Is there grammar checker (not spelling)?
sdieselil
When I type text I make not only spelling mistakes but also grammar mistakes
such as typing two spaces instead of one or omitting space between
period and beginning of next sentence. Is there program which can point to
these mistakes and/or correct them?
Dances With Crows
All the grammar checkers I've seen are *worthless*. (I have not tried
any of the emacs grammar checkers, though.) Natural languages have very
complex grammars, and a particular construction may be an error in one
case and not in another, because natural languages are highly
context-dependent.
"omitting space between period and beginning of next sentence". This is
more complex than you think. What's a sentence? It's not easy to
define that in terms that a computer can grok, and have it be correct in
all instances. I suppose you could flag all instances where you have a
. right next to a capital letter... but then what happens to
fully-written-out acronyms like "F.B.I."? Don't even get me started on
differing modes of expression; "AFAICT" is perfectly acceptable on
Usenet, but it's verboten in formal writing. Oops, what about putting
German words into English sentences? What about starting a sentence
with an interjection like "Oops"?
(BTW, MS Word 2000 coughed out 2 spurious grammar errors on the above
paragraph when I had it run a grammar check. When I tried it on parts
of a novel I wrote, the number of spurious errors rose to horrible
levels. Grammar checkers don't handle dialogue well, and the results of
running one on _Huckleberry Finn_ or _Moby Dick_ are best left to the
imagination.)
IMHO, the best grammar checker is a trained copy editor looking over
your work. (I am a half-trained copy editor, and can vouch for the
effectiveness of fully trained copy editors. I am also a Grammar Nazi,
a Spelling Nazi, and a fan of the serial comma.)
--
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin /
http://www.brainbench.com / "He is a rhythmic movement of the
-----------------------------/ penguins, is Tux." --MegaHAL
David L. Johnson
> On 13 Mar 2003 14:20:01 -0800, sdieselil staggered into the Black Sun
> and said:
>> When I type text I make not only spelling mistakes but also grammar
>> mistakes such as typing two spaces instead of one or omitting space
>> between period and beginning of next sentence. Is there program which
>> can point to these mistakes and/or correct them?
>
> All the grammar checkers I've seen are *worthless*.
I agree. I tried one of the earlier attempts by Grammatik, and it was
actually several steps worse than useless.
> "omitting space between period and beginning of next sentence". This is
> more complex than you think.
Well, highlighting every occurrence of periods not followed by spaces and
capital letters is not beyond the abilities of a computer, as would be
parsing commas and such -- much like matching braces in code. Any editor
can do that. You just should not take it too seriously. But fussing
about passive voice in technical writing gets old real quick.
> IMHO, the best grammar checker is a trained copy editor looking over
> your work.
I agree.
--
David L. Johnson
__o | As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
_`\(,_ | certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to
(_)/ (_) | reality. -- Albert Einstein
Ralf Bader
> On 13 Mar 2003 14:20:01 -0800, sdieselil staggered into the Black Sun
> and said:
>> When I type text I make not only spelling mistakes but also grammar
>> mistakes such as typing two spaces instead of one or omitting space
>> between period and beginning of next sentence. Is there program which
>> can point to these mistakes and/or correct them?
> (BTW, MS Word 2000 coughed out 2 spurious grammar errors on the above
> paragraph when I had it run a grammar check. When I tried it on parts
> of a novel I wrote, the number of spurious errors rose to horrible
> levels. Grammar checkers don't handle dialogue well, and the results of
> running one on _Huckleberry Finn_ or _Moby Dick_ are best left to the
> imagination.)
And how many errors does it /not/ find? Forgotten periods? A period
where a question mark should be? And what is with real grammar?
Word order, time succession and all this? You think everything is
correct because the "grammar checker" told you so...
At many points you can't check the grammar without grasping the meaning,
and all this is way beyond present computer programming possibilities.
Natural language isn't as trivial as programming languages.
Ralf
sdieselil
Please give me links of the *worthless* grammar checkers you have
tried. May be they are enough good for me (the one in Word 2000 is
even better than I need).
B. Joshua Rosen
The spell checker in FrameMaker does a fine job of handling the simple
types of errors that the OP was concerned about, i.e. double spaces,
repeated words (and and). It's very useful for basic typos. I don't know
if any of the Linux word processors have this capability. Frankly I don't
think any of the Linux word processors are ready for even the most basic
tasks yet. I'm still using Word and Frame on Win4Lin when I need a
WYSIWYG editor.
nobody
I'm told that even though grammer checkers seem worthless
to native speakers of the language, they're still regarded as
useful by non-native speakers.
Anonymous
s> When I type text I make not only spelling mistakes but also grammar mistakes
s> such as typing two spaces instead of one or omitting space between
s> period and beginning of next sentence. Is there program which can point to
s> these mistakes and/or correct them?
Use your fine unix tools!
Running your file (or buffer) through a sed filter like
sed 's@\> *\<@ @g;s@\.\([^ ]\)@. \1@g'
will do what you asked for (and sed needs to know nothing about grammars).
John-Paul Stewart
The grammar checker may be a disservice to non-native
speakers. Grammar checkers often make mistakes. If the
non-native speaker does not understand _when_ and _why_ the
grammar checker is wrong, the grammar checker could
_introduce_ _new_ errors into the written work. That's not
likely the desired outcome!
Roodw...@core.com
The flyspell function of Emacs checks for repeated words. Since that's my
primary writing tool, I don't know if any other Linux programs do this.
Since Emacs makes macros so easily, putting one together to get rid of
double spaces would be easy. In fact, one of my formatting macros contains
something that does this, just in case. But Emacs isn't a solution for most
people. Its learning curve is steep enough it's only for full-time
programmers or full-time writers. And some of them will prefer something
else.
But thinking about it, getting rid of double spaces would be within the
capability of any word processor, just using find and replace. Find two
spaces and replace with one. Maybe go through it twice just to be sure.
There are also the command line programs Style and Diction that do a certain
amount of grammar checking. I don't have them on my machine so I can't
comment beyond that.
Back in my Windows days I downloaded a few programs that were said to check
grammar. They did so poorly I immediately deleted them. Although I realize
they've probably improved immensely over the past five years, I'm still
skeptical. As a former editor, I agree that the best grammar checker is a
human.
--Rod
--
Author of "Linux for Non-Geeks--Clear-eyed Answers for Practical Consumers"
and "Boring Stories from Uncle Rod." Both are available at
http://www.rodwriterpublishing.com/index.html
To reply by e-mail, take the extra "o" out of my e-mail address. It's to
confuse spambots, of course.
Shyamal Prasad
sdieselil> Please give me links of the *worthless* grammar
sdieselil> checkers you have tried. May be they are enough good
sdieselil> for me (the one in Word 2000 is even better than I
sdieselil> need).
I have never used the traditional UNIX style/diction commands. I'm
also a lousy copy editory. But go ahead and check out the Debian
package diction.
http://packages.debian.org/stable/text/diction.html
Since it is in Debian it must be open. It should not be too hard to
find it for other platforms.
Cheers!
Shyamal
Timothy Murphy
> Please give me links of the *worthless* grammar checkers you have
> tried. May be they are enough good for me (the one in Word 2000 is
> even better than I need).
I agree that any grammar checker would probably be useful.
The fact that it was not always correct would not be a fatal flaw.
There used to be a Unix program "dict" which gave advice on documents --
eg too much use of passive voice.
I found it was quite helpful.
--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail: t...@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-233 6090
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Timothy Murphy
> http://packages.debian.org/stable/text/diction.html
>
> Since it is in Debian it must be open. It should not be too hard to
> find it for other platforms.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I've downloaded a *.deb file --
can I use that on a RedHat system?
Timothy Murphy
> The grammar checker may be a disservice to non-native
> speakers. Grammar checkers often make mistakes.
Spelling correctors often make mistakes.
They don't really matter.