WHETHER YOU'RE WRITING a letter to Aunt Rhoda, a repor for the boss or a doctoral thesis, you know what it's like to struggle with misspelled words, dangling participles, misplaced antecedents or a search for exactly the right word.
But if you write with a personal computer, assistance can be onl a keystroke away.
Every word processing program worth its salt has a built-ispelling checker, and the better ones have a thesaurus. Wordsmiths who need industrial-strength help can turn to style and grammar checkers, complete on-line dictionaries and a variety of reference books.
Unfortunately, putting together the right package of writer's aid can be an expensive, hit-or-miss proposition. But where there's a vacuum, or even a low-pressure area, the American software industry will rush to fill it.
Two new releases, each priced at $149.95, are aimed at writer looking for an arsenal of weapons in the war on prose.
The Complete Writer's Toolkit, from Systems Compatibility Corp Chicago, and The Writer's Pack, from Reference Software International of San Francisco, bundle a grammar checker and dictionary with a variety of other tools.
Each package has its strengths and weaknesses. If you nee software like this, I'd suggest getting the package with the tools that best suit your writing tasks.
The dictionaries and reference books in these packages ar available as memory-resident programs. They'll pop up over your word processor when you need help and disappear when you're finished with them.
Unfortunately, the grammar and style checkers are not memor resident. They'll examine file created by your word processor, RTC but you have to exit from your word processor to use them.
Both publishers have licensed Definitions Plus, a disk-base version of Houghton Mifflin's massive American Heritage Dictionary. This is my personal favorite, but I realize that dictionaries, like word processors, are largely matters of taste.
Otherwise, the packages are quite different. The Complet Writer's Toolkit is by far the more integrated of the two and much easier to use.
The Toolkit uses The Houghton Mifflin CorrecText grammar style, punctuation and spelling correction software. In addition to the dictionary, the package includes Roget's II Electronic Thesaurus, The Houghton Mifflin Abbreviation Program, the Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations and Written Word II -- Principles of Grammar and Style.
