09-16-2018, 05:02 PM | #1 | |
Wizard
Posts: 2,297
Karma: 12126329
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
|
Does Tool Exist to Spellcheck/Grammarcheck by Category?
I was wondering if anyone has come across anything like this in their travels? If so, please let me know.
To my knowledge, most tools allow you to check and replace on a one-by-one basis. They don't give you an easy way to see all spelling/grammar errors on a document-wide level. What I Envision Sample Input: Quote:
Seeing them broken down this way would allow you to easily tell, at a glance, how many of which types there are + surrounding context. You could also focus purely within a category to see if the recommendations are actually correct:
Current Tools (That I'm aware of) One-by-One Checking (Most tools are like this) If using Word/LibreOffice, you have to go through one-by-one in the order they appear, and Correct/Ignore/Ignore All. Pain Point: Word's grammarcheck frustrating, because you can only "Ignore" and CAN'T "Ignore All". On a huge book, this takes forever. Pain Point #2: In large works, there are typically common issues repeated throughout the entire document (author misspells "erros" + consistently misses a comma before/after certain words). You can't easily tackle all comma errors in a given pass, or solve them consistently, because you're constantly flipflopping between all the different types of issues. Pain Point #3: Another frustration in Word is when you get the dreaded "Too many spelling or grammatical errors" and it refuses to show you the red/blue squigglies within your document. This makes seeing context much more difficult. List-based Grammar-checking LanguageTool's standalone tool allows you to get an entire list of grammar errors in the order they appear: This is pretty great! And it allows you to "Ignore All" entire rules. But because you can't easily tell how many hits this rule actually caught in the entire book (is there just 1? Or 50?), you sometimes don't want to Ignore the entire rule. Pain Point: Because you can't easily ignore, there are a ton of false positives clogging up the list. Pain Point #2: You also aren't too sure what Ignoring a certain rule would effect. Take for example, the "Capitalization" grammar rule: 1. Ignore that specific instance of that specific word? - That second -> Second would be ignored, future ones would be caught 2. Ignore all future instances of that specific word? --- second -> Second would be ignored, future "second"s also ignored. 3. Ignore all cases of capitalization errors? --- second -> Second would be ignored, but so would i -> I. List-based Spell-checking Sigil/Calibre allow you to use the Spellchecking Lists to see errors in mass. This allows you to see all misspelled words in the entire book in an easy to view list, but you can only see individual words, not the surrounding context: You have to manually search for these words, or doubleclick the word X times in the Spellcheck List to jump to each instance. Pain Point: Again, when working on huge books, this can be a pain, especially if it's dealing with words that are very common, but potential misspellings in some contexts (or OCR errors, like "modem"<->"modern"). Reason Why I Thought of This I recently was looking at what they added into the latest versions of Word, and saw they introduced an "Editor Pane": https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...3-6ea27c8f31f1 It finally allows you to split the Spelling + Grammar into separate steps (one of my pet peeves with a lot of the tools, constantly flipflopping between "Spelling Mode" and "Grammar Mode"). Sigil's method is by far my favorite way to spellcheck, but I think the hybrid approach I mentioned above (with lists AND context), would be yet another way to correct errors efficiently. |
|
09-16-2018, 08:56 PM | #2 |
null operator (he/him)
Posts: 20,579
Karma: 26954694
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Sydney Australia
Device: none
|
Short answer is No.
Some notes on my usage of Word 2016’s spell checker. Because I dodge in and out of it a lot, I have the Proofing Options panel in the Quick Access toolbar; Alt 9 opens it. Early on in my workflow (after EpubTools S&R), I do a pass with "Check grammar with spelling" unset. It's not perfect, punctuation ‘errors’ (e.g. missing comma’s etc), which I regard as grammatical/stylistic issues, will pop up; but if you have strict Grammar and Refinements [1] settings most of those are excluded. In an ideal world there would be discrete Spelling, Punctuation, Grammar, and Style checkers. There is a Change all option for spelling. But for me it's deficient, in that it doesn't do the corrections en-masse, it does them progressively. So, if you don't continue checking through to end of document, the 'unseen' corrections aren't made. It also has an Ignore all, if I decide I need to review the context in which a misspelt word is used I select this option. Then after the first spelling only pass, I tap Recheck Document: Press Alt+Numpad+ to go to 1st misspelt word, which should be something I previously ignored en-masse. I copy/paste the word to the Navigation panel search box (I wish there was context menu option or kb short to do that). The Results tab will show the context for all occurrences of the misspelling. By stepping through the Results items, I can deal with each instance - Change, Ignore or Retype. Tap Ctrl+Home and Alt+Numpad+ to find the next misspelt word. In earlier versions of Word if you typed over a misspelt word, what you typed would be offered at the top of the Suggested list for subsequent occurrences of the misspelt word. That feature fell off the back of the truck sometime between 2010 and 2016. If anyone knows how to restore the feature in Word 2016, perhaps they'd let me know - either in here or in a PM. I use Exclusion lists to exclude some spellings in some documents. FX in some texts I might prefer a word on loan from the French to be spelt with the appropriate diacritics.[2] This can result in many 'misspelt' words, the correction, via Find and Replace, involves selecting the appropriate language from the Language option in the "Formats" drop-down button. I too quite like the Sigil and Calibre spell checkers in terms of the UI. Toxaris went some way towards doing something similar for Word in ePubTools. But I found it to be quite slow, and I didn't like having to use the hunspell dictionaries in the MS Office environment. Maybe it'll be better in version 2.0. Ideally it would have the same functionality as the native spell checker, or more, and it would use the Office dictionaries. I'll try to come back on Grammar and Style. BR [1] Where did this Refinements word come from! Why replace a 5 letter 1 syllable word with an established usage: Style, with the 11 letter 3 syllable word: Refinements! Has MS been infected by the penchant for prolix that is endemic within the realms of US officialdom. [2] Come Brexit, will the Anglosphere have to return the words it 'borrowed' from the EU languages; IIRC cravat was nicked from the Croats :-). Last edited by BetterRed; 09-16-2018 at 09:38 PM. |
09-16-2018, 10:20 PM | #3 |
null operator (he/him)
Posts: 20,579
Karma: 26954694
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Sydney Australia
Device: none
|
It looks like the Editor Pane goes some way towards my ideal of four separate checkers. But it needs a live internet connection; so, it is only available in Office 365; which I don't have
Regrettably, I ticked the box for Office Home and Business when I bought my Dell, I assumed there would be an affordable upgrade to Office 365 should I ever want it. There is an upgrade option, but last time I looked, the cost was borderline extortionate BR Last edited by BetterRed; 09-17-2018 at 01:18 AM. |
09-17-2018, 02:49 AM | #4 | ||||||
Wizard
Posts: 2,297
Karma: 12126329
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
|
It's what I feared. Sort of like all the spellchecking tools before we popularized the "List-based Spellchecking". :P
Thanks for these ideas. Quote:
Let's say you reached the halfway point, you've been Ignoring on a case-by-case basis. You run into a common "error" clogging up your workflow, so you go into the "Proofing Options" and change a single setting. Every... dang... change... you just Ignored gets reset. Quote:
Side Note: This categorization is also a frustrating point in Word's grammarcheck. When you get a suggestion, you have no idea WHAT rule/category this "error" actually hit, because it doesn't tell you. Look at the screenshot I gave in Post #1 for Word: Quote:
Code:
Grammar so |------| |no | | | | | |------| ... I have no idea. So instead, you just have to Ignore one-by-one, the same issue throughout the entire document. And if you work on older books, non-formal stuff like Fiction, or throw in em dashes/ellipses, or variables (maths)... the false positives are through the roof! If I saw an annoying false positive in a List-based system, I could just easily skip my eyes to the next category! Quote:
It should be like Notepad++'s Find All. Just show me the entire list of every occurrence! I don't care if there are 100+! Are these default shortcuts? I tried them on my end and they didn't work. My Ctrl+Home jumped me near the beginning of the document. And the Alt+Numpad+ inserted an equation. Side Note: I also went into File > Options > Customize Ribbon > Keyboard Shortcuts: Customize... (ugh, what a way to bury shortcuts). And I couldn't easily find a "Find Next Misspelled Word". According to a quick search online it may be Alt+F7... where it's buried in the menus though, no idea. Why oh why couldn't it be more like Sigil/Calibre's Shortcut pages? Full search + you could easily see what's assigned to what. Quote:
Spelling is the Spelling Police. ("This is an eror.") Grammar is the Grammar Police. ("This are not an error") Style is the Style Police. ("The Oxford Comma is simpler, correct, and superior!") Refinements are the Refinement Police! ("This is some super duper overly wordy sentence.") And when you let Word Replace All (heaven help you), it helps you—refine—your writing! Quote:
And all of the online spellcheck/grammar tools I've run across so far are all one-by-one checkers, and/or have been purchased up/consumed by Grammarly. Side Note: And Grammarly is horrendous. You can see how the one-by-one annoyed The Digital Reader in his review: https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/...ing-grammarly/ Last edited by Tex2002ans; 09-17-2018 at 03:40 AM. |
||||||
09-17-2018, 03:25 AM | #5 |
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 5,584
Karma: 22735033
Join Date: Dec 2010
Device: Kindle PW2
|
@Tex2002ans: It's very easy to check for specific issues with the command line version of LanguageTool.
For example if you saved your test file as tex.text, you'd use the following command line to only look for agreement issues: java -jar languagetool-commandline.jar --language en-US --enabledonly --enable AGREEMENT_SENT_START tex.txt Code:
Working on tex.txt... 1.) Line 1, column 32, Rule ID: AGREEMENT_SENT_START[5] Message: You should probably use: 'are'. Suggestion: are This is the 1st erro. My names is tex. second, this is a diferent error. And t... ^^ Shameless plug: Sigil users could also use my LanguageTool Sigil plugin, which also allows you to enable or disable specific rules. |
09-17-2018, 03:44 AM | #6 | |
Wizard
Posts: 2,297
Karma: 12126329
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
|
Quote:
Sounds like something my good friend Doitsu would want to tackle. Last edited by Tex2002ans; 09-17-2018 at 03:51 AM. |
|
09-17-2018, 05:33 AM | #7 | |
Interested in the matter
Posts: 421
Karma: 426094
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Spain, south coast
Device: Pocketbook InkPad 3
|
Quote:
|
|
09-17-2018, 06:40 AM | #8 | ||
Grand Sorcerer
Posts: 5,584
Karma: 22735033
Join Date: Dec 2010
Device: Kindle PW2
|
Quote:
I totally agree with you on that. Unfortunately, I lack the skills to adapt my simple Sigil plugin for Calibre. Maybe you could ask about it in the Calibre plugin ideas thread? |
||
09-17-2018, 06:55 AM | #9 | |
Interested in the matter
Posts: 421
Karma: 426094
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: Spain, south coast
Device: Pocketbook InkPad 3
|
Quote:
|
|
09-17-2018, 08:31 AM | #10 | ||||||||
null operator (he/him)
Posts: 20,579
Karma: 26954694
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Sydney Australia
Device: none
|
My earlier post was based on Word 2016 from Office 2016 for Home and Business.
I went away and read up on the Editor Pane, it looked interesting. So I had a chat session with MS Support. The pricing is not as bad as I remembered ($200+pa), for Personal it's only AU$10 monthly for 1 desktop, 1 phone, and 1 tablet, which is the same as my weekly gym-fees! And I get to keep my Office H&B - I could put that on my Dell Alien Alpha Xbox box :lol: So I have it on a 1 month trial, I'll be responding based on my limited usage of it. The install was painless, download and run a little exe, which does a bit more downloading, a few minutes over DSL, then a similarly few minutes to install. No more than 10 minutes go-to-whoa. Quote:
I don't change the options under the Settings button. What I do is uncheck/check Check grammar with spelling, and when its checked I select the Writing Style check I want - Grammar or Grammar & Refinements Quote:
If a misspelt word is peculiar to a document, e.g. a place name, persons name etc, I add it to the custom dictionary. When I finish a document I replace RoamingCustom.dic with a 'starter' version of it, which gets rid of the document specific "Added" words. It's the nearest I can get to having a document specific custom dictionary. I can't recall which WP program I used that had them - WordPerfect, Multimate, Gypsy, who knows ? From time to time I consider saving the end of checking RoamingCustom.dic file to the calibre book where I have the DOCX, but I never do. So, when I hit Recheck Document I don't get many misspellings that I have to Ignore Once again. Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Question - anyone have any idea why the context menu for a spelling error has an Ignore All option, but not an Ignore Once option. IIRC it's been ever thus. BR PS; Office 365 Word has an option to opt-out of so-called Intelligent Services. I don't know if or how it works or not. Maybe if you opt out they broadcast a message to the Intelligence Services. Last edited by BetterRed; 09-17-2018 at 09:32 AM. |
||||||||
09-17-2018, 12:48 PM | #11 | |||||||||
Wizard
Posts: 2,297
Karma: 12126329
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
|
Well put the idea in your back pocket. :P
I also wanted to get these thoughts out there, and see what others thought on this Spelling/Grammar situation. Quote:
Sometimes they call it an "Editor Pane", other times an "Editor Overview Pane" or "Editor" (this last one isn't helpful AT ALL for search!): https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...5ecf039?auth=1 https://support.office.com/en-us/art...rs=en-US&ad=US And even a lot of their official posts are inconsistent. Quote:
Quote:
https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement Quote:
There are only ~9500 hits for "Editor Pane" + "Microsoft Word", most of it was articles parroting off the same talking points from Microsoft's blog. No real info, just the same copied/pasted paragraphs. And even Microsoft's blog barely has any info on it. And the handful of pages I found discussing the Editor Pane were all over the place (there was even a post+video from February announcing it and showing off its functionality... and the video is down!) Youtube barely has any hits. I doubt there's any in-depth review of this thing. Quote:
And I remember last time I messed around with it, it reset the document (perhaps my memory is wrong). Quote:
The books I work on have a lot of French/German/Greek words interspersed throughout (or potentially odd stuff like book/article titles). And while it might be valid in case A, it may not be valid in case B. Also ye olde time spelling, might be valid in a quotation, but wrong in the text itself. Or same with English US/UK spellings. Might be valid in a quote, but not outside. You have to be very careful with these things! :P Quote:
And their handful of categories are much too broad (it should break down like LanguageTool's rule > specific check hierarchy). Because sometimes just a single rule causes false positives to go through the roof. Do you still have to Ignore Ignore one at a time? Or can you Ignore the entire rule from there? Quote:
The worst is when you are partway through correction a giant book, and then you get the popup and all the squigglies disappear. Even if you then delete the second half of the book, ain't no way you get your squigglies back! (One of the reasons why I prefer a tool that just runs on the entire document and lists all the errors... like LanguageTool.) Quote:
On this hunt for alternate tools... it was so frustrating. All the "Top 5 list of Grammar Checkers" or "Top 10 Grammar Tools" or "List of Grammar Checker" articles. 99.9% of them pointed to things which redirected right to Grammarly (or now used Grammarly in the backend). (And rarely do these sites even mention LanguageTool.) You pasted in your sample text? Redirects to Grammarly. Try this other site? "Why don't you log in using Facebook" and sends you to Grammarly! Wow, a top 20 list, there MUST be something in there that works. Grammarly! I can give them one thing, their damn marketing drowns out any sort of meaningful competition. A few days ago I did run across a reference to a whitepaper (believe it was based on a PhD where someone designed more accurate grammar recommendations). It was one of the few online tools that actually still existed and wasn't overrun by them! Sadly, it was mostly an API, and the online portion was extremely limited. Last edited by Tex2002ans; 09-17-2018 at 01:01 PM. |
|||||||||
09-17-2018, 08:47 PM | #12 | |||
null operator (he/him)
Posts: 20,579
Karma: 26954694
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Sydney Australia
Device: none
|
Quote:
Quote:
I also have a suspicion that it gets re-enabled if you have Mark grammar errors as you type and/or Check grammar with spelling checked, without so much as a 'by your leave sir/madam'. More testing needed. Quote:
Those who have the knowledge to do an impartial review don't write for the hoi-polloi, and those that have the knowledge don't write reviews for software. Most internet hacks would scratch their heads wondering what giving birth or designing transport corridors has to do with writing, and couldn't differentiate a past participle from their grannies left gumboot Whoops, hit Submit when I wanted Preview - to be continued BR Last edited by BetterRed; 09-17-2018 at 09:10 PM. |
|||
09-17-2018, 11:48 PM | #13 | |||||
null operator (he/him)
Posts: 20,579
Karma: 26954694
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Sydney Australia
Device: none
|
Quote:
Several of the MS and coffee&pasta posts had this I cant find it. Some of the posts that have it, refer to Insider versions, so perhaps it didn't make it into the final cut. If anyone has it, can they tell me where they found it. And, back to the issue of keyboard shortcuts. You don't really need them in Office 2007-16 because everything in the ribbon tabs can be accessed with single finger keystrokes. Providing the first one pressed is the Alt key, the Ribbon will get a bunch of indicators showing what key(s) map to what. FX:- for me ePubTools is Y3; and within that; Dialogue check is Y1. Quote:
I make multiple passes focusing on different issues, rather than doing everything within a single pass. Spelling is the first pass, if I see a punctuation, grammar or style error I fix it there and then - according to my rules. Quote:
As you can almost see there are more 'Grammar' checks, sadly the dialogue box is fixed size BTW: any idea what the issue with the word 'Lack' might be, like how does it get misused - confused with Lakh? Quote:
Sigil's KB shortcut feature would be perfect if it showed the default and the customised settings, and I didn't sometimes lose my custom settings when I install a new version. Quote:
somewhat, Like many people I wasn't enamoured with the flat plastic look of Win 10's Settings App. The other day I downloaded a flat plastic File Manager App, it was very rudimentary so I've not kept it. However in playing with it, I discovered I could intuitively navigate my way around its UI with just the Tab and arrow keys, remember I don't like pointy things like mice and trackpads. No more accelerator keys, e.g. Alt+G for Grouping and Alt+G for Algorithm. I've since discovered that the various flat plastic Apps (I hate that word) MS ships are similar. So perhaps the flat plastic is not as bad as I first thought. BR Last edited by BetterRed; 09-17-2018 at 11:56 PM. |
|||||
09-18-2018, 02:22 AM | #14 | |||||||||
Wizard
Posts: 2,297
Karma: 12126329
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
|
Quote:
And they also tied that Editor into Bing (Definitions + Translation probably pulls definitions from there too). So they probably want to get all your approval before sending all your info to Microsoft-middlemen. No Bing? No spying? No new Editor Pane for you! Quote:
It even shows it in this thread (people complaining about Readability Statistics being broken for a few months): https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...1-b8a70b682eee in an image from September 6. Did you do a fresh install, or did it carry over a lot of your previous settings? Quote:
If you click your cursor onto some text, the Style which matches gets a little border around it (in the above image, you can see it around "Normal"). If the Style doesn't exist in that first row though... You hover your mouse over the Style box. Mouse scroll changes tabs left/right (Home <-> Insert <-> Layout) instead of styles scrolling up/down. Instead, you have to press the little itty buttons on the right edge... to clunkily scroll through styles a handful at a time. So dumb! (Yes, I also know you could pop out the entire Styles Pane [pressing the little itty bitty arrow in the bottom right of my image].) Side Note: Lately, I've also been a proponent of Select > Select All Text With Similar Formatting: This is super helpful when trying to clean up garbage Styles (either copied/pasted from the Internet, or junk from conversions). (Note: It does bring your computer to a crawl if you use it on enormous documents. Word probably doesn't like thousands of discrete highlighted pieces of text. :P) Quote:
Quote:
Side Note: Probably all the different meanings/forms smashed into a single word. In a quick search, I found this link: http://elss.elc.cityu.edu.hk/ELSS/Re...ords%20(Lack)/ Quote:
Quote:
If I do, I lean on LibreOffice (due to being free + working on all OSes). I'm actually one that much prefers the "Word 2003" look, and am not the largest fan of the Ribbon. (One of the things I like is that little Search box right above the ribbon though, where you can search for specific settings/buttons. That's helpful when you rarely do a task, and have no idea where it is buried in the buttons/menus.) And if I ever had to generate printable documents, I would just stick with LaTeX. You can pry that beautiful typography from my cold, dead, impeccably typeset hands. :P Quote:
And maybe not just a "Reset All" button, but a "Reset" button could be added. Quote:
The thing that frustrates me is each version, they keep trying to shove more and more of these "flat" versions of Settings down your throat, but they don't even have the full functionality of the old ones! (Network settings is the perfect example. It's absolute garbage. You can't change anything meaningful within it. Only "Copy" info.) Last edited by Tex2002ans; 09-18-2018 at 02:38 AM. |
|||||||||
09-18-2018, 05:56 AM | #15 | |||||||
null operator (he/him)
Posts: 20,579
Karma: 26954694
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Sydney Australia
Device: none
|
Quote:
At one stage when I had IntelliServ disabled I got the really old (2007) spelling and grammar popup dialogue. The one where you could edit the fragment of text that was displayed in the 'error' popup - IMO that was the best one. But most of the time I'm getting the Editor Pane even though IntelliServ is unchecked. But here's the rub - sometimes when I go to Options->General IntelliServ is checked, and I'm positive it wasn't checked by me! My guess it that gets enabled behind the arras if there's a network connection, but it takes a while for the UI to wake up to that bit of jiggery-pokery, so it shows unchecked. This could be something specific to it being a Trial install, i.e. they want you to play with goodies so that you'll fall in love with them and shell out your money. I'll pull the plug on the network and see what happens Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
If I wanted to see which style is in use, I would use the context menu, viz: Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
BR |
|||||||
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Spellcheck in book view + selected text spellcheck | unfairrobot | Sigil | 2 | 12-19-2016 04:50 PM |
Spellcheck and some notes. | brolny | Sigil | 0 | 11-24-2015 04:37 AM |
Does exist a SSH Help Tool? | jmesar | Kindle Developer's Corner | 2 | 04-20-2012 03:26 PM |
Automatically pull / assign ASIN - does such a tool exist? | ChupaLibro | Kindle Formats | 0 | 03-12-2012 10:51 PM |
SPELLCHECK NATION: Does SpellCheck have a dark side? | cbaehr | Self-Promotions by Authors and Publishers | 10 | 11-07-2010 12:45 PM |