How well does it handle standard international English? So many of the tools I've seen seem to only support American English.
Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
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Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#32The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every day I practice. In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct. However, in 'full fat' English, practice is a noun, whereas practise is a verb; e.g. : > I go to my practice to practise medicine. The problem I have with this website is that it's…
I get this. > ... in 'full fat' English ... English is a bastard of a language and getting messier every day as new nations adopt it is their standard language. Setting the bar where it is well written and unambiguously understandable is IMHO completely fine for a 15$ product. Having a text spell checked to comply with contemporary Oxford English is likely not the goal of this product.
> English is a bastard of a language and getting messier every day as new nations adopt it is their standard language.
I disagree strenuously with this idea, because it suggests that there is one 'big' English in which anything goes. A better idea is the one of the register[0]: there are many Englishes, many sets of rules. Different rules are used in different regions, by different groups of people, and have different connotations (e.g., the King James Bible was intentionally written in a form of English that was considered archaic at the time because that would make it sound more grandiose).
If I were to use this tool, I'd be using it to ensure that whatever I'm writing is well-received by my intended audience. Because English usage is so varied, I would need to be able to control the register that it uses to ensure that the output is suitable. The fact that the product website doesn't even mention a list of supported languages, let alone supported dialects and registers within those languages, has a very everyone can see what a horse is kind of feeling[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics)
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#33Wonderful! I've given it a go, works in Apple's Notes app, but it does not seem to trigger suggestions in Chrome, Firefox or Slack. It does however highlight misspellings there. Any idea what can I do to enable suggestions there? I was looking for a product like this.
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#34You can use a local instance of LanguageTool in a docker container for this:
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#35The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every day I practice. In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct. However, in 'full fat' English, practice is a noun, whereas practise is a verb; e.g. : > I go to my practice to practise medicine. The problem I have with this website is that it's…
Lets be fair here, this tool is new - the domain was registered on Saturday.
What you suggest does seem like a good early doors feature; but the cut they've made seems to be the right one to prove market potential.
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#36The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every day I practice. In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct. However, in 'full fat' English, practice is a noun, whereas practise is a verb; e.g. : > I go to my practice to practise medicine. The problem I have with this website is that it's…
Lets be fair here, this tool is new - the domain was registered on Saturday. What you suggest does seem like a good early doors feature; but the cut they've made seems to be the right one to prove market potential.
It's fine if the tool has severe limitations at this stage. However, it's crucial to clearly state what those limitations are: not only does it prevent the flurry of complaints and chargebacks from customers who were disappointed that their specific case is unsupported, but it's also an opportunity to introduce a 'we're on this journey together' aspect that helps to make customers emotionally invested in the product.
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#37How well does it handle standard international English? So many of the tools I've seen seem to only support American English.
Speaking of which, isn't it time to consider American English to be the standard one?
Colour and licence are so quaint.
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#38Does anyone know how this compares to other products in its field, such as LanguageTool and Harper? LanguageTool can be hosted locally, and Harper runs entirely as an extension, so I'm interested in how the spelling and grammar checks compare.
I just tested both on the text "Look Dick. See Jane. Jane run home. I says you go home to. They eats dinner." LanguageTool does what I would expect. Harper does not. However, both whine about two spaces after a period.
Edit: Alas, Hacker News also removes the extra space after periods.
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#39How well does it handle standard international English? So many of the tools I've seen seem to only support American English.
Speaking of which, isn't it time to consider American English to be the standard one? Colour and licence are so quaint.
Well, only Americans use it. There's no point in arguing about it your version of a language is better or worse but for the rest of the world it's incredibly annoying having to correct Zs with Ss when using LLMs or American only software.
Re: Show HN: Refine – A Local Alternative to Grammarly
#40I've installed it to give it a try but it does absolutely nothing in any application I use. I did give it required permissions.