What is the best free spell, style and grammar checker for English?
Alas, the free ones are nice but not good. Ginger is perky, but middle of the road in catching grammar mistakes (I include contextual misspellings, because spelling checkers do not catch them; there are uncountable numbers of them). Ginger does not catch style mistakes like wordy phrases, redundancy, clichés, platitudes, jargon, informality, overworked and trite expressions, affected language, pompous phrases, empty intensifiers, awkward usage, slang, nonstandard and nonidiomatic diction, rash overstatements, tautologies, vague terms, outmoded diction, and potentially offensive language.Autocrit catches about as many grammar mistakes as Ginger does--about 12-14%--and about as many stylistic mistakes, as well. So depending on what you want, Autocrit can be up to twice as helpful as Ginger.Language Tool is free and catches up to 25% of the grammar mistakes in our limited tests (published at Grammar Checker Comparison Tests, but only a few style problems,Editminion is free, but its website is full of bad writing, so I wouldn't bother with it.Worth considering: Word and WordPerfect each catch around twice as many grammar mistakes as Ginger and Autocrit. Word also finds about as many style problems as Autocrit, but WordPerfect does not check style.The expensive checkers don't do much better than the free ones. Several, (plus Word and WordPerfect) catch 25%-30% of grammar mistakes; only two (none of the above) catch more than 20% of the style blunders.So the best, free or not, catch fewer than a third of common grammar mistakes and seldom more than a fifth of the style problems. Use them, by all means, but don't expect them to clean up your writing very well.
I've got to do some (revision) or (revisions) ? and why? ((GRAMMAR))?
If it is the activity "to revise" meaning to go back over material you have previously learned then it would be "some revision". In other words you are going to do a part of a singular larger activity called revision. If however it is the process of making a number of changes to a document then it would be "some revisions" In other words there are a series of changes and that is a plural.
How can I politely correct someone's grammatical error without looking or sounding like a grammar Nazi?
Well, first off, make sure they’re actually making a grammatical error. This involves understanding the difference between descriptive grammar (the actual grammar of a language as it is spoken by native speakers) and prescriptive grammar (arbitrary rules about how the language ‘should’ be spoken).Second, ask yourself this: does it matter? If the intended meaning is clear and the context is informal, it probably doesn’t matter, and therefore, no correction is necessary. If the intended meaning is not clear, or the context is more formal, then it may matter, and correction may be in order.Third, be polite. This means not belittling the person for having made an error, and phrasing your correction as an attempt to help. For example, “Hey - this letter is going to go out to clients, so you might want to double-check your phrasing. In particular […]”.Sometimes, it may be best to put it as a question. “What you wrote is a little unclear to me. Did you maybe mean X instead?” This “saves face” by not explicitly saying they were wrong, and so can help avoid embarrassment (and thereby avoid the anger than can arise from being embarrassed).Good luck!
Anything linguistically or grammatically wrong with the following piece?
Hi! English is my second language, and I've written a short science fiction parody in English. I revised the grammar and structure, but I still feel there's something wrong with two of its paragraphs. I've pasted it below for you to check, if you please, and tell me if there is something grammatically wrong with it, or if there is a better or more succinct way to write it.Thank you very much. Here is the part I am worried about: Fortoot, the tallest member of the tribe, smiled as he watched the previous night’s snow melt, revealing the entrapped grass beneath it and setting it free to grow and please the eye. He loved springs. He adored the blooming flowers, the chirping birds and the way young members from the four sexes tried to get friendly towards young members from the opposite four sexes. He was always so moved by such things that he would have written a poem about them had he had enough vocabulary for the job. “Buh-buh” he murmured joyfully. The tribe did not have much of a language. Four dozen words or so made the whole lot. Most of those ended with the suffix”-buh”, which loosely meant ‘fun’. Winter, for instance, was ‘bla-buh’, or ‘white-fun’, a season where everyone enjoyed sliding around and throwing snowballs at each other. ‘Mum-buh, or ‘tasty-fun’, stood for any of the numerous exotic fruits on which the tribe fed. As for spring, life and love, they were all represented by the word ‘buh-buh’, which, more or less, sounded like the grunts adult Ogians uttered amidst throes of carnal passion.
I recently received comments for a manuscript I wrote for my PI. He has an average of 30 comments for each page and objects to every other sentence. Many comments are on style/tone. Should I rewrite my entire manuscript?
You should revise the manuscript according to his comments to the best of your abilities, and explain to him which comments you didn't incorporate and why (try not to let it be many, if any). And be grateful that you have a PI who cares to teach you to write, which is a very important skill if you want to continue academic career, and in many cases even if you don't.
Should I correct the grammatical mistakes in popular answers? Sometimes I read excellent answers on Quora with simple mistakes that detract from the quality of the answer. I always want to edit their errors out. What is the proper "netiquette" rule?
Reading these answers, I've come to the conclusion Quora needs a DNE (do not edit ) button for people with chronic untreatable grammar issues. Similar to the DNR (do not resuscitate) orders for people with chronic health issues, the DNE will take the angst out of the question: To edit or not to edit? Most people are happy to be edited, and presumably resuscitated too, but for the occasional Quoran, it's all just too much; their grammar and spelling is so far gone due to dyslexia or ESL issues, that the friendly editing advice of others seems to be a never-ending correct-a-thon. It all loosely translates to: Wrong. Wrong. You're wrong. Ooh, and looky there! You're wrong again! I personally welcome edits to my typos. I am less welcoming of changes to content or grammar issues that stem from archaic rules; it's none of your business where I put my prepositions. ( I know where I'd like to put them )I am also with Oliver Emberton on the 'or - all that's missing is u' issue and with Domhnall O'Huigin on the 'whateverise' issue. Will you freaking wagon trainers just leave the Mother Tongue alone???I have only ever done two substantial edits to answers. One was because the answer was SO DAMN GOOD that I didn't want anyone to dismiss its content because there were a few typos and punctuation errors. I explained this to the guy in question and he accepted the edits. The other was to an answer by a successful guy whose work I admire very much. He's obviously a very busy man and had dashed off the answer because he felt obligated but didn't have time to go over it the several times needed to catch most errors. I was wary of correcting him - but in the end, I asked myself if I would want that standard of writing representing me in a public forum. I wouldn't. I was pretty humble in my suggestions but he never accepted them. I don't think it's that he was particularly worried by them, it's more likely he simply hasn't been back to the site because of real life commitments. My understanding is that we all want Quora to be the best it can be on every level and that includes helping each other catch the little mistakes that slip through everyone's work. 20 years ago, people who wrote as much as many of us here do, did so for a living and their work passed by several sets of very thorough eyes before being seen in public. I don't really believe that the standard of writing has gone downhill, it's just that we no longer have a human editing team to help us appear perfect.
Communication marriage topic sentence?
Yes, that's a problem in marriage, communication. Too much communication.
Is it correct to say "it would be great if you can..."? Or should the tense match like "it would be great if you could…"?
The tenses should match. Both of these are correct:1) It will be great if you can do this.2) It would be great if you could do this.In 2), there is no implication that the person cannot do it. And it is the "polite" way to ask for something. 1) can be used after the request is made. It expresses hope that the person will succeed and implies that they might not.