Harper – an open-source alternative to Grammarly

IMO not using LLMs is a big plus in my book. Grammarly has been going downhill since they've been larding it with "AI features," it has become remarkably inconsistent. It will tell me to remove a comma one hour, and then tell me to add it back the next.

So is there a similar tool but based on an LLM?

Not that I think LLM is always better, but it would be interesting to compare these two approaches.

Grammarly came out before the LLMs. I'm not sure what approach it took, but they're likely feeling a squeeze as LLMs can tell you how to rewrite a sentence to remove passive voice and all that. I doubt the LLMs are as consistent (some comments below show some big issues), but they're free (for now).

Thank you. In general my grammarly and gboard predictions have become so, so bad over the last year.

General purpose LLMs seem to get very confused about punctuation, in my experience. It's one of their big areas of obvious failing. I'm surprised Grammarly would allow this to happen.

The internet, especially post phone keyboards, is extremely inconsistent about punctuation. I’m not sure how anyone could think an llm wouldn’t be.

> It will tell me to remove a comma one hour, and then tell me to add it back the next.

So just like English teachers I see

Grammarly is (was) written in Common LISP https://www.grammarly.com/blog/engineering/running-lisp-in-p...

Given LISP was supposed to build "The AI" ... pretty sad than a dumb LLM is taking its place now

Grammarly sometimes gets stuck in a loop, where it suggests changing from A to B. It then immediately suggests changing from B to A again, continuing to suggest the opposite change every time I accept the suggestion.

It's not a problem; I make the determination which option I like better, but it is funny.

Being dyslexic, I was an avid Grammarly user. Once it started adding "AI features" the deterioration was noticeable, I cancelled my subscription and stopped using it a year ago.

I also only ever used the web app, so copy+pasting as installing the app is for all intentness and purposes is installing a key logger.

Grammar works on rules, not sure why that needs an LLM, Grammarly certainly worked better for me when it was more dumb, using rules.

DeepL Write was pretty good in the post-LLM, pre-ChatGPT era.

DeepL is different in my opinion. They always focused on machine learning for languages.

They must have acquired fantastic data for their Models. Especially because of the business language and professional translations which they focus on.

They keep your intended message in tact and just refine it. Like a book post editing. Grammarly and other tools force you to sound like they think is best.

DeepL shows, in my opinion, how much more useful a model trained for specific uses is.

'imo' and 'in my book' are redundant in the same sentence. Are there rules-based techniques to catch things like that? Btw I loved the use of 'larding' outside the context of food.

Any suggestions for models ppl can run locally that are close to deepl

If you are talking about the current status of DeepL, that would be a low bar.