diction(1) — Commands
NAME
diction, explain, suggest - Prints wordy sentences and looks them up in an interactive thesaurus.
SYNOPSIS
diction [-fpattern_file] [-k] [-ma] [-me] [-ml] [-ms] [-n] [file ...]
explain
suggest
The diction command finds all sentences in an English language document that contain phrases from a database of bad or wordy diction. The explain command is an interactive thesaurus for the English language phrases found by the diction command and only for those phrases.
The diction command reads from standard in if no file operand is provided.
The suggest command is a synonym for explain.
FLAGS
-fpattern_file
Names a user-created pattern file to be used in addition to the default file.
-kPasses the -k flag to the deroff command. The -k flag keeps blocks of text specified nroff by requests or macros; for example, the .ne request.
-maPasses the -ma flag to deroff. The -ma flag interprets nroff man macros only.
-meOverrides the default nroff -ms macro package.
-mlCauses deroff to skip lists; should be used if a document contains many lists of nonsentences.
-mmOverrides the default nroff -ms macro package.
-nSuppresses use of the default file (used with -f). Only the user-created pattern file is used.
DESCRIPTION
Each phrase found by the diction command is enclosed in [ ] (brackets). Because diction runs deroff before looking at the text, include formatting header files as part of the input.
Before using the explain command, use the diction command to obtain a list of poorly worded phrases. When you use the explain command, the system prompts you for a phrase and responds with a grammatically acceptable alternative. You can continue typing phrases, or you can exit by pressing the End-of-File key sequence.
The explain command can also take input redirected from a file. No other command line arguments are valid.
NOTES
Use of nonstandard formatting macros may cause incorrect sentence breaks. In particular, diction does not understand -me.
FILES
/usr/lbin/dict.dDefault pattern file.
/usr/lbin/explain.dThesaurus used by the explain command.