatively.
You can also get a statistical summary based on a particular writing style. Notice the difference in the two summaries – one for general writing and the other for an advertisement.
The program lets you analyze a document based on 13 different kinds of writing.
You can also decide what types of problems you want the program to look for (or not look for).
Click on “Category” after selecting one of the topics and you get a help screen that goes into more detail. For example, it explains the “Tautologies” category like this:
Tautology is the unnecessary repetition of the same idea in different words. Tautologies waste words and can annoy your readers.
StyleWriter highlights common tautologies and offers you an alternative or advice. Avoiding tautologies will make your writing precise and improve your style.
It then gives you examples like replacing “assemble together” with “assemble” and saying “full” instead of “full to capacity.”
One of the most useful features is the ability add new rules – what they call the “House Style.” For example, when I worked at Genworth Financial, the first time we referred to term life insurance in a document, the compliance folks wanted to see something like “life insurance that provides death benefit coverage with a guaranteed level premium for a specific period of time—usually 10, 15, 20 or 30 years depending upon which product you choose.” I created a new rule and when StyleWriter saw the phrase “term insurance,” it gave me the opportunity to stay friends with compliance by using the words they wanted to see. After the first time, I would hit “Ignore All” so I didn’t see it again.
If there is a pattern you don’t like, you can delete it easily. For example, if you’re comfortable you’re not going to use ‘advice’ when you should say ‘advise’ you can delete the pattern and StyleWriter won’t bother you again.
Or you can make exceptions to the built-in patterns. Then, if a word is used in a certain context, StyleWriter won’t flag it as a problem. Maybe you like to say ‘buying’ instead of ‘purchasing’ – but you don’t want the program to suggest that “Purchasing Manger” should be changed to “Buying Manager.”
I’ve found StyleWriter to be invaluable. I believe it has helped me become a better writer and by using it I’ve been able to finish writing projects more quickly and more efficiently. Although I find the cost a tad steep, for me it was a good investment.
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