About the Reviewer of Software For Writers
Hello and welcome to my Software for writers comparison website. My name is Simon Dye- I am a qualified Chartered Marketer with the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I have continued to qualify as such each year since 1998.
My interest in professional writing standards developed when I was studying for my Master of Business Administration at the Oxford Brookes University in 1994.
During my studies at that time I became aware that professional writing standards of spelling, punctuation and readability are nearly as important as the actual content of the written words.
The development and progression of spellcheckers
Microsoft started to build a spellcheck to go with it’s Word writing program. The first ever version of Microsoft Word – Word 1.0 – was launched in October 1983 and developed by former Xerox programmers, Charles Simonyi and Richard Brodie.
The two were hired by Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, in 1981. At this time, Word was called Multi-Tool Word. It was designed for use on computers that ran the UNIX operating system.
Word was a WYSIWYG (‘what you see is what you get’) program. This meant that however a document looked on screen was how it would look once printed. Word let users create, save and print text documents, but it wasn’t an instant success; perhaps because it was competing with the hugely popular WordPerfect and WordStar word processing programs.
Version 2.0 was released in 1985, with added features including a spellcheck and word counter.
As Word was included in the price of the Microsoft’s Office suite, it’s growth became guaranteed. However MS Word’s Spellcheck has a number of limitations- as my review notes.
Further developments have continued- as have rival companies who are improving the overall functionality of spell and grammar checkers.
In the interests of professionalism and transparency I am completely self funding this website’s development and ongoing running costs. I have however applied to Grammarly to join their affiliate scheme and also to Editor Software- the creators of StyleWriter to their affiliate scheme. I see no point in trying to gain monies from Ginger or PerfectIt as I do not believe that they will provide value for money to you.