Checking spelling and grammar when you are writing latex files is more difficult
than if you use MS Word. There are several things that you can do
1) use ispell on your latex documents
2) load or write your latex documents in Word (you don't get the syntax highlighting
or word completion or any of the other cool bits when you use a "real" editor like
gvim or emacs, but you get good spell checking and a little bit of grammar checking)
3) Run David's spell checker with some simple grammar rules
Have some cool grammar rules that you want to add? Checkout the source
code from CVS and add it in. The grammar checker is very modular and allows
you to add in new rules very easily -- you don't even have to recompile anything, just reference
your rule in the appropriate configuration file.
Note With any grammar checker, keep your brain in gear when using them. The grammar checker in Word
is widely regarded to have many problems. So does my grammar checker.
Things to do on the grammar checker:
1) write a better parser for latex files. The one I took five minutes to write doesn't ignore all the tex
commands.
2) Figure out better rules for the definite articles "a" and "an"
3) Fix the double word error so that it doesn't flag double words across sentence boundaries
4) Write a sentence structure parser
5) Add more rules that target the errors you make all the time
6) Define rules that are more accurate than the rules that are there now
(they were just a first cut that I came up with on a Sunday afternoon when I was trying to debug a paper)
Comer's Writing Tips
This the Douglas E. Comer's home page (the network 'guy'). In this page,
interesting links can found under 'A few essays about Computer Science',
located towards the bottom of the page.
The suggestions on which sentences to avoid are under 'How to write a
Ph.D. dissertation'. Other interesting (rather amusing) link is 'How to
generate a CS research topic'.
(contributed by Henrique Paques)