diction(1)

1DICTION(1)                       User commands                      DICTION(1)
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NAME

6       diction - print wordy and commonly misused phrases in sentences
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SYNOPSIS

9       diction [-b] [-d] [-f file [-n|-L language]] [file...]
10       diction [--beginner] [--ignore-double-words] [--file file [--no-de‐
11       fault-file|--language language]] [file...]
12       diction -h|--help
13       diction --version
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DESCRIPTION

16       Diction finds all sentences in a document that contain phrases  from  a
17       database  of  frequently  misused,  bad  or  wordy diction.  It further
18       checks for double words.  If no files are given, the document  is  read
19       from  standard input.  Each found phrase is enclosed in [ ] (brackets).
20       Suggestions and advice, if any and if asked for, are printed headed  by
21       a  right arrow ->.  A sentence is a sequence of words, that starts with
22       a capitalised word and ends with a full stop,  double  colon,  question
23       mark  or  exclaimation mark.  A single letter followed by a dot is con‐
24       sidered an abbreviation, so it does not terminate a sentence.   Various
25       multi-letter abbreviations are recognized, they do not terminate a sen‐
26       tence as well, neither do fractional numbers.
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28       Diction understands cpp(1) #line lines for being able to  give  precise
29       locations when printing sentences.
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OPTIONS

32       -b, --beginner
33              Complain about mistakes typically made by beginners.
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35       -d, --ignore-double-words
36              Ignore double words and do not complain about them.
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38       -s, --suggest
39              Suggest better wording, if any.
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41       -f file, --file file
42              Read  the user specified database from the specified file in ad‐
43              dition to the default database.
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45       -n, --no-default-file
46              Do not read the default database,  so  only  the  user-specified
47              database is used.
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49       -L language, --language language
50              Set the phrase file language (de, en, nl).
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52       -h, --help
53              Print a short usage message.
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55       --version
56              Print the version.
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ERRORS

59       On  usage  errors, 1 is returned.  Termination caused by lack of memory
60       is signalled by exit code 2.
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EXAMPLE

63       The following example first removes all  roff  constructs  and  headers
64       from a document and feeds the result to diction with a German database:
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66              deroff -s file.mm | diction -L de | fmt
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ENVIRONMENT

69       LC_MESSAGES=de|en|nl
70              specifies  the  message language and is also used as default for
71              the phrase language.  The default language is en.
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FILES

74       /usr/share/diction/*     databases for various languages
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76       The file consists of lines, one per entry.  Each line is divided by one
77       or  two tabs into two parts: Left is the text to match and right is the
78       suggestion.  The text to match either starts with a space  to  match  a
79       full  word or with letters to match suffixes.  If it ends with a tilde,
80       it matches a prefix.
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82       The suggestion may be empty to mark fill words, contain an explaination
83       or  start with an equal sign followed by text to match for referring to
84       the explaination of that text.  The right part can consist of an excla‐
85       mation mark to mark exceptions that should not be matched.
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87       If  both parts are separated by two tabs, then this entry concerns mis‐
88       takes typically made by beginners.
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90       Empty lines or lines starting with a hash are ignored.
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AUTHOR

93       This program  is  GNU  software,  copyright  1997–2017  Michael  Haardt
94       <michael@moria.de>.
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96       The  english  phrase file contains contributions by Wil Baden, Kimberly
97       Hanks Gary D. Kline, Greg Lindahl <lindahl@pbm.com>,  Beth  Morris  and
98       Jeremy C. Reed.  The dutch phrase file was contributed by Hans Lodder.
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100       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
101       under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published  by  the
102       Free  Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your
103       option) any later version.
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105       This program is distributed in the hope that it  will  be  useful,  but
106       WITHOUT  ANY  WARRANTY;  without  even  the  implied  warranty  of MER‐
107       CHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU  General
108       Public License for more details.
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110       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
111       with this program.  If not, write  to  the  Free  Software  Foundation,
112       Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
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HISTORY

115       There has been a diction command on old UNIX systems, which is now part
116       of the AT&T DWB package.  The original version was bound to roff by en‐
117       forcing  a call to deroff.  This version is a reimplementation and must
118       run in a pipe with deroff(1) if you want  to  process  roff  documents.
119       Similarly,  you  can  run  it  in  a pipe with dehtml(1) or detex(1) to
120       process HTML or TeX documents.
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