Writing in French means making mistakes with gender agreement, verb conjugation, and pronoun placement. I wanted to know which free tools would catch these errors before I submitted assignments or sent messages to my language partner.
BonPatron catches agreement errors I miss
This checker highlights when adjectives do not match noun gender and when past participles need agreement with preceding direct objects. It caught my recurring mistake of writing des choses intéressant instead of intéressantes. The explanations link to grammar rules, though sometimes in overly technical language.
Reverso finds verb conjugation problems
When I write Je suis allé au marché yesterday, Reverso flags the tense mismatch and suggests passé composé throughout the sentence. It also catches when I accidentally mix tu and vous forms in the same paragraph, which happens when I am writing quickly.
What these tools miss
Neither catches all preposition errors or recognizes when I use a word that exists but makes no sense in context. LanguageTool flagged fewer French-specific issues than BonPatron despite having more features overall. Scribens found typos but missed several agreement mistakes that BonPatron caught.
I run everything through BonPatron first, then Reverso if the text includes complex verb tenses. This takes an extra four minutes per page but reduces the errors my tutor marks by roughly half.