10
votes
Recommendations for a grammar checker?
I'm looking for a French grammar checker. I think I'm in that intermediate-level plateau where I just need to keep talking / chatting in French but I want to eventually get to a point where I have correct grammar, maybe even some suggestions for idioms.
Some info for my use-case:
- I don't expect to go past 100 "consultations" a month.
- Would be nice if there was an extension that helps for email / Messenger / Telegram / WhatsApp.
- Would be nice if it did help with idioms.
I did my homework and found out that:
- Grammarly does offer this but only in English.
- Language Tool exists but it's 20 euros monthly or 60 euros per year, which are both steep prices for just trying it out.
- Asking ChatGPT works most of the time, but it's a bit annoying to load up that website every time and ask. I'm open to coding something based on the API if that would be the most cost-effective option.
Thanks in advance for all your suggestions!
Back in my school days I used BonPatron.
That was well over a decade ago though, there may be better machine learning based tools these days.
It does a great job of explaining errors and offers suggestions for improved wording. It doesn't perform corrections automatically, you have to make them yourself (arguably better for learning). The free version is fully functional, although web-based only and ad-supported.
I'm a francophone, and I would absolutely be unable to write properly in french without Antidote. It's by far the best French grammar and spelling corrector.
I know some ex-journalist (it's Caféine and Faskil from Joystick fame) that still use and recommend Antidote.
But it's 60 euros monthly (or 120 for a perpetual license), which you already stated it's too steep for you.
I like Grammalecte but it's perhaps not what you're looking for.
Google docs has a pretty good spell check for other languages, at least in my experience, and this extends to correcting basic grammar. I can't speak to French, but when I type in German it will generally suggest the correct article (Der/die/das etc.) if I've used the wrong one, add or remove reflexive pronouns, suggest the correct preposition and the correct conjugations for verbs. What it doesn't do is suggest a better way of expressing something - if I've chosen a tense which sounds weird in that context or mistranslated an idiom it's not going to tell me. But for basic mistakes it can be useful.
It does look like DeepL is developing something similar to what you're after but it's still in beta at the moment and only available in English and German.
Having used that tool in German (not my native language), it seems more like a writing tool to find different ways of wording a sentence than a grammar checker. Though maybe my grammar is just already good enough so it focuses on that 😎
An alternative to chatGPT would be maybe using Microsoft Edge. You can access the copilot on the side bar. Else, there's also the functionality of adding any website to the sidebar, so you could add chatGPT.
Creating your own extension and using the API is also not a bad idea. GPT 3.5's API is ridicously cheap, you would struggle to spend 5 or 10 cents per month
I use the free version of LanguageTool a lot, it works fine.
Grammarly is absolutely terrible with user privacy. Don't use it.
A hack I used to use was to use LanguageTool through a Jetbrains product because I had a free student license. It is very specific though (I don't know if you are an IT student with a Github education account).