I’m thinking about using LT to make it easier for people to check their writing for outdated or offensive terms. Do you know if anybody is using it that way, or perhaps to encourage use of a house styleguide?
I think that’s fine, but it should be available free-of-charge too, and be multi-lingual. That’s what brought me to LT.
Before I dive into trying to turn our styleguide into LT rules (I’m not sure what the correct term is even), I wanted to check if anyone else here is already working on something like this, or would like to collaborate.
I’ve had a look around at the rules/en/grammar.xml file, and I see that the PROFANITY rulegroup already includes lots of useful and well-documented rules, not only stuff about cussing/swearing. For example, there’s one for the token “illegal”, followed by “aliens”, which cites a CNN story about a civil rights law in New York (You can now be fined up to $250,000 if you call someone an 'illegal alien' in New York City | CNN), and suggests alternatives like “undocumented immigrants” instead.
So I guess my new question is: Are there working groups for different rulegroups, like the PROFANITY one, or does everyone just offer edits for whatever they like?
You had better ask the maintainers of English directly.
They might not pick up fast. But you can easily contribute by making pairs, like:
(no alternative)
And check if things are already covered by LT by copy/pasting the phrases to be avoided in the web interface, so you can drop all phrases already covered.
And there is a ‘simple rule editor’ here: Create a new LanguageTool rule
It makes creating (initial) rules easy.
My interest is in Dutch. But this book is specifically for English, and you were talking about having rules like these for every language. Is there a Dutch version?
