Writing problems common among many college students are "phrasal" errors such as limited vocabulary, inability to distinguish standard usage from slang or jargon, a tendency to frame thoughts in cliches, a peppering of meaningless intensifiers, and a gift for redundancy and wordiness. To help correct these problems, a text-checking system called EDITOR, which uses microcomputers as word processors and commercially available text-checking software, was developed. Offering students critical feedback at precisely their level of writing, the process includes approximately eight steps for the correcting of spelling and typographical errors, obtaining a concordance, printing a new draft and checking it for phrasal and some mechanical errors, and takes about 20 minutes in all for a five-page paper. With a printout of the errors or potential errors in hand, the student corrects the draft copy and enters the corrections into the word processor. Based on discussions by students, it is evident that such a system teaches them not just the particular errors, but the categories of errors, so that students are able to start looking for wordiness, redundancy, meaningless usage, and so forth on their own before electronic editing. Many text-checking systems are currently available. However, since they are written primarily by commercial programers, their manuals and phrase dictionaries contain many lapses in literacy. Nevertheless, some of these drawbacks can be remedied, with the result being a program such as EDITOR. (HOD)