Grammar software?

[Phil Thien]

A super-nice Polish immigrant neighbor told me that he needs to improve his English writing skills.

He was looking for grammar checking software. Something beyond what is built into Word. I've heard of Grammatik, but googling didn't find anything (no longer around?).

Any suggestions?

[Bob Curwood]

There's a free 'light' version at: http://www.whitesmoke.com/grammarchecklp4/?d=60&a=473&r=5701

[Phil Thien]

Thanks Bob!

Does anyone know if there is a free edition of the Whitesmoke Writer for Mac version?

[Bob Curwood]

Thanks Bob!

Does anyone know if there is a free edition of the Whitesmoke Writer for Mac version?

Well, there's a trial version, at http://whitesmoke.en.softonic.com/ and that page also has links (http://whitesmoke.en.softonic.com/#program_alternative) to alternatives.

OTOH, that page has a review that says "It's difficult to recommend WhiteSmoke Writer, as any word processor will do corrections just as well"

Bob

[Phil Thien]

Thanks Bob. We loaded the Windows version on my machine for him to try. He was pretty happy with how it performed.

So I'll load the trial on his Mac and see if it works equally well for him. Even that neg. review acknowledged that the software may be helpful for those new to English, so it may be just the ticket.

[Larry Browning]

Have you done a google search for "grammar check software mac"? I did, and got lots of hits. I have no experience with this type of software, but some of them look pretty good. I would also say that you should expect to pay for this type of software. Anything that you find for free probably will be a waste of time. This is not true for many things, especially popular and geeky (think FTP client) types of software. The programming requirements for grammar checking are huge and the market for this is pretty limited especially when most full featured word processors have a basic version already built in.