TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Matthew Wong wanted to know about other people's experience with grammar
checkers.
I was offered a copy of Grammatik, which I used for a while. It annoyed me
immensely by failing to deal with any sentence containing a section in
brackets (like this one), treating the first, middle and end sections as
three sentences, all of which it thought were faulty. It also kept
displaying a message box claiming that "This sentence may contain a passive
construction", or some similar wording. I don't have a degree in English,
but I'm reasonably competent, and I couldn't see the problem nine times out
of ten.
It may be that more recent versions of Grammatik have been better, but I
would still prefer to give my work to a human reviewer.
Gill Rollings, Technical Writer, Internet Systems Ltd
gill -dot- rollings -at- isl -dot- com