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The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence: > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions, but my grammar is getting better every

• tossandthrow 1y ago
  I get this. > ... in 'full fat' English ... English is a bastard of a language and getting messier every day as new nations adopt it is their standard language. Setting the bar where it is well written and unambiguously understandable is IMHO completely fine for a 15$ product. Having a text spell checked to comply with contemporary Oxford English is likely not the goal of this product.
  • cjs_ac 1y ago
    > English is a bastard of a language and getting messier every day as new nations adopt it is their standard language. I disagree strenuously with this idea, because it suggests that there is one 'big' English in which anything goes. A better idea is the one of the register[0]: there are many Englishes, many sets of rules. Different rules are used in different regions, by different groups of people, and have different connotations (e.g., the King James Bible was intentionally written in a form of English that was considered archaic at the time because that would make it sound more grandiose). If I were to use this tool, I'd be using it to ensure that whatever I'm writing is well-received by my intended audience. Because English usage is so varied, I would need to be able to control the register that it uses to ensure that the output is suitable. The fact that the product website doesn't even mention a list of supported languages, let alone supported dialects and registers within those languages, has a very everyone can see what a horse is kind of feeling[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_(sociolinguistics) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowe_Ateny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowe_Ateny
    • ygritte 1y ago
      > there are many Englishes, many sets of rules. Absolutely, but try to make a run-of-the-mill LLM understand this.
  • physicsguy 1y ago
    You still need to adapt it to where you are though, people expect this because it causes misunderstandings. If I as a British person go to the US, I know that I can't ask people to go and buy some booze from the off-license and when finished ask them to put their aluminium can in the bin ready for the rubbish lorry while wearing their jumper because that sounds anachronistic.
    • projektfu 1y ago
      Not too mention that a jumper in the US is closer to a pinafore.
      • zoklet-enjoyer 1y ago
        I'm American and have no idea what a pinafore or American jumper is. I know a jumper is a hoodie because I lived in Australia a while ago. But that's not a word I ever hear here.
        • projektfu 1y ago
          It's like overalls with a skirt. In the 80s they were popular for girls.
      • physicsguy 1y ago
        Yes, I'm aware, a colleague moved to Berkeley and relayed a story where he confused a lot of people :)
  • tobylane 1y ago
    > contemporary Oxford English If you chose Oxford because of the Oxford English Dictionary, note that it's not regular en-gb, it's en-gb-oxendict. "the OED often favo[u]rs "-ize" (and its derivatives) over "-ise" for words derived from Greek roots, and may also include historical or less common usages."
    • tossandthrow 1y ago
      I was not aware of this, thanks!
• Normal_gaussian 1y ago
  Lets be fair here, this tool is new - the domain was registered on Saturday. What you suggest does seem like a good early doors feature; but the cut they've made seems to be the right one to prove market potential.
  • cjs_ac 1y ago
    It's fine if the tool has severe limitations at this stage. However, it's crucial to clearly state what those limitations are: not only does it prevent the flurry of complaints and chargebacks from customers who were disappointed that their specific case is unsupported, but it's also an opportunity to introduce a 'we're on this journey together' aspect that helps to make customers emotionally invested in the product.
    • menaerus 1y ago
      Severe limitations? You sound like an a*hole tbf. The tool clearly provides the value, and it's a magnificent display how something like a simple LLM can be used to make your everyday life easier without compromising other minor stuff, you know, like letting other companies make profits by selling your own data? Perhaps you live under a rock, I don't really know, but it maybe just happens that you're not a target audience? There's for sure many folks, and even more so companies, who will value their own privacy more over practice vs practise bikeshedding.
      • jonathanstrange 1y ago
        I have to go with GP here, being able to set the language to en_UK and en_US and getting the right corrections based on this setting is a minimal requirement for an English spellchecker. I can do without other English spelling variants but these two need to be supported correctly and consistently.
  • nicce 1y ago
    I have no idea how this tool is better than running local LLM. Should I buy it?
• adastra22 1y ago
  So you’re saying that for most English speakers it was correct, and that’s a problem?
  • vintagedave 1y ago
    There are many different Englishes. I would bet that this tool does not handle Indian or Malaysian dialects. British English is still influential over most of the Commonwealth, ie a large number of countries.
• dreamcompiler 1y ago
  So apparently the tool is slanted toward American English where the non-word practise is properly treated as a spelling error like colour. If you use these words in writing for Americans and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth, you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.
  • vintagedave 1y ago
    I'm interested in this - I am from the Commonwealth and I do use those words, including when I forget with American colleagues. It never occurred to me that this could ever be perceived as arrogant (even if only when referring to someone with a different background.) And I wouldn't have thought it would mean anything more than a certain language cosmopolitanism, lah ;) (Hope that joke comes through! It's been decades since I had much exposure to Malaysian English.) Can you explain why this might be, please?
    • dreamcompiler 1y ago
      Speaking for myself (an American), when I read published work that uses British spellings and I know the author is American, it feels to me that the author thinks American spellings are somehow vulgar or improper and he/she is trying to rise above our shameful misspellings. British Commonwealth authors (well, really any author I know to be not from the USA) get a pass because these are the spellings they were taught. Nothing wrong with that. This is a phenomenon I've only noticed in the last two decades or so. I don't know if American students are now being (wrongly) taught British spellings in school or they merely think their writing will carry more weight if it has a British "accent" but it just seems arrogant to me. The OED is a useful resource but it is not our dictionary of final arbitration. Americans should use the American Heritage Dictionary.
    • apaprocki 1y ago
      I do not think you should ever feel that way. If any English-speaking listener has an issue with another speaking the dialect of English they were raised with, the listener has an issue with themselves they need to work through. As an American English speaker, I have in the past used UK spellings when communicating at work with a group that I know only contains British English recipients. There is nothing wrong with that -- anything that makes communication more fluid should be welcome. I believe the arrogance angle exists in a situation where an American English speaker with no British English education is using British spellings when communicating with other _American English_ speakers to purposefully create an air of superiority. If you do this, even if no one says anything, they definitely notice. For other English dialects, my personal take is that most Americans (at least the ones who travel or interact with foreigners personally or at work) will assume they either are or are heavily influenced by British English due to history.
• johnisgood 1y ago
  I thought the difference between practice vs. practise was that the latter is British. My spell checker (US English) does not like "practise" though, it is underlined with red. UK English, however, does not underline "practise" with red. So is it really not the case that "practice" is US English and "practise" is UK English? Because based on the spell checker, that seems to be the case.
  • cjs_ac 1y ago
    > So is it really not the case that "practice" is US English and "practise" is UK English? Correct: practice is a noun, and practise is a verb, in non-US English. I don't have my (twenty-volume) copy of the Oxford English Dictionary to hand, but Wiktionary has an explanation under 'usage notes': https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/practise https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/practise
    • johnisgood 1y ago
      > British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and South African English spelling distinguishes between practice (a noun) and practise (a verb), analogously with advice and advise though without an analogous difference in pronunciation. In American English, the spelling practice is commonly used for both noun and verb. I see.
• rafram 1y ago
  Describing American English as “simplified” English is textbook bad linguistics. It’s a different dialect, not an inherently simpler or more complex one.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • NewsaHackO 1y ago
    Yea, it’s insane to try and an entire country’s writing dialect as simplified. I guess it would be the only way to show off his snobbery though.
  • cjs_ac 1y ago
    It's an old meme: https://imgur.com/thats-bit-harsh-steam-XCEdD8W https://imgur.com/thats-bit-harsh-steam-XCEdD8W In the UK, it's considered good form to be humorous when making an argument; I gather that in the US, you're supposed to sound like you're making a speech to prepare troops for war. I apologise if, in the course of describing how a product is unsuitable for use in my culture, I made that argument according to the norms of my culture.
    • dymk 1y ago
      Banter (Traditional) Banter (Simplified)
    • teekert 1y ago
      I once saw this movie where several UK English words were compared to US English and US came of very “simplified”. Ie, pavement “Side walk” (because walk on the side). And several things like Lorry and Hauler all becoming “truck”. I guess it was very cherry picked (I can’t find it now sadly). Ah well, I once read an argument for “EU English”. If it’s anything like my Dunglish (Dutch-English “What talk you about”) it would indeed be simplified.
      • bmn__ 1y ago
        http://enwp.org/Euro_English http://enwp.org/Euro_English
• 18172828286177 1y ago
  For what it’s worth, I’m a native British English speaker and don’t instinctively consider “practice” “grammatically incorrect”. Indeed, I would probably write “practice” myself.
  • jonathanstrange 1y ago
    That's why you need a good spellchecker.
  • anonymous_sorry 1y ago
    Pretty sure I had this corrected on more than one occasion when I was at school. Also licence/license. I remember one day figuring out the parallel with advice/advise as a way to remember which was which. So C for the noun and S for the verb. Weirdly (to my brain), Americans always spell practice with a C, but always spell license with an S.
• darinpantley 1y ago
  Case in point: "Is there a educational discount?" I believe this should say "an educational discount". I wonder if the tool would have caught it.
  • itslennysfault 1y ago
    Did the website originally say this? I just checked and it says "an" now... Perhaps they didn't use their own tool when writing the web copy.
• satvikpendem 1y ago
  There is a great comment I read about a decade ago from anthony_franco [0] about exactly this issue with many "open source alternatives to X", this one specifically about an alternative to Product Hunt that then failed: > OpenHunt tried solving a problem for the content makers without providing any additional benefit to the content consumers. It's a nice, heart-warming mission. But in the end of the day, content is king, that's what consumers want. > There have been many examples of people rallying around a "free and open" version of a service. They fail to realize that the end consumer barely cares. Look at voat (Reddit), app.net (Twitter), Diaspora (Facebook), even ycreject.com (Y Combinator) tried to be a thing for a while. > If someone is able to make it "free and open" while also making it a better experience than the alternative, then it'll be a big success. But so far everyone gets that wrong. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10934465#10940729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10934465#10940729
  • JustBreath 1y ago
    The elephant in the room here is how you ethically get people to onboard without an existing community / fomo / money. The trick is getting the content creators there, but most of them are ultimately and fairly interested in making money, and your new platform wont have that for them. Bluesky has done alright, but that was a black swan event Elon Musk inspired.
    • satvikpendem 1y ago
      Do what reddit did, use multiple accounts as founders, and with AI I'm sure it's even easier to do so. For content-based platforms you must have content, there is no way around it and I don't see adding fake content in the beginning to be unethical, it is a solution to the cold start problem (also a good book by Andrew Chen at a16z [0]). [0] https://a16z.com/books/the-cold-start-problem/ https://a16z.com/books/the-cold-start-problem/
• tshaddox 1y ago
  Fluent American readers are likely to think "practise" is a typo. It's not even one of the commonly-known British/American spelling differences (like "color"/"colour"). Unless you know your audience is likely to be more familiar with British spelling, I'd avoid "practise."
  • xwolfi 1y ago
    They're not very smart then: most non-native people know there are several big mainstream ways to spell English, and we learn that on top of our own languages. Couldn't American schools teach English the same way, like, that there are no single proper way ?
    • tshaddox 1y ago
      We know that there are spelling differences, but most of us probably only know the most prominent ones. In my estimation, this one is quite obscure.
• thayne 1y ago
  In American English, "practise" is incorrect. So if the screenshot is taken from a user using the en_US locale it is correct. Perhaps, if your locale is en_GB it will correct "practice" to "practise", but you can't know that from a screenshot.
• OkayPhysicist 1y ago
  Calling American spelling "simplified" is anachronistic. It'd be more accurate to call British English "embellished". UK English was irreparably damaged by some smug wannabe-Frenchmen who decided there weren't enough unpronounced letters in English after we broke off.