Grammar-checking tool for use with LaTeX?

Question

I am looking for a grammar-checking tool, i.e., something that checks for mistakes such as "two dog" or "a books". It has to work on Linux (Ubuntu). Also, since I use macros to generate some of the prose, it has to somehow work with LaTeX. I don't think that such checkers are LaTeX-aware, so it has to work with some compilation product of LaTeX: DVI or PDF.

If you suggest a grammar checker that checks plain text, please explain how to you extract the text. catdvi does a nice job, but it leaves some garbage like page numbers.

Answer 1

LanguageTool is a very nice standalone, Java-based grammar checker. However, it works on plain text. Therefore, I needed to convert my LaTeX document to as plain as possible text document - Not a simple task. I managed to do it using the following trick:

1. I arranged for all floats to hold their positions using the floats package and the H option. This is required so that captions won't break the paragraphs when transforming to plain text.
2. I removed line numbers using the nopageno package.
3. I used a sed script to do some more fine-tuning, like adding periods to section names and description labels. I don't publish the script here, since that it is really specific to my-own style and conventions.
4. After this preprocessing, I compiled to DVI and ran catdvi -s.
5. I used another simple sed script to get rid of empty lines and page breaks. The final result is a reasonable textual conversion of the LaTeX document, which LanguageTool can work on.

There are still some leftover annoyances, like inlined program listings, which the grammar checker can't understand, but all together I got a decent automated proof-checking from it :)

Answer 2

I wrote a grammar checker for checking TeX documents called LyX-GC. It can also be used online as a web app.

It can use LanguageTool as a back-end. The main advantages over just using LanguageTool directly are that (1) it filters the TeX to avoid false positives from LanguageTool trying to interpret TeX commands as English and (2) it has hundreds of is own rules, including TeX-specific rules. For example, it knows that "See \ref{lem:foo}" should really be "See Lemma \ref{lem:foo}". (Also, if you use LyX, LyX-GC obviously has the advantage of being able to integrate with LyX.)

LyX-GC only really supports English (though there is experimental French support in the git repository).

Answer 3

I've just finished writing a new tool for checking spelling and grammar directly on LaTeX files, called TeXtidote:

https://sylvainhalle.github.io/textidote

The program can remove markup from the file and send it to the Language Tool library, which performs a verification of both spelling and grammar in a dozen languages. What is unique to TeXtidote is that it keeps track of the relative position of words between the original and the "clean" text. This means that it can translate the messages from Language Tool back to their proper location directly in your source file. By default, TeXtidote produces an HTML report that shows your original sources, with the errors found by Language Tool highlighted at the correct location:

The tool is free and easy to install (OS-independent, requires Java). I encourage you to give it a try and tell me what you think! (More information about download/install/use can be found on the Readme page of the GitHub repository; click on the "Download" button on the web site to get there.)

Answer 4

I don't believe there are good grammar checkers, but Word's is better than most — provided, that is, you tell it to switch off broken features like checking for passive constructions.

You can load your Latex file into Word as a plain text file and look for the highlights that indicates that its grammar checker is concerned about some construction (typically green dotted underlining).

With a bit of macrology, you can get a good approximation to indicating to Word which bits are English (or whatever) and indicate the Latex markup as not-a-language. This makes running the grammar/spell checkers more pleasant to use.

Postscript — I had not noticed the linux tag: various flavours of Word can be run under Wine. In the absence of competition, this might be the best Linux solution, although it can't be the best free software solution.

Answer 5

VIM-BASED SOLUTIONS

INTRODUCTION

LanguageTool is a blessing for the open-source community when it comes to spelling & grammar checking. As a bonus, it is a platform independent Java (.jar) application. Be warned, it is not perfect yet, but it is definitely usable and fills a gap that existed for a very long time. It is being actively developed and I sincerely hope for the day it will be the best tool available ever.

To begin with, any grammar-check solution will inevitably use LanguageTool. It is almost inescapable -- even paid commercial utilities will not give you the flexibility and the integration offered by LanguageTool. Now given this fact, the question simplifies to asking:

How can I use LanguageTool on platform X for documents of type Y?

I will now proceed to answering it for the VIM platform (and latex documents as just a special case). This is a canonical case as far as linux OS is concerned.

Basic Set-up

In summary, as of today in the Feb'17, I find three usable solutions as three plugins. I usually recommend Vundle plugin manager whose simple syntax to include in .vimrc is: (No harm in having all three plugins simultaneously. The subsequent setup of each individual plugin is mentioned in the rest of the write up.)

set rtp+=~/.vim/bundle/Vundle.vim
call vundle#begin()
Plugin 'dpelle/vim-LanguageTool'
Plugin 'rhysd/vim-grammarous'
Plugin 'vim-syntastic/syntastic'
call vundle#end()

And then from within vim, issue a pair of commands once-for-all:

:so $MYVIMRC
:VundleInstall

You also need LanguageTool main java (.jar) application installed to ~/LanguageTool/. You may use the following:

>> mkdir -p ~/LanguageTool
>> cd ~/LanguageTool
>> wget https://www.languagetool.org/download/LanguageTool-3.6.zip -O LT.zip
>> unzip LT.zip

The Main Solutions

1. Plugin: vim-LanguageTool

As being the earliest LanguageTool plugin, this has some impressive performance except for some uncomfortable navigation.

There is one caveat to link the LanguageTool application on your desktop. Include the following line in your .vimrc and restart vim (you may :so $MYVIMRC too).

let g:languagetool_jar='~/LanguageTool/languagetool-commandline.jar'

All set, you only have to start the spell/grammar-check-session using command :LanguageToolCheck and end the session using :LanguageToolReset. What you do in between is the key, and you use two commands :lnext :lprevious to navigate among errors. You may remap them in .vimrc for a better comfort for e.g.

nmap gn :lnext<CR>
nmap gp :lprevious<CR>

Actually, you can be slightly smarter and try using those maps only when LanguageToolCheck is active. And nunmap them immediately on issuing LanguageToolReset. (I found aliases LTC and LTR nice, issuing these additional nmap/nunmap'ing commands)

You are also allowed to change color of each type of error (for e.g. green for grammar and red for spelling) using vim commands such as: hi LanguageToolGrammarError guibg=peru guifg=wheat. The full list of types of errors is found in :h LanguageTool.

2. Plugin: vim-grammarous

This is actually a nice alternative to the one above. It automatically installs languagetool java application for itself on its first invocation, hence a much quicker and easier installation to get yourself going.

So directly coming to the usage which is very similar to above except for a couple of more commands. Use :GrammarousCheck to start and :GrammarousReset to end the spell/grammar-check-session. The main tasks are in between and are performed using the small window that opens up explaining the errors in the file. This new window is special and using commands f, n, p, and ? you can navigate.

I personally prefer some of the remaps as below for a more comfortable usage.

let g:grammarous#hooks = {}
function! g:grammarous#hooks.on_check(errs) abort
    nmap <buffer>gn <Plug>(grammarous-move-to-next-error)
    nmap <buffer>gp <Plug>(grammarous-move-to-previous-error)
    nmap <buffer>gr <Plug>(grammarous-move-to-info-window)r
    nmap <buffer>gas f <Plug>(grammarous-move-to-info-window)f
    nmap <buffer>gR <Plug>(grammarous-move-to-info-window)R
endfunction
function! g:grammarous#hooks.on_reset(errs) abort
    nunmap <buffer>gn
    nunmap <buffer>gp
    nunmap <buffer>gr
    nunmap <buffer>gf
    nunmap <buffer>gR
endfunction

This above sample, when present in your .vimrc will create five handy additional normal-mode commands namely gn (next error), gp (previous error), gr (ignore the error), gf (fix automatically with suggested correction), gR (ignore all errors with same rule). These are available only to the current buffer and only when :GrammarousCheck is active, and will disappear as soon as :GrammarousReset is used.

3. Python wrappper: language-check in combination with vim's Syntastic plugin

Note: syntastic should have been installed already during above Basic Set-up step of three plugins.

This is an interesting and simplest solution of all, if you already have the infamous Syntastic plugin on vim and python installed on your linux. All that you have to do is install the python-wrapper language-check using the terminal-command:

>> pip install --upgrade language-check

and add the following two lines to .vimrc.

let g:syntastic_text_checkers = ['language_check']
let g:syntastic_tex_checkers = ["lacheck", "chktex", "text/language_check"]
let g:syntastic_text_language_check_args = '--language=en-GB'
let g:syntastic_tex_language_check_args = '--language=en-GB'

Caveat: By default, this setup checks for spelling everytime a save/write command :w is used and therefore slows it down. You may disable this check-on-write by using the following line in .vimrc. But note that it means that you will check grammar yourself manually.

let g:syntastic_check_on_wq = 0

All set, you can simply use two commands :SyntasticCheck and :SyntasticReset to start and end the session respectively. You don't need any more commands here because of the special interface that already highlights and explains on status bar of what went wrong, as you move your cursor to the specific locations.

If anything troubling, you may first want to verify whether the filetype is properly detected to either tex or text by using the command:

:SyntasticInfo

Answer 6

There are two old Unix tools for checking grammar. They are called style and diction. Check out the link:

http://dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_15.html#SEC220

I personally have never used them.

However I am of a belief that the best way to check your punctuation and grammar is to have somebody else proofread your paper for you.

Answer 7

The TeXworks editor has integrated spell-check and it works on Linux too.

I think it uses the same spell-checker as OpenOffice, so it should be able to check the mentioned mistakes.

Answer 8

Have you checked out stylecheck? I found it to be reasonably good, though I'm not sure what it does with macros....

Answer 9

I've been thinking about this lately as well. The question How to perform advanced spell checking of latex documents? suggests a tool called After the Deadline which looks quite interesting. Haven't tried it though so I can't tell you how to use it or if it's any good.

EDIT: Don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I've been testing their web service and it's not too impressive. It reports no errors on these sentences: "I have two dog. I read a books"

Answer 10

I add Queequeg to the list, although it is far from perfect, too. It is a simple command-line tool aimed exactly at finding concordance errors in English. It works with LaTeX sources out of the box.

Unlike After the Deadline, it errs on the side of false positives, and sometimes there are a lot of them. It correctly reports the concordance errors on the example sentence "I have two dog; I read a books" suggested in another answer.

(Small tip for those who wish to try it: there is an error in the installation instructions, you should replace make dict WORDNET=/src/wordnet/dict with make dict WORDNETDICT=/src/wordnet/dict.)

Answer 11

When opening LaTeX files with vim text editor, it is possible to use a plugin that integrates LanguageTool grammar checker. Since, it does not explicitly support the LaTeX syntax, some elements will be detected as syntax errors.

However, the number of these false positives can be significantly reduced if the most common errors due to LaTeX syntax are ignored. This can be achieved, adding, for instance, the following line to ~/.vimrc,

let g:languagetool_disable_rules='WHITESPACE_RULE,EN_QUOTES,' \ . 'COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE,CURRENCY,EN_UNPAIRED_BRACKETS'

While not perfect, this approach allows for the LaTeX document to be checked, without the hassle of converting it to a plain text format.

Answer 12

I was using TexWorks and had the exact same problem. Upon investigation which platforms were supported by LanguageTool, I discovered TexStudio, which full integrates with LanguateTool and works perfectly. See this page for integration details: http://wiki.languagetool.org/checking-la-tex-with-languagetool#toc4

Answer 13

For Visusal Studio code, the LTeX – LanguageTool grammar/spell checking does a great job for both LaTeX and Markdown files.

Answer 14

It's also an option to spell-check the output, i.e. the PDF file. It's a bit indirect, but at least you won't have problems with the LaTeX specific syntax.

Adobe Acrobat has a spell-check if I'm not mistaken, but not everybody has access to it of course.

Answer 15

You can use SCaVis editor to edit Latex files. It has LaTeX tools (to insert math characters), content management (shows Latex sections on the left panel), LaTeX syntax highlighting and spell checking based on OpenOffice dictionaries

Answer 16

Yes, you can use grammar and style checking using the RTextDoc LaTeX editor.

Answer 17

HEVEA is a Latex to HTML translator that does not insert line breaks (unlike detex) and can handle most environments, such as tables, that may include text you also want to grammar-check. Since you are using Ubuntu, you can install the package hevea. Then, you can translate your latex project with the command

hevea document.tex

Since Hevea uses its own parsers and library implementations, it will not understand some Latex environments. In my case, I had to "comment out" all \begin{tabulary}...\end{tabulary} environments by enclosing them with

\begin{latexonly}
\begin{tabulary}
...
\end{tabulary}
\end{latexonly}

The latexonly environment is available after adding \usepackage{hevea} to the preamble of your Latex document and only instructs Hevea to ignore its contents and not affect your usual Latex workflow.

Essentially, this reduces the problem to grammar-checking an html page, document.html.

The good thing about html is that word-processing software, which tend to have state-of-the-art spelling and grammar checking, can flawlessly import html pages. I made good experience using Microsoft Word 2010, which is good at checking English grammar. Aside from many false positives in math expressions, it found several subtle grammar mistakes I had not found after proof-reading my thesis twice. Note that MS Word 2010 runs under Wine environments. Concerning native spell checking on Linux and Ubuntu, you can use LibreOffice.

Answer 18

As somebody said before, RTextDoc http://jwork.org/rtextdoc/ is a good editor for LaTex source code. It has on-the-fly syntax highlighting of errors (red line) and problems with the grammar (blue lines). See the image shown below:

It's powered by the LanguageTools. In addition to grammar checks, it has many 'bells and whistles' for the usual LaTeX source editing. Note that the grammar checking and syntax highlighting works fine even without activation to the Pro version. It also runs equally well on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Answer 19

I just published a 480 page book and found a great grammar check that also preserves the embedded tex commands. 1. Rename your .tex files to .txt 2. Open the .txt file in MS Word (as simple text) and perform the grammar check. It is easy to simply skip over the embedded LaTex commands. Make the needed changes and save the file. 3. Rename the .txt file as .tex 4. Now you can continue editing your .tex file as usual.

Answer 20

I wrote a post on the solutions that I found, on medium. The various options tried (April 2022) are:

• TeXstudio and LanguageTool.
• Textidote.
• YaLafi.
• Overleaf and LanguageTool plugin.
• Overleaf and Grammarly plugin and textarea plugin (not recommended, a bit unstable).
• Overleaf and Writefull plugin.

Some other programs, that can be found in this thread, have not been included.

Answer 21

Check out http://wiki.languagetool.org/checking-la-tex-with-languagetool

You can convert your LaTex file to HTML and check the HTML with the LanguageTool.

Answer 22

Here is another solution i found out: Latex Spelling and Grammar Check. Check it out and let me know what you are thinking of it.

Answer 23

There are superb grammar checking solutions for Microsoft Word. Open the PDF file using MS Word. This is done in Windows by using right click, then "open with" and select Microsoft Word. The generated Word document may contain a few errors with hyphenated words and footnotes, but it is useful.

MS Word spell checker may be complemented with a popular grammar checking tool such as Grammarly, Language Tool, ProWritingAid.

Answer 24

The AbiWord project includes a US English-only grammar checking plugin using "Link Grammar." (For Linux) Current version seems to be 3.02 (from 2016.) I've found it useful, however, I haven't found a way to turn off its detection of certain formatting problems, such as hard returns (from the days of the typewriter, remember, before word wrap?) I suppose running text through something like Sigil or Calibre's epub editor might be able to fix that first. The last time I tried, I may have done something wrong, and it removed ALL spaces, however! That pretty much made the text unreadable.

Edit: Link Grammar Parser January, 2019: link-grammar 5.6.0 released! https://www.abisource.com/projects/link-grammar/

Answer 25

The filtering tool YaLafi provides LaTeX filtering with character position mapping between LaTeX and extracted plain text. On the project page, an application for integration with the proofreading software LanguageTool is proposed. Among others, it can generate a report in text or HTML format.

The filter does recognise LaTeX definitions of the form \newcommand in the input text, and it can be additionally adapted with some Python statements. For instance, the input

\newcommand\xxx A
\newcommand\yyy{books}
\xxx\ \yyy{} are interesting.

will produce a complaint about 'A books' in line 3.

Alternatives are TeXtidote and vscode-ltex, but both do not process macro definitions. Pandoc recognises own macros, but does not perform character position mapping.

YaLafi is still in an early stage and may be difficult to install if one is not acquainted with Python.