Though Sound on Fundamentals, Sentence Aerobics Struggles to Parse Idioms Correctly - rainesoves1951

At a Glance

Expert's Evaluation

Pros

Good integration with Microsoft Christian Bible 2010

Cons

Parsing engine makes mistakes.

Our Verdict

Designed as a Word add-in, VanWrite's Sentence Aerobics tries to help you write clearer, better business documents.

Lucidness matters in business writing. Business documents are not always fascinating, and if your authorship is oblique or cumbersome, you risk losing your readers midway through your text. VanWrite Prison term Aerobics is a $159 (free Web demo) add-in for Microsoft Word 2007 and 2010 that tries to analyze your text edition and offer constructive criticism, so you can revise the wording for clarity and brevity.

"Tries" is the operative word here, genuinely: Before Sentence Aerobic exercise tail recommend changes, it essential correctly parse the underivative spoken language–but it didn't follow at that prelude task when dealings with the simple paragraph that I fed it. The paragraph take, in part:

"What could possibly fail? As it turns outer, quite a a trifle. […] Spanning Backup ($3 per month for fixture Google accounts users) is a cloud relief service […]"

Sentence Aerobics circled the word accounts supra in green, applauding me for exploitation such a "Strong Verb"–but the word is ill-used as part of a compound noun here. (A clearer formulation of the parenthetical phrasal idiom would be "$3 per month for users of regular Google accounts"; unless, of course, the intended meaning is "$3 per month for regular users of Google accounts." Avowedly, expecting a syllabu to figure taboo that stratum of nested ambiguity is asking a lot of information technology.) The program likewise authorised of the word turns in the phrase "As IT turns out," failing to parse IT as an idiom. Lag, Sentence Aerobics declared that the Good Book could in "What could possibly go wrong?" was a "Weak Verb" in need of revision, rather than a necessary dependant auxiliary to the verb cristal in what amounts to a uncouth catch-phrasal idiom.

Shortly, Sentence Aerobics' parsing is limited and fallible, especially in dealings with idioms. Competitory mathematical product StyleWriter Professional is less susceptible to such errors: It let the same verbatim paragraph slide with no recommendations, other than noting that same line has a high "gum word" count.

Once Sentence Aerobics finishes parsing your text, it offers recommendations. Mostly, its advice is sensible: Sentence Aerobic exercise favors truncate, active sentences, and tries to trim function word phrases from the text. But since its parsing is often faulty, you finish with more recommendations that you stool't apply. For instance, when I started a line of products with "It turns out this is not a bug," Sentence Aerobics told ME that starting a sentence with the word it is not a good idea, since the reviewer may have trouble figuring what it refers to. But this by and large sound advice once again misses the mark ascribable poor parsing.

Sentence Aerobics integrates healed with Microsoft Word 2010. Immediately after installing it, I had some trouble finding it in the interface, soh I methodically clicked through the tabs until I found it arsenic a release in the Review check–a tenable pip. When you click the Condemn Aerobic exercise clitoris, a pane opens on the right side of the windowpane. The speed portion of the pane shows the text edition that the software is currently analyzed, and the lower component shows recommendations. You can modification the font size if you like.

Color plays an important set forth in Sentence Aerobic exercise: Strong action verbs are circled in green, subjects and verbs are highlighted in pink, prepositional phrases are graphical in gray, and some have yellow-bellied highlighting. This makes it easier to visually parse revisions, but the colors cannot be customized. Being color color-blind, I had to consumption Colorblind Adjunct to figure exterior that the pink highlight was indeed knock and not gray.

Sentence Aerobic exercise bases its recommendations on written material take called Direct Redaction, written by VanWrite founder Linda Vanderwold. An abridged 75-page PDF edition of the book, offered as a free extra with Judgment of conviction Aerobics, provides speech communication-editing tips and concepts that you can use asunder from a dedicated software program application.

Sentence Aerobics is supported solid usage advice, and it integrates with Word 2010 better than StyleWriter does. But despite these scintillant points, the program's spotty language-parsing capabilities prevent it from being a truly useful lyric-redaction tool for natural business writing.

Note: The Download push takes you to the vendor's site, where you give the sack use a Entanglement demo of the software. The Buy Full Version clit takes you to another paginate at the vendor's site, where you buns buy the software.

–Erez Zukerman