Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Review of Grammar Check Anywhere and Whitesmoke


As an indie author, I struggle to put out error-free work. I hate typos, misspellings, and format errors. While most misspellings are corrected by the word processor, many typos and grammatical errors are not, and neither are words used out of context.  As I noted in a recent blog (as recent as today, as a matter of fact. I’m catching up) indie authors should use an editor, at least until the get a feeling for grammar and punctuation, and are able to construct a story without a lot of help. But that still leaves proofreading. I mentioned in that blog the typos that I missed, even after having read the thing a couple of times. Even my wife missed them.


It occurred to me that there may be some decent software that will help me. So, I searched for software that would check grammar. Many word processors have something that purports to do it, but mine (Atlantis) does not. There is not even a plug-in. 


I discovered a number of programs that might work, so I downloaded a few to see what they would do. My verdict is that although they may be useful for students, people learning the language, or people who fancy themselves writers, but who are not properly schooled in English, they are of little use to a professional writer. Although they certainly make some suggestions that improved any writing, they are so imperfect that one still needs a human proofreader to go through it word by word.


Some of the most popular programs, such as Ginger, worked only with Microsoft products that I don’t have. I downloaded StyleWriter4, but found the interface to be so horrible that it was unusable. I ended up trying Whitesmoke and Grammar Check Anywhere. Neither is perfect, but of the two, Whitesmoke (WS) is better. Both run in the background, and are activated by a hot key, which you can assign. They both have reasonably decent interfaces, and are easy to use. But there are major differences between them, and major problems with both.


For example, neither one (nor any others I tested online) found any problems with the sentence: “We are going to place in the country.” It should be “We are going to a place in the country.” A clear limitation of all grammar checking programs, illustrating that no matter what you do, you still need a set of human eyes to read the thing. And better that the eyes are not yours.


But why should they miss this? The word “place” is one of those words that can be a noun or a verb. “I have a place in the country,” or “Please place the jar on the table.” As noun, it needs an article – “the” or “a.” As a verb it does not. So, why not flag it? They flag other stuff. They flag common words that are confused, as I discuss below. I know that in the context I used it that there should be an “a” in front of it. But I type fast and miss letters, sometimes. When I read it, my brain skips right over it. Just mark it and say “you might be missing an article.” 


Both of these programs have a trial version to download for free. (Note to those selling software: I will never download a program for which I have to pay first, with the right to cancel. I don’t trust you that far. I insist on a free trial download, no strings attached.)


Warning: Both programs affected formatting. Never use them on a final version of a document on which you have struggled on the formatting. 






Grammar Check Anywhere.


I found this program to be nearly useless for my purposes. Most of the suggestions for corrections it made were meaningless or wrong, and it does not look at punctuation.


Unlike many programs, including WS, this program does not require an internet connection to work.


In contrast to WS, which allows only 10,000 characters at a time, Grammar Check will check your entire document at one time, one issue at a time. I used it on a 56,000 word novel. The document comes up in an editing window with the first issue (potential problem) highlighted. 


The first issue it had was with the sentence “If this stick breaks, you are gonna die.” It highlighted “this stick breaks,” and suggested “this stick break,” “these stick breaks,” and “the stick breaks.” The only one of the suggestions that is grammatically correct in this context is the last one. The sentence as it is is correct, so why bother? If you are going to bother, then make a suggestion that has the result of producing proper grammar in the context of the sentence. I suppose you could say “Did this stick break?” I cannot, however, think of a context where “these stick breaks” would be correct. In my limited understanding of English, the noun “stick” would have to agree in number with the article in front of it. “These” is plural, so “stick” would have to be plural, and the verb would have to not have the “s.” That may be a rough way to put it, but if you can think of any context where the suggestion “these stick breaks” would be correct, feel free to comment.


Then it wanted to make sure that I did not mean “foreword” when I used the word “forward.” Fine, but from the context of the sentence, I used the right word. The program, then, mechanically looks for certain words and gives a warning, without regard to context. You can adjust the sensitivity to these things, and you can tell it not to look for them, but that feature does not seem to work. It did the same thing with “weather,” to be sure I didn’t mean “whether.” I am beyond this issue in my understanding of English, and found it quite annoying. (It also has an “Ignore All” button, which does not work).


For  the phrase “he no longer,” it suggested “he know longer.” Uh, no. This is clearly geared toward a person who does not know the difference between know and no. But under what context would the word “know” be correct here? None that I can think of, so it clearly simply looks for “no” and substitutes “know.” Not much use, and certainly a time waster.


It did make some good suggestions. For example, “without,” instead of “in the absence of,” and “despite,” in place of “in spite of.” Good ideas, and the type of advice that everyone could use.


Then it started selecting letters in the middle of words at random and suggesting that they be capitalized, because it had determined that they were the first word of a sentence. I don’t know where this came from, but it got to be quite annoying.


As you go through the program’s suggestions, you can edit your actual document (a feature missing in WS), or you can edit the document in the program’s window. You should know, though, that if you click “Finish,” you will have no option but to have the program make the changes to your document that you made in the editing window. There should be a way to exit without doing anything. If you don’t want to make the changes in your document that you have made on the editing window, you must hit the “Cancel” button. This is a major drawback or, more accurately, a flaw, in the program.


It destroyed my formatting. The first time I tried it, I had it look at the entire document, including all the front matter. I had agonized for hours over the headers and footers, because I’m using different headers for odd and even pages, and the page numbering starts at chapter 1, not at the beginning of the document, which is the title page. When I told it to finish, it applied my changes, and killed my header and footer formatting. Fortunately, I had saved it when the format was right, and not saved it since. I experimented with this issue by taking only a portion of the text starting in the middle of the document (which is done by selecting it, then pressing F7), made some changes, then applied it. This time, it did not affect the headers and footers. 


I liked that you could choose between editing the actual document, or editing in the program and having it applied to the document. The editor works at normal speed, which can be useful. 


I found the program as a whole to be too basic. That is, it seems to believe that you don’t know the difference between “weather” and “whether,” which is a level or two below where any writer would be. So, it’s good for middle school students, but not professional writers.


On the upside, It costs only about $60, so you won’t go without food and shelter if you spring for it, but for me it was too much of a time waster, with only minimal usefulness. 


Whitesmoke (WS)


Great interface, clean-looking editing window and meaningful suggestions.


The editor, though, is painfully, agonizingly, horribly slow. I’m talking two or three seconds per keystroke slow. You want to shoot yourself. And you can’t edit your document while this is running. 


It’s limited to looking at only 10,000 characters at a time. Maybe a chapter. 


Requires internet connection. I read another review that determined the connection was not secure. So watch what you edit, it’s being sent over a non-secure connection.


Affected the format slightly, but did not touch my beloved headers and footers. For example, it eliminated italics. 


If you do a search for grammar checking programs, you will find that WS has marketed the garbage our of their product. Some of it is a little deceptive. You go to a site that looks like a different product, and it turns out to be a landing page for WS. I hate that. I also found “reviews” online that were clearly written by WS. I hate that, too. I have enough trouble figuring out what’s real in this world. 


WS is superior to Grammar Check Anywhere in several ways. It’s interface is much more professional looking.  It comes up with a nice clean editor, and a side bar graphic that rates your writing overall, and with respect to certain categories, such as sentence structure.


It highlights problems it finds by underlining the offending word or phrase, and then putting suggested changes above them. You make the change by clicking on the one you like, or you ignore them by doing nothing. The suggested changes are marked in different colors, depending whether it is a spelling error, an incomplete sentence, a word suggestion, and so forth.


But it ain’t perfect. Here are some of its suggestions:


“I’m not” in place of “I ain’t.” No prob.
It said that “That’s too bad” is not a complete sentence. I don’t know whether it is or it isn’t, but it’s typical conversational speech. But I’m not horrified by the fact that it made the recommendation.


“I ain’t no coward” should be “I’m not any coward.” Don’t sound right to me.


“Could” instead of “were able to.” Good suggestion.


A comma after “us” in the sentence “If they find us they are going to hurt us.” Probably right.


But there are some serious bugs in it. It suggested “Iprovided,” or “Itprovided,” instead of “provided” (as in “Provided we survive . . .”) The suggested corrections are missing spaces. i.e., the suggestions for correcting grammar and punctuation themselves have typos. Imagine if you were a foreigner trying to correct a document in English. You want to put your brains on the ceiling? Try to look up the meaning of “Iprovided.” Not good for a program that has been around for a while, and that is intended to do what this thing does, and for which you will lay out actual dough. And remember, you are supposed to click on the one you want, and it automatically makes that correction. I don’t need a grammar program that introduces more errors.


There came a point in the document where it got one word off from the word with which it had a problem. For example, “. . . he did not hear come in.” It underlined “come” and suggested it be “here.” If you made the change, you end up with “hear here.” It meant to suggest that “hear” should be “here.” (Like in Grammar Checker, I’m at the point in my understanding of English that I know the difference. Would I type the wrong one? Not likely. More likely that I would leave off a letter, such as typing “hea” or “her.” You want to help me, flag a sentence where I used “her” instead of “here.” I’d pay for that.


So, many of the suggestions it had were just plain wrong, whether considering the context or not. There are typos in some suggested corrections.


On the other hand, there are some good things about it. The editing window is very easy to read, and they do not clutter it up with oodles of useless suggestions (only a few). So, I find myself reading every word very carefully, not only the words indicated for changes. This is important. When I proof read my own stuff, I tend to gloss over things because I know what it says (or what it should say). 


They purport to have, and others have written that they do have, excellent customer service. I haven’t tested it, and I don’t know what happens after you buy the thing.


If you do install the trial version, to remove it you have to go to Windows Task Manager, and delete it from the Processes window. It does not show up in the Applications window. (if the thing in running. You can prevent this by not having it start automatically when you start your computer)


So, will I buy it? No. It’s about $150 (105 Euros), although I know they will offer you a 30% discount if you uninstall their software. Is it worth a hundred bucks for what it does? Probably. But here’s my issue with it, and with Grammar Checker:


Conclusion


Certainly, both programs will help you with your writing, particularly if English is not your native tongue, or you’re a student, even in college, or you are an indie writer who can’t afford a real live editor. If you are writing something that does not have to be immaculate, but you want help with some punctuation (WS only) and word usage, then these will help you.


If you are a professional writer, however, they are virtually useless. Although they will make a few good suggestions, so would any editor. Since they are not a substitute for an editor, then you are wasting your time and money. You will spend the time going through with one of these programs, and still have to go through word-by-word to get the glitches that these won’t catch. Would you rely on your spell checker to make sure everything was okay? No. 


I looked at these to address the problem that I miss typos when reading through a document. They are of little use for that. What helped me the most was listening to it being read out loud on my computer. Adobe pdf will do it, but I had a tremendous problem. In older versions, it worked very well. They have now rendered it nearly useless. The best program I’ve found so far is Natural Reader. You can get a free version with just Microsoft Annie’s voice, or you can pay (quite a bit, actually) for other voices. The other voices are cool, but I doubt they are worth the money. With Natural Reader, you can listen and edit your document at the same time. It has numerous bugs and flaws, but it works good enough for the free version.  

28 comments:

  1. Thanks for the reviews. I did think of a way to use "These stick breaks..." : Perhaps a radiologist is showing his interns some scans of green-stick fractures... "These (green)stick breaks..." He might be inclined not to use the full term, out of economy.
    Also, there was also a small grammatical error, "...WS has marketed the garbage our of their product." I think you meant, "...marketed the garbage out of..." Hope you didn't use one the checkers; you might have to add that if you reblog this review. ;)
    Thanks again for the reviews; I found them helpful.

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    1. Thanks. I didn't use the grammar checkers on my blog. Probably would not have found the errors, anyway.

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    1. I stand by my review. I have not found a grammar checker that did anything more than provide corrections at a high school level. Writers will not benefit from it, because our errors come from fast typing. There is no grammar checker on the market that I have found at any price that is of any value to a person who has a command of the English language and the craft of writing.

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    2. Thank you for 'spelling it out.' As well, and much to my dismay, after plodding around upon seeing an ad for Whitesmoke "free" grammar checker -- having immediately landed on the devs product page but finding no information on limitations... following a somewhat lengthy chat with a rep I finally was told the free version lasts but 3 days. 'Smoothtalk 101b' is a more suitable moniker for this monstrosity.

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  3. Even though when I purchased the software there was no indication that this was a time-limited product, they canceled my license and, since WhiteSmoke only works after checking with its servers, it stopped working and now they want more money to activate it again.

    So WhiteSmoke is really a scam! Stay away!

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Have you consulted with them? I had a similar issue. I logged to http://www.whitesmoke.com/ and a very helpful chat rep. sorted all out for me in a few hours. I think they had some kind of bug or something, but the tool was very good so I decided to fight for it and today very glad I did so. You should definitely talk to them because this kind of thing happens.

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    3. Thanks for your comment, Lavinia. I'm not sure what bug you're talking about. The issues I mentioned are errors in the program that can't be fixed by talking to a rep. I had no technical problems with it, other than it being very slow. And there were a lot of things I liked about it, but in the end it did not do anything for me.

      I also don't think one should spend a few hours trying to fix expensive software.

      I'm glad you're able to use it, that's fine. I just didn't think it did anything particularly useful for a writer.

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    5. Grammarly.com is better but much more expensive. While I am at it, not only is WS 80% crippled, you have to understand English fairly well to know when 'WM is suggesting incorrect corrections 80% of the time.

      Regardless, knowing its limits, I used it as a back up to Grammarly and it caught a few mistakes grammarly missed.

      However, the reason I will never go back to WS is their customer service/ billing is reliably incompetent. While they offer no way to monitor or regulate your account, you have to find their hidden email address to make any changes and then you can be sure they will almost always do the opposite of what you ask including double billing.

      Their download still causes PC errors as of 2015.

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  4. Good point, Pedro. The online checkers usually are selling a subscription, rather than the software, so it's limited to a year, or whatever. Forgot to mention that.

    But since they don't eliminate the need for a human editor, and you have to be very careful following their suggestions, as most are wrong, you don't really need them.

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  5. hum....I appreciate your review. I have difficulties writing...I have always envied those who can edit on their own. I have learning disabilities and I have found Whitesmoke to be an extremely useful albeit slightly costly tool to have at my disposal.

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  6. We came to know wonderful things form your blog.
    Very nice blog.
    document editing services.

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  7. Hello friend
    it’s true that most of the persons are facing problem while writing English they commit some errors I also faced the same problem. To overcome this problem I searched an English grammar checker tool in internet which helps me a lot and it’s free.

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  8. Michael...thanks for your review of these products. I'm also an author and I struggle to provide error-free copy for my books. It's a tough job. Writing is the easy part. Editors and proofreaders are expensive. You'd think with all the cool AI we have now, that someone would have put something together that works well. Until then, I'll just order lots of proofs and give 'em to all my friends. Thanks for saving me some $$$. Best Wishes.

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  9. I'd be trampled if all sites gave articles like these awesome articles.Grammarly reviews

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  10. Do not waste your time and money with WhiteSmoke. It is a scam.
    The company is going to bankrupt. They cancel user accounts much earlier. You will find so many negative comments and reviews on Internet about scamming with user subscriptions.

    I suggest you to use Grammarly or LanguageTool. The second one is free and really woks well.

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  11. After a short Demo period, I bought " lifetime - anywhere: accesses.
    Ever Since, I had the chance to use it less than ten times. They block my password, and when I approached technical support- no answer, the online chat is never online. Simply the worst service one can receive, at the minute you buy- lifetime access you are no longer a fruitful customer and they simply ignore you, I urge you not to spend your money on this company

    ReplyDelete
  12. After a short Demo period, I bought " lifetime - anywhere: accesses.
    Ever Since, I had the chance to use it less than ten times. They block my password, and when I approached technical support- no answer, the online chat is never online. Simply the worst service one can receive, at the minute you buy- lifetime access you are no longer a fruitful customer and they simply ignore you, I urge you not to spend your money on this company

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    Replies
    1. If you're not satisfied, request your money back. If they are not responsive, file a claim with your credit card company or PayPal (however you paid). They will take care of it.

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  14. Conventional spell checkers fix spelling mistakes (i.e. non-word errors) by essentially performing a dictionary look-up of a word, and fix grammar errors by applying a set of grammatical rules
    grammar-checker

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    ReplyDelete