🚀 go-pugleaf

Oh dear I knew this would happen ...

rq02+@andrew.cmu.edu (Richard Quadrel) writes in response to my
statement that 

>> The only other Mac grammar checker is Grammatik, but Correct Grammar
>> is far superior.

>I don't know what kind of papers Mr. Dale writes, so I have no idea why he
>made that comment about Sensible Grammar.  While no grammar checker is
>perfect, both Sensible Grammar and Grammatik were successful in dicovering
>errors in both my technical papers and informal correspondance.  ...
>...
>Sensible Grammar doesn't seem to catch as many potential problems as
>Grammatik does, but it's still a pretty good program.  And either of these
>beats the pants off of Correct Grammar, in my opinion.  For Mr. Dale and
>others: try running Correct Grammar and Grammatik on a sample file (I'll
>be happy to provide one of my own!) and compare for yourself!

Ok.  I was addressing only the issue of *syntactic error detection and
correction* -- the original poster asked for a *grammar* checker.
These programs do other things, but Sensible Grammar isn't
particularly interested in doing *syntax* (= grammar in my language)
checking -- I'm talking here about things like subject-verb number
agreement and other genuine syntactic problems.  Because of its
limited pattern matching techniques, Sensible Grammar generates a lot
of false positives: for example, if you say "When is she going to
work?", SG will suggest replacing "she going" by "her going".

Grammatik (at least in Version 3; haven't tested Version 4 yet) uses
(as far as we can tell by trying to break it) technology based on the
old Unix WWB PARTS program, plus some error-locating heuristics on
top.  This is pretty limited for catching syntactic errors:  for
example, it doesn't spot the problem with "John and Mary starts the
car".  Correct Grammar, on the other hand, does appear to carry out
some real parsing of the text.

These programs all do many other things quite well, and I would be the
first to agree that the interface is very important, although there
are of course different preferences here.  But when it comes to
detecting genuine syntactic problems, Correct Grammar wins.

I should add that (a) my awareness of the limitations of various
systems here is largely due to the detailed examinations performed by
a colleague, Shona Douglas, and that (b) I have no connections with
the manufacturers of any of these programs.

R
-- 
Robert Dale        Phone: +44 31 650 4416       | University of Edinburgh
UUCP:   ...!uunet!mcvax!ukc!its63b!cogsci!rda   | Centre for Cognitive Science
ARPA:   rda%cogsci.ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk  | 2 Buccleuch Place
JANET:  rda@uk.ac.ed.cogsci or R.Dale@uk.ac.ed  | Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland