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A GLANCE through any software catalogue reveals that most word processors
are designed for the office. These are fine if you want a built-in calculator,
organiser, mail-merge database or spreadsheet, and do not mind the spelling-checker
missing 90 per cent of the chemical elements.

A year ago I discovered Wordbench, which is far more suited to my work
as a technical writer. Developed in America by Franklin Smith and the Bank
Street College of Education, New York, Wordbench encourages a structured
approach to writing projects. As well as the writing, it also caters for
the planning, research, and other background tasks.

Wordbench has four main modules, which you use in turn: Outliner, Notetaker,
Writer and Print Manager. In Outliner, you first sketch out the sections
and subsections. Next you research your topic, using Notetaker to build
up a database of ‘cards’, each with a field defining its place in the outline.
Then you merge the notes and outline into a Writer document to polish before
printing via the Print Manager.

This approach may look frighteningly over-organised. It is, however,
very suitable for manuals, research papers and other technical works whose
structure is well-defined. The process is also more flexible than it sounds.

The word processor, Writer, has a range of specialist tools beyond the
usual word-count, thesaurus and spell-checker. There’s a matching-words
utility to check your work against a library of cliched, wordy, misused
or sexist phrases. The Viewer lets you browse and copy from other documents;
and ALT-I calls in a menu of special characters. This may not be as comprehensive
as scientific processors like Chi-Writer, but provides European accents,
lower-case Greek and basic mathematical symbols sufficient for most purposes.

For academic work, the Reference Tool allows you to create a separate
list of sources, for citing in the text, as footnotes or as a bibliography.
Its help facility, Reference Assistant, lists the Modern Language Association’s
guidelines for citing reference material from 80 types of source – everything
from academic dissertations to cartoons.

Modules called Brainstorm and Folder Manager complete the line-up. Brainstorm
(no relation to David Tebbutt’s well-known ideas processor) is a set of
novelty routines claimed to beat writer’s block. The Folder Manager handles
file housekeeping, macro definitions (‘short-cuts’), and customising.

I found the Folder Manager the only difficult area of Wordbench. For
the beginner, it has a large and confusing range of set-up options, though
few need altering in practice. Otherwise I encountered few problems beyond
the usual minor chore of updating the American spellings in the dictionary.

Incidentally, several people have mentioned to me a persistent rumour
that Wordbench will not export files in the ASCII format digestible by other
word processors. The mistake is understandable, as this important function
is extremely well-hidden. The final print option does allow ASCII output,
so there is no barrier to passing Wordbench work to a desk-top publishing
package for more sophisticated printing.

Wordbench is available from Addison-Wesley. Tel: 0734 794000. Pounds
sterling 140 + VAT for the IBM version.