Nascent Online Grammar Checker

[aschweig]

Hi All -

I have put together an online grammar checker, "GrammarTool". During graduate school my friends would often have me read their drafts as I was one of the few native English speakers around. Eventually I had the idea of writing software to do some automatic basic checks.

Eventually this personal project morphed into a website. The good news: the website is free (and I'll keep it that way unless traffic really picks up and I need to pay for faster hardware), it doesn't have ads; the interface is relatively simple. I am eager to introduce features -- my own skill and time allowing.

The bad news -- like any automatic grammar checker -- my tool is still far worse than having a real live person read your writing.

At the moment, my own interest is to improve the website's ability to check articles. I have found this to be a difficult area.

Other suggestions of checks (and ideas how to program them) are welcome!

- aschweig

[Tdol]

I have attached a screenshot of what I got by pasting your post in. Flagging up time allowing as unusual word order rather than an error struck me as good. I didn't get the comment about the moment, which reads Possible reference to 'the moment' before introduction.

I'll run some other things through and get back to you.

BTW Please add the site to our ESL links database:
ESL Web Directory: Add a Link
We have a section on Grammar: Grammar - ESL Web Directory - UsingEnglish.com
Give a brief factual description of the site.

[aschweig]

Hi! Thanks for checking out the website.

The message, "Possible reference to 'the moment' before introduction." -- was intended to help identify where definite articles are used prematurely. (Perhaps due to Cut-and-Paste actions.)

For example:

"I got a car from my grandparents. The car is a Buick."
vs.
"The car is a Buick. I got a car from my grandparents."

In the second rearrangement, "the car" refers to a yet-to-be introduced car.

In this case, I need to add a check to allow common and idiomatic definite articles, e.g.,

"The economy is starting to recover."

Depending on the audience, "the economy" needs no prior introduction.

[Tdol]

I see- thanks.

[Esgaleth]

I would very much like to try your "Grammar Tool". Where can I find the link to your site, please?
Google search obviously failed me this time.
Thanks.

[Tdol]

GrammarTool

[Esgaleth]

Thank you very much! The checker is really good.
I hope to be able to attach some feedback. Regardless any issues, it's the best I've ever tried.

Attachment 1482

[bds51]

If the site is really grammar tool, then it wasn't able to correct two simple sample sentences. One sentence involved 'both' and the other was to check whether it could identify faulty parallelism. You can mail me if you'd like the sentences.

[emsr2d2]

I just want to check that it is only designed to identify errors and not to correct them.

The first sentence I entered was "I could of done it better". It correctly highlighted "could of" as an error, but I couldn't see a correction. However, of course, it identified the error perfectly.

The second one I tried wasn't so successful. I entered "There's a cat and a dog in the room". It highlighted "There's" quite correctly and when I changed it to "There are" and the highlight vanished. Unfortunately, in both cases, it inexplicably highlighted "the room". I can't fathom any reason why it would do that.

It also doesn't seem to like BrE spellings. I entered "I will memorize it now" which showed no problems. I changed it to "memorise" and it highlighted the word as an error.