Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
What I really need to find is a Grammar checker that will spot things that I miss with my stroke damaged brain or someone with the symptoms of Dyslexia. People like me have a problem with spotting missing words or wrong words for the text sentence. The spell checker works wonders for someone who find it hard to remember how to spell words that were ease before the stroke. Actually it is easier for me to type at times then speak the words. I use to be able to have my wife proof read my documents, but she developed Alzheimer's and now lives in a nursing facility not remembering who I am or how to read well. She was the daughter of a college professor and use to proof read his student's essays for misspelling and grammar errors. She was in high school at that time and she was grading college level papers for their spelling and grammar. This was before the computer was a desktop machine. I need some system that can do even half as well as my wife did for me. I need a system to go over my documents to check all the errors that it can find for wrong word usage, part of speech error, and other things that are common besides spelling errors. I want my documents to read at the college level, instead of something that has mistakes a 12 year old would be able to figure out and fix. There was some Internet service that was able to look at your document and tell you at what level of communication it was for. Personal, Business, Technical, or even Legal, or something like that. So it would be nice to have some extension to my word processor to find these grammar issues and help me fix them easily. On 01/22/2011 10:43 PM, MR ZenWiz wrote: Not sure which you you mean, but I have never seen a good grammar checker anywhere. Period. Way back in the stone age (of WordStar), there was a thing called GrammaTek that did a really bad job of grammar-checking, but things have progressed a little since then. Word's grammar checker is the best one I've seen although recently I've noticed that LO is flagging some grammar errors and flagging them for me. Some are intentional due to the way I write or a point I'm trying to make, but in general it makes me look at something that might be wrong. If you right-click a grammar-highlighted word or phrase, it should tell you what it thinks is wrong with it. However, grammar checkers don't catch misspelled words (spell checkers do that), they sometimes catch misapplied homonyms, which is not the same thing although it is or can be useful. Personally, I prefer a human proof-reader, even if it's me, because at least with English, grammar is too complex for most (not all) programs to do it justice, whereas I can usually spot a grammo while reading because they tend to jar my understanding enough to look twice. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 6:39 PM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: Are you telling us there is a Grammar Checker that will catch more then a miss spelling ward or too? -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:00 AM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: What I really need to find is a Grammar checker that will spot things that I miss with my stroke damaged brain or someone with the symptoms of Dyslexia. People like me have a problem with spotting missing words or wrong words for the text sentence. You're asking for way more than a computer will EVER do. I'm a language professional (translator/interpret), and a hacker, and I tell you, computers will never fully replace translators or editors. Computers may be useful in such areas, but their work will always, always have to looked over by a competent, human editor prior to being perfected for publication. The idea of a universal translator (as seen on Star Trek) is just a pipe dream. A universal editor would be no different. No system or program, not MSOrifice or LibreOffice or any other includes the feature with the level of accuracy/capacity that you seek. ./tony -- http://www.baldwinlinguas.com http://www.baldwinsoftware.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 8:22 AM, baldwin linguas baldwinling...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:00 AM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: What I really need to find is a Grammar checker that will spot things that I miss with my stroke damaged brain or someone with the symptoms of Dyslexia. People like me have a problem with spotting missing words or wrong words for the text sentence. You're asking for way more than a computer will EVER do. I'm a language professional (translator/interpret), and a hacker, and I tell you, computers will never fully replace translators or editors. Computers may be useful in such areas, but their work will always, always have to looked over by a competent, human editor prior to being perfected for publication. The idea of a universal translator (as seen on Star Trek) is just a pipe dream. A universal editor would be no different. No system or program, not MSOrifice or LibreOffice or any other includes the feature with the level of accuracy/capacity that you seek. That pretty much says it all. In webmaster's situation, I would just use what's available and hope for the best. LO picks up some of the problems you've mentioned, but not all, and you still have to look at each one to see what the problem is. IMO, Word is slightly better than LO, which is better than what OO had when I was using it (before LO beta1 came out). Don't know about others like WordPerfect, etc. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
Hi :) Don't aim at being perfect. There is no such thing anyway and it takes too long. The trick is probably to respond well to criticism and perhaps build in some way of correcting later. Don't worry. People here might be willing to quickly proof-read some things if there is somewhere such as google docs that you can place a rough draft? Regards from Tom :) From: MR ZenWiz mrzen...@gmail.com To: users@libreoffice.org Sent: Sun, 23 January, 2011 18:18:48 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker? On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 8:22 AM, baldwin linguas baldwinling...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:00 AM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: What I really need to find is a Grammar checker that will spot things that I miss with my stroke damaged brain or someone with the symptoms of Dyslexia. People like me have a problem with spotting missing words or wrong words for the text sentence. You're asking for way more than a computer will EVER do. I'm a language professional (translator/interpret), and a hacker, and I tell you, computers will never fully replace translators or editors. Computers may be useful in such areas, but their work will always, always have to looked over by a competent, human editor prior to being perfected for publication. The idea of a universal translator (as seen on Star Trek) is just a pipe dream. A universal editor would be no different. No system or program, not MSOrifice or LibreOffice or any other includes the feature with the level of accuracy/capacity that you seek. That pretty much says it all. In webmaster's situation, I would just use what's available and hope for the best. LO picks up some of the problems you've mentioned, but not all, and you still have to look at each one to see what the problem is. IMO, Word is slightly better than LO, which is better than what OO had when I was using it (before LO beta1 came out). Don't know about others like WordPerfect, etc. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On 01/23/2011 11:22 AM, baldwin linguas wrote: On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:00 AM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: What I really need to find is a Grammar checker that will spot things that I miss with my stroke damaged brain or someone with the symptoms of Dyslexia. People like me have a problem with spotting missing words or wrong words for the text sentence. You're asking for way more than a computer will EVER do. I'm a language professional (translator/interpret), and a hacker, and I tell you, computers will never fully replace translators or editors. Computers may be useful in such areas, but their work will always, always have to looked over by a competent, human editor prior to being perfected for publication. The idea of a universal translator (as seen on Star Trek) is just a pipe dream. A universal editor would be no different. No system or program, not MSOrifice or LibreOffice or any other includes the feature with the level of accuracy/capacity that you seek. ./tony I know that no system is perfect, but I could use whatever help there is out there for these tasks. There was talk on the OOo list a while back about a Grammar add-on project, but I do not know it it ever got finished. It would be nice to have an option for sound alike words like aunt and ant. Of course it would be nice if I could spell properly, or close enough for the spell checker to give me a list that has the word I am looking for. So does any one know of some free system that would run on Ubuntu that does more than LO does for grammar checking? Even a stand alone package would help. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:22 AM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: I know that no system is perfect, but I could use whatever help there is out there for these tasks. There was talk on the OOo list a while back about a Grammar add-on project, but I do not know it it ever got finished. It would be nice to have an option for sound alike words like aunt and ant. Of course it would be nice if I could spell properly, or close enough for the spell checker to give me a list that has the word I am looking for. So does any one know of some free system that would run on Ubuntu that does more than LO does for grammar checking? Even a stand alone package would help. The one that I really hated was an OOo extension - language lab, I think. They had two grammar checker / thesaurus add-ons and I thought this one was better, then I wound up turning it off because it flagged every possible error (most of which weren't). I didn't see anything like this on the TDF site. You might find it more useful than I did, but again I don't recommend it. As for stand-alone grammar checkers, you might have luck with Google -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On 01/23/2011 03:03 PM, MR ZenWiz wrote: On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 11:22 AM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: I know that no system is perfect, but I could use whatever help there is out there for these tasks. There was talk on the OOo list a while back about a Grammar add-on project, but I do not know it it ever got finished. It would be nice to have an option for sound alike words like aunt and ant. Of course it would be nice if I could spell properly, or close enough for the spell checker to give me a list that has the word I am looking for. So does any one know of some free system that would run on Ubuntu that does more than LO does for grammar checking? Even a stand alone package would help. The one that I really hated was an OOo extension - language lab, I think. They had two grammar checker / thesaurus add-ons and I thought this one was better, then I wound up turning it off because it flagged every possible error (most of which weren't). I didn't see anything like this on the TDF site. You might find it more useful than I did, but again I don't recommend it. As for stand-alone grammar checkers, you might have luck with Google The one on LibrePlanet for LO is listed as LanguageTool. [OOo has it as well]. I installed that one the other day. Is this the one you hate or the one you like. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On Sun, Jan 23, 2011 at 2:54 PM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: : The one on LibrePlanet for LO is listed as LanguageTool. [OOo has it as well]. I installed that one the other day. Is this the one you hate or the one you like. I think that was the one I hate. The one built into LO works fine for me right now. Try it out and see what you think, don't take my word for it. YMMV. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:10 PM, baldwin linguas baldwinling...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 12:41 AM, Eclipse eclipse-...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Catching passive voice and other basic grammar? It will catch disagreement between subect and predicate, in most cases, although sometimes erroneously, as well as adjective and antecedent disagreements, usually. I wouldn't expect it to catch passive voice. I believe it allows folks to get away with mixing up your and you're; they're, there, their; to, too, two; and, it won't stop anyone from committing such atrocities as There's apples in the fridge. I would consider that the most basic of grammar. It won't correct the use of object pronouns for subjects, or vice-versa, which is a common error. It seems to know little or nothing of standard punctuation. It does not recognize either, run-on sentences, or incomplete ones (fragments). It doesn't mind dangling participles. The vast majority of errors it will catch are so obvious as to render it useless, and the less obvious errors it catches are often not errors. It allows, for instance, the following abomination to go uncorrected: Me and her went to by one horses. I find myself frequently correcting its corrections. Personally, I'd like to know how to disable it, while retaining spellcheck for catching typos, but, it seems it's an all-or-nothing affair, sadly. http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/11/04/dont-mind-your-language%E2%80%A6/ Thanks you, tony, that seems to sum it up rather nicely. I think it will occasionally catch the homonyms you listed, but rarely. I too would prefer it wasn't there. One thing that really drove me up the wall was in an earlier incarnation where I was using an ordinary noun as a proper noun, and it kept not realizing that a first letter capital actually meant something different (That's been fixed.) -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
Are you telling us there is a Grammar Checker that will catch more then a miss spelling ward or too? Being someone who has suffered a stroke and has problems with catching anything that is not a misspelling that is not caught by the spell checker withing the word processor or the email client. I would love to have some system for American English that would highlight my mistakes without me having to listen to a bad text-to-speech system reading my document back to me. So Yes or No. Is there something for LibreOffice to do more than just grammar checking or underline a sentence and you have to figure out that you got the parts of speech wrong or it was to be aunt instead of ant? On 01/22/2011 02:14 PM, MR ZenWiz wrote: On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:10 PM, baldwin linguas baldwinling...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 12:41 AM, Eclipseeclipse-...@optusnet.com.au wrote: Catching passive voice and other basic grammar? It will catch disagreement between subect and predicate, in most cases, although sometimes erroneously, as well as adjective and antecedent disagreements, usually. I wouldn't expect it to catch passive voice. I believe it allows folks to get away with mixing up your and you're; they're, there, their; to, too, two; and, it won't stop anyone from committing such atrocities as There's apples in the fridge. I would consider that the most basic of grammar. It won't correct the use of object pronouns for subjects, or vice-versa, which is a common error. It seems to know little or nothing of standard punctuation. It does not recognize either, run-on sentences, or incomplete ones (fragments). It doesn't mind dangling participles. The vast majority of errors it will catch are so obvious as to render it useless, and the less obvious errors it catches are often not errors. It allows, for instance, the following abomination to go uncorrected: Me and her went to by one horses. I find myself frequently correcting its corrections. Personally, I'd like to know how to disable it, while retaining spellcheck for catching typos, but, it seems it's an all-or-nothing affair, sadly. http://www.stephenfry.com/2008/11/04/dont-mind-your-language%E2%80%A6/ Thanks you, tony, that seems to sum it up rather nicely. I think it will occasionally catch the homonyms you listed, but rarely. I too would prefer it wasn't there. One thing that really drove me up the wall was in an earlier incarnation where I was using an ordinary noun as a proper noun, and it kept not realizing that a first letter capital actually meant something different (That's been fixed.) -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
Not sure which you you mean, but I have never seen a good grammar checker anywhere. Period. Way back in the stone age (of WordStar), there was a thing called GrammaTek that did a really bad job of grammar-checking, but things have progressed a little since then. Word's grammar checker is the best one I've seen although recently I've noticed that LO is flagging some grammar errors and flagging them for me. Some are intentional due to the way I write or a point I'm trying to make, but in general it makes me look at something that might be wrong. If you right-click a grammar-highlighted word or phrase, it should tell you what it thinks is wrong with it. However, grammar checkers don't catch misspelled words (spell checkers do that), they sometimes catch misapplied homonyms, which is not the same thing although it is or can be useful. Personally, I prefer a human proof-reader, even if it's me, because at least with English, grammar is too complex for most (not all) programs to do it justice, whereas I can usually spot a grammo while reading because they tend to jar my understanding enough to look twice. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 6:39 PM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: Are you telling us there is a Grammar Checker that will catch more then a miss spelling ward or too? -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker?
Hi :) Yes, re-reading a document yourself is quite effective but if you made the mistake in the first place you are the least likely person to spot it. Another person, almost anyone is often better. There is a similar problem, perhaps the same one in many ways, to do with translation software. Things like Babel fish or google-translate can give a good starting point but do create some hilariously bad errors. Take a phrase out of sight, out of mind meaning something like if you can't see the problem then don't worry about it (yet). Translate it and then translate it back and find it warped into something bizarre like invisible idiot. Or try Pull the other leg (it's got bells on) presumably a reference to Morris Dancing and means something like I think you are trying to fool me into believing something ridiculous for fun. Sometimes it is difficult to avoid odd phrases but even if writing is kept bland enough there can still be problems that are unclear until a translation is attempted. The line Good English Grammar checker? looks fairly appalling to me but it makes sense and is perfect for a subject-line as it gets straight to the point and is very informative. Subject-lines are often good when they are a bit like txtin language but less extreme (Xtrim?).# My grammar is often bad but at the moment she's in the kitchen making tea. Regards from Tom :) From: MR ZenWiz mrzen...@gmail.com To: users@libreoffice.org Sent: Sun, 23 January, 2011 3:43:36 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Good English Grammar checker? Not sure which you you mean, but I have never seen a good grammar checker anywhere. Period. Way back in the stone age (of WordStar), there was a thing called GrammaTek that did a really bad job of grammar-checking, but things have progressed a little since then. Word's grammar checker is the best one I've seen although recently I've noticed that LO is flagging some grammar errors and flagging them for me. Some are intentional due to the way I write or a point I'm trying to make, but in general it makes me look at something that might be wrong. If you right-click a grammar-highlighted word or phrase, it should tell you what it thinks is wrong with it. However, grammar checkers don't catch misspelled words (spell checkers do that), they sometimes catch misapplied homonyms, which is not the same thing although it is or can be useful. Personally, I prefer a human proof-reader, even if it's me, because at least with English, grammar is too complex for most (not all) programs to do it justice, whereas I can usually spot a grammo while reading because they tend to jar my understanding enough to look twice. On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 6:39 PM, webmas...@krackedpress.com webmas...@krackedpress.com wrote: Are you telling us there is a Grammar Checker that will catch more then a miss spelling ward or too? -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity *** -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to users+h...@libreoffice.org List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/www/users/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
