From: utzoo!dciem!mmt Newsgroups: net.nlang Title: Re: diction and all that/which Article-I.D.: dciem.210 Posted: Thu Mar 10 11:49:30 1983 Received: Thu Mar 10 12:08:16 1983 References: cornell.4085 It is true that the diction program provides many false alarms. Its main benefit is that it gets the writer to think about whether the writing is correct, and leads to better writing overall. Different people will start with different hit rates, and if the writer doesn't know enough English to know whether a "diction" output is a hit or a false alarm, diction can't help. If a writer starts with a diction hit rate of, say 20%, and understands why the hits actually should be changed (use "suggest" to see what alternatives there may be), then after a few tens of pages of writing the hit rate will decline to 10% and then 5%, at which point there is no further use for "diction". It is a training aid, not a paper-corrector. As for that/which, I started with diction without having any feel for when to use one and when the other. Diction annoyed me with its pedantic approach. But having used it for a while, and having had a book copy-edited (most of my "which"s were changed), I now have a good feel for their correct usage. It is a worth-while exercise. Martin Taylor