LanguageTool Standalone

Although attending school is supposed to teach you the basics in reading and writing, mistakes can easily be made and leave a poor impression if unattended. With the computer being used as a common means of writing any type of document, needless to say that spell and grammar checking tools are available. As such, LanguageTool Standalone comes equipped with the know how to make sure text you write is properly written.

The application comes with its own interface and text input field, giving you the possibility to either insert plain text files or manually write down phrases you want to check for errors. What's more, no installation is required so you can use it on the go on a large variety of machines, since it is built on the Java platform.

Launching the application shouldn't pose any accommodation problems, with your workspace divided into two sections, one for preview while the other for input. Feedback is provided almost instantly, and depending on detected errors, several suggestions are provided.

You can adjust several text settings like font and size in order to make text clearly visible. The application comes with an impressive amount of supported languages you can pick from a drop-down menu. Doing so instantly applies corresponding rules.

The application is supposed to be specialized in grammar and style, without support for spell checking. However, spelling errors are underlined as possible encounters, and the core function of detecting grammar and style issues can leave something to be desired.

This might push you to check the options menu for advanced detection methods, and there is, indeed, a staggering amount of rules you can view along with examples and the possibility to disable, but no way to add more or edit existing ones.

On an ending note, LanguageTool comes with solid intentions of reducing the risk of errors when writing, but its functionality is not entirely flawless, making you think twice. The amount of supported languages and rules is no doubt impressive, with an intuitive interface. However, practicality is slightly questionable due to the poor support for text files other than TXT, as well as the set of rules it goes by, which can ignore many typos and errors even with all checkers set to on.