Frequently Asked Questions About the Editor Proofreading Program

What does Editor do that other spelling and grammar checkers do not?

Conservatively estimated, Editor can find more than 125,000 mistakes and problems in spelling, usage, mechanics, and style that standard checkers like Word's and WordPerfect's do not notice.  This estimate may seem extravagant;
we explain its derivation in detail on a separate page.

How well these numbers compare with claims by other software on the Internet is unclear because other programs have different ways of finding errors.  Our investigations suggest that no other software can approach Editor's range in finding spelling mistakes and usage problems missed by standard checkers, and that no one else pays as detailed attention to matters of style--a subject that standard spelling and grammar checkers ignore almost entirely.  We offer brief comparisons with Word, WordPerfect, and Writer's Workbench in other FAQs.  See also the FAQ on repetitions.

Please note that Editor does NOT check syntax (sentence structure), which is
what some “grammar” checkers claim to do but no software can do well.  Editor does find many nonsyntactical problems that grammar checkers miss, and it strongly supplements, though it does not replace, standard spelling checkers.

Who uses Editor?

Editor is used by students and teachers at schools, colleges, and universities in the United States and Canada and by many professional writers and editors in the US, UK, and elsewhere. Businesses large and small have bought copies for office use. Our individual customers reside in 50 states and in 50 other countries around the world (and counting). Click here for some comments from our customers.

Please note: prospective customers whose first language is not English should read “Can Editor help second-language (ESL) writers?” below.

Is Editor interactive? Will it work inside my word processor?

Editor does not work within a word processor as, for example, Word's and WordPerfect's spelling and grammar checkers do. Those are quick, click-to-fix programs. Editor is a copyediting and proofreading program designed to collaborate with, and teach good editing practices to, a serious writer. It expects
careful attention, not just mouse clicks, during the process.

Though this is not our recommended copyediting procedure, it is possible to run Editor and, while viewing the output, bring up a word processor with the text displayed, click back and forth (multitask) between the two programs, and make whichever revisions suggested by Editor you decide to accept.

Can I download Editor after I buy it?

To control costs, we do not provide downloads directly from the Internet.
However, after paying for a copy of Editor, you may e-mail Serenity Software requesting a free “e-mail download” of the complete program in compressed form, sent as an e-mail attachment.  The attachment usually arrives within a day.  See the Note on Security below before requesting an e-mailed copy.

The free e-mail option is available only to single-copy purchasers of Editor.
Because the expected delivery time for international airmail is up to two weeks, we encourage international customers to request an e-mail download.

Serenity Software will always send an Editor CD to purchasers by regular mail unless instructed otherwise.

Note on Security: the e-mail attachment may be rejected by strong antivirus or firewall protection or by networked security systems.  Many academic (.edu), institutional, and commercial services (notably gmail, googlemail, and other gmail clones and aliases), reject the attachment because it contains executable computer code.  Among the services that do deliver the e-mail attachment are aol, att, bigpond, bellsouth, btinternet, charter, comcast, cox, earthlink, hotmail, iinet, live, mindspeed, msn, nbnet, netscape, netvision, pacbell, prodigy, qwest, sbcglobal, telefonica, telus, tiscali, usa, verizon, yahoo, and ymail.

We will send the e-mail attachment to addresses other than those listed above, but cannot promise success with services previously untried.  We can also upload a copy of Editor to an ftp address if you send the address, a username, and a password.

Does Editor's purchase price include shipping and handling?

Yes. The purchase price includes shipping by First Class Mail anywhere in the world that the US Postal Service ships to. Domestic First Class Mail is usually delivered within 3-5 business days (not guaranteed). We use First Class Mail International (Air Mail) to locations outside the United States, but the USPS’s expected international delivery time for ordinary air mail is up to two weeks.

International customers, and others wanting our fastest available delivery (usually 1-2 days), should read the "download" FAQ above, paying attention to the information about e-mail servers.

Is the purchase price for a subscription requiring periodic renewal fees?

No. The purchase price is for a complete copy of the program and there are no additional or later fees. You may keep and use the program indefinitely.

Upgrades are inexpensive and at the customer's discretion. This Web site maintains a cumulative list of changes and additions so that customers can decide for themselves whether and when to upgrade. /dd>

Can I receive the software sooner by paying extra for shipping?

We do not ship our software by overnight or express mail. It is very expensive and we do not have a convenient way to bill you for it (but see next paragraph). Domestic First Class Mail is usually delivered within 3-5 business days (not guaranteed). We use First Class Mail International (Air Mail) to locations outside the United States that the US Postal Service ships to, but the USPS’s expected international delivery time for ordinary air mail is now one to two weeks.

International customers, and others wanting our fastest available delivery (usually 1-2 days), should read the "download" FAQ above, paying attention to the information about e-mail servers.

Can Editor help second-language (ESL) writers?

How much help Editor can give to a second-language writer depends on how well that writer already speaks and writes English. Editor is not a program for teaching basic English to speakers of other languages. More particularly, Editor cannot correct poor sentence structure or fix broken syntax. Please read our note on ESL for more information.

The Web site at The Language Project has a good discussion of problems in helping second-language speakers to become fluent in English.

Is there a Macintosh version of Editor?

CodeWeavers (www.codeweavers.com) publishes Crossover--inexpensive software that allows Windows XP programs to run on a Mac without the need to purchase a copy of Windows or an emulator program. Their tests of Editor are favorable, and they have added our program to their "compatibility" list. A major university is testing whether Crossover will let them run Editor for students in their Mac lab; their preliminary results are good.

We have customers using Editor successfully on Macs under both VMware’s VMware Fusion and Parallel Software’s Parallels Workstation, which are Windows emulators. They report that Editor can analyze files from Microsoft's 2004 edition of Word for the Mac as well as files from Word for Windows.

Another way to use Editor on a Mac document is to save the document on a PC-formatted disk as a plain text file and run that file through Editor on a Windows machine. Editor isn't interested in anything except the text itself—it discards all non-text formatting before analyzing the document—and the output it gives you is identical to what you would get if you ran Editor on a Mac directly. You can use Editor's output to mark up your draft, then go back into your Mac word processor and make the desired changes. There is an extra step or two involved, of course, and you would need to have access to a Windows computer with Editor installed.

A Macintosh version of Editor was published in 2001 by the Modern Language Association to run in OS 9 (it could run in an OS 9 "window" in OS X, but we did not revise it for OS X or later Mac operating systems). The Mac version is still listed for sale on the MLA Web site , but it has not been updated since publication, and we can no longer provide support for it.

Is there a Linux version of Editor?

CodeWeavers (www.codeweavers.com) publishes Crossover--inexpensive software that allows Windows XP software like Editor to run in Linux. They have not finished testing Editor in Linux but are optimistic because their tests using similar Macintosh software are positive. Check their "compatibility" list for information about Editor and Linux.

Can Editor handle large documents?

Yes, but. Yes, Editor can handle large documents, but its analytic output can be voluminous, and we recommend analyzing such documents in shorter segments for convenience. To give you an idea, on a partial dissertation of 100 pages that we tested, Editor's detailed comments ran to 70 pages, which some writers might find cumbersome to deal with as a single list. But Editor has analyzed files of more than four times that size without difficulty.

There is no need to break up and then reassemble a long document in order to analyze it with Editor. In a word processor, highlight sections of any length, extract them using Save As into separate documents, and analyze those. Use the results, either as you get them or cumulatively at the end, to copyedit the original document in the word processor.

Does Editor analyze Word, WordPerfect, Works, RTF, HTML, and other files?

Yes. Unlike most proofreading software, Editor reads all these document formats, including their most recent versions through 2007, and some versions of Works, as well.

More generally, because Editor can analyze any plain-text (.txt) file and any modern word processor can save files in that format, Editor can analyze any document written using any modern word processor. The program's output is a set of plain-text files that are identical no matter what document format it analyzes, and that output is used in the same ways when revising and correcting any word-processor file.

Which editorial style does Editor use: MLA, APA, or Chicago?

Although Editor's principal reference for formal academic and professional style is the MLA Style Manual, we compare our recommendations with the Publication Manual of the APA and the Chicago Manual of Style. For British style conventions, we consult The Economist Style Guide and several Oxford University Press publications. Where these authorities disagree, especially in rules for punctuation and other mechanics, we note the disagreements in our Reference screens. An important exception is MLA and APA parenthetical-reference formats, which differ significantly. Editor checks MLA parenthetical references for correct form but does not yet do that for APA style.

The professional manuals' rules for formatting footnotes and bibliographies are complex and differ considerably. Editor does not attempt to check them; for the proper notational and bibliographical formats, scholars should consult the style manuals appropriate to their fields.

Does Editor check spelling?

Yes, but Editor does not duplicate a standard spelling checker’s functions—it extends them. Editor specializes in commonly misspelled phrases like under stood, dramatis persona, Canadian geese, wailing away, and different tact. The program catches many thousands of misspellings like these that other spelling checkers do not find, but it does not substitute for those spelling checkers in spell-checking a document. The sidebars on these pages include examples of spelling mistakes that Word and WordPerfect do not catch but Editor does.

Our early tests suggest that Word 2007's new “context-sensitive” spelling checker finds only some of the common spelling mistakes that the previous version, Word 2003, misses. In a set of 44 contextual spelling mistakes that Editor catches, for example, Word 2007 finds only 11. In a test of 75 contextual hyphenation mistakes that Editor finds, Word 2007 identifies only 28. We did not invent context-sensitive checking, but Editor has been doing it for more than twenty years.

Other tests find no improvement in Word's ability to find stylistic problems--the misused words, slang and jargon, clichés, offensive terms, obsolete gendered language, wordy phrases, and other instances of weak writing that are among Editor's special copyediting features.

Can Editor handle British, Canadian, Australian, and other non-US English spelling?

Yes. Editor's databases of problem terms include British-English (UK) equivalents, so the software properly analyzes British texts as well as texts by writers who—like Canadians, Australians, and most other anglophones—use a mixture of US and British spelling conventions. Except for some clichés, Editor does not respond to local slang, colloquialisms, or usage conventions found only in English-speaking communities outside the US and UK.

Can Editor find homonym mistakes?

Yes, many of them. Ordinary spelling checkers miss most homonym errors.
Editor uses a specially designed form of syntax analysis to catch these mistakes, including misspelled plurals and possessives as well as the common confusions of its and it’s; effect and affect; their, there, and they’re; to, too, and two; alley, ally, and allay; insight and incite; posses and possess; and many more.

Does Editor check punctuation?

Some punctuation problems cannot be identified reliably by software because they depend on sentence structure, and Editor does not attempt full-sentence syntax analysis. Punctuation can also depend on meaning, about which computers are clueless.

Editor does know some things about punctuation. For example, it finds some places where a comma is missing; it catches improperly formed dashes and hyphens; it notices when, in many compound modifiers, there are missing hyphens before nouns; it flags improperly formed dates and MLA citation references; it catches misplaced punctuation around quotation marks as well as some missing quotation marks, parentheses, and brackets; it finds many possessives that lack apostrophes; it knows which sentences should be marked as questions; and it knows that if words like “however” and “moreover” are followed by punctuation, there should probably be preceding punctuation as well. Despite these features, there are many punctuation problems that Editor cannot resolve.

Can Editor check for excessive repetitions in a document?

Editor has a special set of repetition-analysis functions that allow a writer to (1) check a document for words repeated four or more times per page, on average (four is not fixed but can be changed as a search parameter); (2) look for individual paragraphs that have words repeated three or more times (the words are not chosen beforehand but depend on the independent vocabulary of each paragraph); (3) find all three-word phrases that repeat in a document; (4) find passages in a document of six or more words (up to a paragraph) that repeat; and (5) do a complete frequency count of a document's vocabulary.

Functions 2, 3, and 4 help find passages where repetition makes dull reading. Function 1 is useful primarily for short texts, and function 5 gives summary information about a writer's working vocabulary.

How does Editor compare with Word and WordPerfect in checking grammar?

Editor supplements but does not replace those grammar checkers. Editor finds many grammatical errors but does not undertake full-sentence syntax analyses, as those checkers do. The sidebars on these pages include examples of grammar (and other) mistakes that Word and WordPerfect do not catch but Editor does. Editor's databases contain many tens of thousands of other writing problems that standard text-checkers fail to recognize.

“Grammar” is often loosely defined to include matters of usage and style. In attending to those matters, Editor far outshines the standard checkers.

Writers who have trouble with English syntax—some ESL writers, for example—
must use a grammar checker before using Editor because Editor is not designed primarily to correct syntax mistakes.

How does Editor compare with Writer's Workbench as a writing aid?

In our opinion, Writer's Workbench is the only other software that analyzes texts
as extensively and carefully as Editor, but the two programs' agendas are quite different.  A detailed comparison would take up too much space here.  One way
to compare the two programs is to say that using Workbench is like taking a semester course in the elements of composition, whereas using Editor is like having a professional copyeditor scrutinize your writing.  Workbench uses many statistical generalizations in its analyses of texts; Editor sweats the details.

Here's an axample of what we mean.  Weak writers use too many vague words and phrases.  Writer's Workbench, in their own words, "calculates the percentage of vague words and, if the vague ratio is greater than 3%, lists those words and the number of times they were used in the composition."  Editor identifies frequently-used vague words and expressions using a database of more than 420 of them.  Both kinds of information are helpful to writers.  Editor's approach is to allow the writer to decide in each case whether to keep, eliminate, or change the term.

Like Editor, Workbench has a Web site rich in information about its features, and we encourage you to spend time investigating both sites.

Can I get an evaluation copy?

To keep our prices low, we offer evaluation copies of Editor only to teachers or institutions considering a purchase of more than 5 copies--e.g., for writing labs, classrooms, or offices. Because of our money-back guarantee, however, there is little risk in buying a copy and trying it. Further investigation of this FAQ page and of other pages of this Web site can help prospective customers decide whether to purchase and try the software.

Can I custom-tailor my copy of Editor?

Yes, in a number of ways. Editor looks for writing problems in more than fifty categories, and most of those categories can be turned on or off to suit a particular writing style or circumstance. For example, a writer can decide whether the program should flag all contractions as informal. A fiction writer can instruct Editor to ignore slang, clichés, colloquialisms, and pretentious terms used in dialogue. US writers are notified when they use British spellings but British writers can turn that notification off. Click here to see how easy it is to fine-tune Editor's analysis categories.

To suppress unneeded comments about particular terms, a writer can make a list of words and phrases for Editor to ignore during text analysis. Writers can also develop their own supplementary dictionary of items for the software to comment on and can add to the list of terms that the software counts. Adding such personal features is easy: they are just plain-text, typed lists. Writers can modify the output display of the DRAFT function; Editor will also allow changing its analysis-output displays from a list grouped by categories to a single list.

Is Editor useful in teaching writing?

Many teachers, including us, have found it so.  Editor’s design models and encourages the editing-and-revision procedure used by most good writers, whose essential work of rewriting takes place between a first draft and a final presentation.  Modern word processors short-circuit that procedure, especially for inexperienced writers.  Working with a draft outside a word processor, Editor restores it.

Editor has been used in classrooms and writing labs at the university, college, and high school levels, in some cases for many years.  Editor is particularly effective in helping students to develop thoughtful revision skills and to aquire clear and fresh prose styles.

It is worth noting that lazy students left entirely on their own with Editor will use it to improve their writing about as often as they will use a spelling checker to improve their spelling: in some cases, not at all.  Teachers may decide not to mandate Editor's use, but they should strongly encourage it if they wish not to be plagued with low-level writing mistakes and problems when evaluating students' work.

I am a teacher. Will Editor help me correct and evaluate student papers?

Probably not. Editor is an extension of the spelling and grammar checkers included in many word processors. Unlike them, it also searches for stylistic problems, but like them, Editor is intended for use before papers are submitted for evaluation. Using the program yourself to correct and evaluate student work would be like using the word processors' checkers yourself on their papers: an inefficient way to spend time. Students should use the checkers and Editor and revise their work appropriately before submitting it.

Does Editor provide readability statistics?

“Readability” scores are controversial. We agree with a recent critic: readability formulas “are based around the average words [per] sentence, and the average syllables used per word. . . . Being mathematically based, readability tests are unable to determine the likelihood that [a] document is comprehensible, interesting, or enjoyable. It is possible to obtain good readability scores with gobbledygook, provid[ed that] the content contains short sentences made up of monosyllabic words.” See The Language Project's Web site for this discussion.

There is little consistency among the many readability formulas. The Gunning-Fog Index, for example, says a reader needs 12 years of schooling to read this Web site's home page, whereas the Flesch-Kincaid index says 8 years is sufficient.

Is there a user’s manual? Is there onscreen help with learning the program?

Editor's “Writer’s Manual,” an instruction manual that is also a handbook on writing better prose, is available onscreen within the program.  The manual can
be printed.   Additionally, Editor has more than seventy reference screens with explanations and examples of the writing problems that Editor's analyses find.  Contact-sensitive Help screens are available every time the user must take an action.

Error messages on screen explain what to do if the software encounters a problem.  Click these links to see a sample discussion from the Writer’s Manual or examples of Editor's reference screens.

What about upgrades?

Editor is upgraded frequently, with additions to its database of writing problems, new or improved analysis routines, and improvements to the user interface.
Every new customer receives the most recently updated version. Anyone on our list of customers can upgrade to the latest version for $15.00 (using an e-mail download) or $20.00 (using a mailed CD). See our upgrades page for details.