.TH DICTION 1 "@UPDATED@" "GNU" "User commands"
.SH NAME \"{{{roff}}}\"{{{
diction \- print wordy and commonly misused phrases in sentences
.\"}}}
.SH SYNOPSIS \"{{{
.ad l
.B diction
.RB [ \-b ]
.RB [ \-d ]
.RB [ \-f
.IR file
.RB [ \-n | \-L
.IR language ]]
.RI [ file ...]
.ad b
.br
.ad l
.B diction
.RB [ \-\-beginner ]
.RB [ \-\-ignore-double-words ]
.RB [ \-\-file
.IR file
.RB [ \-\-no-default-file | \-\-language
.IR language ]]
.RI [ file ...]
.ad b
.br
.ad l
.B diction
.BR \-h | \-\-help
.ad b
.br
.ad l
.B diction \-\-version
.ad b
.\"}}}
.SH DESCRIPTION \"{{{
\fBDiction\fP finds all sentences in a document that contain phrases
from a database of frequently misused, bad or wordy diction.  It further
checks for double words.  If no files are given, the document is read from
standard input.  Each found phrase is enclosed in \fB[ ]\fP (brackets).
Suggestions and advice, if any and if asked for, are printed headed
by a right arrow \fB->\fP.  A sentence is a sequence of words, that
starts with a capitalised word and ends with a full stop, double colon,
question mark or exclaimation mark.  A single letter followed by a dot
is considered an abbreviation, so it does not terminate a sentence.
Various multi-letter abbreviations are recognized, they do not terminate
a sentence as well, neither do fractional numbers.
.PP
\fBDiction\fP understands \fIcpp\fP(1) \fB#line\fP lines for being able to
give precise locations when printing sentences.
.\"}}}
.SH OPTIONS \"{{{
.IP "\fB\-b\fP, \fB\-\-beginner\fP"
Complain about mistakes typically made by beginners.
.IP "\fB\-d\fP, \fB\-\-ignore-double-words\fP"
Ignore double words and do not complain about them.
.IP "\fB\-s\fP, \fB\-\-suggest\fP"
Suggest better wording, if any.
.IP "\fB\-f\fP \fIfile\fP, \fB\-\-file\fP \fIfile\fP"
Read the user specified database from the specified \fIfile\fP in addition
to the default database.
.IP "\fB\-n\fP, \fB\-\-no-default-file\fP"
Do not read the default database, so only the user-specified database is used.
.IP "\fB\-L\fP \fIlanguage\fP, \fB\-\-language\fP \fIlanguage\fP"
Set the phrase file language (\fPde\fP, \fBen\fP, \fBnl\fP).
.IP "\fB\-h\fP, \fB\-\-help\fP"
Print a short usage message.
.IP \fB\-\-version\fP
Print the version.
.\"}}}
.SH ERRORS \"{{{
On usage errors, 1 is returned.  Termination caused by lack of memory is
signalled by exit code 2.
.\"}}}
.SH EXAMPLE \"{{{
The following example first removes all roff constructs and headers
from a document and feeds the result to diction with a German database:
.RS
.sp
deroff -s file.mm | diction -L de | fmt
.RE
.\"}}}
.SH ENVIRONMENT \"{{{
.IP "\fBLC_MESSAGES\fP=\fBde\fP\^|\^\fBen\fP\^|\^\fBnl\fP"
specifies the message language and is also used as default for the
phrase language.  The default language is \fBen\fP.
.\"}}}
.SH FILES \"{{{
.nf
@DATADIR@/diction/*	databases for various languages
.fi
.PP
The file consists of lines, one per entry.  Each line is divided by one
or two tabs into two parts: Left is the text to match and right is the suggestion.
The text to match either starts with a space to match a full word or with
letters to match suffixes.  If it ends with a tilde, it matches a prefix.
.PP
The suggestion may be empty to mark fill words,
contain an explanation or start with an equal sign followed by text to
match for referring to the explanation of that text.  The right part can
consist of an exclamation mark to mark exceptions that should not be
matched.
.PP
If both parts are separated by two tabs, then this entry concerns
mistakes typically made by beginners.
.PP
Empty lines or lines starting with a hash are ignored.
.\"}}}
.SH AUTHOR \"{{{
This program is GNU software, copyright 1997\(en2017 Michael Haardt <michael@moria.de>.
.PP
The English phrase file contains contributions by
Wil Baden,
Kimberly Hanks
Gary D. Kline,
Greg Lindahl <lindahl@pbm.com>,
Beth Morris
and
Jeremy C. Reed.
The Dutch phrase file was contributed by Hans Lodder.
.PP
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
.PP
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
.PP
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program.  If not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
.\"}}}
.SH HISTORY \"{{{
There has been a diction command on old UNIX systems, which is now part
of the AT&T DWB package.  The original version was bound to roff by
enforcing a call to deroff.
This version is a reimplementation
and must run in a pipe with \fBderoff\fP(1) if you want to process
roff documents.  Similarly, you can run it in a pipe with \fBdehtml\fP(1)
or \fBdetex\fP(1) to process HTML or TeX documents.
.\"}}}
.SH "SEE ALSO" \"{{{
deroff(1), fmt(1), style(1)
.PP
Cherry, L.L.; Vesterman, W.: \fIWriting Tools\(emThe STYLE and DICTION
programs\fP, Computer Science Technical Report 91, Bell Laboratories,
Murray Hill, N.J. (1981), republished as part of the 4.4BSD User's
Supplementary Documents by O'Reilly.
.PP
Strunk, William: \fIThe elements of style\fP, Ithaca, N.Y.: Priv. print., 1918,
http://coba.shsu.edu/help/strunk/
.PP
There is a huge and actively maintained Standard American English database 
at: https://mrsatterly.com/diction.html
.\"}}}