The Editor Copyediting and Proofreading Program

Editor is different.  Editor is not a spelling checker, though it finds thousands of spelling mistakes that word processors' spelling checkers overlook.  Editor does not find or correct syntax errors—no software can do that reliably—and does not work from inside any word processor.  Editor is a remedy for important weaknesses of spelling and grammar checkers and is an indispensable tool for writers, writing teachers, and editors.

Editor cannot teach you to write, but it can help you write better.  Like a professional copyeditor, Editor proofreads and helps correct and polish writers’ drafts at the word and phrase levels.  The software can identify more than 100,000
common spelling errors, mechanical errors, usage mistakes, and stylistic misdemeanors that elude other text checkers.

Editor’s design models and encourages the editing-and-
revision procedure used by good writers, whose essential work of rewriting takes place between a first draft and a final presentation.

Contemporary English prose needs editing.  It is littered with wordy phrases, needless repetitions, clichés, trite expressions, vague terms, redundancy, pretentious language, illogical statements, homonym confusions, jargon, misspelled terms, incorrectly formed plurals and possessives, and other common problems.  Proofreading tools featured in word processors miss most stylistic clutter and many outright blunders in spelling, usage, and mechanics.

Inexperienced writers often make poor stylistic choices, but published authors and editors can also stumble, as literate readers of newspapers, magazines, and today’s fiction know.  Other text-checking programs may claim to check style, but our tests indicate that none have Editor's coverage and precision, most are more expensive, and some are appallingly illiterate.

The sidebars of these pages give examples of writing problems that popular spelling and grammar checkers miss but Editor identifies.
Before sliding your cursor over them, see how many problems you can figure out.  If you recognize most of them, you may not need Editor's help.  (The pop-ups are illustrations and do not reproduce the pro-
gram's actual comments.  Click here for examples of Editor's displays.)

Read some of our customers' comments.  Many questions that prospective customers have about Editor are answered in detail on our FAQ page.

Last revised June 21 2008