Language

Merops contains over 740 customizable rules relating to spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, grammar, abbreviations, and the use of non-English loanwords.

The information below describes just a small percentage of the rules Merops can apply to language editing.

Most language corrections or preferences are suppressed in parts of the document that should be preserved, such as book titles, addresses, and quotes.

Spelling

Merops can automatically correct spelling errors and alert unknown terms, using a database of over 3 million terms, names, and words, in 7 languages.

General preferences

Merops can automatically standardize (in either direction):

‘z’ and ‘s’ spellings such as ‘idolized’ vs ‘idolised’
US and UK English differences

Specific preferences

Merops allows you to choose individual spelling preferences for over 270 words, e.g. aging or ageing.

Merops can be enhanced using a custom dictionary.

Merops uses general dictionaries for English, Spanish, German, Italian, Latin, Middle English, and Spanish.

Punctuation

Merops can standardize the position of punctuation and spaces, e.g. set the spacing before an ellipsis or replace no-break spaces with normal spaces.

This process is clever enough to ensure that, for example, spaces are added after colons and semicolons, unless they form part of tight technical expressions (e.g. ratios, genetic terms).

Merops can standardize the formatting of punctuation signs. For example, species names should have non-italic parentheses:

(Zoothera naevia) should be (Zoothera naevia)

Merops can standardize characters, such as an en rule in relationship pairs (e.g. doctor–patient relationship). Merops can standardize quotation marks according to publisher style or language convention, and can differentiate quotation marks within quotation marks.

Merops can standardize the use of full stops / periods with abbreviations, e.g.:

H.I.V. ↔ HIV
Tues ↔ Tues.
Blvd. ↔ Blvd

Hyphenation

Merops can automatically standardize to publisher guidelines on hyphenation.

Prefixes

Merops can remove hyphens following standard prefixes (non-, pre-, post-, etc.). Each prefix is individually customizable.

Merops includes exceptions, including:

‘double-letter’ rules (e.g. non-negotiable)
proper noun prefixes (e.g. pre-Roman)

Compound adjectives

Merops can standardize hyphenation of compound adjectives (e.g. ‘a short-term view’, but ‘in the long term’; ‘it took 5 minutes’, but ‘it was a 5-minute conversation’).

Grammar

Capitalization

Merops can correct the capitalization of general text, applying ‘Sentence case’, while capitalizing proper nouns and initialisms.

The way ‘Title Case’ is applied is customizable, with different options for long prepositions, or words after colons.

Corrections

Merops can automatically correct or alert grammatical, errors, including:

misuse of a/an
repeated words
incorrect word choice or word order

Writing style

Merops can apply rules relating to non-preferred writing style, including:

overly verbose language
gender-biased language
colloquialisms
potentially offensive terms
tautology
informal contractions (e.g. don’t)
change underlined text (for emphasis or other known reason) to italic
change informal spelling/pronunciations to formal

Abbreviations

Merops can identify and standardize punctuation of abbreviations and apply rules including:

define abbreviations at first mention
only use abbreviation if used a minimum number of times
generate abbreviation list in the header and/or table footnotes
choose whether or not individual abbreviations (such as DNA) need to be defined
choose where abbreviations may need to be redefined (e.g. once per table)

Non-English

Merops can standardize:

the formatting of loanwords, such as laissez faire, in situ and ad nauseum;
between abbreviations/full terms, such as ad lib and ad libitum;
between abbreviated Latin and English, such e.g. and 'for example';
the punctuation preceding, following, and within terms like e.g. and i.e.