A Useful Grammar Checker?
burtdub asks: "With the amount of raw text data available, there seems to be no shortage of ambitious language projects on the horizon, from Universal Language Translators to Junk Email Filtering. However, the mess that is the English language still seems to elude commercial attempts while being relatively ignored by the open source community. What would it take to make a useful, functional grammar checker?"
Speaking of The Elements of Style, the full text of the book can be found here. It's online now. Use it.
A couple of nitpicks here:
> Remember... English is the bastard child of Celtic, Latin, and various other Germanic languages.
English isn't really related to the Celtic languages. There are a few Celtic loan words, but that's about it. Also, Celtic languages and Latin aren't Germanic. You can see the relationships here.
While I am one to appreciate good grammer and spelling, I hardly think that people English will become more difficult for native speakers to understand or use. As long as everyone screws it up in a consensual manner, we'll know what others mean.
Q.E.D.