[HN Gopher] Show HN: Refine - A Local Alternative to Grammarly
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Refine - A Local Alternative to Grammarly
Author : runjuu
Score : 371 points
Date : 2025-07-14 05:12 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (refine.sh)
(TXT) w3m dump (refine.sh)
| gbalduzzi wrote:
| Does this only supports English?
| runjuu wrote:
| Theoretically, it could support over 140 languages, as it is
| powered by the newly released Gemma 3n model. However, I
| haven't tested many languages yet.
|
| In upcoming releases, Refine will support custom prompts and
| BYOK (Bring Your Own Key), allowing you to use any large
| language model you want.
| pyman wrote:
| What's the rationale behind adding BYOK? Or the advantages?
|
| You do realise you're already using an optimised model built
| for everyday devices, and that model includes some serious
| innovations in parameter-efficient processing, right?
|
| You're a great developer, and it looks like you're thinking
| about adding features like BYOK quickly to please more users.
| But in doing that, you might be missing the real innovation
| you've already created. You've basically built a version of
| Grammarly without the privacy issues that make most IT
| departments ban it.
|
| No one wants Grammarly or your tool sending corporate emails
| or documents to a language model. Privacy is what sets you
| apart from Grammarly. It's your biggest feature right now.
| Add a big table to your site comparing your products privacy
| with Grammarly's. That's your strongest selling point, and
| probably the only feature that can truly compete with the big
| players.
|
| My advice? Keep improving the app, but keep the model local.
| Keep it private. That's the killer feature you've got.
| rubslopes wrote:
| One can have a beefier server at home and may want to use
| it for running the model while out and about with their
| laptop.
| planb wrote:
| Seams weird to not have "How does this compare to Apple
| Intelligence Writing Tools" at least in the FAQ. Maybe refine is
| better or has more features, but the page doesn't even seem to
| acknowledge that a system level feature like this exists.
| Nicell wrote:
| Neat idea. I see why the fluency feature is off by default. It
| constantly rewords things, adds random quotations, or does
| something pretty silly https://imgur.com/oVSWmtN
|
| The Grammar feature seems to have weird suggestions/cycles too on
| a little bit more testing. Curious to see how this improves. A
| local only, one-time-purchase grammarly alternative is appealing!
| mirrormaster wrote:
| Isn't privacy a concern? How do consumers ensure that data is not
| going to captured in a future update without it being open source
| or having third party security audits?
| awestroke wrote:
| That's a concern with all apps ever so idk what answer you're
| expecting
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Except the open-source ones, or sandboxed[1] ones without any
| auto-update functionality (not sure if this app has any).
|
| [1] Loosely; I'd say not referencing any networking
| entrypoints or dlsym() also counts, as working around that
| would be very non-deniably malicious.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Perhaps this type of software could be either open-source
| with full code accessibility, or proprietary but from a
| highly trustworthy entity responsible for privacy both
| legally and reputationally. Currently, both approaches are
| missing.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Disagreed. It's not concerned with all apps, because most
| commercial applications have legal entities explaining how
| they use collected data. In this particular case, this is
| something called 'Refine', and it's not a legal entity,
| therefore, questioning its data privacy approach is fully
| legitimate.
| reconnecting wrote:
| I also strongly believe that it's a primary question when we
| talk about keyboard input.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| Does anyone know how this compares to other products in its
| field, such as LanguageTool and Harper? LanguageTool can be
| hosted locally, and Harper runs entirely as an extension, so I'm
| interested in how the spelling and grammar checks compare.
| boramalper wrote:
| +1. Also worth noting that both LanguageTool [0] and Harper [1]
| are FOSS.
|
| [0] https://languagetool.org/
|
| [1] https://writewithharper.com/
| raegis wrote:
| I just tested both on the text "Look Dick. See Jane. Jane run
| home. I says you go home to. They eats dinner." LanguageTool
| does what I would expect. Harper does not. However, both whine
| about two spaces after a period.
|
| Edit: Alas, Hacker News also removes the extra space after
| periods.
| codesnik wrote:
| browser rendering does. You'd need white-space: pre-wrap rule
| to retain double spaces.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Extra space after periods is never correct with
| proportionally-spaced fonts, which is why all browsers remove
| it by default.
|
| Two spaces after periods is a kludge invented for typewriters
| that had monospaced fonts and touch typing teachers need to
| stop teaching it in the modern era where most writing uses
| proportional fonts.
| dkga wrote:
| Curiously, it's also a tell-tale sign that a North-American
| typed the text.
| FabHK wrote:
| Just as a space before colons or exclamation marks is a
| sign that someone francophone typed it.
| dkga wrote:
| Indeed - especially the space before colons and semi-
| colons. The space before exclamation marks sometimes
| happens in informal typing amongst Brazilians. But never
| the space before colons/semi-colons.
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| Harper will detect those errors in its next release.
| scottfr wrote:
| We're building a Chrome extension grammar checker that runs
| locally using Chrome's built-in LLM.
|
| You can try it out here:
|
| https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/grammit-the-ai-gram...
|
| LLMs can also correct other sorts of mistakes, such as
| correcting "The first US President was _Ben Franklin_" to
| "George Washington".
| slacktivism123 wrote:
| >LLMs can also correct other sorts of mistakes, such as
| correcting "The first US President was _Ben Franklin_" to
| "George Washington".
|
| And they can also cause new factual mistakes that a grammar
| checker never would!
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| Preach.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I've run LanguageTool Server with the ngrams[0] for years, it
| is legitimately excellent with the ngrams (and mediocre
| without). The English-only ngrams are roughly 15 GB on disk.
|
| Just have a Windows Scheduled Task kick off this bat file:
| SET PATH=SET PATH=C:\program files\Amazon
| Corretto\jdk17.0.15_6\bin\ start javaw -cp
| languagetool-server.jar org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer
| --port 8081 --allow-origin "*" -l en-US --languageModel
| "C:\LanguageTool\LanguageTool-6.3\ngram"
|
| [0] https://dev.languagetool.org/finding-errors-using-n-gram-
| dat...
| smartmic wrote:
| Worth to mention as another alternative: Harper[0]
|
| [0]: https://writewithharper.com/
| patrakov wrote:
| Harper is so basic that I can't recommend it.
|
| Does not catch a singular/plural discrepancy between the
| subject and the verb in a sentence--a common mistake when the
| expressed thought applies equally to one thing or to many
| things.
|
| Does not catch a missed indefinite article--a common mistake
| for speakers of languages that don't have articles. Similarly,
| does not catch the use of the indefinite article for a thing
| already mentioned before.
|
| Does not even catch the obvious "don;t" typo.
| clay10 wrote:
| Have you raised these as issues? The developer has been
| extremely responsive in my experience.
|
| I use Harper in my Neovim setup and its been great. I just
| add things that are missing from the dictionary when I come
| across them in my codebase
| speckx wrote:
| Open ticket about "don;t" typo, see
| https://github.com/Automattic/harper/issues/1559
| patrakov wrote:
| That's mine! And it's already fixed; I am indeed amazed by
| the developer's responsiveness.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| This is precisely what I've been hoping somebody would build. In
| my initial testing, it works well. I can even mix sentences with
| different languages, and it still makes correct suggestions.
|
| The fluency suggestions are seemingly largely malfunctioning. It
| frequently suggests starting and ending sentences with quotes,
| although it also makes some useful suggestions. There seems to be
| an issue with analysis running synchronized, or something like
| that; when I type into a text field and Refine starts to run, it
| often blocks text entry. Selecting a suggested replacement blocks
| the app for half a second or so. Neither of these problems occurs
| with Grammarly or Language Tool. I also noticed a bunch of issues
| that Grammarly catches (like verb agreement) that Refine does
| not.
|
| But this is an amazing first release and extremely promising.
| Congrats!
| nk8620 wrote:
| why is there no open source alternatives to this? Seems ripe to
| be just built.
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| Harper?
|
| https://github.com/Automattic/harper
| janpmz wrote:
| How big is the model that powers this?
| patrakov wrote:
| 8B (Gemma 3n)
| pyman wrote:
| https://ai.google.dev/gemma/docs/gemma-3n
| Yoric wrote:
| What I'd be interested in would be something I could host on my
| local server (e.g. with ollama) to get suggestions on my laptop,
| where I write typst or markdown with Zed or VSCode.
|
| I realize I'm a niche :)
|
| Does anybody know of such a tool?
| Yeri wrote:
| I'm missing some information on how this works (a LLM? which? Do
| I need to bring an API key? Does this work offline?) and what I
| can expect in terms of performance/battery hit.
| parkcedar wrote:
| > Lightning Fast. Local processing means instant results
| without internet dependency or delays. > Always Available.
| Works offline, on flights, in coffee shops, anywhere you write.
|
| Two of your 4 questions were answered in the first content
| block
| zipping1549 wrote:
| Considering that it mentions offline capability I'd say local
| tiny LLM.
| d3m0t3p wrote:
| It is Gemma 3n, I can't give feedback yet on the battery hit,
| But I would not expect anything bad as these models have been
| developed for much smaller devices (Phones)
| diimdeep wrote:
| It does this This phrase is offensive and
| violates my safety guidelines. Therefore, I will not revise it. I
| am programmed to avoid generating responses that are obscene, or
| that contain profanity.
|
| because what's under the hood is this, and prompts are hardcoded
|
| unsloth/gemma-3n-E4B-it-GGUF You are a
| precision editor guided by a custom style manual. Your tasks are
| ordered by priority. Your primary rule is to consult the
| provided REFERENCE DICTIONARY. Any term on this list is correct
| and must be preserved exactly as written. Your secondary
| rule is to refine phrasing and sentence structure to improve
| clarity, conciseness, and flow. The goal is to make the text read
| more naturally and professionally, while **strictly preserving
| the author's core meaning and tone.** Your final rule is
| to output ONLY the clean, revised text. You MUST NOT add any
| commentary, greetings, or explanations. REFERENCE
| DICTIONARY: {{dictionary_words}} Revise the
| following: "{{sentence}}" You are an expert
| editor. Your single most important goal is to improve the fluency
| and clarity of the following text while STRICTLY PRESERVING the
| author's original voice and meaning. You MUST follow
| these rules: 1. Only rephrase sentences that are
| genuinely awkward or unclear. 2. Never make changes for
| purely stylistic preference. Return ONLY the clean,
| revised text. Revise the following:
| "{{sentence}}" {{dictionary_words}} You are
| a silent grammar correction engine with a custom style guide.
| Your primary rule is to consult the provided REFERENCE
| DICTIONARY. Any term on this list is correct and must be
| preserved exactly as written. Your secondary rule is to
| correct all other grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors in
| the main text. Your final rule is to output ONLY the
| clean, corrected text. You MUST NOT add any commentary,
| greetings, or explanations. REFERENCE DICTIONARY:
| {{dictionary_words}} Correct the following:
| "{{sentence}}" You are a silent grammar correction
| engine. Your sole function is to receive text and output the
| corrected version. You MUST NOT add any commentary, greetings, or
| explanations. You will only return the clean, corrected text.
| Correct the following: "{{sentence}}"
| slacktivism123 wrote:
| Incredible. Has any non-AI grammar checker ever returned a
| "safety" refusal to the user before? Is this the power of LLM
| wrappers?
| pmdr wrote:
| Imagine if WinRAR didn't let you archive or name your files
| what you want. How we were trusted with such DESTRUCTIVE
| tools all these years is beyond me. /s
| Inviz wrote:
| Couldnt make it to show suggestions in vscode/cursor. I would
| like to use the tool, but i'd expect it to work consistently
| across all widgets in the system (i.e. like superwhisper). Is
| there a technical limitation here or my misconfiguration of
| things?
| cjs_ac wrote:
| The screenshot shows the (corrected) example sentence:
|
| > Sometimes I still make mistakes with articles and prepositions,
| but my grammar is getting better every day I practice.
|
| In American/Simplified English, this is grammatically correct.
| However, in 'full fat' English, _practice_ is a noun, whereas
| _practise_ is a verb; _e.g._ :
|
| > I go to my practice to practise medicine.
|
| The problem I have with this website is that it's entirely
| concerned with peripheral issues. The product respects my privacy
| - good. The product is performant - good. The product doesn't
| require an Internet connection - good. The product works in many
| writing apps - good. The product has transparent pricing - good.
| But I don't give a shit about any of this until you convince me
| that this will consistently do the correct thing, and this
| website singularly fails to achieve this.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowe_Ateny
| ygritte wrote:
| > there are many Englishes, many sets of rules.
|
| Absolutely, but try to make a run-of-the-mill LLM
| understand this.
| physicsguy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Not too mention that a jumper in the US is closer to a
| pinafore.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's like overalls with a skirt. In the 80s they were
| popular for girls.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Yes, I'm aware, a colleague moved to Berkeley and relayed
| a story where he confused a lot of people :)
| tobylane wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I was not aware of this, thanks!
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I have no idea how this tool is better than running local
| LLM. Should I buy it?
| adastra22 wrote:
| So you're saying that for most English speakers it was
| _correct_ , and that's a problem?
| vintagedave wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I have always been "aware" of the concept that they can be
| perceived as arrogant, but really only "colour" - it sounds
| kind of deliberate and like some attempt to sound "fancy,"
| like enunciating "theater" as "thee-AY-tour" But even so, I
| usually see it as a _humorous_ thing. The person is
| purposely trying to sound over the top arrogant /refined as
| a joke. I've never actually read "british" spellings and
| gone "what an ass." I usually assume that's how they write
| _or_ it 's a joke.
| butshouldyou wrote:
| Huge quantities of english speakers, who are not from the
| Commonwealth, learn British English.
| beAbU wrote:
| > and you are not a citizen of the British Commonwealth
|
| What do you regard as the British Commonwealth, and what
| variant of English spelling to you expect people to use who
| are _not_ part of this grouping?
|
| Just so that you know, in case you don't, "US English" is
| used just about exclusively in the US, and UK English is used
| in most of the rest of the world, despite the fact that most
| of our devices incorrectly default to US English.
| dkga wrote:
| I work at an international organisation, and can confirm.
| My understanding is that is that at the international
| level, only the US-based international organisations use US
| English.
|
| To be sure, I don't have any dog in this fight, just
| highlighting a fact from my experience that many here might
| not know.
| beAbU wrote:
| This is my approach/experience as well, hence my comment
| and question to the previous poster.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That sounds surprising. As an European, I thought that UK
| only _thinks_ their English is the dominant one, because
| it 's the one officially taught everywhere. Meanwhile,
| the reality is, people learn English primarily from
| Hollywood and MTV; music, video, television and computer
| games are both the primary exposure and the main reason
| for people to pick English up, and they're almost all in
| US English. Secondarily, computers - the OS, software,
| SaaS - all of that is either in US English or localized
| to wherever the users live, and even then the US English
| version is usually _better_.
|
| Nobody actually uses UK English here, except for English
| teachers. Computers don't. TV doesn't. Corporate jobs
| don't. And so regular people don't either.
| beAbU wrote:
| Where is "here"?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| "Here" is Poland, but in my trips to other places in
| Europe (and around the world), I never saw anything that
| would suggest this is an unique experience. On the
| contrary, it's pretty much self-evident, and having it be
| otherwise would require the last 200 years of world
| history to be dramatically different from what they were.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| I believe at least in all of Eastern Europe (including
| those guys who call themselves Central :wink:) US English
| dominates in pop culture, and business. I also used to
| work with a few Italians, and Portuguese and they all
| wrote US En too, so I suspect it's the same for them too.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| The kind of organization that identifies as an
| "international organization" is disproportionately likely
| to be hyperaware of its working language choice and
| standardize on a particular English dialect by policy and
| pick en-gb.
|
| Without such a conscious choice, yes, Americanisms do
| seem a fair bit more globally pervasive and easy to fall
| into "by accident".
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I'm assuming we're talking NGOs here, because if we
| expand "organization" to include for-profit entities,
| then I'd argue vast majority of them will not just be US-
| English speaking, but _US-originating and US-
| headquatered_.
|
| > _Without such a conscious choice, yes, Americanisms do
| seem a fair bit more globally pervasive and easy to fall
| into "by accident"._
|
| You'd need choice _and enforcement_ - unless such
| organization is testing for Received Pronunciation during
| interviews and filtering out people who cannot into Queen
| 's English[0], I'd wager most of the members in such org,
| who don't come from UK (or a few related countries), will
| be speaking "British English" with distinctly US
| pronunciation. Because while an organization can make a
| conscious choice here, for most people, learning a second
| language is a long-term endeavor that largely happens "in
| the background", and it's very easy to learn a blend,
| with UK English being present in schools, and US English
| everywhere else.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Or is it King's English now?
| naniwaduni wrote:
| Coming from the horse's mouth, my expectation is that GP
| works at some kind of (non-military?) treaty
| organization? ime while outsiders might include NGOs
| under the umbrella, the kind of people who work at the
| "international level" tend to uhhh, care about their
| taxonomy. Multinational corporations are almost never
| lumped together with these (and generally don't really
| care about international cooperation as a goal, except
| instrumentally), outside the barest sense of "yeah, I
| guess they're organizations and they work
| internationally".
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Majority counting by combined headcount of the
| organisation type _maybe_ , but almost all multinationals
| are very big companies so by the law of "you get fewer
| number of pieces if each piece is large" there just
| aren't very many of them.
| broken-kebab wrote:
| Not sure what is international level? If it's a kind of
| supranational organizations which mandate a particular
| version of English, I'm ready to believe that in EU it's
| UK En. But for commercial companies my experience is
| exactly opposite: it's mostly US En unless you're
| communicating with Brits, or someone from a country which
| inherited British education.
| apaprocki wrote:
| My experience with a large multi-thousand Eng department
| where the majority are in the US or UK: US-based or
| influenced employees will write usually with American
| English spellings and continue to do so even if based in
| the UK. UK-based or influenced employees will write with
| British English spellings and continue to do so if based
| in the US. No one conforms to the other and everyone can
| understand each other perfectly fine because the spelling
| of these words does not matter for comprehension. This
| applies to writing as well as words in code or API names.
| keiferski wrote:
| Plenty of European companies and organizations use American
| spellings. In general I'd say it's pretty much random and
| 50/50.
| JLCarveth wrote:
| _Americans_ finding anyone else arrogant is quite rich.
| malfist wrote:
| That's a mighty broad brush you're painting with
| 42lux wrote:
| I guess it's more of a shit throwing contest than an
| artistic practice.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| In the real world, it boils down to a game of "count the
| nuclear-powered aircraft carriers".
| anotherevan wrote:
| That's very colorful[sic] thinking.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Interesting - I'd heard of American Gen Zs using _theatre_ to
| mean the art form, to distinguish it from just meaning a
| building, but I hadn 't heard of British English being
| considered a more prestigious register than American English.
| Is this a new phenomenon?
| Onawa wrote:
| I don't think OP meant "arrogant" in terms of more
| prestigious, but in the sense of any native US-English
| speaker using British English spellings as a way to seem
| fancier or more formal.
|
| Non-native US-English speakers are not viewed in the same
| light (in my opinion).
| ghaff wrote:
| I find there are a few specific Britishisms (like theatre)
| that don't really raise an eyebrow in the US and _maybe_
| can seem a bit more upper-class. Grey vs. gray are
| essentially interchangeable. Toward vs. towards is another.
| limagnolia wrote:
| It gives off arrogant vibes to have one accuse Americans of
| being arrogant for using alternative spellings.
| speedgoose wrote:
| As a Frenchman, I enjoy writing _colour_ and being arrogant.
| groby_b wrote:
| Come on, write _couleur_ and let them eat cake ;)
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > you instantly mark yourself as arrogant.
|
| That is simply not true. Maybe that's how you feel about it,
| but it is generally not the case (or even considered,
| really).
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I learned _colour_ at school in France.
| johnisgood wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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
| johnisgood wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Describing American English as "simplified" English is textbook
| bad linguistics. It's a _different_ dialect, not an inherently
| simpler or more complex one.
| NewsaHackO wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's an old meme: 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 wrote:
| Banter (Traditional)
|
| Banter (Simplified)
| teekert wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway2025_1 wrote:
| Could the 'Simplified Spelling Board'[1] of 1906 have
| anything to do with the naming?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Spelling_Board
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Huh, that's an interesting tidbit.
|
| > _The Simplified Spelling Board was announced on March 11,
| 1906, with Andrew Carnegie funding the organization, to be
| headquartered in New York City._
|
| Some big names here.
|
| > _The New York Times noted that Carnegie was convinced
| that "English might be made the world language of the
| future"_
|
| He wasn't wrong.
|
| > _and an influence leading to universal peace,_
|
| That's still to be seen.
|
| > _but that this role was obstructed by its "contradictory
| and difficult spelling"._
|
| Well now.
|
| It's interesting to scroll through the list of proposed
| changes; 100+ years later, many of them seem to be the
| default/correct spelling, but just as many look _wrong_ ,
| even when following the same transformation rules. E.g.:
| "brasen" -> "brazen" vs. "surprise" -> "surprize".
|
| Thanks for linking this!
| signaturefish wrote:
| Simplified English is a thing that exists, for clarity - see
| for example https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice
|
| I don't know if the parent comment was trying to equate
| American English and Simple English - I can see it as a way
| to dismiss American English as a "lesser" language (which it
| isn't, as you say), but I wouldn't start by assuming that.
| 18172828286177 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| That's why you need a good spellchecker.
| anonymous_sorry wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| JustBreath wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/
| tshaddox wrote:
| 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."
| thayne wrote:
| 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.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Powered by local AI models
|
| I worry that this will make my writing more likely to fail an AI
| coursework detector, which could really impact my life. The risk
| just isn't worth it till someone has tested the output through
| all the big players (turnitin etc.)
| raincole wrote:
| If I use correct punctuation marks my work will be more likely
| to be \detected\ as AI written; The risk just isn"t worth it so
| I never do that^
| FabHK wrote:
| It's hilarious, on some other sites one is immediately
| accused of using ChatGPT when using the n-dash (-) or m-dash
| (--) instead of the hyphen (-). Not an issue with the
| monospaced font here. ETA: I stand corrected.
| londons_explore wrote:
| ChatGPT tends to speak in american english, which means
| it's obvious to readers in the rest of the world because
| local phrases aren't used.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| We'll soon need a writing tool that introduces spelling and
| grammar errors into our text and messes with punctuation so
| that we aren't accused of using LLMs.
| aaronbaugher wrote:
| It's funny how many people still think sloppy, mistake-
| filled writing is a sign of AI, as if their writing is at
| the same level as the image generators giving people six
| fingers, when the truth is the current LLMs use better
| English grammar than 99% of humans. Their writing may be
| kind of boring and standard, but they don't confuse "their"
| and "there."
| itslennysfault wrote:
| I don't think the risks are high with this. It's not writing
| for you. It's just correcting your grammar. If you're 99%
| writing it yourself and just having it highlight grammar
| mistakes I wouldn't expect it to trigger an alarm....... but I
| haven't been in school since waaay before LLMs were
| viable/common. So, maybe it's worse than I think.
| admiralrohan wrote:
| If you are running local LLMs what is the hardware requirement in
| my machine? Don't see any mention of that.
| ggerganov wrote:
| Gemma 3n (the model used by this app) would run on any Apple
| Silicon device (even with 8GB RAM).
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| Yup, but you're automatically giving up a ton of RAM that
| could be better used for Slack.
| smcleod wrote:
| How well does it handle standard international English? So many
| of the tools I've seen seem to only support American English.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Speaking of which, isn't it time to consider American English
| to be the standard one?
|
| Colour and licence are so quaint.
| smcleod wrote:
| Well, only Americans use it. There's no point in arguing
| about it your version of a language is better or worse but
| for the rest of the world it's incredibly annoying having to
| correct Zs with Ss when using LLMs or American only software.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I'm actually Russian. The whole world uses American
| English, by virtue of US dominance in all important
| technical and cultural spheres.
| smcleod wrote:
| "The only whole world uses American English" ... I think
| you might be living in a bubble. It sticks out like a
| sore thumb.
| larnon wrote:
| He is actually correct. I am neither American nor
| English.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Commonwealth nations tend to not use American English.
| They form a fairly major part of the world.
| smcleod wrote:
| That's certainly not the case in the majority of Europe,
| Australia, New Zealand, East Africa, West Africa, South
| Africa, PNG, Fiji, Philippines, South Asia and South East
| Asia. Really it's mostly just America and Canada that use
| American.
|
| I could cite many sources but https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/American_and_British_English_s... provides a simple
| view.
| gamegod wrote:
| We don't use American English in Canada either.
| smcleod wrote:
| Oh! I'm sorry, I must have misread!
| beAbU wrote:
| I honestly don't think this is true. In many places
| outside the US our devices will default to US spelling,
| making it appear as if the language spoken by the locals
| is US English.
|
| But when you look at things like the type of English
| being taught in school, or the language used by the
| government, it'll be UK/International English.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| I regularly correspond to people from all over the world,
| India, China, Brazil, France, and they all tend to use US
| English, thus the suggestion.
|
| Commonwealth countries are relatively minor in population
| compared to the USA and the rest of the world.
|
| And yes, default US spelling in devices does play a role.
| See prev. point about technological and cultural
| dominance.
| macintux wrote:
| > Commonwealth countries are relatively minor in
| population compared to the USA and the rest of the world.
|
| Given India's presence in the Commonwealth, this seems an
| odd assertion. 2.6 billion people live in the
| Commonwealth[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_the_Co
| mmonwea...
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Kinda forgot India is still part of the Commonwealth.
| Maybe because all Indians I ever corresponded with
| uniformly used US spelling, likely because they work a
| lot with the USA. YMMV.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| I could care less about this attempt at trolling, but I
| won't.
|
| We have enough American cultural hegemony as it is. It
| frustrates me no end that I regularly am unable[1] to
| configure software to use my preferred version of English.
|
| [1] or it's extremely difficult. CLion I'm looking at you;
| every available option I have is set to British English, but
| still you insist on telling me my Colours should be corrected
| to Color etc. :(
| adastra22 wrote:
| English is a bastard language of French and Saxon. But we
| don't get upset over that because Britain made the world
| English. Now the USA is making the world American. That
| ship has sailed.
| beAbU wrote:
| I think we need to call American English "American", then you
| can speak American and I can speak English.
| 42lux wrote:
| Europe still teaches British English in schools.
| jasekt wrote:
| Wonderful! I've given it a go, works in Apple's Notes app, but it
| does not seem to trigger suggestions in Chrome, Firefox or Slack.
| It does however highlight misspellings there. Any idea what can I
| do to enable suggestions there? I was looking for a product like
| this.
| drowe859 wrote:
| Same! Interested in this but need it to work for Slack, where I
| often type more informally and don't take the time I should to
| proofread.
| gardnr wrote:
| You can use a local instance of LanguageTool in a docker
| container for this:
|
| https://github.com/gardner/LocalLanguageTool
| DonsDiscountGas wrote:
| A lot of people would rather pay $15 than mess with docker
| containers
| koiueo wrote:
| Gosh people love complicating things.
|
| You don't need docker (a Linux-only piece of tech) to run a
| java application. Even though I'm on Linux, and docker
| experience is waaaaay better here than on any other platform, I
| wouldn't in my life consider using it to run LanguageTool.
| java -cp languagetool-server.jar
| org.languagetool.server.HTTPServer
| idoubtit wrote:
| A command without context is not very useful. If anyone wants
| to run LanguageTool locally, I suggest reading the official
| documentation page: https://dev.languagetool.org/http-server
|
| Their recommended process is :
|
| 1. Install fasttext (it's an official Debian package, but you
| have to compile it on Windows).
|
| 2. Download and uncompress the LanguageTool release.
|
| 3. Create a config file.
|
| 4. Launch the server with the java command (of course, a JRE
| must be installed).
|
| 5. Connect to the API, e.g. with the browser extension.
|
| Running a ready-made docker image replaces steps 1-4 and
| removes the need to install Java globally. Some will prefer
| it this way.
| koiueo wrote:
| > 2. Download and uncompress the LanguageTool release.
|
| > Running a ready-made docker image replaces steps 1-4
|
| We can go pretty low level in the docker option too.
|
| 1. Download a Linux installation image
|
| 2. Download a hypervisor
|
| 3. Install Linux on the virtual machine
|
| 4. Install docker in a virtual Linux machine
|
| 5. Launch LanguageTool container
|
| 6. Configure networking between the host and the container
| in the guest
|
| 7. Connect to the API, e.g. with the browser extension
|
| Obviously I initially oversimplified by omitting the
| configuration step. But adding download step to inflate the
| complexity is not a fair play ;-)
|
| I'd argue that running a platforn-native artifact is both
| simpler and easier than involving virtualization. Even if
| steps 1-4 are done by some magical tool like rancher or
| docker-desktop
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Gosh people love complicating things.
|
| You don't need to fight with installing (the correct version
| of) java. I wouldn't in my life consider installing java on
| my OS directly.
|
| For anyone with docker already installed (most people these
| days)... git clone
| git@github.com:gardner/LocalLanguageTool.git cd
| LocalLanguageTool docker compose up
| ho_schi wrote:
| There is also a readily installable Flatpak:
|
| https://github.com/sonnyp/Eloquent
|
| It is restricted by Flatpak (i.e. Control Groups and
| Namespaces): * No file-system access *
| No access to devices * Network Access is allowed (API of
| Languagetool is only reachable via REST?)
|
| It is fat. But that's more an issue of Java itself. I only wish
| Languagetool didn't use Java, which is fine on a servers but
| horrible on personal-computers. Implemented in C, C++ or Rust
| and it would be probably already part of LibreOffice. Sonny
| Piers is the packager Flatpak, a prominent ex-member of GNOME
| board. He was removed due some Code-Of-Conduct thing which
| nobody can explain, due to issues within the Code-Of-Conduct.
|
| PS: LibreOffice had to fight years to remove Java which plagued
| the project.
| xd1936 wrote:
| TIL LibreOffice has finally removed Java. Thanks for
| educating me.
| nusl wrote:
| I've installed it to give it a try but it does absolutely nothing
| in any application I use. I did give it required permissions.
| gregjw wrote:
| It'd be neat if there was an open source solution this polished.
| utf_8x wrote:
| Holy crap, a local-only app with one-time purchase *and* a free
| demo? You don't see that very often these days
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| My biggest problem with Grammarly is how buggy it is. How often
| it doesn't work as intended and either messes up formatting or
| doesn't change the text when I click.
|
| Does Refine solve this?
| atmosx wrote:
| I would pay 50$ a year if this had a vim integration.
| rsoury wrote:
| If this were open source AGPL it'd be an insta-download.
| wkjagt wrote:
| Very cool product. And thank you for not making it a
| subscription.
|
| > Can't find the answer you're looking for? Feel free to sent us
| an email at support@refine.sh
|
| Should be "send". Especially with this kind of product, you
| shouldn't have grammar mistakes on the website :)
| amelius wrote:
| I'm really wondering if/why Grammarly still has a business case,
| in this age of LLMs.
| koiueo wrote:
| It's beyond me how they still refuse to offer an official API.
|
| Gemini subscription costs as much, allows me to do much more,
| and I can call it from vim or emacs without some arcane
| acrobatics
| netule wrote:
| They _used_ to have an API, which they removed about two
| years ago or so. Until then, there were a bunch of 3rd-party
| Grammarly plugins, including a pretty decent one for VSCode.
| pmdr wrote:
| Mainly because (cloud-hosted, bigger & smarter) LLMs probably
| offer no added privacy benefit. Self-hosted models are dumber,
| neutered and unpredictable.
| mcapodici wrote:
| Languagetool is an open source tool you can run as a local
| spelling and grammar checker. It's different to Grammarly - less
| AI and more rules based. I often use both tools at the same time.
| I wrote a quick intro on how to self host this -
| https://martincapodici.com/2025/05/10/check-your-writing-usi....
| reconnecting wrote:
| There is no guarantee that this software will not occasionally
| start acting as a keylogger. If somehow this happens (let's
| assume not intentionally), will it be the direct responsibility
| of the author?
|
| Legally, there is no entity behind that responsible for privacy
| (1), and honestly, I don't see even minimal reason to trust this
| software from a legal perspective.
|
| 1. https://refine.sh/privacy-policy
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| There's no reason to trust it from a technical perspective
| either. The app is unsandboxed. Easy enough to check from the
| CLI. codesign --display --verbose=4
| Refine.app 2>&1 | grep sandbox
|
| Apple provides a network client entitlement[1] that sandboxed
| apps must have, to connect to the network. Since this app isn't
| sandboxed, that restriction doesn't apply.
|
| Personally, I only use software that was either built on my
| machine or downloaded off of the Mac App Store (MAS apps have
| the be mandatory sandboxed).
|
| [1]:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/en...
| reconnecting wrote:
| Most of the time, both legal and technical misalignments walk
| together. Thank you for noticing this.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Isn't that true of all software? How do you know that grammarly
| is not already doing that your data is transmitted to their
| servers after all.
| reconnecting wrote:
| Not at all. Most commercial software has a publisher (as
| legal entity) that is responsible for privacy and takes
| reputational risks if something goes wrong.
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| So does this, it says at the bottom "(c) 2025 Runju Huang".
| Mister Huang is publishing this, presumably, he would be
| responsible for any wrong doing.
|
| Is your objection that he is distributing this by himself,
| instead of through the app store? Or that it appears that
| he is doing it as an individual instead of a company?
|
| Sure, it's a little sketchy, it's a guy with a website and
| a privacy protected domain and that's about it. But if
| anything were to happen you would be suing the developers
| of refine.sh.
|
| I guess I do see your point though. For my software I have
| indeed created a legal entity and can be easily looked up.
| sgarland wrote:
| Does this do tone? That is the single largest feature of
| Grammarly's Slack plugin that I absolutely loved, and if my work
| allowed it, I'd have it again.
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| LLM usage would immediately disqualify this from most academic
| writing.
| AdilZtn wrote:
| Could you elaborate why?
| nakovet wrote:
| Minor thing with the website but the download button is not
| entirely clickable, if you don't click on the text you don't get
| to download it, due to the div > a and the anchor being just the
| text, consider styling the anchor to have the padding so the
| whole thing is clickable. :)
| j45 wrote:
| I wonder if there was some complexity with internationalizing or
| localizing English (UK English, etc) outside of the primary build
| case.
| diekhans wrote:
| No API to hook into one's favorite tools, such as emacs.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Has anyone tested how this works in comparison to locally-hosted
| LanguageTool?
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| Does anyone know of an equivalent for translations, ideally open
| source though?
| valorantPanda wrote:
| Nice product! Does it support other language like Chinese?
| lessurliu wrote:
| I tried it and it worked pretty well. I'm curious about the
| principle behind it. Is there any model or API being called?
| sarmadgulzar wrote:
| I see that you're using gemma3n which is a 4B parameter model and
| utilizes around 3GB RAM. How do you handle loading/offloading the
| model into the RAM? Or is it always in the memory as long as the
| app is running?
| chilipepperhott wrote:
| I can see this as a major issue. If you start using this for
| grammar checking, you're basically subtracting 3GB of RAM from
| your system.
| zamalek wrote:
| I'm a Linux adherent, but I can't understand how a "normie tool"
| like this wouldn't release to Windows first. You're hitting <15%
| (<30% for US) of the market. Even if you only care about
| developers, you're hitting the worst of all 3 (Windows, Mac,
| Linux) with a MacOS only release[1].
|
| [1]: https://truelist.co/blog/linux-statistics/
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/
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