Features - PerfectIt for Word (Windows)

PerfectIt’s checks fall into nine categories. A brief description of each check is provided below.

Click on the check name for a more detailed description of that check.

• Hyphenation of Phrases: looks for hyphenated phrases that also appear without hyphens, e.g. ‘short-term’ and ‘short term’.

• Hyphenation of Words: looks for hyphenated words that also appear without hyphens, e.g. ‘co-operative’ and ‘cooperative’.

• En Dash or Hyphen: looks for phrases with en dashes that also appear with hyphens, e.g. ‘cost–benefit’ and ‘cost-benefit’.

• En Dash or Space: looks for phrases with en dashes that also appear with a space, e.g. ‘East–West’ and ‘East West’.

• Compound Words: looks for phrases of a similar type that appear both with and without hyphens, e.g. ‘sixty-six’ and ‘thirty four’.

• Similar Words: checks for words and phrases similar to user-specified terms. This check does not require a search term.

• Wildcard Find and Replace: checks for user-specified words/phrases that include wildcards.

• Preferred Spelling: checks for user-specified words and phrases without wildcards.

• Spelling Variations: looks for any words spelled in more than one way, e.g. ‘colour’ and ‘color’.

• Accents: checks for words that appear in two forms that are identical except for the use of non-English characters.

• Numbers in Sentences: checks whether numbers are used in the middle of sentences consistently, e.g. ‘the 3 wise men’ and ‘the three wise men’.

• Common Typos: checks a short list of potentially embarrassing mistakes that are not picked up by spellcheckers.

• Phrases to Avoid/Consider: checks for user-specified words and phrases that need to be considered carefully.

• Contractions: checks whether contractions such as ‘wouldn’t’ appear in the text.

• Abbreviations in Two Forms: checks if an abbreviation appears in more than one way, e.g. ‘NASA’ and ‘Nasa’.

• Abbreviations Defined Two Ways: checks if one abbreviation has been used with two meanings, e.g. ‘ITT (International Trade Team)’ and ‘ITT (Invitation to Tender)’.

• Abbreviations Used Before Definition: checks if an abbreviation that is defined appears in the document at a point before the definition, e.g. ‘CBD’ appears before ‘CBD (Central Business District)’.

• Abbreviations Defined Twice: checks if an abbreviation appears with its definition twice in the same document, e.g. ‘TfL (Transport for London)’ appears two times.

• Abbreviations Without Definitions: lists all abbreviations that are not defined and provides an opportunity to add a definition, e.g. if ‘USSR’ is not defined, this can be changed to ‘USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)’ where it is first used.

• Abbreviations Not Used: checks if an abbreviation that is defined is then spelled out in full, e.g. ‘HP (Hewlett Packard)’ is defined, but then ‘Hewlett Packard’ is used later in the text instead of ‘HP’.

• Abbreviations Used Only Once: checks if an abbreviation appears only in the location where it is defined and the term is not used anywhere else in the text.

• Capitalization of Phrases: checks if a phrase that is capitalized also appears in lowercase, e.g. ‘President’ and ‘president’.

• Capitalization of Headings: checks whether headings at the same level use consistent capitalization, e.g. ‘Introduction to the text’ and ‘Conclusion To The Document’.

• Bullet Punctuation: checks whether items in a bulleted list end with consistent punctuation, e.g. semi-colons or full stops.

• List Punctuation: checks whether items in a numbered list end with consistent punctuation, e.g. semi-colons or no punctuation.

• Bullet Capitalization: checks whether items in a bulleted list start with consistent capitalization, e.g. the first word either in lowercase or in uppercase.

• List Capitalization: checks whether items in a numbered list start with consistent capitalization, e.g. the first word either in lowercase or in uppercase.

• Punctuation in Tables: checks that the punctuation within tables is consistent, e.g. some column headings end with a full stop but others do not.

• Capitalization of Table Headings: checks that headings in tables use consistent capitalization, e.g. ‘Results found’ and ‘Data Entered’.

• Consistency of Table/Box/Figure Titles: checks whether tables, boxes and figures that have titles are labelled in a consistent way, e.g. one figure may have the title ‘Figure 2’, but another may have the title ‘Diagram 3’.

• Table/Box/Figure Order: checks that the numbering on tables, boxes and figures is sequential, e.g. ‘Table 1’ comes before ‘Table 2’.

• Missing Table/Box/Figure Titles: checks whether some tables, boxes and figures have titles and others do not.

• Comments Left in the Text: checks for highlighting and phrases that may indicate additional changes are needed, such as ‘add — here’.

• Finalization tasks and Reports: let users do a variety of other document checks, including removing extra spaces, automatically generating a Table of Abbreviations and generating a list of the changes made during PerfectIt’s checking.