PC-Blue - MS DOS Public Domain Library

home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search

/ PC-Blue - MS DOS Public Domain Library / PC-Blue MS-DOS Public Domain Library - NYACC.iso / vol223 / manual.doc < prev next >

Wrap

Text File | 1986-11-30 | 28.6 KB | 690 lines

Manual for STYLED Version 1.0 (c) 1986 by Louie Crew --------------------------------------------------------------------- Copy STYLED freely. If you use it, send a contribution. Pass it on. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To use: STYLED requires MS-DOS, version 2.0 or higher. 1) Put STYLED on a disk with at least one text file. 2) Type STYLED plus a carriage return. 3) Follow the menus. Why? STYLED charts patterns in texts. I created STYLED to help me revise. I now also use it to analyze what others write. It helps me as I compare professionals with amateurs. The program serves as a heuristic. It only describes: it cannot prescribe or remedy. It can help a clever person to identify and organize insight. A dullard a dullard will remain. The program abstracts several forms from texts. Writers must integrate form and content. Form alone lacks efficacy. Witness thousands of bad poems in good iambic meter, hundreds of bad symphonies in perfect 3/4 time, millions of discarded images painted with the finest of oils. Monsieur Jourdain, beware! The program can help a writer spot patterns to preserve and patterns to expunge, as well as places to pattern. The program can freshen the air for those who know little to do with a text except to check for "mistakes." At the very least, the program adds order when a writer dickers. Occasionally STYLED can prompt a reVision, a new way to see. Epiphanies come rarely, however. Only muses can program those. STYLED offers no help with pre-writing and first drafts. It attends to matters that most writers notice only minimally in early drafts. STYLED serves only those writers who feel that they have said something worth the time to polish. Revision can gobble huge amounts of time. Many people revise for hours without improving. Many lack strategy. This program can help, modestly. I sometimes spend an entire day revising one page. When I can't, I wish I could have. I wish more of the writers I read, would. Caveat: Do not let this program waste your time. I have appended a sample of my own sessions with the program. You should find many other uses. I cringe when I imagine mindless ways to use the program. For example, the program quantifies transitionals. Transitionals often evidence cohesion, but only if the writers have used them accurately. For some writers, THUS=ALSO, MOREOVER=NEVERTHELESS, etc. This program will not detect their confusion. No program protects us from sophomores. Thank the goddess, most grow up. I smile when I imagine those who think these matters completely unimportant. At Breadloaf, Robert Frost used to talk for hours about a minute effect of meter. "But surely you don't think about such things when you write!" allegedly a poetaster exclaimed and Frost apocryphally teased, "About little else." Too many people think that mystery abides only in abstracted ideas, that the package counts for little. Like choristers who sing in showers only, these compose not, and know not those for whom they perform. Interpret, but distrust your interpretations. Features most important often occur but once. This program identifies slots. You must imagine wise ways to fill them. ==== What? The Main Menu STYLED's menu initially gives six choices: Analyze 1 = Word length 2 = Punctuation 3 = Syntax 4 = Nominalization (V)iew a text (E)nd a session Choice: Any of the first five choices will return to the menu. Use the E key to exit to the MS-DOS prompt in an orderly way. The V option lets you view the text. You do not have to leave the program to return to your word-processor. The program shows the text to you one screen at a time. Hit ESC to exit, any other key to continue whenever the program pauses. The program numbers each screen when you view the text. ------ At this point, I recommend that you stop. If you have not done so, run STYLED. Investigate one of the samples or test a text file of your own. Return to this document only if you want to reflect more about how to interpret the analysis. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The Four Reports 1. The Skin of the Text--Word Length This report replaces each word with a bar the length of the word, and it preserves the terminal punctuation. It prints in dark-on-light only words with 10 or more characters. It adds a sentence number, totals the words in each sentence, and summarizes: Total word count: Words 10+ chars.: ( %) Aver. wds/per/sent: Then it lists all of the long words with a sentence number. 2. The Pulse of the Text--Punctuation All punctuation blinks. One diamond character represents each word. Afterwards, the program tallies the punctuation and computes the average interval. 3. The Skeleton of the Text--Syntax Possible coordinators, subordinators, and transitionals appear in high intensity. If not already reported, first and last words of sentences, as well as words before and after internal punctuation, appear in low intensity. A dull bar replaces each other word. The program tallies the possible coordinators, subordinators, and transitionals; and it lists them, each with its sentence number. 4. Symptoms of Cholesterol--Nominalization Forms of the verb TO BE appear in dark-on-light letters. Many words that may hide action appear in high intensity. All other words appear in low intensity. Afterwards, the program tallies forms of TO BE and the words that may hide action and lists them on screen with sentence number. How to Use This Information Your own goals should dictate how use any statistics. Any patterns should integrate with content. What do you want to emphasize? What do you want to intensify. What junctures do you want to stress as such?.... What does your audience expect? If you write to explain a process, you would not want sentences as long as you might allow if you expound a complex philosophical principle. If you want to chart norms, you might use the program to analyze sample portions of several published texts which share your goals and your audience. Even then, you may want to improve on the model if you can write more clearly and forcefully. In time you will discover your own norms for various types of discourse. If the graphs show patterns that correspond in no way to what you intend, return to your word-processor only after you put a new Duracel in your inner ear. If all sentences look alike, can you rearrange them to serve a design, possibly one latent, not yet composed? If you detect monotony, you may want to reorganize, or you may choose to exploit the monotony, later to reverse dramatically. Interpret carefully. Generalize reluctantly. Reverse a common practice if to reverse enhances the manuscript. Norms should not imprison, but should liberate. Attend them consciously, and cautiously. Numbers effect no magic. A person who writes primarily to achieve numerical patterns resembles someone who arranges books by color. The person who writes secondarily to accommodate numerical patterns resembles those who arrange books in part by size. Word-Length I like to require my "long words" to serve major rather than minor verbal intentions. When I see them abstracted, I do not welcome any long words for which I recall no special purpose. A company will not long survive if its administrators contribute to the company's net worth only by driving limousines. Shakespeare himself reserved words like INCARNADINE for matters hunky-dory. I try to identify clusters of long or short bars. If many short words cluster, do I dictate? Do I oversimplify? If many long words cluster, do they cloud? What verbs can I use to unpack action buried in nouns? What Latinate words can I replace with clearer, shorter ones? Another popular style-checker, Grammatik (Aspen Software Co.) calls sentences under 14 words "short," sentences over 30 words "long." Some sociologists call all adults from 21-35 "young", from 36-50 "middle-aged", and from 50-65 "old". Since they give me only 7 more months of middle age, I dislike their arbitrary trifurcation of the work years, but I know what both groups analyze. Distrust categories; but respect them. Punctuation Punctuation often reveals whether I have emphasized what I wanted to emphasize. For example, Sometimes I begin moderately and intensify later. At other times I begin dramatically (as with a short sentence, a long one, or a highly modified one) and then moderate, as with a stretch of sentences less varied. Sometimes I risk monotony and then surprise. Contexts influence the effects of patterns in prose just as much as in music. A series of short sentences from Hemingway will not necessarily function the way the same pattern does in a pamphlet to accompany aspirin. STYLED can help me spot places in my early drafts where I have deafened. Use the program to report St. Paul's punctuation in STPAUL.TXT. Many people consider this passage one of the most beautiful in all of English literature: perhaps only the style compels them? The substance cynically indicts everyone, especially in the original Greek text. See my later account of how I used the punctuation report to identify what to preserve when I revised STUDNESE.TXT. Use this stethoscope on any "set piece"--by Adrienne Rich, Lincoln, Sojourner Truth, Jefferson, Chinua Achebe, Maxine Hong Kingston..... Syntax Sometimes the graphs suggest that a paper does not cohere, especially when sentence after sentence appears with the first and last word, the rest in bars. Sometimes the graphs account for several parts of the cohesion, as when the program analyzes STPAUL.TXT. For those of us who write neither like saints nor dullards, STYLED suggests specific places to improve. For example, if I never subordinate by pattern, I might try to do so once I identify the part of the paper that I think most important to emphasize. Beware: the computer does not know what constitutes a subordinator, a transitional, or a coordinator. The word THAT, for example, can function in a variety of these ways, or just as demonstrative pronoun. The old saw That that that that that boy used is wrong is obvious. won't confound this program. [We need no program to call this sentence terrible!] STYLED reports all THATs as POTENTIAL subordinators. Specifically the program reproduces any word which matches one of these 56: ACCORDINGLY, AFTER, ALSO, ALTHOUGH, AND, AS, BECAUSE, BEFORE, BESIDES, BOTH, BUT, CONSEQUENTLY, EITHER, ETC., FIFTH, FIRST, FOURTH, FURTHERMORE, HENCE, HOW, HOWEVER, IF, INDEED, INSTEAD, MEANWHILE, MOREOVER, NEITHER, NEVERTHELESS, NOR, OR, OTHERWISE, PROVIDED, SECOND, SIMILARLY, SINCE, SO, STILL, THAT, THEN, THEREFORE, THIRD, THIS, THOUGH, THUS, UNLESS, UNTIL, WHAT, WHEN, WHENEVER, WHERE, WHEREAS, WHETHER, WHICH, WHILE, WHO, WHOM The Cholesterol Report Forms of TO BE The program finds AM, ARE, AREN'T, BE, BEEN, BEING, IS, ISN'T, WAS, WASN'T, WERE, or WEREN'T--regardless of case. These forms almost always force a writer to bury action in less forceful words, usually in nouns. These forms locate all passives (except the lone past participle) and all expletives. What's at stake: When you fetch your transcripts, only the novice tells you: "I have lost your records." The experienced tells you, "Your records have been lost." (Passive: agent dropped.) Those ready for Washington say, "There has been a loss of your records"--with no hint of an agent who responds. In documents which I edit most thoroughly, I try to restrict TO BE to situations in which I name or identify--or to those sentences where all other alternatives sound silly. Nominalization When a noun contains an action, we call it a nominalization. (NOMINALIZATION itself contains the action "make [-ize] a nominal.") We can state the action as a verb, often, but not always, with some the of the morphemes the noun uses. Should we? All of us use nominalizations. I welcome them when: They re-name old information Kwong ACTED well in GODOT..... Other ACTors in Hong Kong RESPECT his talent, though he does not aspire to RESPECTability. They so commonly occur that alternatives strain, obscure, or otherwise seem silly and tedious. "The administration....." instead of "Those who administer" "Writer" instead of "One who writes" Nevertheless, I test as many nominalizations as time allows, to seek better alternatives. Like hidden poison, nominalizations blight the integrity of much that parades as serious discourse in our times. If you need evidence, review the work of the Committee on Doublespeak at the National Council of Teachers of English. Bureaucrats and others who write for captive audiences like to use nominalization abundantly. Review ADMINESE.TXT. The writer administers a department. He knew that his captives would read him closely. Presumably he wanted to impress them. He does not impress me. Read my revision in REVADMIN.TXT. Which do you prefer? The program does not actually identify nominalization, but identifies words that MAY evidence it. Several English morphemes often turn verbs into nouns. For example, the morpheme OR nominalizes hundreds of verb-- actor [act+], inventor [invent+], administrator, [administer+...] But OR does not always nominalize. Witness FOR, thereFOR.... These words bury no action, yet the program highlights them. The program is stupid: you should not be. Stay awake. Don't expect the program to find all buried action, or always to highlight words that hide it. The more a writer reduces nominalization, the more the program will seem inaccurate. That same principle affects many computer checks. The better I spell, the more a spelling program will match only with words which I have really spelled correctly. Even after the program catches a nominalization, the user must choose whether to keep it: Kwong was a good actor in several of our plays. or Kwong acted well in several of our plays. Which do you prefer? I hope that those who write references for me will use the second, more forceful form. Arcana: Version 1.0 of the program highlights any word which contains one of the following strings: ING, ENT, ANT, NESS, ION, ISM, IST, IVE. The program highlights any word that contains ER, OR, HOOD, TY, AL, NCY, NCE, NCIES, BLE, IAN only when these strings occur at the end. If you find some of these matches annoy you more than others, or if you discover strings not included here which would help you edit more effectively, write me. If I incorporate those changes in later versions, I will acknowledge you and send you a free copy. Please share any other reactions. I personally don't mind the odd mismatch. STYLED saves me an enormous amount of time in that it finds a major portion the nominalizations which I want to review. Text Formats and Conventions The program assumes in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). If you (V)iew your file first and it appears as you expected to, then you have a text in ASCII and can go on to my next paragraph. If, however, your text adds strange graphics, then your text does not conform to ASCII. Various programs to strip these characters exist, in the public domain. I like to use Gene Plantz' UNWS.EXE or another called CLEAN.COM. Check with your local computer group to find a free copy of these, and send a contribution to the creator of the one you use. WordStar, for example, uses the non-ASCII characters. UNWS means un- WordStar. WordStar can create ASCII texts if you use the "N" (Non- document) option from its main menu. For easy reference, STYLED reports sentences by number, consecutively, from the beginning to the end of the document. It ignores any line that begins with a period, since many programs format REMARKS thus. It recognizes all initials as such, plus a few abbreviations--Ms., Mrs., Dr., Prof., Mr.--so long as the period follows with no space between. The program will count the quotation marks (either " or `) at the left of words to compute the number of your quotes, the <,(, or [ to determine the number of parenthetical remarks. It does not detect whether you close these or whether you use them for any other purposes (such as for mathematics). The program will treat as an ellisis any string of uninterrupted periods. If you put spaces between them, you will slightly distort the punctuation report. The program recognizes spaces as the boundaries of words and tests the left of each word for no more than one punctuation mark, the right of each for no more than 2 punctuation marks. The program will treat any additional punctuation as part of the word: if it ever thus treats a quotation mark as part of the word, your report of nominalization will abort because the quotation mark distorts the format of the temporary CHOLES.$$$. If this happens, TYPE CHOLES.$$$ from MS-DOS to see it. Then return to STYLED. The program recognizes -- as a dash, - as a hyphen. It treats words on either side of the dash as separate, on either side of a hyphen as one. The program cannot recognize whether a sentence continues after a quotation that includes terminals. It will treat as two sentences an item such as: "John, did you leave?" Mary asked. or When I asked "Could you come?" I was not sure you understood. Reserved File Names The program stores data in temporary files to summarize after each option, and then erases those files. Do not name any of your own files with the name of these temporary files: LONGWORD.$$$, TRANSIT.$$$, TOBE.$$$, CHOLES.$$$. The program will erase any such file on the same disk. Temporary files could grow quite long if you review a long text. Be sure to reserve enough space on your disk. A Tip about the Directory Option When the program prompts you for the file to view or analyze, it allows you to see request the directory first. If you enter just the slash plus a carriage return, you will see the full directory of the logged drive. You may specify another drive. You may also specify the MS-DOS "wild cards" --asterisks and question question marks--to limit the clutter. How to Print the Reports If you have a dot matrix printer that supports MS-DOS graphics, use PrtSc to print any screen on your printer. For easy editing, I suggest that you use PrtSc to print the lists which the program provides. Refer to those lists as you return to edit your text with your word-processor. (With a ram-resident utility, I "import" them into a temporary file, which I later window from my word-processor.) If you print an entire session, MS-DOS provides and easy way. Save the session to a text file and print that text file after the session. To save the session as a file, from the MS-DOS prompt type: STYLED >filetosave Replace "filetosave" with the name of the file in which to reserve the session. (Upper/lower case does not matter, but you must use the blank space and the greater-than sign exactly as shown.) If you trap the session in this way, you will slow the program slightly, and you must have enough disk space to accommodate the new file. Some word-processors allow you to see the graphics in the new file; others, such as WordStar, will not. You can view the reports if at the MS-DOS prompt you enter TYPE sessionsaved If you hit Ctrl-P before you enter this command, you will print the entire session on your printer. The versions saved in this way will not preserve the distinction between high and low intensity. Other Freeware I have other freeware, each for MS-DOS only: CANTONES A program to help you learn to speak Cantonese. Reviewed in the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers' Association, May, 1986. An earlier version, "MailMerge Cantonese," won best-article-of-1985 by the Hong Kong Computer Society. MUSES A program to help writers circulate their manuscripts and prepare bibliographies of their publications. See review in CODA, Summer 1986. Expected by September 1986 APPLY A program to manage applications for grants, jobs, etc. A A program to manage addresses. It groups people in up to six categories. F A program to sort income and expenses by up to 40 categories, which you designate. WORDSSS A program to build specialized word lists, especially those you encounter as you read. Louie Crew Director of the Writing Program Chinese University Shatin, N.T. Hong Kong 0-6066134 TELEX 50301 CUHK HK CABLE SINOVERSITY Appendix: STYLED Practice The program tests what we intuit about texts. For example, the program can chart a writer's "leanness" or "periodicity" with specific, visible evidence. The program helps writers test drafts. If we want a lean style, or a periodic one, the program charts how each new draft nears our goal. The program cannot provide a style; but it can measure several dimensions of a style. We must know our own goals before we can use the program effectively. I personally value force and directness. I like to unpack nouns whenever they hide action which I can put into a verb. I eschew passives and most other forms of TO BE.... Joseph Williams' STYLE (Scott, Foresman, and Company) and Richard Lanham's REVISING PROSE (Scribner's) both preach the style I aspire to practice. I recommend them highly. Both demystify revision. Both help me winnow. A Sample Session With a Student's Paper I asked my second-year students to write about a book which they had hated. One student concluded: As far as science fiction is concerned, the story is not the least interesting. I can hardly read anything really interesting and mysterious: no fancy about the wonderful world on planets, no extremely mysterious, haunted rumors about the bronze statue, no need to puzzele, no way of amusement. Since the author only reports the plot, the story is quite boring. And I was dissatisfied after reading it. [This paragraph appears as STUDNESE.TXT on the disk.] Notice how she gropes. INTERESTING appears twice, as does MYSTERIOUS. But her text builds. Use STYLED to look at the punctuation, especially in sentence number 2, where she repeats more meaningfully. The final two sentences jab. STYLED charts this pulse. I argue that the student can make a strong paragraph here but needs skill to recognize what to keep, what to excise. If she merely cuts the repetition, she could turn turn her pulsating indictment into a cadaver. With the "cholesterol" report, I found 4 forms I wanted to cleanse. Instead of the two forms of TO BE, compare The science fiction here does not engage. I tried to preserve the pulse of the second sentence, as a weighty indictment, but to repeat less, and to put the more vivid action into verbs: No fancy detail, no mystery, no wonder: no rumor haunts planets; the bronze statue neither puzzles nor amuses. In my version, verbs reinforce the jabs at the end. The author only plots. The book bores me. (The punctuation report of her text shows the jabs, but the report of her word-length marks them less clearly than does the report of my word length.) Some readers may prefer the less forceful original. Perhaps I have even changed her meaning, especially with "author only plots." I argue that I have discovered more meaning than she had yet freighted, as I often discover my more precise meaning when I revise my own texts. These exercises cannot prove one's taste better than another's. The exercises suggest what's at stake in our choices. Some may prefer to write like the student here, or like the administrator below. Which versions would you prefer to read? Which will you more likely remember? A Sample Session With a Colleague's Report I often use STYLED to identify specific cholesterol to rinse from the circulatory system of academese. Option 4 of the program reveals many places where my colleague buried the action in nouns or used forms of TO BE: Implicit in what has been suggested above is the fact that the Department needs significantly to increase its expectations and its requirements. Both sections of the Graduate Division now have completed the pioneering phase of their programs. The programs are well established. A satisfactory international recognition for the programs has been achieved. The time now has come to build upon the initial successes of the Department's postgraduate program. During the forthcoming triennium, postgraduate coursework within the Department must be made more complex. Students must be required to operate at more sophisticated--at genuinely international--levels of commitment and skill. Compare my version: I have implied that the Department needs to expect more, to require more. We have pioneered long enough. Now we must sophisticate our graduate students. During the new triennium, our students must demonstrate more skill. They must commit themselves to more complex materials. The faculty must serve international, not parochial standards. When I showed the two versions to a graduate student, he exclaimed, "So much clearer! The second doesn't sound like a report." It does not have to. It IS [sic] one. Yes, I revolt. If you have read this far, maybe you will join me. Just how many more hours will unclear prose abuse? First we must re-write our own.