Language Tool - Free is Good, Paid is Better, but Expensive

Mac apps have had rudimentary built-in grammar checkers for a while. Grammarly was the first well-know commercial product to elevate the capabilities of that tool genre, becoming extremely popular with students in particular. Lately, LanguageTool has surged in popularity. It is integrated into many well-known writing apps across multiple platforms, including macOS and iOS.

Professionally, I am tasked with composing Confluence (knowledge base) documents for Jira, the ticketing system my job uses. Personally, I maintain three blogs as a non-monetized blogs as a hobby. I write a lot as a result. I have been using the free version of LanguageTool for a couple of months. It does a better job than the native spell checkers I previously used, and it helps with things like missing commas and omitted words. I took advantage of a Black Friday sale to sign up for a year on the Pro Plan. As a result, the app now has a much larger range of tools for me to use.

LanguageTool has a plugin for Safari, Firefox and Chromium browsers. It has a tool specifically built for Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Apple's Pages and LibreOffice. For email users, it works with Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird and Gmail. It even has a plugin for Obsidian, where I do most of my writing. On a Mac, it is also optimized for uses in other apps like Messages and Notes. There is a native editor app for Mac users.

Language Tools's capabilities are sizable.

• Grammar
  • Word order
  • Verb tenses
  • Subject/verb agreement
  • Commas and in-depth punctuation

• Style
  • Repetition
  • Over-used words and phrases
  • Wordiness
  • Foreign terms
• Semantics
  • Lack of clarity
  • Word confusion
  • Double negatives
• Format and Typography
  • Consistency for numbers and letters
  • Spacing
  • Time and date formats
• Spelling
  • Misspelled names and acronyms
  • Casing errors
  • Easy to import your Mac's personal dictionary

LanguageTool works not just with English, but with many other languages as well. It provides detailed stats on what it has done to aid you in writing. You can use a limited feature set or turn on what it calls "picky mode" for more frequent suggestions to strengthen your writing. It does not duplicate what macOS and ChatGPT offer in so far as it does not change the tone of your writing, but it will paraphrase sentences for you.

I am pleased so far with the suggestions I receive from LanguageTool. It definitely makes what I write more polished. It is not a cheap tool. Without the Black Friday discount, it is $5.83 a month, or $70 a year. Casual users can get plenty of benefits from the free plan, while students or more serious writers can benefit from deciding to go pro.