Sentence Aerobics integrates well with Microsoft Word 2010. Immediately after installing it, I had some trouble finding it in the interface, so I methodically clicked through the tabs until I found it as a button in the Review tab--a sensible spot. When you click the Sentence Aerobics button, a pane opens on the right side of the window. The upper portion of the pane shows the text that the software is currently analyzed, and the lower portion shows recommendations. You can change the font size if you like.

Color plays an important part in Sentence Aerobics: Strong action verbs are circled in green, subjects and verbs are highlighted in pink, prepositional phrases are written in gray, and some have yellow highlighting. This makes it easier to visually parse revisions, but the colors cannot be customized. Being color blind, I had to use to figure out that the pink highlighting was indeed pink and not gray.

Sentence Aerobics bases its recommendations on writing guide called Target Editing, written by VanWrite founder Linda Vanderwold. An abridged 75-page PDF edition of the book, offered as a free extra with Sentence Aerobics, provides language-editing tips and concepts that you can use apart from a dedicated software application.

Sentence Aerobics is based on solid usage advice, and it integrates with Word 2010 better than StyleWriter does. But despite these bright points, the program's spotty language-parsing capabilities prevent it from being a truly useful language-editing tool for natural business writing.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use a Web demo of the software.