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Aucbvax.2427 fa.works utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works Fri Jul 24 00:54:08 1981 What is Writer's Workbench? >From TRB@MIT-MC Fri Jul 24 00:52:49 1981 Writer's Workbench was originally a few elegant programs which were written by L L Cherry at BTL Murray Hill. The original one, probably the one of most interest to hackers, parses English text and identifies parts of speech by looking for relations between the words. This parts program is the basis for several others.

One program uses the output of the parts program to classify each sentence type as simple, complex, compound, or compound complex. This style program also collects statistics on document "readability." There is a topic program which uses the parts program to generate frequent nouns for keyword indexing (not a real good idea, in my opinion) and a program whose purpose it is to easily find split infinitives.

Other programs include one that looks for for excessive use of passive voice, one that counts average number of syllables in a word (this program uses English spelling rules, rather than a dictionary; the readability program needs this info), a program which lets you check your organization by printing out the first and last sentences of each paragraph, a spelling corrector, a double word finder, a bad idiom finder, a punc- tuation corrector, a program that breaks your text into phrases, and a bunch of little programs that just print out examples.

Writer's Workbench has been recently covered by the mass media. The reporters always seem to give a ridiculous impression of it, stressing the fact, for instance, that it has a program which identifies your use of sexist language. (Now there's a justification for computer science, huh?) The mass media, and therefore the public, do not seem to see the line between computer systems as tools and computer systems as replacements for humans. (Writer's Workbench flags possible errors, it does not rewrite your document.) I believe that this ignorance is a major stumbling block to the acceptance of the computer revolution.

Writer's Workbench would have a field day with this message.

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