LanguageTool
Version: 3.7 Web: https://languagetool.org
When switching from Windows to Linux, one of the most demanded types of software is an office suite. Frankly, there is an abundance of choice, both open source and proprietary. But the story doesn’t end with proper parsing of DOCX and XLSX files in Linux, because commonly Windows users also expect the same quality of spell-checking as they are used to with Microsoft Word, which contains some proprietary language tools from third parties. While regular spell-checking in suites like LibreOffice works very well thanks to the Hunspell library, we could wish for more – specifically for automatic grammar, punctuation and style checking.
LanguageTool is an extension that implements all above capabilities for more than 20 languages, mostly European. Native English speakers will also find it useful for correcting common misspellings and style errors.
LanguageTool comes as an .OXT file for LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice and needs to be installed using the standard extension manager (Tools > Extension Manager) from any of the suite’s applications. LanguageTool is based on Java 8 and will not work with other office apps in Linux right away. However, if for any reason you don’t use LibreOffice or OpenOffice, you can go with alternative options: LanguageTool offers Chrome and Firefox browser plug-ins, a Google Docs plug-in, a crossplatform standalone desktop client and finally an online text input field on the project’s website. When used in an office suite, LanguageTool supersedes the default spell-checking engine and offers its own dictionaries together with the grammar check feature. You can tell it’s working by the blue underlines that emerge below missed commas, wrong prepositions, duplicate words and other errors. Of course, it won’t make your text shine as a professional reviewer (but where’s the fun in that?!–Ed) could do, but at least you’ll escape the most common mistakes that occur. Each LanguageTool release brings more grammar rules and enriches existing dictionaries with new terms and phrases, and the 3.7 version is no exception. Be sure to upgrade if you use Writer heavily!
“It provides automatic grammar, punctuation and style checking.”