looking at http://community.languagetool.org/corpusMatch/list?lang=en I see
a lot of warnings where I cannot decide whether they are really useful. If
you are a native English speaker, please help us by saying whether you
think these rules should really be activated by default:
From “Redundant phrases” category:
“period of time”. LT says “Use simply ‘period’”
“a large number of”. LT says “Specify a number, remove phrase, or simply use ‘many’ or ‘numerous’”
“many different”. LT says “Use simply ‘many’”
“all of the”. LT says “Use ‘all the’”
“the winter season”. LT says “Use simply ‘winter’”
“Readability”:
LT says “You used three nouns after one another, and this might decrease
readability. You might consider rewording the sentence.” for phrases like
these:
television guidance system
payload delivery system
computer science education
speech synthesis library
X-ray fiber diffraction
sodium nitrite solution
precision mechanics industry
CD add-on device
What do you think, are these rule useful? Should they be enabled by default or are they just annoying?
I am a native English speaker. These corrections look fine, but some users may find these corrections annoying. For instance, there is nothing incorrect about using “period of time” or “a large number of”, and they might even be preferable phrases depending on the context. I think if the LT corrects phrases which aren’t incorrect, it may frustrate the user. But at the same time, how annoying can it be? It’s just a little blue underline, I don’t think it inconveniences the user.
I have indeed noted some of the times that LT has been perhaps a bit ‘overenthusiastic’.
My opinion (as a native speaker with a degree in linguistics), is that in general, the warnings are useful but the option to disable them is equally important.
Some of the warnings are not dissimilar to those in Word depending how you have it programmed.
What would perhaps be more useful is to be able to shrink the option menu a bit (with a - sign) as it is far too long at present.
At the same time, as you are discussing the usefulness of rules, my observation is that these rules (style) are not the most useful
Take for example the rule ‘black in colour’ (instead of just ‘black’)
How many languages would insist on ‘in colour’? Or to put it another way, how many speakers are likely to type ‘black in colour’ not realising that ‘in colour’ is redundant in English?
Even in Thai where they say ‘colour blue’, they very rarely make the mistake in English as colours are one of the first things children learn and they quickly see that the word ‘colour’ can be dropped.
On the other hand, I’d like to see hundreds of more rules for what are common mistakes even for English speakers (but I am so slow at writing rules that I have just not had the time)
My opinion (as a native speaker with a degree in linguistics), is that in
general, the warnings are useful but the option to disable them is
equally important.
Thanks for your reply. We made disabling rules easier in LT 1.9 where you
can just click “deactivate”, no need to visit the option dialog anymore.
Take for example the rule ‘black in colour’ (instead of just ‘black’)
It sounds strange indeed - but a Google search for “black in colour” leads
to several million hits (not all are valid, but many are, it seems).
On the other hand, I’d like to see hundreds of more rules for what are
common mistakes even for English speakers (but I am so slow at writing
rules that I have just not had the time)
English in LanguageTool has no maintainer currently, so any help is very
welcome.
'English in LanguageTool has no maintainer currently, so any help is very
welcome. ’
but I very much doubt that I can help you out. I’m not a programmer as you already know and cannot write rules without going through hours of mental agony and frustration.
Tell me exactly what a ‘maintainer’ does and I’ll see if I can find someone.
Tell me exactly what a ‘maintainer’ does and I’ll see if I can find
someone.
There’s no “job description” for a maintainer. It’s mostly about
developing/improving rules, or doing whatever one is good at. Most
maintainers do some translation work, but that’s not needed for English.
Sorry to say that I haven’t managed to find anyone.
I’d really like to help out as the software interests me and is super useful but I’m just too slow at writing code and a lot of what is on the site is just way above me.
I hope to improve my skills in writing rules when I have time and maybe things will change but before I’m ready, you will have to answer loads of my questions to help me!!!