Introducing Vale, an NLP-powered linter for prose
We’re pleased to announce the v1.0.0 release of Vale, a command-line tool that brings code-like linting to prose. Vale is cross-platform (Windows, macOS, and Linux), written in Go (Google’s open-source programming language), and available on GitHub.
Linting is the process of ensuring that written work (source code or prose) adheres to a particular style — for example, Python’s PEP 8 style guide (code) or the Google’s Documentation Style Guide (prose).
Before we get into the details of what makes Vale useful, there’s one point we’d like to clarify: Vale is not a general-purpose writing aid. It doesn’t teach you how to write; it’s a tool designed to be used by writers. More specifically, Vale focuses on the style of writing rather than its grammatical correctness — making it fundamentally different from, for example, Grammarly.
In other words, Vale focuses on ensuring consistency across multiple authors (according to customizable guidelines) rather than the general “correctness” of a single author’s work.