{"id":664,"date":"2019-01-12T22:07:46","date_gmt":"2019-01-12T21:07:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/?p=664"},"modified":"2019-01-15T15:08:29","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T14:08:29","slug":"review-languagetool-an-alternative-to-grammarly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/review-languagetool-an-alternative-to-grammarly\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: LanguageTool, an alternative to Grammarly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When I wrote my first post on 200wordsaday.com<\/a>,\n I realized that a grammar and spell checking tool would be really \nhelpful in speeding up the editing process and improving my non-native \nEnglish writing skills at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Top Dog: Grammarly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Grammarly <\/a>has\n been heavily advertised all over the web recently \u2013 at least in ads \nthat I was targeted with. Its promise sounds really appealing: Grammarly\n instantly checks all your written input in the browser and gives you \nboth spelling and stylistic tips on your writing. The user interface \nlooks neat, the ads are well done, what am I waiting for?
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n downsides: Grammarly sends all your writing to US based servers \u2013 what a\n privacy nightmare. And \u2013 Grammarly doesn\u2019t speak my native language, \nGerman. Well, no thanks.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Contender: LanguageTool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Then I found an alternative: LanguageTool<\/a>\n \u2013 an open source tool, made by a German company, publicly maintained on\n Github. And as far as I can see, LanguageTool sure can compete with \nGrammarly.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LanguageTool can be used in 25 languages and \nautomatically detects the language that you are writing in, so no manual\n switching. It has a free version that is pretty comprehensive, and a \npremium version with even more features and checks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aptly named tool <\/em>gives\n you spelling and stylistic tips as well \u2013 but from my experience the \npast days, most suggestions deal with spelling. I could use more \nvocabulary suggestions, though.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While you can use it locally \nand offline, the standard configuration does send your writing to \nLanguageTool servers. But at least, it\u2019s GDPR territory over here…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m\n using the Firefox extension and got used to the tool really fast, and \nit\u2019s working just fine while being really unobtrusive. It works in all \nyou favorite services: in Gmail, in Twitter as well as every contact \nform. There even are extensions for LibreOffice and Microsoft Office \n(which I haven\u2019t tried yet, though).
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Winner Is\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

LanguageTool, easy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I wrote my first post on 200wordsaday.com, I realized that a grammar and spell checking tool would be really helpful in speeding…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"wpf_show_in_dewp_planet_feed":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[184,180],"tags":[183,181,178,182],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-200-words-a-day","category-tools","tag-grammar","tag-grammarly","tag-review","tag-spellchecking"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/voneff.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}