About Grammar and consistency in the English in TEX files
chikkubhai
I am a great fan of LaTex (WinEdt) although I have started using it
only from the past two years to write my master's thesis. However, a
missing piece in the software is a functionality to check grammar and
language style, atleast in my WinEdt. Beyond a simple spell check and
thesaurus, aren't there ways to fix the grammar, one thing that took
me months to fix, using WinEdt. It's a great addon if there was an
option to check for grammar and style based on the currently accepted
styles.
Any suggestion or help for this newbie?
Regards
Kris
Barutan Seijin
If English is not your native language, i'd suggest having a native
speaker look at your hardcopy. If it's your thesis, do not rely on an
automated grammar check.
If English is your native language, i'd suggest reading a grammar book.
You're going to proofread your thesis, right?
Style is more difficult to automate. For one, people don't agree about
what good style is. Good style also takes into account context. What
works in some places does not work in others.
By now you must also be aware that some academic subcultures have their
own stylistic conventions. You may have to follow these conventions.
However, because these conventions often run counter to what is
generally accepted as readable English, they are not coded into
automated style checkers.
Finally, much of good style comes down to knowing when to break the
rules of good style.
Robin Fairbairns
>On 28 Jun 2007, chikk...@gmail.com wrote:
>> I am a great fan of LaTex (WinEdt) although I have started using it
>> only from the past two years to write my master's thesis. However, a
>> missing piece in the software is a functionality to check grammar and
>> language style, atleast in my WinEdt. Beyond a simple spell check and
>> thesaurus, aren't there ways to fix the grammar, one thing that took
>> me months to fix, using WinEdt. It's a great addon if there was an
>> option to check for grammar and style based on the currently accepted
>> styles.
>>
>> Any suggestion or help for this newbie?
>
>If English is not your native language, i'd suggest having a native
>speaker look at your hardcopy. If it's your thesis, do not rely on an
>automated grammar check.
>
having said all of which (much of which i agree with), the answer to
the original question is "not so far as i know". istr looking at a
free software grammar checker some long time ago, but it wasn't ready
for practical use then and i've not heard of it since.
a google groups search (of comp.text.tex) might be a good way forward.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Durduran
eventhough my grammar is horrible, I hated using grammar checkers,
however, there are few that are opensource and they work under linux, I do
not know if they work under windows or within winedt:
http://www.dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_15.html#SEC220
There is also this:
http://www.languagetool.org
(it has been integrated into LyX so presumably it can be integrated into
others such as winedt.)
Jeffrey J Weimer
chikkubhai <chikk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a great fan of LaTex (WinEdt) although I have started using it
> only from the past two years to write my master's thesis. However, a
> missing piece in the software is a functionality to check grammar and
> language style, atleast in my WinEdt. Beyond a simple spell check and
>...
>
> Any suggestion or help for this newbie?
The Writing Center at our university will proofread a thesis for
grammar. Perhaps your university offers a similar service. Be sure to
check how long they need to do this ... you might otherwise be holding
up your defense because you are waiting on a final revision.
Otherwise, I agree with B. Seijin ... get a reference book on grammar,
read it, and practice. Having an always available crutch to fix an
ongoing problem is a lazy man's way out of learning how to avoid the
problem in the first place.
Anyway, I am not aware of grammar-correcting packages for TeX/LaTeX.
--
JJW
chikkubhai
A couple of my native English speaking friends, also professional
engineers, could not find a mistake; and, it was about three months
ago when I thought my thesis was ready for approval. Its not even now;
I am learning English (as a second language) after six months of
thesis writing to fix the 250 page thesis for tense, grammar, and
consistency. The writing centers are not so helpful, my bad, they
would not understand my English in terms of the technical aspects of
my subject.
I really thought that there is a way out for Latex or Adobe Acrobat
users as both of the softwares have been in use for decades (I think
so). On the hope that English too, is bound by rules, just like math,
and that checking consistency of, say, a predefined tex code to
represent particular symbol or variable is a possibility, I hoped to
take advantage of my PC power someday to fix those that I may have
easily missed.
Regards
Kris wt a k
blm...@myrealbox.com
chikkubhai <chikk...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your comments you guys,
>
> A couple of my native English speaking friends, also professional
> engineers, could not find a mistake; and, it was about three months
> ago when I thought my thesis was ready for approval. Its not even now;
> I am learning English (as a second language) after six months of
> thesis writing to fix the 250 page thesis for tense, grammar, and
> consistency. The writing centers are not so helpful, my bad, they
> would not understand my English in terms of the technical aspects of
> my subject.
In a perfect world, you would be able to find (and afford)
a well-qualified copyeditor -- someone who understands English
grammar and usage well, and knows enough about your subject area
not to mess things up. But since sometimes even publishers of
technical books aren't able to do that, maybe that's too much
to hope for.
> I really thought that there is a way out for Latex or Adobe Acrobat
> users as both of the softwares have been in use for decades (I think
> so). On the hope that English too, is bound by rules, just like math,
> and that checking consistency of, say, a predefined tex code to
> represent particular symbol or variable is a possibility, I hoped to
> take advantage of my PC power someday to fix those that I may have
> easily missed.
And in a perfect world .... I think the problem is that English
is *not* bound by simple rules like those of math. I say this in
part based on years of following alt.usage.english: The regulars
there might not be the world's leading experts, but they seem
pretty knowledgeable, and still sometimes the best they can do
with regard to explaining to a non-native speaker why one usage
is preferred over another is "because that's the way we say it."
I don't know how you'd turn that into code!
That doesn't help you either.
I assumed in reading this post that you were looking for something
like the "grammar checker" built into MS Word, but checking the
archives for your first post, you don't mention that, so maybe not.
*However*, if you have access to a copy of Word, and you find its
attempt at a grammar checker useful, here is a possibly crazy
idea that might help: Turn your LaTeX code into plain text
(someone here can probably tell you how), import it into Word,
and run Word's grammar checker.
In any case, good luck. (And for what it's worth -- I think you're
doing pretty well here expressing yourself in this second language!
but getting it to sound native-speaker-like is just not easy.)
--
B. L. Massingill
ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.
J.S. Milne
Every mathematician has a list of horror stories about copy editors
who, while not understanding their work, nevertheless felt competent
to meddle with it. Correct style and syntax depends on understanding
the intended meaning of the piece. Computer grammar checkers will
never be able to catch any but the most blatant errors.
Jeffrey J Weimer
> Thanks for your comments you guys,
>
> A couple of my native English speaking friends, also professional
>...
> consistency. The writing centers are not so helpful, my bad, they
> would not understand my English in terms of the technical aspects of
> my subject.
My apologies. Your original posting was clearly worded such that I
responded as to a native English speaker with the pronouncement of
avoiding a crutch by reading a grammar book. Certainly, writing
proficiently in a non-native language requires a good deal more than
just reading a book about it (or even reading a lot of documents in the
language itself ...).
I second the suggestion that, as a fall-back, you try to convert your
LaTeX to plain text, import this into a copy of MS Word, and run the
grammar checker. This would likely catch any major mistakes.
Also, I still say you might allow the the writing centers at least an
opportunity to review your document (as time permits). While they may
not fully understand the technical aspects, a reasonable adept reviewer
should still be able to point out grossly incorrect grammar, for example
...
"The pressure is held constant while the flow rate was varied, which
still keeps the gas flow in laminar range".
.... (should be)
"The pressure WAS held constant while the flow rate was varied. This
kept the gas flow in THE laminar range".
Unless your thesis is the ONLY technical one that has been produced at
your university in the last few years or so, I would think your writing
center would have SOMEONE on staff who is prepared to review it in this
way.
Oh ... I would also wonder where your thesis advisor has been during the
necessary reviewing process (but that may be a politically incorrect
question to ask).
Good luck!
--
JJW
anon k
> Thanks for your comments you guys,
>
> A couple of my native English speaking friends, also professional
> engineers, could not find a mistake;
Engineers aren't usually famed for their exquisite mastery of grammar
and stylistics. Many of them really dislike it, in fact.
> The writing centers are not so helpful, my bad, they
> would not understand my English in terms of the technical aspects of
> my subject.
This sounds contrary to what you could reasonably expect from a
university writing center. The technical aspects ought not matter to
grammatical checking as long as they can tell the grammatical function
of each word.
They should also be interested in helping you to phrase your language to
make it more accessible to non-specialists, especially if you're in
engineering, which often involves talking with or writing for
non-specialist clients or policy-makers.
But, in fact, I found writing centers inadequate too. They tend to put
most of their resources into the lower end of the spectrum, and your
posts show that you're well past that.
The people whom I most depended on for dissertation criticism were
fellow students (not always in the same discipline) and, most
importantly, the advisors. They couldn't help but point out the
occasional mistake, and the stylistic options and how to choose between
them.
It'd have been great had they known a bit more about LaTeX too.
Aaron Hsu
> On the hope that English too, is bound by rules, just like math,
> and that checking consistency of, say, a predefined tex code to
> represent particular symbol or variable is a possibility, I hoped to
> take advantage of my PC power someday to fix those that I may have
> easily missed.
The problem here is that the English language is bound by relatively
simple rules (meaning that it is conceivably possible for a computer to
analyze the structure of the document and produce a grammatically
correct document), but if that were all it took, we would have little
trouble with teaching English as a second language. The problem comes
from the Rhetoric side, because style affects the acceptability and
readability of a piece as much as its grammatical correctness. I
believe most sufficiently advanced non-native English speakers produce
or are capable of producing grammatically correct documents, but
grasping the complexities and varying aspects of rhetoric usually comes
at the price of many years of exposure and active research into these
arenas.
On the other hand, most native speakers do not fare very well at the
rhetoric side of things anymore these days, so you are not alone. :-)
Things like MS Word's Grammar and Style checker pales when placed
beside a real expert, but it works sufficiently well in turning rather
poor documents into acceptable ones.
--
Aaron Hsu <aaro...@sacrificumdeo.net>
"No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he
could do only a little." - Edmund Burke
Barutan Seijin
> The people whom I most depended on for dissertation criticism were
> fellow students (not always in the same discipline) and, most
> importantly, the advisors. They couldn't help but point out the
> occasional mistake, and the stylistic options and how to choose
> between them.
You'd think that advisors/committee members would be helpful, but it
isn't always the case. They have More Important Things to do, children,
or aren't that good with the language themselves.
Robin Fairbairns
>On 2007-06-30 02:19:39 -0500, chikkubhai <chikk...@gmail.com> said:
>
>> On the hope that English too, is bound by rules, just like math,
>> and that checking consistency of, say, a predefined tex code to
>> represent particular symbol or variable is a possibility, I hoped to
>> take advantage of my PC power someday to fix those that I may have
>> easily missed.
>
>The problem here is that the English language is bound by relatively
>simple rules (meaning that it is conceivably possible for a computer to
>analyze the structure of the document and produce a grammatically
>correct document), but if that were all it took, we would have little
>trouble with teaching English as a second language.
the rules may be simple, but there are an awful lot of them. a few
months ago, i bought a cambridge "colloquial grammar", supposedly
designed for non-native speakers, but which i find fascinating. i
wouldn't necessarily classify all the rules as "simple", but whether
or not, there are an awful lot of them -- the book runs to 984 pp...
>The problem comes
>from the Rhetoric side, because style affects the acceptability and
>readability of a piece as much as its grammatical correctness. I
>believe most sufficiently advanced non-native English speakers produce
>or are capable of producing grammatically correct documents, but
>grasping the complexities and varying aspects of rhetoric usually comes
>at the price of many years of exposure and active research into these
>arenas.
i believe the problem lies deeper than (merely) english-as-she-is-
spoke[*]: english is a bastard language (with roots in old german,
french, latin, classical greek, etc., and hugely transformed by a
certain c.16 dramatist and poet) and there are valid alternative
constructs for lots of things. for example, is the plural of the
latin borrowing "addendum" english in form ("addendums") or latin
("addenda")? -- in fact, either is valid. things get worse with greek
borrowings like hippopotamus (i've seem people applying a supposed
latin plural to that). "virus" (a latin borrowing) is another
confusion -- one regularly sees "virii" as plural, which is obviously
someone's idea of the latin plural, except that it's not even that:
the oxford english dictionary gives "viruses" without any mention of
the latin plural (which could, for all i know, be "virus", differently
stressed).
>On the other hand, most native speakers do not fare very well at the
>rhetoric side of things anymore these days, so you are not alone. :-)
>Things like MS Word's Grammar and Style checker pales when placed
>beside a real expert, but it works sufficiently well in turning rather
>poor documents into acceptable ones.
my wife, who generally writes quite good english[**], uses word quite
regularly (i hardly ever touch it). the grammar "corrections" it
offers in her prose are, more often than not, just plain *wrong*.
i've never seen it attempt anything with something that started as a
*bad* document ... perhaps it could improve such a thing.
[*] don't use that semi-humorous phrase -- iirc, it comes from a very
amusing book about the english people, written by an hungarian immigrant.
[**] we've both been at it for rather a long time...
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Thomas A. Schmitz
> "virus" (a latin borrowing) is another confusion -- one
> regularly sees "virii" as plural, which is obviously someone's
> idea of the latin plural, except that it's not even that: the
> oxford english dictionary gives "viruses" without any mention of
> the latin plural (which could, for all i know, be "virus",
> differently stressed).
Sorry, this is my field, so I can't resist: no, virus does not
belong to the fourth declension, so the plural is not virus (with
a long "u"). Virus is one of the rare words of the second
declension in -us that is neuter (the other notable one being
vulgus). Both seem to indicate some sort of collective singular
(vulgus = mass; virus = humidity) and do not have a plural in
classical Latin. However, you're right: virii is an obvious
attempt to demonstrate one's superior knowledge that falls
horribly flat, so it always make my hair stand on end.
Best
Thomas
Robin Fairbairns
>rf...@cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>
>> "virus" (a latin borrowing) is another confusion -- one
>> regularly sees "virii" as plural, which is obviously someone's
>> idea of the latin plural, except that it's not even that: the
>> oxford english dictionary gives "viruses" without any mention of
>> the latin plural (which could, for all i know, be "virus",
>> differently stressed).
>
>Sorry, this is my field, so I can't resist: no, virus does not
>belong to the fourth declension, so the plural is not virus (with
>a long "u").
note my "for all i know" get-out clause above.
>Virus is one of the rare words of the second
>declension in -us that is neuter (the other notable one being
>vulgus). Both seem to indicate some sort of collective singular
>(vulgus = mass; virus = humidity) and do not have a plural in
>classical Latin.
i live to learn. i stopped studying latin 47 years ago: i don't know
if i never knew those words, or whether i've just forgotten them.
>However, you're right: virii is an obvious
>attempt to demonstrate one's superior knowledge that falls
>horribly flat, so it always make my hair stand on end.
you and me both. even after 47 years ;-)
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
Aaron Hsu
> Aaron Hsu <aaro...@sacrificumdeo.net> writes:
>> On 2007-06-30 02:19:39 -0500, chikkubhai <chikk...@gmail.com> said:
>>
>>> On the hope that English too, is bound by rules, just like math,
>>> and that checking consistency of, say, a predefined tex code to
>>> represent particular symbol or variable is a possibility, I hoped to
>>> take advantage of my PC power someday to fix those that I may have
>>> easily missed.
>>
>> The problem here is that the English language is bound by relatively
>> simple rules (meaning that it is conceivably possible for a computer to
>> analyze the structure of the document and produce a grammatically
>> correct document), but if that were all it took, we would have little
>> trouble with teaching English as a second language.
>
> the rules may be simple, but there are an awful lot of them. a few
> months ago, i bought a cambridge "colloquial grammar", supposedly
> designed for non-native speakers, but which i find fascinating. i
> wouldn't necessarily classify all the rules as "simple", but whether
> or not, there are an awful lot of them -- the book runs to 984 pp...
I was examining them from the side of a computer being able to process
the rules. The actual mechanics of parsing English sentences for
grammar is not so hard for a computer to do. Sure, there are a lot of
constructs, and a great deal of vocabulary and "exceptions" to learn,
but overall the actual task itself is not so complex, merely intensive.
Understanding English as a language to be understood and comprehended
on more than just its technical correctness, however, is at least an
order of magnitude more difficult. I believe one analogy would be the
difference in creating a simple Chess program (grammar checker), versus
creating a truly "expert" pattern oriented algorithm for playing Go.
>> On the other hand, most native speakers do not fare very well at the
>> rhetoric side of things anymore these days, so you are not alone. :-)
>> Things like MS Word's Grammar and Style checker pales when placed
>> beside a real expert, but it works sufficiently well in turning rather
>> poor documents into acceptable ones.
>
> my wife, who generally writes quite good english[**], uses word quite
> regularly (i hardly ever touch it). the grammar "corrections" it
> offers in her prose are, more often than not, just plain *wrong*.
The grammar suggestions provided by Word to an author who has even
cursory native knowledge concerning rhetoric and grammar (I'm thinking
Junior Level college student, nowadays) ought to be utterly useless. On
the other hand, for a non-native speaker (such as the OP) who has
enough knowledge to construct reasonably comprehensible, though
consistently incorrect documents, the checker will probably be somewhat
useful.
What I think would be very useful for TeX users, is a standalone
program that is capable of doing this. Most TeX users are not
interested in breaking into Microsoft Word (on another computer
possibly), and running a grammar checker.
Michele Dondi
(Thomas A. Schmitz) wrote:
>vulgus). Both seem to indicate some sort of collective singular
>(vulgus = mass; virus = humidity) and do not have a plural in
>classical Latin. However, you're right: virii is an obvious
Tria neutra sunt in "us": virus, vulgus et pelagus.
Michele
--
>It's because the universe was programmed in C++.
No, no, it was programmed in Forth. See Genesis 1:12:
"And the earth brought Forth ..."
- Robert Israel in sci.math, thread "Why numbers?"
Thomas A. Schmitz
> On Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:37:59 +0200,
> thomas.nos...@uni-bonn.de (Thomas A. Schmitz) wrote:
> >vulgus). Both seem to indicate some sort of collective singular
> >(vulgus = mass; virus = humidity) and do not have a plural in
> >classical Latin. However, you're right: virii is an obvious
> Tria neutra sunt in "us": virus, vulgus et pelagus. Michele
Yes, but pelagus is a Greek loanword and has a perfectly
respectable plural pelage (Lucretius 6.619), so this nice rule is
only superficially true.
Thomas
chikkubhai
suggestions show how much English cannot be coded, I was still
referring to my simple structured English, a little beyond subject,
verb, object style and often having problems with variable tenses in
the same paragraph. I recently completed my 15th (I think more than
that) reading of my thesis and I can tell that its simple. I have
begun to use "Chicago Manual of Style" and "A Writer's Reference" by
Hacker; although, I thought that "The Elements of Style" by Strunk and
White, and AGU's style guide would suffice. I still have problem of
what to use is right of 'suggest' or 'suggests' and 'toward' or
'towards', and the usage of commas. Therefore, a similar English
grammar checker as that of a word processor should be in built.
Actually, a solid thesaurus with grammar and examples for usage of a
word and its variants is enough :-)
Coming to what I thought was the suggestion not communicated properly
by me:
Word, for example, allows you to create a tool bar like space where
you can create those symbols and equations, and would be using
regularly, which are accessible with a click of a button. Lets say I
defined a parameter flhp where lh and p go in as a subscript and
superscript or say in 'latitude = 43o N' where you need a spacing
before and after the '=' symbol. I lack consistency using symbols and
wordings following a specific AGU style, throughout my thesis. Some of
them include words, hyphenated or without space or symbols
representing parameters have to be consistently using the right
subscript, superscript, spacing and units. There could be a way to
predefine these in tex editors. I want my PC check for errors.
Even Acrobat reader does a bad job at recognizing errors, for example,
it cannot recognize symbols, an outcome of using Latex code in a Tex
file. It even recognizes words containing 'ff' string as a symbol and
hence as a error.
Your comments and suggestions have been quite useful.
Aaron Hsu
> Lets say I
> defined a parameter flhp where lh and p go in as a subscript and
> superscript or say in 'latitude = 43o N' where you need a spacing
> before and after the '=' symbol. I lack consistency using symbols and
> wordings following a specific AGU style, throughout my thesis. Some of
> them include words, hyphenated or without space or symbols
> representing parameters have to be consistently using the right
> subscript, superscript, spacing and units.
TeX macros can help to some extent to reduce "repetition" errors, but
for most of those style issues, it is probably most useful to you if
you just focus and learn them by practicing a good deal. :-)
chikkubhai
I did try that by predefining them (as a macro I believe) in my main
file and all of the pdf document displayed strange errors and symbols.
I always look to exploiting my systems capabilities and automation and
this time it was not easy. I think "Having an always available crutch
to fix an ongoing problem is a lazy man's way out of learning how to
avoid the
problem in the first place - JJW " WAS my way back then.
Regards
Kris
Juhapekka Tolvanen
chikkubhai <chikk...@gmail.com> writes:
> However, a missing piece in the software is a functionality to check
> grammar and language style, atleast in my WinEdt.
Programs called "style" and "diction" may help you a little bit:
http://www.gnu.org/software/diction/diction.html
But they are not exactly grammar checkers. They are Unix-software, but
you may be able to compile their sourcecode under Cygwin. But if you go
that route, you'd better check if binaries of style and diction are
available in distribution of Cygwin.
style and diction work only with plain text, not LaTeX. Therefore, you
must find some way to convert your LaTeX to plain text, first. Some ways
to do it are mentioned in UK TUG FAQ:
--
Juhapekka "naula" Tolvanen * http colon slash slash iki dot fi slash juhtolv
"Sou sa, ima mo ore wa mitsukerarenai sonzai no imi ga, dakara motto motto
motto motto motto kono karada ni imi wo kizamitsukeru: 'Tada waratte,
fuminijireba ii.'" Dir en grey
blazar
wrote:
> Yes, but pelagus is a Greek loanword and has a perfectly
> respectable plural pelage (Lucretius 6.619), so this nice rule is
> only superficially true.
Yeah, that's just one of the *very* few things I remember about Latin
from my school days, along with a bunch of ad hoc quotations, and the
Fibula Praenestina inscription, which for some reason I know by heart
- and incidentally is nowadays more commonly considered to be a false,
as you most probably know. Go figure!
Michele