In the mid-90's, Gary McGuire had taught English for about 16 years. Like many teachers, Gary had a number of part-time summer jobs to supplement his income for his growing family. One of the skills he learned in those part-time jobs was how to write software, and his goal was to write record-keeping software to help him in the classroom.

At about the same time, Gary's wife, Jennifer, returned to school to become a nurse and later a family nurse practitioner. It was a scary time for her because of the challenges and demands of the courses. Gary saw how difficult it was for her to manage family and school. She was pulled many directions and it was tough, but she was successful.

Gary decided to give nursing a try himself and entered a nursing program. Even though he already had a master's degree it didn't prepare him for writing using APA style. Formatting his papers in APA style drove him just a little crazy, so he used some of that summer job training to write a computer program to help him create references and citations in APA style. He wanted a program that allowed him to concentrate on the content of his papers, not the formatting.

After Gary earned his degree, he and Jennifer practiced as family nurse practitioners. A couple of Gary's nursing instructors told him that he should put his APA formatting tool on the Internet to help other folks. He didn't think the program would sell very well, but he tried it anyway.

He needed to come up with a name for the product, but everything he thought of sounded a little cheesy. Then he remembered acronym used in healthcare - PERRLA, which stands for Pupils are Equal, Round, and Reactive to Light and Accommodation. It's a good thing. It means that the brain and eyes are communicating the way they should. It means "normal." Considering how crazy school can be for many folks, it had a restful and calming feel. PERRLA - normal. Something every student wants. In 1998, version 1.0 of PERRLA for APA was released.

Gary also understood from personal experience that money is a serious consideration for students, so he decided that the software would be inexpensive, always stay current with APA format, and that customers would never have to pay to get the latest version. There are still customers who purchased in the early days and regularly update to the newest release of PERRLA -- without any extra cost.

Gary isn't working on PERRLA all by himself any more. He has wonderful partners keeping the software up to date and helping customers. We're now on version 6.0 of PERRLA for APA and we'll soon be launching PERRLA for MLA.

PERRLA has customers:

• Living in all 50 states in the United States, every province in Canada, and more than 30 other countries;
• Majoring in a variety of subjects including nursing, business, psychology, criminology, and computer information systems; and
• Studying in thousands of colleges around the world, including many colleges that require that their students use PERRLA for APA to write their papers.

PERRLA's goal is to help students write PERRLA Perfect Papers and provide exceptional customer support to members of the ever-growing PERRLA family.