[English] Has the new version 3.6 disabled most of the article usage rules?

Hello all,

Since our last post, we had started some intensive testing of the various grammar rules. We picked up Article usage for our testing exercise and started testing all the 57 rules under the Articles section in the grammar.xml 29 rules are not running as expected. We stopped intensive testing and tested only those sentences that are given as examples for each of the said rules, and it is still the same.

The rules that are failing are as follows along with the sentences tested:

  1. Rule “Zero or indefinite article (‘a’/‘an’) before superlatives”
    Sentence tested: The guy is best driver.
  2. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: About month before I left it was discussed to attend the conference.
  3. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: About large boat.
  4. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He is talking about friend.
  5. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He is talking about good friend.
  6. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: It falls tad.
  7. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting for answer.
  8. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting for swift answer.
  9. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: The dog spent all day in kitchen.
  10. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting in lobby.
  11. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting in large lobby.
  12. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: ACET would not be able to reclaim tax on covenant.
  13. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: This remark is on previous page.
  14. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: Change your filter after week.
  15. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He is good friend.
  16. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: Recently I have experienced problem.
  17. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: Recently I have experienced serious problem.
  18. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He is experienced soldier.
  19. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He is extremely experienced soldier.
  20. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting at airport.
  21. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting at new airport.
  22. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting by river.
  23. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He was waiting by small river.
  24. Rule “Missing definite article referring to a time period”
    Sentence tested: Something happened in past.
  25. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He is friend.
  26. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He does lot of things.
  27. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He takes brother with him.
  28. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He gives brother a bar of chocolate.
  29. Rule “Articles: article missing before a countable noun”
    Sentence tested: He goes step too far.

Has there been any update in the grammar.xml in the v3.6 release? We were testing these rules using the online portal: https://www.languagetool.org/

Is it the right place to check these specific rules? Please do let us know.

This rule is default="off", i.e. it isn’t active unless you explicitly activate it (on languagetool.org, you cannot to that, you need to use the API or stand-alone version). Checking LT 3.5, it had been off, too, probably for a long time. The main reason why rules are turned off by default is because they cause too many false alarms.

Thanks @dnaber that is very helpful. We will have these rules activated on our local environment and then test. :slight_smile:

Can you please tell me where in the source code did you make changes to enable/disable certain rules.