diction(1)                                             diction(1)



     NAME
          diction, explain - locate wordy sentences in a document

     SYNOPSIS
          diction [-ml] [-mm] [-n] [-f pfile] file...

          explain

     DESCRIPTION
          diction finds all sentences in a document that contain
          phrases from a data base of bad or wordy diction.  Each
          phrase is bracketed with [].  Because diction runs deroff
          before looking at the text, formatting header files should
          be included as part of the input.  The default macro package
          -ms may be overridden with the flag -mm.  The flag -ml
          (which causes deroff to skip lists) should be used if the
          document contains many lists of nonsentences.  The user may
          supply her/his own pattern file to be used in addition to
          the default file with -f pfile.  A pfile is just a list of
          (wordy) phrases, with one phrase per line.  The default
          pfile is /usr/lib/dict.d.  If the flag -n is also supplied,
          the default pfile will be suppressed.

          explain is an interactive thesaurus for the phrases found by
          diction.  It prompts you with:

             phrase?

          to which you should respond by typing the phrase flagged by
          diction that you need explained.  The explanation tells what
          to use instead of phrase.  To get out of explain, press
          DELETE.

     FILES
          /usr/ucb/diction
          /usr/ucb/explain

     SEE ALSO
          deroff(1), style(1), spell(1).

     BUGS
          Use of nonstandard formatting macros may cause incorrect
          sentence breaks.  In particular, diction does not recognize
          -me.











     April, 1990                                                     1