LanguageTool

Spellchecking makes sure you don’t make spelling mistakes. The problem is that even though a word is spelled correctly, it may be used incorrectly. My favorite example is this: “We were hired to assess the services provided by this company.” Even though the spelling is correct, there is an error in this example, an error that a simple spellchecker will not point out. This is where proofreading tools come in. They take more than spelling into consideration to point out errors. LanguageTool is such a tool. And more to the point, it is an open source proofreading tool that provides support for more than 20 languages, from English, French, and German to Polish, Romanian, and Slovenian.

LanguageTool is available in several flavors. There’s a standalone version that is based on Java and consequently, it works on any version operating system that supports Java. Then there’s a LanguageTool version for LibreOffice or OpenOffice.org. And last but not least, there’s a LanguageTool extension for Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

To get the standalone version up and running on a Windows-powered machine, you must download a 53.3Mb archive, extract its contents, and then run languagetool-standalone.jar.

There are two panels on the LanguageTool interface. The panel at the top presents the text you loaded or typed into the application – the input text. After the application analyzes the input text, it presents all the mistakes it uncovers in the panel at the bottom. At the top, above these two panels, there’s a traditional File Menu. And down at the bottom there’s a dropdown menu that allows you to select the Text Language and a button for launching the Check Text process.

Using LanguageTool is a very simple process. First up you must provide some input text. You can do so by typing in the text manually, by pasting it into the application, or by loading a text file. Once you load the text, LanguageTool will immediately go to work, uncover errors, and present them to you.

Released under a GNU Lesser General Public License, LanguageTool is a free and open source application.

Efficiently uncover errors in your text documents by using the versatile proofreading tool LanguageTool.