On 8/23/05, Jesse L. Purdom wrote:

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 10:12, Jie Li wrote:

...

Hey, my question is: how can I check my grammar when I use Kate or Kile in SUSE9.3. Do I need to get another software to do so? Is there any LaTeX editor can do this job? I am writting my thesis and it would be really helpful if I can find something like word in M$.

Have you considered using OpenOffice? Writer is every bit as useful as MS Word.

I tried it, there is no this "grammar check" function....

Jesse

Jie Li wrote:

On 8/23/05, Jos van Kan wrote:

...

Kate: Tools>Spelling Kile: Tools>Spelling

I think you must have ispell installed. Not sure. If you try to spell check a language different from English you also have to down load the appropriate dictionaries.

If you're looking for something like MS Word, try Open Office, that offers the same functionality.

What I am looking for is not "spell" check, it's "Grammar" check. I've searched on Google, seems that only M$ word and PerfectWord by Corel can do the job

Grammar check on MS Word?? You got to be kidding! Regards, -- Jos van Kan www.josvankan.tk

On 8/23/05, jdd sur free wrote:

Jie Li wrote:

...

M$Word does a good job here,

are you shure? I'm also non native english and never could use it. English grammar is not so hard (it's not the grammar, the problem, usually) I use M$word from the begining, now I am trying to use Linux stuff. Everything is perfect in Linux, except this "grammar check" function.

and PerfectWord does the similar thing..

don't know this one. same as me, I got this from a article on the internet.

many people think the job is good, but sometime it's worst (gives errors).

it's the same than automatic translation. The context is very difficult to know for a program (not only for microsoft - if there is no open source gramar checker is not a hazard) I just need to find some simple errors in my text, which if very usual.

jdd

-- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

On 8/23/05, Mike Roy wrote:

Hi Jie (I hope that is your first name): As to your question about grammer checkers within English language word processors, both Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPerfect have this feature. The only one that I know of that will work under Linux is WordPerfect v 8.0 for Linux. This is a good but older program (WordPerfect is now at version 12). I purchased my copy of WP v8.0 from Corel last summer for about $40.00 Cdn. but I'm not sure if it is still available. You may want to visit the Corel web site at: Mike: thank you for your detailed suggestions! I think I will prepare my thesis in LaTeX, but I will check my grammar with M$Word.

www.corel.com

I'm not sure about Latex (or other versions of Latex) as this is really a printing / layout program instead of just a word processor. OpenOffice does match Microsoft's Word in most features but lacks a grammer checker. As an aternative, you might want to consider buying a good book or two on English grammer. No, it's not as convenient as something included in the word processor but it may be your only other option. If you do decide on a book, I would strongly recommend reference books from Oxford as they are considered the world authority on English. Another English publisher, Collins, also has some excellent reference works. Another source would be style books from major newspapers or news agencies, such as The Canadian Press Stylebook or the New York Times Style Book. Generally, I would avoid most American publications of this type. Hope this helps. Cheers, Mike

On 8/23/05, jdd sur free wrote:

Jie Li wrote:

...

Hey, my question is: how can I check my grammar

ask your mother/girl friend...

automatic grammar edit is desastrous. There are some (probably not open source) professional programs, but none is really as good as it should. it makes a very long time for a very bad result. M$Word does a good job here, and PerfectWord does the similar thing.. I really hate M$Word, but seems that it's a good choice for a non-native english speaker like me...

spellchecking is already not so good :-(

openoffice has a feature quite handy: it can remember selected mispelling and correct it automatically, in case you make frequently the same mistake (as I do :-()

jdd

-- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

On 23 Aug 2005, cpchan@sympatico.ca wrote:

Well if it is just plain text, you can always use diction:

Forgot to add, diction does work with LateX source files. Charles -- "Never make any mistaeks." (Anonymous, in a mail discussion about to a kernel bug report.)

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 21:27, Dylan wrote:

You speak better English that a computer can ever analyse.

Would a computer have caught that, I wonder :)

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 21:50, James Knott wrote:

Several years ago, I watched a demo of IBM's Voice Type Dictation, running on OS/2. It could recognize the appropriate use of there, their and they're or two and too, etc., in a sentence.

If a piece of software can help in reducing the "its vs. it's", "would of" and "there vs. their" in this world, then I'm all for it. Compulsory installation and "replace all" turned on by default, on pain of death

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 22:10, James Knott wrote:

Quite so. It's amazing the number of people, who don't know the difference between you're and your. Another prime example of ignorance is "irregardless". The word is "regardless".

Or irrespective, depending on what you want to say My pet peeve is "would of" or "should of". It looks so ugly it just gets on my nerves

Carlos E. R. wrote:

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The Tuesday 2005-08-23 at 22:17 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

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Or irrespective, depending on what you want to say

My pet peeve is "would of" or "should of". It looks so ugly it just gets on my nerves

That's why, if people for whom English is their first (or native) language can't get it right, we non English-as-1st-language-speakers need a grammar checker ;-)

Well, actually, after the damn fools at UC Berkeley declared English grammar "irrelevant" in the '60's, our educational system collapsed until recently. Now, even though we've pretty much recovered (societally) from that catastrophe, we still have two generations of schoolteachers who neither know nor care about grammar and spelling, except that our society is dragging them forcibly back to sanity. You're likely in a better position than most of us to recognize and use good grammar and spelling. As Anders appears to be :-). John Perry

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Wednesday 2005-08-24 at 09:54 +0100, Fergus Wilde wrote:

You're too modest, Carlos, no-one could complain about your English. And of course, no-one has the right to 'complain' about use of English by non-native speakers,

Thanks :-) The trick is that I read a lot. But remember that our first contact with a second language is most often in paper, not by voice as you. We have to memorize words the hard way. I never learnt "spelling rules".

though it would be nice to think native speakers might offer polite guidance when it's likely to be welcome. What's eating me is the raising in England of a vast number of native speakers who aren't given even a basic grounding in the way their own language works.

Interesting. The same thing has started to happen here: gross spelling faults in entry level exams to university are "non fatal" now.

...

It seems to be one of those areas where open sofftware is lacking. Another is optical characer recognition.

That would be hugely useful, agreed! Any time people are ready ...

Let us hope :-) (See? I have to write "let us", because I'm unsure if it is "lets" or "let's" or whatever ;-) ) - -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFDDSUNtTMYHG2NR9URAmumAJ0YGAUyGzOvayxRkyDzmKIWAWH2nACgmIIV Q5lo211jBaNYahGJKGgAOIY= =dfY3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 22:44, Dylan wrote:

You're gonna have to learn to live with that one I'm afraid. Because the de-stressed form of /HAVE/ is phonetcally identical to the de-stressed form of /OF/ children acquiring English as a first language will learn them as the same lexical item in certain syntactic environments. One of these is "aspectual auxilliary following modal" so it's going to become a feature of Standard English and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Innit, eh?

Never. Only if I can force them to be consistent and say "Of you done that?" I know that "have" sounds the same as "of" in the contraction "would've", but that doesn't detract one iota from the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever. If children learn it, they'll have to unlearn it. As children they also learn to spell many words that they later get corrected. It's what school is all about. I know it is a living language, but some things are too silly for words And some things never change. Leicester still ain't called Lester, is it. And it doesn't get more phonetically identical than that. Innit? No' 'alf

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 23:20, Dylan wrote:

Indeed, writing (and therefore spelling) is a learnt behaviour/skill. The ability to speak (communicate verbally or gesturally) is an automatic function arising from neuro-physiologcal and cognitive complexity as an emergent capability.

I'm talking about correcting the written word What are you talking about?

The sooner people who have less idea about what actually goes on in the brain when we speak than a monkey has about the workings of the East Inda Company, the better.

Hm, that seems to be incomplete. The sooner those people do what, the better? Or was that the point, perhaps

On Tuesday 23 Aug 2005 22:00, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 22:44, Dylan wrote:

...

You're gonna have to learn to live with that one I'm afraid. Because the de-stressed form of /HAVE/ is phonetcally identical to the de-stressed form of /OF/ children acquiring English as a first language will learn them as the same lexical item in certain syntactic environments. One of these is "aspectual auxilliary following modal" so it's going to become a feature of Standard English and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Innit, eh?

Never.

Only if I can force them to be consistent and say "Of you done that?"

Ah, but that's a different environment. Thing is, I could give you a long and detailed analysis of it, but i won't unless you really want it.

...

I know that "have" sounds the same as "of" in the contraction "would've", but that doesn't detract one iota from the fact that it makes no sense whatsoever.

Only to those of us who didn't acquire it that way.

...

If children learn it, they'll have to unlearn it.

Get used to it. Languages change. And they change because children acquire (that's a technical term, they DON'T learn a language and you CANNOT with any success teach them a different way to speak) the language their peers speak.

...

As children they also learn to spell many words that they later get corrected.

Indeed, writing (and therefore spelling) is a learnt behaviour/skill. The ability to speak (communicate verbally or gesturally) is an automatic function arising from neuro-physiologcal and cognitive complexity as an emergent capability.

...

It's what school is all about. I know it is a living language, but some things are too silly for words

And some things never change. Leicester still ain't called Lester, is it.

As it happens, Lester (the surname, and Lister for that matter) is the same word as Leicester. Spelling has ABSOLUTELY NOTHNG to do with the syntactic and phonetic representation or realisation of our linguistic faculty. The sooner people who have less idea about what actually goes on in the brain when we speak than a monkey has about the workings of the East Inda Company, the better.

Dylan According to Melvin Bragg it's all a sign of the healthy growth of the language. After all, the Gramatical version actually came along well after

On August Tuesday 23 2005 5:20 pm, Dylan wrote: the 1800s in order to teach those "upper Middle class oiks" "THE RULES". but those were as arbitrary as the spelling has always been. So each new group adds or subtracts from them.. or ignores them entirely. Appologies to Melvin, I saw the show as I was falling asleep one morning so may not be quoting him acurately. The Adventure of English, was a marvel of a show, they paid him to have video shot all over the world basically reciting lists of words. Great gig if you can get it! ;-) -- j registered linux user #363029

On Wednesday 24 August 2005 05:05, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Thank god you're in total control of the English language.

You're welcome But I never claimed to be in "total control", I don't think anyone could be. As a matter of fact, I'm not even sure what it means. I just expressed my dissatisfaction with certain recent trends in modern English usage, and the perhaps vain hope that tools like those requested by the OP could assist in KILLING THEM before I flip a lid

Randall R Schulz wrote:

Anders,

On Wednesday 24 August 2005 09:48, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

... If children learn it, they'll have to unlearn it. ...

It sounds like you're playing the role of language dictator, to me.

The most hopeless cause in the world is to try to control the evolution of language. There's a great deal of everyday English usage that offends me, too, but it's whistling in the wind to inveigh against it.

Randall, while I disagree strongly with Anders's statement, I disagree even more strongly with yours. What's happening is not evolution, but corruption. Our language came from William the Conqueror's conquest of the Anglo-Saxons, and subsequent suppression of their culture, including a (reportedly) beautiful, expressive language. Since the Anglo-Saxons were not allowed to have an education except in Old French (and then only a few of them), their language declined to a messy jumble of local dialects, similar to the early 20th century Italian mess of mutually incomprehensible dialects. Chaucer and a few of his comtemporaries wrote in one of the less disorderly of those dialects, and their genius made it become the English language. But it was not until the printing press and the Puritans (who invented universal education) that we got a stable, expressive, powerful language that people could depend upon for communication. Much the same thing happened in Italy when Dante Aligheri and his contemporaries formalized the Florentine dialect and made it the Italian language. When I was in central Italy in the '60's, there were still old rural people who couldn't speak Italian, and I couldn't understand anything they said (I'm fluent in Italian). That's where we're headed. Evolution is what Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Noah Webster took 700 years to do (Webster succeeded to some extent in America). Chaos is what the UCB professors of the '60's promoted, and that way lies not evolution, but corruption. Based on historical evidence, it'll only take a couple of centuries. By the way, my disagreement with Anders is that children must learn that English is a slurred language with a powerful, expressive underlying grammar that needs to be learned. The slurring (schwa) is in our speech, and has nothing to do with what we're thinking. If we lose the underlying grammar, we lose our communication, our thought processes, and ultimately our society. As did the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons. John Perry

Randall R Schulz wrote:

structured or to whom what kind of education is available. Young people will speak two languages if you come down hard to force the formal variant of the language in school. Later, their vernacular will infiltrate the formal language, anyway.

and they do that intentionally to force as a group against they parents oldfashioned habits :-) (di I do that? probably) jdd -- pour m'écrire, aller sur: http://www.dodin.net http://valerie.dodin.net http://arvamip.free.fr

On 8/24/05, Dave Howorth wrote:

Jie Li wrote:

...

Thanks Richard, I think I probably will stick to M$word first coz I don't have much for trying something new, I am on the edge of the my thesis deadline. I will write my thesis first in M$word as a draft and convert into latex later, this seems a little stupid, but might be a easier way for me

Hello Jie

I think that is a very wise decision. Your priority is to finish your thesis so use the tools you are familiar with that you know will do the job.

Hello Dave, Thanks for your helpful suggestion. I am doing the same thing. It's just a pity that I did not find the counterpart of M$Word in Linux which has a Grammar check function. OOo Write needs to upgrade and include this function. Or maybe someone with get a LaTeX editor with this function. I will move on writing my thesis. cheers. Jie

One suggestion, if you have not used Word to build a document as large as a thesis before, is don't try to build the whole thing in one document. Split it, perhaps into individual chapters, and keep lots of backups. This makes it easier to deal with some difficulties that can arise in Word itself with big documents, and also with problems that sometimes arise with printers. You can always join the individual chapters together when you finish, to produce a single document.

FWIW, I think Word's grammar checker is pretty good, and I'm a native English speaker. I've used it successfully in an environment with professional journalists. It's not perfect, so it's worth having a grammar book as a backstop, but it catches lots of things.

Cheers, Dave -- Dave Howorth MRC Centre for Protein Engineering Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 2QH 01223 252960

--- Jie Li wrote:

Dear : Mike Roy , R Fieldsend , Dave Howorth ,

I really appreciate your detailed suggestions sent into my mailbox, but when I reply them, I copied and plasted into this maillist so that leave them into public.

I wish this isn't a problem to you guys coz your replies are really helpful and I hope some more ppl can read them..

Hi Jie, I can't speak for Mike or Dave, but I did intend to reply to the list, and I should have checked before clicking on the send button. I appreciate your issue with not being able to spend the time on experimenting with Linux based grammar checking, and I hope your experience with Word isn't too bad. The advice about keeping the document in sections is very valid (wysiwyg gets very slow with big documents), and of course, keep backups somewhere other than your harddrive! The good thing is that its given me a mini-project to work on, and I've now started grammar checking all of the content on my own website, to see how readable it is (for the record I tend to write sentences that are too long according to readability scores, but they've always been like that). Good luck with your thesis, and I hope everything goes well. Take Care Richard ps. One person said that you should only use grammar books that were written in the UK as the American ones are just for American English, not 'proper' English. The only exception I'd make for that rule is the 'Strunk and White - Elements Of Style' book, which is tiny and packed with really useful information.

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 3:02 pm, Jie Li wrote:

Thanks Richard, I think I probably will stick to M$word first coz I don't have much for trying something new, I am on the edge of the my thesis deadline. I will write my thesis first in M$word as a draft and convert into latex later, this seems a little stupid, but might be a easier way for me

FYI, KDVI does allow you to export your dvi file as text. I don't know how it handles graphic files, equations, etc, but plain text seems to work well enough. It *might* be quicker to prepare your thesis in LaTeX, export the dvi file to plain ascii and use M$ stuff on that. -- Don

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 21:44, Dylan wrote:

On Tuesday 23 Aug 2005 21:17, Anders Johansson wrote:

...

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 22:10, James Knott wrote:

...

Quite so. It's amazing the number of people, who don't know the difference between you're and your. Another prime example of ignorance is "irregardless". The word is "regardless".

Or irrespective, depending on what you want to say

My pet peeve is "would of" or "should of". It looks so ugly it just gets on my nerves

You're gonna have to learn to live with that one I'm afraid. Because the de-stressed form of /HAVE/ is phonetcally identical to the de-stressed form of /OF/ children acquiring English as a first language will learn them as the same lexical item in certain syntactic environments. One of these is "aspectual auxilliary following modal" so it's going to become a feature of Standard English and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it. Innit, eh?

Phonetically identical, maybe (if we've decided not to bother aspirating 'h' anymore, despite the obvious value of doing so in distinguishing words from one another), but not gramatically. So to obviate the confusion, we could try teaching children what it is they are actually saying and writing, couldn't we? The pronunciation hasn't changed much, so why is this happening now? Because we've dropped the ball by ceasing to teach basic English grammar to children. That's doing them no favours because they'll end up with a blunter, more limited tool with which to express their ideas and feelings. Ya narta meeen, innit? In de areah.

Dylan

-- "The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out." (Chinese Proverb)

Anders Johansson wrote:

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 22:10, James Knott wrote:

...

Quite so. It's amazing the number of people, who don't know the difference between you're and your. Another prime example of ignorance is "irregardless". The word is "regardless".

Or irrespective, depending on what you want to say

My pet peeve is "would of" or "should of". It looks so ugly it just gets on my nerves

It beats me where those terms originated, very sloppy indeed, like "there software" instead of "their software" - I had drummed into me the difference between there, their and they're. I suppose the English language is the most widely spoken and the most widely basterdised. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce ... Hamradio License G3VBV, Keen licensed Private Pilot Retired IBM/Amdahl Mainframes and Sun/Fujitsu Servers Tech Support Specialist Microsoft Windows Free Zone - Linux used for all Computing Tasks

Fergus Wilde wrote:

I think it's because very large portions of the last few generations just weren't taught any basic grammar. For reasons I can't fathom, teaching children basic parsing and correct construction seems to be seen somehow as an act of oppression that will strangle their creative urges, rather than as giving them the sharpest tools to express those urges to best advantage.

It's not just grammar or spelling. They're also not learning basic math, history, geography and many other things. It makes one wonder what those kids are doing all day, when they're at school. What's really appalling, is the way they're not allowed to fail, no matter how badly they're doing, as it might hurt their feelings. What's going to happen when they get to the real world and find themselves unemployable or unable to get into college, because they're lacking in basic education? I'll bet they'll have more than hurt feelings.

On Wednesday 24 August 2005 15:58, Synthetic Cartoonz wrote:

On Wednesday 24 August 2005 09:34, James Knott wrote:

...

Fergus Wilde wrote:

...

I think it's because very large portions of the last few generations just weren't taught any basic grammar. For reasons I can't fathom, teaching children basic parsing and correct construction seems to be seen somehow as an act of oppression that will strangle their creative urges, rather than as giving them the sharpest tools to express those urges to best advantage.

You don't need that.. Well, that's according to the folks in the know. You know, the ones that have 2 or 3 doctorate degrees in education, but haven't been in a real classroom in 20+ years.

...

It's not just grammar or spelling. They're also not learning basic math, history, geography and many other things. It makes one wonder what those kids are doing all day, when they're at school.

Same thing here. Ah, I've got a better way, and because I've got all this education, I know exactly what's best for kids to learn. I've got no idea what happens in a classroom, but this will work. Just to make it clear, I work in a school. I'm not a teacher, but am married to one. I see this all the time. The school set up a small shop to sell school supplies. Problems came up when the 6th graders didn't know how to make change.

...

themselves unemployable or unable to get into college, because they're lacking in basic education? I'll bet they'll have more than hurt feelings.

I recently read about a school that banned teachers from grading with red pens, because it was too traumatic for the kiddies. More polite and friendly colors must be used instead.

That's true. It hurts their feelings. Well, perhaps not the kid as he doesn't really care. It's mostly the parents that dislike it. Then they blame the school when the kid can't find a job after graduation. This notion of no child left behind is a good one. Help all the kids. It's a good thing. But give them something to work with. Basic skills so that they can get a job if they aren't college material. And there are those that aren't. But you can't tell them that.. Just my $.02's worth Mike -- Powered by SuSE 9.3 Kernel 2.6.11 KDE 3.4.0 Kmail 1.8 For Mondo/Mindi backup support go to http://www.mikenjane.net/~mike 4:16pm up 21:28, 3 users, load average: 2.02, 2.10, 2.21

On Wednesday 24 August 2005 10:46, Fergus Wilde wrote:

Bit sad to lose track of the use of English (for native speakers, at least) among people using computers, who ought to be well aware of the need for precision and syntactical correctness from their command line experience.

Unfortunately there is a large number of people who are spending inordinate amounts of time trying to teach computers to be vague and human in their understanding. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before a computer starts accepting "pf" instead of "ls" "because their binary language version sounds the same"

I'm sure the reason 'would of' and 'should of' upset you so much is because those two really do show that the writer can't tell a verb from a preposition and are thus much more badly lost than those merely baffled by the few simple rules surrounding the use of the apostrophe.

Actually, the primary reason why it gets up my nose is that it just looks horribly ugly, aesthetically speaking. Your reason is good too though :) But I'll shut up about it now

On Tuesday 23 Aug 2005 20:46, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Tuesday 23 August 2005 21:27, Dylan wrote:

...

You speak better English that a computer can ever analyse.

Would a computer have caught that, I wonder :)

Hey, we can all fall foul of typos and spelling mistakes. That's why everything should be read by a third party if it's of any consequence. Thankfully, email is of little import so I couldn't give a f***. Dylan -- "The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have given out." (Chinese Proverb)