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For an online project I'm working on, I am looking for a open source grammar checker. I have searched Google, with some good results (http://www.link.cs.cmu.edu/link/, etc), but I am wondering what all of you think about this topic.

I need this to be able to be used online, versus desktop based, but this is the only real specification I have. If it has a built-in spell checker, that would be a plus, but I can always use another project for that purpose.

Thanks for any help.

Erich Mirabal
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individualtermite
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4 Answers4

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LanguageTool should fit the bill:

http://www.languagetool.org/

richardtallent
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  • I saw a online version here: http://community.languagetool.org/, but I'm not sure if this is available to download. – individualtermite Jul 23 '09 at 00:36
  • IIRC, it's a Java app with a default UI interface, but the underlying engine could be run server-side via JSP. You may even be able to embed it as an applet in a live web page and call it from your form code. I tried once to compile it under J# and that led to nothing but frustration. That said, using the actual engine might be worth the trouble if you're serious about implementing a grammar checker. – richardtallent Jul 23 '09 at 06:37
  • @richardtallent Thanks for your help. I think I'll drop a post at their site and ask what they are using to accomplish that effect. The problem is that I don't really want the user to need Java to use the program. And I want it more to be that when they enter the text, another page returns what is wrong/right about their grammar. – individualtermite Jul 23 '09 at 17:16
  • LanguageTool is the best I've found so far that can be called by a program, but many of its rules are arbitrary stylistic preferences, and many of its rules are wrong more often than they are right. If you use the default ruleset, something like 1/3 of the flagged errors will be errors. – Phil Goetz Feb 22 '14 at 21:07
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try polishmywriting.com (now afterthedeadline.com)

I think the developer's details are here: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=raffi here's an ASK HN post from raffi: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=286162

UPDATE: you can get an API Key (i.e. for Wordpress): http://www.afterthedeadline.com/download.slp?platform=Wordpress

pageman
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  • @pageman Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like a very good tool. However, does it require you to buy those Service Plans in order to use it? – individualtermite Jul 23 '09 at 21:58
  • @PFI that's why I included raffi's details - get a news.ycombinator.com account and try to contact raffi - there might be a licensing deal there somewhere ... – pageman Jul 24 '09 at 18:18
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Have you taken a look at the Xinha project? I believe that has spell check and possibly grammar check.

Andrew Siemer
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Several wysiwyg editors have support for spell checking: feckeditor, htmlarea, tinymce.

I think most of them uses aspell dictionaries.

rjlopes
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    I believe the question is about grammar checking, not spell checking. – Milan Babuškov Jul 22 '09 at 21:46
  • @Milan Babuškov This is correct, the question is about grammar checking. – individualtermite Jul 22 '09 at 23:17
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    what is this "aspell" dictionary? maybe you should use the spell checker ;) - also, in the spirit of grammar and this question: "most of them *use* ..." – Erich Mirabal Jul 23 '09 at 18:41
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    SOrry i misunderstood the question, a grammar checker is not the same that a speel checker. @Erich: aspell is an open source spell checker that has many dictionaries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspell another example is hunspell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunspell – rjlopes Jul 23 '09 at 21:00