Path: utzoo!mnetor!frank
From: frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: grammatik mac
Message-ID: <5315@mnetor.UUCP>
Date: 16 Mar 90 14:13:49 GMT
References: <10120@portia.Stanford.EDU-
Reply-To: frank@mnetor.UUCP (Frank Kolnick)
Organization: Computer X (CANADA) Ltd., Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Lines: 37

In article <10120@portia.Stanford.EDU- thewho@portia.Stanford.EDU (Derek Fong) writes:
-Has anyone received their complementary copy of Grammatik Mac via the 
-contest yet?  How long does it take to get the thing?
-
-Then again, I just read a review which dampened my enthusiasm of getting it.
...
-        Writing is difficult for many people, but a new writing aid for
-Macintosh computers could make it downright impossible.
-        Reference Software boasts its new Grammatik Mac writing-improvement
-program ``will improve your writing in 30 days or your money back.''
-        Spending 30 days with Grammatik Mac, however, could render users
-incapable of writing the San Francisco software publisher to request the
-promised refund.
-        The program is a mishmash of bells and whistles that calls
-attention to what it perceives as errors and suggests revisions. But the
-errors it cites often are not errors, and the revisions it suggests are
-sometimes inane or, worse erroneous.

Ah, that makes me feel better! I don't have Grammatik, but I have both
Sensible Grammar and MacProof. The above description could be applied to them
as well. I tried both on various manuals and a book I was writing, and
eventually gave up. To sort out the poor advice from the good, you have to
know more than the program does in the first place. I now doubt whether
any program (now or in the near future) can analyze style and/or grammar.
I'll admit that I bought the programs because I was lazy and thought
they could get me past the tedious mechanical errors, so that I could
focus on style and presentation. That turned out not to be the case.
A good spelling checker will weed out a significant number of typos,
especially if it checks for capitalization and common errors like
double words ("the the").

(On the other hand, if anyone *does* know of a good grammar checker,
 I'd like to hear about it :-)
-- 
Frank Kolnick,
Basis Computer Systems Inc.
UUCP: {allegra, linus}!utzoo!mnetor!frank