An Electronic Writer's Reference

This program is designed to serve as an interactive resource as you do any kind of writing on or off your computer. It offers advice on all grammatical and syntactical aspects of good writing practice, and is aimed primarily at the student market.

It is based on the visual metaphor of the Filofax. A small, portrait-oriented (and non-resizable) window comes up on the screen. For topic menus, it has side-tags imitating notebook section dividers down the right-hand edge. These are labelled on the fairly unreadable vertical axis, but this doesn't matter so much since the main navigation buttons are located at the bottom of the page.




The main sections of the program are: composing and revising, document design, effective sentences, word choice, punctuation, ESL trouble spots, research writing, and basic grammar. There's also an index, a glossary, a bookmark facility, and pop-up screens offering examples on each topic.

The metaphor of the notebook looks good and works well, because it doesn't take up much room on screen. It works like a HELP file, with single page explanations of small units of information. This is a commendably simple design, even though some of the text is almost unreadably small - which is particularly frustrating in the section explaining bibliographic references.

The topic explanations are a mixture of heavy grammar and good advice. On the who and whom question for instance, the first screen offers a definition which might deter all but the most grammatically stout-hearted:

"The choice between who and whom occurs primarily in subordinate clauses and in questions. Who and whoever are subjective-case pronouns; whom and whomever are objective-case pronouns"

Fortunately, the following screens offer examples where common mistakes have been visibly corrected.

The exercises on all the basic topics of grammar and writing are very thorough. The user feels a rewarding sense of interaction, and they seem like good fun. I couldn't resist completing them all. Some of the answers - on punctuation for instance - are a matter of taste rather than being right or wrong.

The pages are printable, the program installs easily, takes up 18MB of disk space, and I think would make a useful addition to anybody's bank of resources - depending upon price when the program comes out of beta testing.