Business letters, brochures, marketing materials, annual reports, company newsletters - such business documents demand smart writing that gets your point across without wasting words. WordDog works with Microsoft Word 97 or 2000 to rid your documents of unclear wording, redundant language and overused phrases. Much of the time, unfortunately, the utility isn't clever enough to tell bad text from good.

When a section was highlighted WordDog gave me a list of alternative choices, such as a new word, shortened version of the same phrase, or the option of deleting it. You can accept one of these alternatives or press the Ignore button and go on to the next chunk of text. An Ignore All button lets you exclude words or phrases you like to use, either in the current document or indefinitely.

This utility shows promise at picking out poorly constructed sentences, but WordDog napped through a few lessons in grammar school (in fairness, WordDog makes no claims to be a grammar checker). Some alternatives are on target, but at least half the time it suggests fixing things that are fine or offers words and phrases that make no sense in the given context. For example, choices for the phrase "No need to play against the computer" were "no need to play compared with the computer" or "no need to play from behind the computer." You can use the "always ignore" feature to block the software from making this suggestion again, but it is not effective enough to improve the program's accuracy.

As a self-editing tool for clarifying personal and business communications, WordDog may have value, and at $24.95 it won't break your budget. In the long run, though, this dog seems to be more bark than bite.