NAME

diction, explain − print wordy sentences; thesaurus for diction

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 non-sentences.  The user may supply her/his own pattern file to be used in addition to the default file with −f pfile.  If the flag −n is also supplied the default file will be suppressed. 

Explain is an interactive thesaurus for the phrases found by diction. 

SEE ALSO

deroff(1)

BUGS

Use of non-standard formatting macros may cause incorrect sentence breaks.  In particular, diction doesn’t grok −me. 

7th Edition  —  May 10, 1986