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Depending on your individual circumstances, it's probably the best, as well. y!a yjddPROFILEy U 1  1 h!A(0 /dd'( 3t> XA  Product Name  3 [ PA,  :=  Grammatik IV $99 Grammatik Windows $99 Reference Software 330 Townsend Street Suite 123 San Francisco, CA 94107 (415)5410222hXWe'll cut through the confusing issue of how the DOS and Windows version of Grammatik differ first. In short, they ah  hardly do at all. The two products have identical feature sets, equal prices, and similarly named files. In fact, two of the utility programs included with both, designed to help you manually edit rules and dictionary files, are the same item; if you invoke them while running the Windows version, you are ah  shelled out to DOS and returned when you exit the utilities. Overall, we found Grammatik Windows less convenient then ah  $88  ! 7$its more seasoned brother ! 7in most regards. Its help ! 7system pales in comparison, ! 7The multiple windows it ! 7creates move independently ! 7!0 7of each other even though ! 7!0 7they're used together, and it ! 7!0 7will not run in Windows ah  ! 7!0 73.0's real mode under any ah  ! 7!0 7circumstances, eliminating ! 7!0 7use on 8088/86equipped ! 7!0 7computers from considera! 7tion. It does provide a help! 7ful bar display that shows ! 7the percentage of work ! 7completed while using it in ! 7noninteractive mode, and  88has a menu system that's designed slightly more intuitively, but unless you're using a Windowsĩspecific word processor ah  such as Microsoft's Word for Windows or Write, or Samna's ah  Am1 or Am1 Professional, choose the DOS version of Gram bh ԭmatik. That said, let's speak about the Grammatik line ah  generically. (From this point forward, we'll point out differences when appropriate; otherwise, all that follows applies to both versions of the product.) XInstalling Grammatik requires no user intervention other ah  then providing a target drive and directory. It takes up about a megabyte of disk space, reducible to some 450 kilobytes, and requires 325K of RAM to run under DOS, 512K under Windows. Installation procedures included with both versions ah  ask for permission to modify the path statement in your AUTOEXEC.BAT file and include a SET statement, and Grammatik Windows also requests to add a file extension ah  association line to your WIN.INI file. XDocumentation consists of an installation/quick reference card and a book divided into four sections: getting started/tutorial, using Grammatik, inside view, and designing style ah  guides. Reading through the first two sections is all the casual user will need to do to become conversant in all Grammatik's ah  important functions, a process that can be completed in under an hour. The second half of the book is devoted to providing a semitechnical explanation of Grammatik's operation, and ah  using the rule and help screen editor. Editing help screens is not too difficult, but only true masochists should attempt to edit rules. XOperating Grammatik is all but effortless. A few easily ah  navigated menus (DOS diehards can specify most options with5 J0! 7G!0 7!5 command line switches) provide access to all program functions, and since you tell Grammatik what word processor ah  you use (from a very long list of candidates) during installation (it can be changed), you'll rarely need to use the choices on the preferences menu. Grammatik provides pre ah Ԫprogrammed models for five kinds of writing (general, business, technical, fiction, and informal), and allows you to create custom styles easily by toggling environmental factors such as short/long sentence length definitions, and usage rules. Rules are found in Grammatik's three "rule classes". ah  Respective examples of the rules controlled by the grammatic! 7al, mechanical, and style classes are checking for double ! 7negatives, correct presentation of ellipses marks, and use of ! 7jargon. The use of supplemental dictionaries can teach ! 7Grammatik to ignore readergroup specific phrases. ah  ! 7FHGrammatik gives you the option of checking your writing ah  ! 7interactively or in an automated operation that makes ! 7!0 7suggestions all at once, leaving you to check the advice ! 7!0 7Grammatik generates manually. Interactive mode is fun to use ah  ! 7!0 7and can be educational, but there are some problems inherent ! 7!0 7to it. For one, when you edit an error, your changes are ! 7!0 7reflected in the editing window, but their effect on the ! 7!0 7condition displayed in the error window is not. Accordingly, ! 7!0 7you'll need to run a second pass of the program to see what ! 7the net effect of Grammatik's work is. Another fault is ah  ! 7Grammatik's method of handling certain types of flagged ah  ! 7situations. "Long sentence" errors usually won't fit on screen ! 7in their entirety, so determining the full context of what you ! 7were trying to say can be difficult. On the other hand, the existence of an "ignore this class for the remainder of the session" option available only when using Grammatik interac ah ԭtively prevents you encountering and needing to process fifteen or twenty mixed capitalization errors such as "dBase". ah  FHYour general impression of Grammatik probably will be ah  decided by your opinion of its idiosyncracies. "Informal" and "Colloquial" checking are controlled by the same toggle, and some phrases with multiple errors don't always flag them all. For example, the expression "to densely populated" produces a split infinitive error flag, but no "wrong to (two, too)" notice. Yet for each of its problems, Grammatik counters with ah  innovations. There's a very smart replacement feature (changing "already to" to "all ready to") Somewhere between good and bad lies the ability to run Grammatik from inside ah  a few of the most popular word processors. In reality, the macros initialized by this option shuts down the word processor, runs Grammatik, and brings back the word ah  processor when you're finished grammar checking. The documentation states that this option is not a memory resident program, and so doesn't impose memory overhead. That's half right. A TSR, it isn't, but the program that sets the macro up uses 76K of RAM that remains unavailable until you exit the word processor. FHWe wonder how many users will be excited about having their work compared to The Gettysburg Address or Hemingway past the second time they witness the trick, but Gram ah ԭmatik's many statistics presentation options can be fun. In ah  general, using Grammatik may not deserve that extreme a ah  description, but it does its job, and well. If you do much writing, Grammatik is terrific.