[OS X TeX] Grammar checker

Alain Schremmer schremmer.alain at gmail.com
Tue Dec 2 06:18:40 CET 2008


On Dec 1, 2008, at 10:49 PM, David Watson wrote:

> On Dec 1, 2008, at 9:16 PM, Luis Vitorio Cargnini wrote:
>>
>> Anyone knows a grammar checker for LaTeX ?
>> this is a weakness in LaTeX editors like texshop.
>
> I would argue that this a strength. From personal experience, MS  
> Word makes some poor grammatical suggestions. I think the best  
> grammar check is a combination of a concise style manual, such as  
> The Elements of Style (for the English language), plenty of time so  
> you can set the work down for a few days and then take a fresh  
> look, and someone who you trust to tell you the truth, no matter  
> how painful it may be to hear it.
>
> I can tell when someone uses MS Word to "correct" his work; "which"  
> and "that" are used inconsistently, and the flow is unnatural.

This non-native speaker doesn't think he can really tell but, when I  
used MS Word, I would often think its grammar rather strange and I  
ended up disabling its grammar checker long before disabling MS Word  
terminally. Of course, many linguists, Harris, Chomsky, etc have  
failed to write grammars that wouldn't have many exceptions. So, it  
would have been rather surprising had MS Word succeeded.

Regards
--schremmer



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