Bottom line: For the budget conscious or for a second opinion
Review: WordDog rightly emphasises plain language and usually makes good suggestions. But the program is nowhere near as comprehensive as other software, especially StyleWriter and Editor.
We found WordDog easy to use. WordDog, like other software such as StyleWriter, suggests immediate onscreen edits rather than marking your documents with editorial comments (compare, for example, Editor and ClearEdits). WordDog handled our long test document (100 pages) well; it processed the document quickly, though it found only a small percentage of flaws that other software found. WordDog also usefully allows you to turn on Word's "track changes" feature so that you can review your edits later. Our document "jumped" when we started WordDog, but the makers acknowledge the problem and offer an easy-fix: move the WordDog toolbar on to a row occupied by Word's toolbar buttons. Do not put the WordDog toolbar on a row by itself.
While most of the other software we tested returned "false positives" (errors that aren't really errors), WordDog returned several false positives that seemingly could have been quite easily avoided. For example, WordDog highlighted "should of" in "should offer" and suggested we use "should have" instead. We gather that it would not take too much extra coding to tell WordDog to find "should of" only where that phrase precedes a space. Also, WordDog works only on body text; it will not process other parts of a document, such as footnotes.
However, at only $24.95, WordDog is very good value. It is also a cute, fun program and advances the cause of plain English.