What is MacProof?

MacProof is a desk accessory that scans text for mistakes in mechanics (in- cluding spelling), usage, and style. An easy-to-use checklist lets you pick which types of errors to look for. When it catches a potential problem, MacProof shows the suspect word or phrase in context, along with a short explanation (see “Checking It Out”). You don’t have to leave MacProof to edit the document, but you can revise only one sentence at a time.

The Analyze Structure function is supposed to help you recognize structural weaknesses by letting you look at your writing in different ways. For example, you can highlight the opening and closing sentences of every paragraph or the first words of every sentence. Analysis is minimal, though — it’s up to you to decide if you’re satisfied with what you see.

MacProof only examines selected text, so you can check a single word or an entire chapter. But with some applications (including Microsoft Word) all formatting disappears if you make changes in MacProof. (Of the programs I tried it with, MacProof worked perfectly only with MacWrite. It wasn’t compatible with ReadySetGo 4.0 or a beta version of FullWrite Professional.) Just as annoying is MacProof’s inability to recognize words with curly apostrophes like the one in “can’t.”

Tessler, Franklin (August 1988). Getting It Right. Macworld. (pgs. 145-147).

Download MacProof for Mac

Architecture

Motorola 68K

Compatibility notes

• 1 MB RAM
• Two 800K floppy disk drives
• Hard disk drive recommended

Emulating this? It could probably run under: Mini vMac