Did you know that you can set Microsoft word to check for ‘style’ in your writing? Yeah that’s right, I said style. In the style settings, you can set it to check for the following and much more: Use of And, But, and Hopefully in the opening of a sentence; Cliches, Colloquiaslisms, and Jargon; Sentence length; Unclear Phrasing; and get this – Wordiness. Compare that to Appleworks, which (as far as I know) doesn’t have a freakin’ grammer checker!
Also, you can turn on ‘readablity statistics,’ which tell you the basics (word count, char count), the above average (avg. sentences per paragraph, and avg. words per sentence), and the ridiculously above average, and a bit average (reading ease and grade level). Read – Grade Level. It actually delivers a GPA based on the document. It seems a bit off, though. I have 1 sentence and an incomplete title, and it gave me a 3.7. Yeah, not so much.