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French grammar check: check grammar and spelling for French texts

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Free French Grammar Checker

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Best Free French Spell Checker

Thanks to the free French spell checker, you don’t have to worry about spelling, grammar and punctuation errors. You concentrate on your text, and we take care of correcting your mistakes.

• French grammar checker
• French spell checker
• French punctuation checker

Complicated French grammar made easy

What is the gender of “ordinateur”? Which tense of “durer” do I need in this sentence?

The French grammar checker will show you all these mistakes and more, and suggest corrections if needed.

Correct French punctuation

Is this accent right here? Which quotation marks are actually used in French?

Paste your text into our tool and let the online French spell checker help you with the correct punctuation.

Avoid misused words

In French, many words sound similar. It’s not always easy to find the right expression.

With the French spell checker, you can make sure you’re saying exactly what you want to say. 

Check French, English, German and Spanish texts

Would you like to check all your texts with one tool? With Scribbr you can correct French as well as English, Spanish and German texts.

Our spell checker is available for the following languages:

Check your French text today

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Frequently asked questions

The Scribbr Grammar Checker is a tailor-made AI-powered tool that can correct basic language, grammar, style, and spelling errors. We run it so that our editors are free to focus on what they do best: making sure that your paper is free of more nuanced mistakes and providing you with helpful feedback and writing tips.

The Scribbr Grammar Checker is a pro at correcting basic mistakes – and a human editor will still be carefully reviewing your full text – so you can rest assured that your paper is in very good hands!

When you receive back a document that has been reviewed by the Scribbr Grammar Checker, you’ll see two sets of tracked changes in it: one set from the grammar checker and one set from your editor. That way, you can easily tell who made what changes in your paper.

Not sure how tracked changes work in Word or how to review your edited file? Read our handy guide to learn more.

We tested ten of the most popular free grammar checkers to see how many errors they could fix in our sample text and deducted points for any new errors introduced. We also evaluated the tools’ usability.

When compared all the other grammar checkers we tested for this comparison and Scribbr performed exceptionally well. It was successful in detecting and correcting 19 of the 20 errors. See the full review here .

If our grammar checker flags an error that is not actually an error, you have several options:

1. Ignore the error: Most grammar checkers allow users to skip or ignore suggestions they do not agree with or find irrelevant. If you are confident that the flagged “error” is not an issue, you can bypass the suggestion and move on to the next one.

2. Review the context: Take a moment to thoroughly review the context surrounding the flagged error. Sometimes, the initial correct usage might still create confusion or ambiguity within the specific context, and reconsidering the phrasing could improve overall clarity.

Yes, this grammar checker covers the following mistakes:

1. Grammar: Correction of grammatical errors such as subject-verb agreement, tense usage, and sentence structure

2. Spelling: identification and correction of spelling errors, including typos and commonly confused words.

3. Punctuation: Detection and rectification of punctuation errors, including incorrect use of commas, periods, colons, and other punctuation.

4. Word choice errors: Catch words that sound similar but aren’t, like their vs. they’re and your vs. you’re.

Yes. There’s no sign up or payment required to use the grammar checker.

Yes. The grammar checker fixes any text, no matter what the medium is.

The Scribbr grammar checker finds more errors than many other tools and is particularly user-friendly:

• Winner: In our test comparison, the Scribbr grammar checker found 19 out of 20 errors, putting it in first place.
• No registration required: You don’t need an account to use the grammar checker.
• No limits: There is no character or word limit.
• Ad-free: There is no advertising on Scribbr to distract from the tool.

For more details, feel free to read our test of the best English grammar checkers.

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Grammar Checker for French

Craft flawless french content and captivate your audience with our free online grammar checker., grammar corrector and punctuation checker for french, use our free grammar & spell checker to improve your content for higher efficiency., instant writer check.

Simply write or paste your text to run a sentence check and see how it can be improved.

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If there are any typos and misspelled words, we will find and fix them for you!

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Double-click any word in your copy to see the list of synonyms that make it more compelling.

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Simply copy your text to use it elsewhere. Or install our browser extension to get help on any website.

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Error-free writing leads to better marketing roi, faster communication, and increased revenue., run sentence check to create compelling content.

For writers, our writer check feature is an invaluable tool. It can help you refine your writing style, suggest alternative phrasing, and offer insights into your writing habits. By using Linguix regularly, you can become a more confident and effective writer. Our sentence check feature analyzes the structure of your sentences, ensuring that they are clear, concise, and easy to understand. It can identify run-on sentences, sentence fragments, and other issues that may confuse your readers. Linguix punctuation checker ensures that your commas, periods, and other punctuation marks are used correctly. It can also help you improve your use of colons, semicolons, and other advanced punctuation.

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Linguix's spelling and grammar check feature is available online and our browser extensions work on Google Docs, Gmail, ChatGPT, and millions of other websites. Our spell check online tool is perfect for catching typos and other errors that can slip past you during the writing process. The spell tester can provide suggestions for correcting your mistakes, making it easier to polish your work. For those who need to check larger volumes of text, our sentence grammar check tool can help you analyze your work quickly and efficiently. This tool is perfect for students, teachers, and professionals who need to review longer documents.

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"BonPatron Pro"

Description.

BonPatron is an online tool for writing in French that identifies spelling errors and common grammatical problems. BonPatron Pro offers several advantages over the free version :

• no advertising (ads help support the free version)
• a verb conjugator
• resizable editor – much more room available for editing your text
• fullscreen editor – you can maximize the editor to the size of your browser window (except in Safari)
• text archiving – you can view any of your previously submitted texts
• summary of errors
• interactive grammar exercises for many errors
• integrated English-French dictionary
• a mechanism for easily inserting accented characters
• several more planned features....
• finally, a subscription helps support this project (think of it as a donation if you prefer)

Individuals can purchase a one year license for BonPatron Pro for only €12 99 (about $16, other currencies are accepted). To purchase an individual license, visit the Create an Account Page . Create an account now and also receive a bonus subscription to SpellCheckPlus Pro (our editor for texts in English).

Group, academic, and institutional licenses are also available with volume discounts. Schools can purchase licenses for each machine in their computer labs (shared licenses) or purchase licenses for each student (which allow students to use the license at home as well). Please contact us for more information.

Grammar score:   ? % (number of words: )

Summary of possible errors ( show explanations) -->, bonpatron.com.

Best online French grammar checkers

Updated: January 19, 2024 by Mylene in French Grammar   ▪ English Français  

Whether you are writing a dissertation, a formal essay, or a blog post, your aim is to produce the most readable manuscript and to avoid outright French grammar mistakes. Having a piece of text riddled with French grammatical and spelling errors is not only distracting for your readers, but also can hurt your reputation and raise doubts about your knowledge and expertise in a subject.

While you should consider hiring a professional copy editor if you’re writing a novel, there are a number of online French grammar tools that everyone can use for free. These online tools let you correct most of the errors in your texts. Preparing an error-free piece of text in French without spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes is what takes a manuscript from good to great. It’s the trademark of great content.

I have reviewed the best French grammar checker online software that will make your writing error-free. Before starting the comparison of the best French grammar checkers, I would like to give a general overview of grammar checkers and how they really work:

What is a grammar checker?

• Errors that a French grammar checker can find
• Do you really need a grammar checker?
• How to use a grammar corrector?
• Top French grammar checkers 
• The best French grammar checker

French grammar checkers: The alternatives

A grammar checker is a tool or software that can verify common spelling and grammar errors. Grammar checkers go beyond verifying spelling mistakes, they check grammar too. A grammar checker ensures that:

• sentences are properly structured and grammatically correct
• words are spelled checked and have no basic typos
• punctuation is addressed correctly and is consistent

At this point, you know that French grammar checkers can rescue you. Next, you’ll discover the specific problems that a grammar checker can identify and fix.

What kinds of errors does a French grammar tool find?

Basically, a good French grammar corrector should be able to quickly check the text you’ve written, highlight potential errors, and suggest corrections. Some common errors that a French grammar checker can find are:

• tricky spelling errors
• punctuation errors
• gender errors (un, une)
• conjugation errors (subjonctive…)
• article (le, la, du, de la)
• subject-verb agreement
• singular/plural nouns

If you desire to gain further knowledge on singular and plural words, you may refer to the following two articles: the first addresses the proper writing of the days of the week in French and the second tackles the French color adjectives’ agreement .

Do you really need a French grammar checker?

It’s important to use a grammar checker before turning in your essay or sending a professional email in French . In a business context, poor language structure is one of the main reasons for losing customers, arrangements, and missing professional opportunities. In a competitive job market, there’s never been a more important time for jobseekers to polish their resumes and avoid all kinds of grammar and spelling mistakes to make their applications stand out.

How To Use A Grammar Corrector ?

I still remember the book I used when I was a student, the Bescherelle . I still use it sometimes. Nowadays, grammar correctors are online and automated. They provide a complete analysis of a text. Most grammar checkers are free. You just have to paste your text on the required field. Then click the button to start the verification. That’s it!

But be aware that grammar checkers aren’t perfect.

Automated checkers have their limitations. A grammar checker cannot replace a human corrector because these tools don’t have the ability to reason like a human and understand things in their context.

French grammar checkers

Pick a robust grammar checker tool that you can rely on to catch your writing mistakes. While some French grammar correctors are great and provide you with comprehensive writing feedback, other tools can make your text worse and alter the meaning of your sentences.

To choose the best tool, I put the many online French grammar tools to the test.

For that, I took an extract of Le Petit Prince de Antoine de Saint-Exupéry . Here is the original text in French:

Il me fallut longtemps pour comprendre d’où il venait. Le petit prince, qui me posait beaucoup de questions, ne semblait jamais entendre les miennes. Ce sont des mots prononcés par hasard qui, peu à peu, m’ont tout révélé. Ainsi, quand il aperçut pour la première fois mon avion (je ne dessinerai pas mon avion, c’est un dessin beaucoup trop compliqué pour moi) il me demanda : – Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette chose-là ?

Then I rewrote the extract and I added 12 mistakes on purpose. Words with errors are in bold:

Il me fallu longtemps pour comprendre d’i l venait. Le petit prince, qui me posait beaucoup des questions, ne semblait jamais entendre la miennes. Ces sont des mots prononcés par hasard qui, peu de peu, m’ont tout révélé. Ainsi, quant il aperçut pour la première fois mon avion (je ne dessinerai pas ma avion, c’est un dessins beaucoup très compliqué pour moi) il mon demanda : – Qu ‘est que c’est que cette chose-là ?

Now let’s see if the following 7 French grammar checkers can find these 12 mistakes.

Bonpatron.com

Bon Patron is a writing assistant that not only corrects grammar but also gives you comprehensive writing feedback.

BonPatron found 10 of the 12 mistakes. It also offers good explanations in English.

Scribens found 5 of the 12 mistakes. The tool missed several mistakes! This is the reason why I don’t recommend relying on this tool.

Reverso provides corrections and suggestions and more information via an in-built French dictionary.

Reverso found 7 of the 12 mistakes.

You can use the Cordial tool to proofread and check for grammatical errors in social media updates, emails, or blog posts.

Cordial found 9 of the 12 mistakes. Cordial found more mistakes than reverso and Scribens.

CorrectionOnline

CorrectionOnline found only 6 of the 12 mistakes.

LanguageTool

It’s a French grammar checker with explanations in French. If you’re a French beginner, you may not understand all the explanations.

LanguageTool found 7 of the 12 mistakes.

What is the best French grammar checker?

Regarding the results of this comparison, the best French grammar checkers that found most of the errors are:

If you have grammar questions, you can use the forum of Wordreference or Reddit . This will allow you to better understand grammar rules.

The best French grammar checker is a human expert.

The linguist Geoffrey K. Pullum argued in 2007 that they were generally so inaccurate as to do more harm than good:

Improve Your French

Now that you’ve learned about different French grammar checkers and discovered a few alternatives, you can use your creativity to write dissertations, formal essays, and blog posts in French without any grammar or spelling errors.

Looking to discover a wide variety of great content? Check our videos on  YouTube  and on Instagram  to listen to French content posted every week. Speaking French and mastering the art of communication can be challenging, even for native speakers!

Writing a Professional Email in French (Sample template included)

2 thoughts on “Best online French grammar checkers”

Bonjour, J ai trouve votre blog tres interressant. J aurais quelque questions. Je dois utiliser le Francais business et l’ Anglais business dans mon travail. Je suis francaise vivant en Angleterre mais mon anglais est meuilleur que mon francais en plus je suis dyslexic. Pourriez vous m indiquer un free grammar checker qui puisse corriger mes emails en anglais et francais? J’utilise Ginger et Grammarly mais ils ne suis pas exellent a 100%. Je vous remercie d ‘avance. Oceane

Bonjour Océane, je vous remercie tout d’abord pour votre message. Actuellement il n’y a pas de correcteur de texte fiable à 100%. Grammarly est une bonne option mais il ne peut pas corriger toutes les erreurs. Néanmoins il va vous aider à corriger un grand nombre d’erreurs. A bientôt !

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11 Best French Grammar Checkers to Proofread Your Writing

French grammar can be a little tricky to learn at times.

That’s where French grammar checkers come in!

I put 11 tools to the test with a 450-word apartment description that contained intentional (and unintentional) grammar errors.

In the end, I discovered that each resource was helpful for unique situations, though Grammalecte was best overall.

Let’s take a closer look at the takeaways of each of the 11 French grammar checkers from my experiment!

• 1. Reverso: Best for Quick Checks
• 2. LanguageTool: Best for Critical Thinking
• 3. BonPatron: Best for Beginners
• 4. Sapling: Best for Catching Common Errors
• 5. Grammalecte: Best Overall Checker
• 6. SEOMagnifier: Best for Document Uploads
• 7. WhiteSmoke: Best for Offline Checks
• 8. HiNative: Best for Corrections by Natives
• 9. Scribens: Best for Checking Longer Texts
• 10. FrenchCorrector: Best Free Checker
• 11. Microsoft Word: Best for Convenience

Benefits of Using a French Grammar Checker

And one more thing....

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

1. Reverso : Best for Quick Checks

Price: Free; Premium available from $9.99/month

Reverso is a well-known translator that converts between French and other languages.

It also works as a checker for up to 450 characters, though it’s more reliable for spelling checks since it’s not perfect at catching every grammar error. 

While Reverso does pretty well in checking gender agreement, it misses language nuances and also has inaccurate corrections, but that’s not entirely surprising, considering it’s a free app.

Other than the translator and spell-check functions, features include dictionary definitions, a synonym finder, a conjugator and a grammar reference. 

Overall, Reverso is good for a quick check, but shouldn’t be relied upon too heavily.

2. LanguageTool : Best for Critical Thinking

Price: Free; Premium available for $19.90/month

LanguageTool is a free browser extension that offers grammar checks for multiple languages, French included. And unlike Reverso, there’s no character limit.

It did catch most simple and complex errors but didn’t necessarily correct them for me.

Instead, it simply flagged the error, gave me a short explanation of why it was wrong and listed possible corrections. So it was up to me to do the thinking and decide how I wanted to fix my mistakes.

I will warn you that LanguageTool will try and push you into upgrading by telling you that there is “one more advanced issue” and not revealing it to you until you pay.

3. BonPatron : Best for Beginners

Price: Free; Pro available for ∼$16/year

This is the best choice  for beginners that need grammar explanations and an interface in English.

It allows you to check a smaller block of text in one go, and even though it missed the gender of adjectives, it caught the gender of articles, as well as subjunctive issues and other more complex grammar issues. 

The  grammar explanations in English were somewhat generalized but quite clear , giving general advice to guide you instead of straight out giving you the correct answer (e.g. you need a feminine article of some sort in front of a feminine noun).

At the bottom of the page, your  errors are linked to pages with much longer grammar descriptions (in English) of French grammar rules that your text violated.

4. Sapling : Best for Catching Common Errors

Price: Free; Pro available for $25/month; business plans available

Sapling’s AI-powered grammar checker was created by developers from UC-Berkeley, Stanford and Google. It can support French text as well as seven other languages.

Text errors are underlined in red, with an error count in the bottom-right corner so you can ensure you’ve checked every flagged mistake.

You can hover over the errors to see Sapling’s suggested correction. Clicking on the correction will insert it into the proper place in the text.

Sapling was designed for business users who can benefit from features like autocompletion and snippets.

For the casual user, the free version was noticeably successful at catching common grammar mistakes made by non-native French speakers.

5. Grammalecte : Best Overall Checker

Price: Free

Grammalecte is an open-source French grammar checker that’s downloaded as a Google Chrome extension.

As such, you can use it to check the French writing you do in an online word processor such as Google Docs, but there is also an input feature in the program’s interface where you can copy and paste your work.

Out of all the French grammar checkers, Grammalecte caught the most errors. Flagged errors were color-coded, explained thoroughly and paired with suggested fixes.

Grammalecte is also equipped with a dictionary, verb conjugator, grammar reference and even a text formatter that checks French punctuation.

I also liked that everything is done in-house , so information will not be sent to any external servers or sites.

6. SEOMagnifier : Best for Document Uploads

Although I experienced a little déjà vu with SEOMagnifier in terms of common missed errors with previous resources, it’s free to use and easy to navigate.

It also has a feature to upload entire documents in supported .doc, .docx and .txt extensions, which is handy for longer texts.

The tool found most of the errors in my text, even the subjunctive one, and gave me an explanation of the error  as well as  a list of possible corrections.

The website claims that its  algorithm is constantly improving as more people use the French grammar checker to edit their work. While that could explain the similarity it has with other checkers, it could also lead to more accuracy down the road.

7. WhiteSmoke : Best for Offline Checks

Price: Free; full version available from $59.95/year

From incomplete sentences to subject-verb agreement and capitalization issues, WhiteSmoke has the capacity to identify and correct a very wide range of errors.

It also explains why the mistakes are incorrect and offers suggestions for correction.

Additionally, WhiteSmoke has a feature that allows you to input English and get a flawless French translation , which is handy for learners who are still getting the hang of the French language.

WhiteSmoke is available as a web application  for online word processors  and as a downloadable program for offline word processors. 

8. HiNative : Best for Corrections by Natives

Price: Free; Premium available from $5.68/month

HiNative allows learners to ask language questions directly to native speakers on the app.

You can ask for quick vocabulary and grammar explanations, as well as brief cultural information.

This means that HiNative will not help you grammar check long texts. But if you want some clarification or a quick example of a grammar point, native French speakers can help you out.

Answers from native speakers can be rated. You can also search the app for previous questions, and templates help you compose your own queries.

Note that without premium tickets, your questions may not get as many views or responses. You can read our full review of HiNative here .

9. Scribens : Best for Checking Longer Texts

Price: Free; Premium available from ∼$11/year

This website is neither complex nor popular, so I was surprised by its thorough corrections, easy interface and clear explanations.

Overall, Scribens was very good about flagging gender problems and not erroneously flagging proper nouns (as many other checkers do). 

There were also quite a few more complex mistakes that the program caught, such as the use of the subjunctive. 

For the corrections, Scribens doesn’t only provide a drop-down box with the corrected word , but it also supplies you with a short grammar explanation, as well as a link to the associated grammar rule with additional examples.

You can use Scribens for free, but if you pay for Premium access you’ll get unlimited text and plugin options.

10. FrenchCorrector : Best Free Checker

FrenchCorrector is free and has a pretty simple interface that will catch most errors, whether they’re simple or complex.

Like LanguageTool above, FrenchCorrector did not necessarily correct anything and instead indicated where the error was, why there was an error and some suggestions for corrections. 

There was an option for autocorrect, but it just gave me a list of errors that were found and claimed that they were corrected.

In fairness, FrenchCorrector explicitly states that its technology does not replace a real-life professional proofreader. The program can pick up basic spelling and grammar errors , but more advanced ones may slip through. The transparency was quite refreshing.

11. Microsoft Word : Best for Convenience

Price: $159.99 (one-time purchase); Microsoft 365 subscription starting from $6.99/month

Did you know that if you change your language on Microsoft Word to French, you can have your writing checked instantly?

That’s right! Microsoft Word is able to pick up on some obvious errors, give brief explanations and list options for correction. There is also a thesaurus available to find synonyms. 

While this is a convenient tool, it’s probably not the best to rely on for complete grammar corrections, and it does come with quite a hefty fee.

Here’s why a French grammar checker can come in handy:

• You can impress native French speakers. A French grammar checker is a great way to make sure your grammar is absolutely perfect when sending something off to a native French speaker.
• They can supplement your language learning. Whether you’re learning with others in a traditional classroom or independently online, a French grammar checker will always be handy in your studies. They even work alongside media-based language programs that show you grammar constructions as used in the real world.
• There are benefits to your speaking as well. By seeing your grammar errors corrected in writing, you are less likely to make them while speaking, ensuring that even your oral communication with native speakers is great.
• You can express your ideas with more accuracy and eloquence.  A French grammar checker can help you ensure that you are saying exactly what you mean so your French will come across as smoother and more elegant.
• They can help advance your education or your career.  Grammar errors can lead to a bad mark on a paper or even an overlooked job application. Having a French grammar checker look over your work in advance could make all the difference in your outcomes.

With the tools above, you should be better able to tackle the correction of any French text that you might produce, whether it is for the pleasure of writing, improving your language skills or convincing traveling Francophones to rent out your room.

FluentU has a wide variety of great content, like interviews, documentary excerpts and web series, as you can see here:

FluentU brings native French videos with reach. With interactive captions, you can tap on any word to see an image, definition and useful examples.

For example, if you tap on the word "crois," you'll see this:

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All throughout, FluentU tracks the vocabulary that you’re learning and uses this information to give you a totally personalized experience. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned.

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The 6 best free French grammar checkers

by Anne-Lise Vassoille

Published on July 12, 2022 / Updated on January 5, 2024

Alongside online thesaurus and directives from the Académie française , grammar checkers are other useful tools to understand and write in French. Be it to type a quick email or draft a formal letter in French , they help you ensure your grammar and your spelling are correct. They have grown so much in popularity that you are now spoiled for choice, and may even find it difficult to pick one. To help you decide, we have tested six French grammar checkers available for free online.

For the sake of our test, we took a sentence from Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince): “J’ai des amis à découvrir et beaucoup de choses à connaître” (I have friends to discover and many things to learn). We then added five grammar and spelling mistakes to it, as follows: “J’ai des ami a découvrir est bocoup de choses à conaitre” , and used the wrong sentence on each of the grammar checkers in our list. We considered how many mistakes each was able to spot and correct, but also how user-friendly and complete they appeared, in order to rank the six contenders:

• LanguageTool, the best French grammar checker on our list
• Scribens, a great tool to check French grammar 
• Textgears, a context-less French grammar corrector 
• Bon Patron, a dense French grammar checker
• Reverso, a potentially misleading French spell-check tool
• Google Docs, a good word processor to check the spelling, but less for grammar

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1. languagetool, the best french grammar checker on our list.

If LanguageTool comes at the top of our list, it’s not just because it was able to identify four mistakes out of five. As you will see, it’s not the only one to achieve this result. In our opinion, the real bonus of LanguageTool is the type and the clarity of the extra information it provides.

For instance, on the first error, des ami, it was the sole grammar corrector to provide the only two possible correct versions in this syntax, depending on whether you are referring to male or female friends. Other correctors either merely pointed out the error or provided more possible versions, which, though they exist, don’t quite fit in this particular syntax.

2. Scribens, a great tool to check French grammar 

Right after LanguageTool, Scribens comes in as a close second. In our test, it was able to spot the exact same four errors. The suggested edits were also correct. But you may not get all the possible correct versions and the explanations may not be quite as clear, unless you decide to click on règle générale (general rule) to get a very detailed grammar overview.

3. Textgears, a context-less French grammar corrector

In third position, Textgears is not quite as efficient as LanguageTool and Scribens. While it still detects four mistakes, the possible corrections it suggests may not all be relevant to the particular syntax. Looking at the same error as previously, Textgears offers four suggestions to correct des ami : two with the article des (some) and two with the preposition de (of). However, in view of the syntax, the two suggestions with the preposition de are irrelevant. Something which Textgears doesn’t seem able to recognize…

4. Bon Patron, a dense French grammar checker

Further down the list, Bon Patron can identify when something is wrong and why it is wrong. But it may fall short of giving you the actual correct version in a clear and straightforward manner. Instead, it may tell you possible ways on how you can correct a word yourself. A bit more of a hassle, though this can also be a good opportunity to practice French grammar :

In other cases, you may be confused by the heap of alternative words you are flooded with to replace a badly spelled one. 

5. Reverso, a potentially misleading French spell-check tool

This ranking may look surprising, considering Reverso is the only French grammar corrector in our list to highlight the five errors in our test sentence. However, it fails to properly correct one of them, thus replacing one error by another. Indeed, the tool didn’t manage to figure out the grammar and syntax of the sentence correctly: In this sentence, it is not another form of the verbe être (to be) that is needed, but rather the word et (and).

6. Google Docs, a good word processor to check spelling, but less for grammar

Yes, technically, Google Docs is a free online word processor, and not a grammar and spell checker. However, it does include the feature in French, alongside other useful ones like predictive text. For obvious reasons, the grammar and spell checker on Google Docs is fairly limited. For instance, it may correctly suggest to add a missing French accent on à (to), but without explaining why the version without it, a (has), is incorrect:

Also, it is the only software in our list that was able to spot only three mistakes out of five. It failed to recognize that des ami was incorrect, even though the error could be deemed fairly easy to spot.

Get your French grammar and spelling checked for free online

Overall, all the French grammar checkers in our list will be a great help in your writing efforts in French. However, from our simple test, it appears that LanguageTools and Scribens are the best choices. They are able to correct your main mistakes, but also to understand the nature of your mistakes, which is a great additional benefit in your learning. The fact that they are available for free online is just the icing on your French gâteau …

Anne-Lise Vassoille

Anne-Lise is a translator and copywriter working for various industries... Settled down in London, she cannot get enough of the exceptional cultural life in the English capital city, starting with theater, be it to see a new West End show or to roll up her sleeves with her amateur drama group. She is also interested in photography, as her Instagram profile shows. She indulges her passion for languages in a translation blog she writes with other linguist friends. Go to her Linkedin page to know more about her background and her professional experience.

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How to Quickly Improve Your Writing Skills with French Grammar Checkers

There are lots of tools you can use to check your French for grammar, spelling and conjugation mistakes.

But how well do they perform?

That’s what I wanted to find out so I selected 5 sentences a French learner submitted online and corrected them with a few French grammar checkers.

In this article, you’ll discover how reliable grammar checkers are and learn about a few alternatives.

French grammar checkers can make your text worse

Most French grammar checkers are free but it doesn’t mean you should use them.

In fact, my little experiment shows that they often make your text worse.

Here are the sentences I submitted. As you can see, they contain quite a few spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.

I chose these sentences because they were submitted by a French learner on the French Help subreddit and contains mistakes you’re likely to make as a French learner.

Formidable! Qu’est que tu vas faire la semaine prochaine?

Je vais faire du magasinage pour les cadeaux.

Pourquoi êtes-vous achetez les cadeaux?

Est-ce l’anniversaire d’amie?

Non, ce n’est pas du l’anniversaire d’amie. J’acheté les cadeaux pour ma famille pour le Noël.

Now let’s see how well French grammar checkers performed!

• Reverso French

Do you know that feeling when you buy a product with high hopes only to be disappointed as soon as you start using it?

That’s how I felt after using Reverso French. The tool being based on Cordial, a rather well-known French grammar checker, I expected it to catch most mistakes and offer helpful suggestions.

Unfortunately, the tool missed several punctuation mistakes and turned three grammar mistakes into different grammar mistakes.

As a result, the corrected text contains new grammar mistakes and is in no way better than the text submitted.

BonPatron has several advantages compared to other grammar checkers. You can indicate that the person speaking is a woman which makes a huge difference in French, and it offers explanations in English as well as a detailed list of possible errors.

The tool corrected 4 punctuation mistakes, one grammar mistake and gave two useful suggestions to fix other mistakes.

Unfortunately, it also added a mistake that didn’t exist before and turned a mistake into another.

BonPatron performed better than Reverso French but we’re still far from perfection.

LanguageTool

LanguageTool is a French grammar checker with explanations in French. It found fewer mistakes than Reverso and BonPatron but at least didn’t add any.

It corrected 4 punctuation mistakes and made a good suggestion. Unfortunately, the explanations are in French which makes understanding your mistakes tricky if you’re a beginner.

Scribens corrected 4 punctuation mistakes, a conjugation mistake and found an error without offering any fix.

I can’t recommend Scrivens considering the tool offers no explanations in English and performed worse than others.

Antidote is the software I use to proofread my French. I love it because it contains a dictionary, a thesaurus, and other useful tools.

I was pretty excited to review it (I reviewed Antidote 8) since it has helped me a lot as a native French speaker.

Unfortunately, it didn’t particularly shine during this test since it successfully corrected all punctuation mistakes, fixed one conjugation mistake but turned two mistakes into other mistakes.

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word offers a French grammar checker I didn’t have the chance to review since I don’t own Microsoft Word.

However, most reviews seem to indicate it performs rather poorly and is better used as a simple spellchecker.

You probably use Google everyday but did you know it’s also a very useful tool to proofread your French?

A great way to use Google to correct your French is to type your (short) sentence in the search engine and see if major websites use it.

Here you can see that no website seems to use the sentence “Pourquoi êtes-vous achetez les cadeaux”. That’s a sign that the sentence is incorrect or at least that French people wouldn’t use it.

Human grammar checkers

Software are pretty good as spellcheckers but they perform rather poorly as grammar checkers which is why I recommend you to find someone who can correct your French instead.

Here are several websites you can use for that

Lang-8 is a social network for French learners. You can post your text in French and ask native speakers to offer you feedback and correct your mistakes.

However, you’re also expected to correct mistakes people make in your native language. The more you correct, the more corrections you get.

Reddit French Help

The goal of this subreddit is to help you improve your French and learn from your mistakes. Members won’t necessarily correct everything for you but will rather show you your mistakes so you learn how to correct them.

“This is a subreddit for all those questions pertaining to enhancing one’s comprehension of the French language. Using peer review, we seek to develop a better understanding of the French language and its nuances. This Subreddit is designed to be a teaching, not telling, platform. We try to focus on guidance and not just giving an answer with no explanation.”

• Wordreference

Wordreference is my favorite English-French dictionary but also offers a forum where you can ask questions about French words and get short sentences corrected.

You can also use it to ask questions about French grammar .

Yozzi is a website you can use to post longer texts. The idea is to post a text in French and get useful suggestions from other members.

French verb conjugators

It’s safe to assume you’ll want to look up the conjugation of a French verb at least once. In fact, I regularly do so even though I’m a native speaker!

These are the three best French verb conjugators in my experience:

• Conjugation FR

Your conversation partner

Having a conversation partner is essential if you want to speak French fluently one day and it’s also a good way to get your texts corrected.

Just make sure you don’t overwhelm your conversation partner with requests to correct your text, correcting can quickly become boring.

Click here to discover tools you can use to find a conversation partner .

Over to you

What has your experience been with French grammar checkers? Have they helped you or do you feel that they made things worse?

• What are the best French learning apps in 2024?
• The 16 best websites and apps for French conversation practice
• Duolingo French review: The good, the bad and the ugly

Benjamin Houy

Benjamin Houy is a native French speaker and tea drinker with a BA degree in Applied Foreign Languages and a passion for languages. After teaching French and English in South Korea for 7 months as part of a French government program, he created French Together™ to help English speakers learn conversational French.

Correcteur orthographe / Correction grammaire

French grammar checker.

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French grammar and spelling checker

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Free text checker in French. A fantastic online detection of grammar and spelling errors!. Check punctuation. Search and correction of errors in different languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Greek. Determination of readability and other basic text metrics.

French – Spellchecking

By using our website, you can check the text for free to find spelling mistakes and typos. Spell checking algorithms take the most common rules of the language into account, as well as differences in spelling in different dialects. By using the service, you can improve your texts here and now!

Check punctuation

To find punctuation errors, our system uses our own developments in the field of artificial intelligence. This allows you to find the vast majority of punctuation errors: missing commas, quotation marks or dashes. For each language, we use different approaches to text analysis to get the best results.

Grammar check

TextGears algorithms check text and detect over 200 types of grammatical errors: correct use of parts of speech, and the construction of sentences. After checking, the service will offer options for correcting errors, and also display statistics on the most common mistakes. This will help to improve your grammar knowledge.

Checking the text style

TextGears not only detects grammar and spelling errors, but also analyzes the style of speech, checks the appropriateness of using individual words in a general context. Smart algorithms will help you save your essay or CV from inappropriate words, as well as choose synonyms, and make your text more presentable.

French Grammar Checker | Best Grammar Checker For French

French Grammar Checker

Enter your text:

Upload a document: (Supported Format: .doc, .docx, .txt)

Paste your own text here and click the 'Check Text' button. Click the colored phrases for details on potential errors. or use this text too see an few of of the problems that LanguageTool can detecd. What do you thinks of grammar checkers? Please not that they are not perfect. Style issues get a blue marker: It's 5 P.M. in the afternoon. LanguageTool was released on Thursday, 21 April 2018.

About French Grammar Checker

We used to have separate classes of grammar in the school. A great emphasis was given to the grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes.

It's true that like many others, we have forgotten those rules and the importance of grammar.

Welcome to the  French grammar checker  device which is utilized to recognize and settle spelling and sentence structure mistakes for your

• exposition,
• assignments, and

It's gladly generated by reverse speller to check language missteps and spelling mistakes in your official archives document, papers or assignments.

We get confused that Is finishing your sentences with a preposition is correct or wrong? Are there firm principles for when to utilize who, that or which? Where do the comma and punctuation go? This is very irritating and embarrassing for a beginner or an expert level writer.

French is a difficult language. You speak in a different tone and you write in different form. This is confusing!

Writing in French is quite troublesome as the chances of making grammar error are high. One needs to be highly expert to write in French. to help the writers, a number of grammar checker for french are present that remove the mistakes and replace them with corrected word .

To have your grammar checked in the document, you can use these grammar checkers easily.

Why Grammar Checker tools and who needs?

Educators and teachers expect your paper to be free of grammar error. In any case, let be honest, even fluent French speakers are inclined to senseless slip-ups. That is the reason proofreading is completely basic in guaranteeing your work is great.

Indeed, even master scholars now and then get stumbled up while using French texts. On the off chance that you work with an editorial manager, little blips aren't that vital. You should choose one of the French grammar checkers and make your paper error-free.

The perils of Bad Grammar

Indeed, even in today’s French texts , 120-character contemplations, and random blogging, sentence structure spelling is still important. We perceive that the thoughts communicated are more vital, however, these thoughts may not be properly achieved to anyone if they're conveyed messily.

Subsequently, poor language structure can influence your vocation. Numerous examinations have demonstrated that poor correspondence at work causes terrible impressions, mistakes, postponements, and lost customers or arrangements.

Off the clock, correspondence issues prompt doubt and false impressions. What's more, in case you're a student, French grammar mistakes result in low checks. Whatever the case, we can enable you to keep those mistakes far away.

a Utilize our online punctuation and grammar checker, and in a moment, you'll be sure that you're putting out quality material for your perusers.

How does online text correction for french works?

Our punctuation checker initially investigates the whole article/substance or reports which are foreign made and features all sentence structure blunders and spelling botches with vivid content.

You can settle all the blunder by clicking one by one on the corrected words .

It will indicate a distinctive alternative, for example, " aller " and " partir " when you will tap on the featured content.

 In the event that your substance is completely free from language mistakes then it will say "no blunder found". Also, this will give you surety that your article/content is free from sentence structure and spelling mistakes .

French grammar check  is a free apparatus for

• instructors and
• substance essayist

it can be utilized to recognize syntax blunders and missteps in French grammar.

French Grammar Checker FAQ

What is the best grammar checker for french.

There are many French grammar checkers available online but most of them just don’t work. Even if they do, they don’t work the way you expect them to. Besides, these French Grammar checkers are paid. We recommend using our free French Grammar Checker tool instead. It is a sophist aced tool that really knows how to handle French language.

Why use French Grammar Checker tool?

No matter how good you are at writing French, there is always a chance of making mistakes. If you have written a huge report or essay then it’d take a lot of time to check the whole thing for grammatical mistakes. That’s where French Grammar Checker comes in. You put your content in the tool and within seconds, it’d show you your grammatical errors.   

How to check French Grammar?

Checking French Grammar is now easier than ever. Just copy/paste or upload your document in the tool and hit enter. French Grammar checker would go through your content and look for grammar and sentence structure mistakes. It’d highlight the mistakes and show them to you so you can get rid of them.

How to learn French Grammar?

You can easily learn and improve your French grammar using our tool. It’d help you find out your mistakes and then you can work on improving those mistakes.

How to write in French and Check for Grammar in a word document?

This is quite easy. First obviously you need to know how to write French. You can always use language converters to convert content written in English to French language. Once you have written the content, got to the French Grammar checker tool and click on the button upload word document and then select the document and hit enter. The software would start analyzing the document.      

How to check French grammar using SEO magnifier?

• To utilize seo magnifier   French grammar checker just duplicate your content that you need to check and paste it into the content region and click on the " French Grammar Check " button. Just follow the snapshot guide to understand it more clearly.

Step 1: Copy and paste the French text for grammar correction.

Step 2:  Or Select the French text or document file using the " select file " button.

Step 3: Select the " French language " from the below box.

Step 4: Hit the " French Grammar Check " button for French correction.

This device will consequently feature all spelling blunders and language structure mistakes and accentuation.  

Our Grammar checking apparatus feature spelling blunder with red and syntax with yellow and punctuation with green shading.

Tap on featured content to see the clarification for such blunders. You can disregard the amendment for different words by choosing the choice "ignore option for this word".

After making the changes, go through it one again and check the French grammar thoroughly.

Our free french grammar check is super-quick and simple to utilize instrument for French texts and spelling mistakes . It's the best decision.

You can utilize this device without introducing any program or information exchange. You have the alternative to settle punctuation mix-ups and blunders inside a section, short exposition, formal letters, blog entries and web content.

The Key Feature of Best French Grammar Corrector

Utilizing our online proofreader benefits you in a few ways. In the first place, no product establishment is required. Your data is sheltered and secure (content is never stored on our servers), and you get your outcomes very quickly. Simply type the words you need to register with the content field and snap one of the two catches underneath to begin. Bright underlined prompts will call attention to spelling mistakes, sentence structure proposals, or style recommendations.

Here are the few advantages:

1. Assemble Credibility

Once in a while, your words are all you have.

Whether you are a professional writer or compose numerous papers for school, perfect language structure and spelling is fundamental.

we learn constantly and It's a long-lasting procedure.

Your foremost concern while writing should be, that your content message is delivered in an understandable manner.

Your peruser may not have any desire to keep reading your paper if mistakes are available. French checker is the best way to quickly remove all the blunders.

2. Figure out How to Spell New Words

When you begin editing your writings, you'll figure out how to spell new words. New vocabulary empowers you to express your contemplations better and investigate alternate points of view.

A bigger vocabulary additionally builds your composition certainty and diminishes basic slip-ups.

3. Pick up Authority

Keep in mind that individuals are attracted to champs and achievement.

Great spelling and punctuation will enable individuals to concentrate more on your thoughts and stories. By using French grammar corrector , you will be able to correct the French texts .

4. Spare Time

In the event that you need to compose extensive business reports, poring through each work you deliver can be tedious and troubling. You need to edit everything, except you might not have sufficient energy to do as such.

Our online checker can spare you altering time: with only a couple of snaps, you can rectify all missteps that slipped into your content.

Sparing time implies sparing cash!

Fixating on one paper for quite a long time likely isn't the most beneficial utilization of your opportunity.

5. Adjust Mistakes

When you investigate your writings, you won't need to fear blame by your educator, supervisor, or partners. Showing your dominance of spelling has a few advantages. Likewise, your gathering of people may admire you for having solid spelling capacities.

Knowing how to spell is basic for any profession. You wouldn't have any desire to publicize tasty deserts at an eatery any more than you'd need to recommend the wrong pharmaceutical to a patient. You won't hurt anybody in the main situation, but rather regardless you'd hazard losing deals and picking up terrible notoriety.

Utilizing an apparatus to forestall such missteps will give you the lift in composing certainty that you have to win occupations and progress in your vocation. So begin now and right away check for any punctuation botches, get vocabulary proposals, and check your content for copyright infringement. In any case, don't simply indiscriminately put stock in innovation. Continuously ensure you give your writings the last edit before you distribute or send them out.

What are the disadvantages of the French grammar checker?

In spite of, the fact that language structure checkers can help individuals who are not extremely sure about developing syntactically perfect sentences, there are various issues which have been raised about their utilization.

False positive issue

  Grammar checkers every now and again hail superbly great punctuation as terrible (i.e. the "false positive" issue).

At times, French grammar checkers don't distinguish any mistakes with a record.

Simply depending on the device

Many individuals who utilize French sentence checker absolutely depend on it, and in light of that, they are not expanding or building up their French abilities. They simply present their paper on the device and submit it to their teacher.

Not precise: sometimes they are not exact by adjusting your paper. A few devices will just make your paper most noticeably bad.

French grammar fixer  is exceptionally prescribed for

• web content journalists,
• proficient authors and
• for each individual who needs to enhance the syntax.

Utilize this keen individual supervisor apparatus to settle your sentence structure blunders unhesitatingly and enhance your French composition aptitudes at the same time. It will correct the French grammar, French texts, spelling mistakes and punctuation effectively.

I would prescribe French grammar corrector  for somebody who needs to enhance their writing in each unique situation. This administration can go anyplace with the facility of internet. Any administration that can give experienced journalists approaches to enhance the writing skills and still instruct another French speaker the basic is worth its cost. If you would like to improve for other languages then you can check the online grammar checker which supports Spanish, German, Russian, English and many more about 26 languages.

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Spoken French Grammar: What You Say vs. What You Write

• December 15, 2023

To rapidly enhance your French speaking and comprehension skills, prioritize learning spoken French over formal grammar rules.

You can ignore some technical grammar learned in school, as it is seldom used in spoken French.

Let’s focus on the differences between spoken and written grammar to speed up your path to fluency.

C’est parti!

Index: 1. La journée de Laure (short story in correct French with English translation) 2. La journée de Laure 2 (same story, in informal spoken French in the first person) 3. Breaking down the differences between these versions 4. Quiz!

1) La journée de Laure (short story in correct French)

Chaque matin, Laure se réveille, prend une douche, puis s’attable pour un café avec quelques tartines de confiture. Every morning, Laure wakes up, takes a shower, then sits down for a coffee with some jam on toast.

Elle sort de son appartement en se dépêchant, pour ne pas rater le bus qui l’emmène au travail. She leaves her apartment in a hurry to avoid missing the bus that takes her to work.

Arrivée au bureau, elle s’installe devant son ordinateur. Upon arriving at the office, she settles in front of her computer.

Les heures s’écoulent entre projets, réunions et appels téléphoniques. The hours pass by with projects, meetings, and phone calls.

Elle déjeune avec ses collègues, qu’elle trouve très amusants. She has lunch with her colleagues, whom she finds very amusing.

Cependant, l’après-midi est souvent plus chargée. However, the afternoon is often busier.

Réunions, rapports à finaliser, Laure ne doit pas se déconcentrer. Meetings, reports to finalize, Laure must not get distracted.

Elle termine généralement sa journée vers dix-huit heures. She usually ends her day around six o’clock.

Sur le chemin du retour, elle fait quelques courses. On her way back, she does some shopping.

Le soir, elle va parfois rejoindre des amis pour prendre un verre. In the evening, she sometimes meets up with friends for a drink.

Mais aujourd’hui, elle est exténuée. But today, she is exhausted.

Alors après avoir préparé son repas, elle dîne en regardant une série. So after preparing her meal, she has dinner while watching a TV show.

Puis elle va se coucher avec un bon livre, et après quelques pages, s’endort. Then she goes to bed with a good book and falls asleep after a few pages.

2) La journée de Laure 2 (short story in informal spoken French, in the first person)

Tous les matins, j’me réveille, j’prends une douche, et puis j’bois un café vite fait avec des tartines. Every morning, I wake up, take a shower, and then quickly have a coffee with a couple of slices of bread.

J’me grouille de sortir de l’appart’, pour pas rater l’bus qui m’emmène au taf. I hurry out of the apartment so I don’t miss the bus that takes me to work.

Une fois au bureau, j’m’installe devant mon ordi. Once at the office, I settle in front of my computer.

Le temps passe entre projets, coups de fil et réunions. Time passes with projects, phone calls, and meetings.

J’déjeune avec mes collègues, qui sont vachement marrants. I have lunch with my colleagues, who are really funny.

Par contre, l’aprem, c’est toujours le rush. However, the afternoon is always a rush.

Réunions, rapports à boucler, faut pas que j’me déconcentre. Meetings, reports to finish, I must not get distracted.

En général j’finis vers six heures. Usually, I finish around six o’clock.

En rentrant, j’fais un saut au super pour acheter deux-trois trucs. When I get back, I pop into the supermarket to buy some stuff.

Le soir, j’vais parfois rejoindre des potes pour l’apéro. In the evening, sometimes I meet up with friends for drinks.

Mais aujourd’hui j’suis crevée. But today, I’m exhausted.

Alors après m’être fait à bouffer, j’mange en matant une série. So after making myself some food, I eat while watching a series.

Après j’vais m’pieuter avec un bon bouquin. Then I go to bed with a good book.

Et j’m’endors en deux-deux. And I fall asleep in no time.

3) Breaking down the differences between these versions

 > > Correct French: Chaque matin, Laure se réveille, prend une douche, puis s’attable pour un café avec quelques tartines de confiture. = Every morning, Laure wakes up, takes a shower, then sits down for a coffee with some jam on toast.

• Everyday spoken French: Tous les matins, j’me réveille, j’prends une douche, et puis j’bois un café vite fait avec des tartines. = Every morning, I wake up, take a shower, and then quickly have a coffee with a couple of slices of bread.
• Grammar: – J’me réveille, j’prends une douche. – I’m repeating the subject in informal French. In correct French, we could write “Je me réveille et prends une douche.” without repeating the subject, but when speaking, it sounds too formal. – J’prends. – I cut the “e” in “ Je ”! That’s spoken French pronunciation: we always cut down the “e”s that slow us down. It would be incorrect to write it that way in formal situations. I’m writing it here only to help you hear the difference.

Click here to learn more: Essentials of Spoken French – Cutting the “e”

2. Vocabulary: – S’attabler (formal verb) = to sit at a table for a meal. – Vite fait = quickly . It’s a common expression; it’s not rude or slang, but it’s still too informal for correct written French. Vite ef (verlan) = vite fait. En deux temps, trois mouvements = vite fait = très rapidement = very quickly. – Chaque matin = each morning , which I used in the correct French Tous les matins = every morning , which I used in informal French.

The last one is here to tell you how subjective it all is. You could use “Chaque matin” and “Tous les marins” in the correct and everyday spoken French, which means basically the same thing.

BUT – I still feel that “Chaque matin” is more formal than “ tous les matins .” That kind of thing will depend on each French speaker and their background and personality. So, it’s here to tell you: don’t worry too much about all this. You’ll always sound too informal for some people and too formal for others, and that’s OK! The point is to help you practice another kind of language, the everyday spoken French you might have skipped in school, but you need to understand real conversations or your favorite French TV shows.

> >  Correct French: Elle sort de son appartement en se dépêchant, pour ne pas rater le bus qui l’emmène au travail. = She leaves her apartment in a hurry, so as not to miss the bus that takes her to work.

• Everyday spoken French: J’me grouille de sortir de l’appart’, pour pas rater l’bus qui m’emmène au taf. = I hurry out of the apartment, so I don’t miss the bus that takes me to work.
• Grammar: – J’me grouille – we cut the “e”. – Pour pas rater l’bus – we cut the “e” in “le bus”, and we cut the “ne” in “ne pas”: “pour ne pas rater le bus” in correct French becomes “pour pas rater l’bus” in spoken French so that we can speak faster, again!

Click here to learn more: Memorize This Fast Spoken French Rule: Drop the “ne”

2. Vocabulary: – Je me grouille = j’me grouille (informal) = Je me dépêche = I hurry up. – Un appart (informal shorthand) = un appartement = a flat, an apartment. – Le taf (informal slang) = le travail = work .    Le TAF = T ravail A F aire.

> > Correct French: Arrivée au bureau, elle s’installe devant son ordinateur. = Upon arriving at the office, she settles in front of her computer.

• Everyday spoken French: Quand j’arrive au bureau, j’m’installe devant mon ordi. = Once at the office, I settle in front of my computer.
• Grammar: – Quand j’arrive au bureau (significantly less formal) = Une fois au bureau (less formal) = Une fois arrivée au bureau (more formal) = Arrivée au bureau (formal). = Once at the office. But again, that’s subtle and subjective.

2. Vocabulary: – Un ordi (informal shorthand) = un ordinateur = a computer.

> > Correct French: Les heures s’écoulent entre projets, réunions et appels téléphoniques. Elle déjeune avec ses collègues, qu’elle trouve très amusants . = The hours pass by with projects, meetings, and phone calls. She has lunch with her colleagues, whom she finds very amusing.

• Everyday spoken French: Le temps passe entre projets, coups de fil et réunions. J’déjeune avec mes collègues, qui sont vachement marrants. = Time passes with projects, phone calls, and meetings. I have lunch with my colleagues, who are really funny.
• Grammar: J’déjeune = Je déjeune = I have lunch. We cut the “e” in “je”.

2. Vocabulary: – Les heures s’écoulent (too poetic) = Le temps passe (less formal). – Un coup de fil (slight slang) = un appel téléphonique (slightly too formal) = a phone call. – Vachement marrant (informal) = Très amusant (formal) = très drôle = very funny.

> > Correct French: Cependant , l’après-midi est souvent plus chargée. Réunions, rapports à finaliser, Laure ne doit pas se déconcentrer. = However, the afternoon is often busier. Meetings, reports to finalize, Laure must not get distracted.

• Everyday spoken French: Par contre, l’aprem, c’est toujours le rush. Réunions, rapports à boucler, faut pas que j’me déconcentre . = However, the afternoon is always a rush. Meetings, reports to finish, I must not get distracted.
• Grammar: – Je dois / Elle doit or Il faut. = I need to / She needs to, she has to. – Je dois manger. = Il faut que je mange. = I have to eat. – Elle ne doit pas se déconcentrer. = Il ne faut pas qu’elle se déconcentre. = She mustn’t get distracted. – Faut pas qu’elle se déconcentre. – In everyday spoken French, we often cut the “il” and the “ne”. – Faut pas faire ça. = Il ne faut pas faire ça. = We shouldn’t do that, this is forbidden.

Le truc en plus: When we use the expression “Il faut que”, we have to use the subjonctive. The subjunctive verbal mode in French expresses doubt, uncertainty, desire, or hypothetical situations. It often appears in subordinate clauses, triggered by specific verbs or conjunctions.

Click here to learn more: French Grammar: French Subjunctive Made Easy

2. Vocabulary: – Par contre (less formal) = Cependant (informal) = However.

Click here to learn more: Why French People Never Say “Cependant” (And Other Formal Words)

• L’aprem (informal shorthand) = l’après-midi = the afternoon. – Le rush (informal slang) = chargé (formal) = busy. We often use some English words in everyday spoken French. – Boucler (informal) = finaliser, terminer (more formal) = to finish.

> > Correct French: Elle termine généralement sa journée vers dix-huit heures. Sur le chemin du retour, elle fait quelques courses. = She usually ends her day around six o’clock. On her way back, she does some shopping.

• Everyday spoken French: En général j’finis vers six heures. En rentrant, j’fais un saut au super pour acheter deux-trois trucs. = Usually, I finish around six o’clock. When I get back, I pop into the supermarket to buy some stuff.
• Grammar: – J’finis = Je finis. = I finish. We cut the “e” in the “je” when we speak. – J’fais = Je fais. = I do.

2. Vocabulary: Je finis = Je temine = I finish . Here, we are at the same level of formality, so the verb choice is subjective. – Sur le chemin du retour (too poetic) = En rentrant (much more common) = On the way back. – Deux-trois (informal) = quelques (slightly formal) = a couple of / a few.

> > Correct French: Le soir, elle va parfois rejoindre des amis pour prendre un verre . Mais aujourd’hui, elle est exténuée . = In the evening, she sometimes meets up with friends for a drink. But today, she is exhausted.

• Everyday spoken French: Le soir, j’vais parfois rejoindre des potes pour l’apéro. Mais aujourd’hui j’suis crevée. = In the evening, sometimes I meet up with friends for drinks. But today, I’m exhausted.
• Grammar: – J’vais = Je vais. = I go. – J’suis = Je suis. = I am. We cut the “e” in both examples. Chuis = J’suis = Je suis.

2. Vocabulary: – Les potes (slang) = les amis = friends. – L’apéro = l’apéritif = prendre un verre = having a drink, before dinner, with people. – Crevée (slang) = fatiguée = tired = exténuée (formal) = exhausted.

> > Correct French: Alors après avoir préparé son repas, elle dîne en regardant une série. = So after preparing her meal, she has dinner while watching a TV show.

• Everyday spoken French: Alors après m’être fait à bouffer, j’mange en matant une série. = So after making myself some food, I eat while watching a series.
• Grammar: J’mange = Je mange . = I eat. – We cut the “e”.

2. Vocabulary: Faire à bouffer = préparer un repas = to cook, to prepare a meal. ***Attention! *** “ Faire à bouffer ” is a kind of disrespect towards the food, when you’re cooking something convenient but not too tasty so that you wouldn’t use it in a restaurant, for instance. – Manger = Dîner (slightly too formal, but both common and correct) = to eat. – Mater (slang, also used for voyeurism) = Regarder = to look, to watch.

> > Correct French: Puis elle va se coucher avec un bon livre, et après quelques pages, s’endort. = Then she goes to bed with a good book, and after a few pages, falls asleep.

• Everyday spoken French: Après j’vais m’pieuter avec un bon bouquin. Et j’m’endors en deux-deux. = Then I go to bed with a good book. And I fall asleep in no time.
• Grammar: – J’vais m’pieuter = Je vais me pieuter = Je vais me coucher. = I go to sleep. We cut the “e” in “je” and in the reflexive pronoun “me”. – J’m’endors = Je m’endors. = I fall asleep. – We cut the “e” in “je”, but the “e” in “me” is cut even in formal French because the verb starts with a vowel. Also, we repeat the subject pronoun “elle” when speaking, which is not the case in formal writing.

2. Vocabulary: – Aller se pieuter (slang) = Aller se coucher = to go to sleep. – En deux-deux = rapidement = quickly . – Un bouquin (slang) = un livre = a book . – Puis (too formal) = then . – En deux-deux (cute informal expression) = quickly, in two seconds.

1. Laure ne doit pas se déconcentrer. = Faut pas que j’me déconcentre.

That’s to remind you that in French, to say “I need to” or “She needs to, she has to”, we can say either Je dois / Elle doit or Il faut .

–    Je dois manger. = Il faut que je mange. = I have to eat. –    Elle ne doit pas se déconcentrer. = Il ne faut pas qu’elle se déconcentre. = She mustn’t get distracted. –    Faut pas qu’elle se déconcentre. – In everyday spoken French, we often cut the “il” and the “ne”. –    Faut pas faire ça. = Il ne faut pas faire ça. = We shouldn’t do that, this is forbidden.

This one is a final reminder that in everyday spoken French: 1. We often repeat the subject: je vais m’pieuter, and je m’endors en deux-deux. 2. We often simplify: “après quelques pages” (after a few pages) gets cut. 3. We use different words: “un bouquin” instead of “un livre (a book).

And we did it! We’ve covered a lot of differences in French grammar between the correct language you learned in school and the everyday spoken language we use.

4) Final Quiz

How would you say and pronounce these sentences in everyday spoken French, in the first person?

• Laure doit changer d’appartement. = Laure needs to move from her apartment.
• Elle a eu une après-midi très amusante. = She had a really funny afternoon.
• Elle va prendre un verre avec des amis. = She’s going to have a drink with some friends.

So what do you think? Remember to switch “Laure” with “Je” in the first person. Ready for the answers? Great! Yes, we could say instead:

• J’dois changer d’appart. or Faut que j’change d’appart. = I need to move from my apartment. Faut qu’je change d’appart. Sometimes, we cut “e” more often in one sentence. But don’t worry, you don’t have to do it because all French people don’t speak like that all the time.
• J’ai eu une aprem vachement marrante. = I had a really funny afternoon.
• J’vais prendre l’apéro avec des potes. = I’m going to have a drink with some friends.

These are all suggestions. Of course, there are many ways to do the same thing, especially in informal French! Can you think of other possible answers? Write them down in the comment section!

Then, you can keep exploring Understanding Spoken French with your next free video lesson.

Or you can keep learning about understanding fast-spoken French with me!

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• Understanding Spoken French (Even When It’s Fast)
• Spoken French vs School French: Understanding This BIG Difference Will Help Your Fluency
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Guest Essay

Biden Is Breaking Campaign Rule No. 1. And It Just Might Work.

By Felicia Wong

Ms. Wong is the president and chief executive of Roosevelt Forward, a progressive advocacy organization.

Should we have trillionaires? Should we even have billionaires? According to at least one recent analysis , the economy is on track to mint its first trillionaire — that is 1,000 billion — within a decade. Such staggering accumulations of wealth are made possible in large part by the fact that America’s federal tax burden is so comparatively light. After a long period of seeming to venerate the 1 percent, or the 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent, American sentiment is swinging hard against this imbalance.

Now President Biden, behind in many polls and with an economy that is objectively strong but politically unpopular, is hoping to boost his re-election bid with a policy idea that would once have been almost unthinkable: For this portion of the population, at least, he is vowing — almost gleefully — to raise taxes.

Even for a popular president, this would seem like a huge risk. For a Democrat with low job approval ratings and precarious poll numbers on his handling of the economy, it’s a shocking rebuke to conventional wisdom — and practically an invitation to critics to call him a tax-and-spend liberal. But on the politics as well as the policy, Mr. Biden is making the right call. Economic ideas that were once dead on arrival are now gaining traction on both the left and the right. The moment has arrived for changes in the tax code — and maybe beyond.

For at least the past half-century, raising taxes has been the third rail of American politics. Ronald Reagan rode the wave of the late-1970s tax revolt into the Oval Office. I was a kid in California then, and I remember how fierce the anti-tax sentiment was. Howard Jarvis and his followers, mostly older white property owners, pushed for the ballot initiative known as Proposition 13 because they were, in their words, mad as hell that their rising taxes would help educate immigrant families. The anti-taxers won by a nearly two-to-one ratio.

Time magazine put Mr. Jarvis on its cover and called Prop. 13 the “most radical slash in property taxes since Depression days.” The movement devastated schools and social services. But it was political gold and spread nationwide.

During his first year as president, Mr. Reagan cut the highest personal income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. He cut taxes for low-income Americans, too, decreased the maximum capital gains rate from 28 percent to 20 percent and cut corporate taxes. These tax cuts caused such deficits that Mr. Reagan had to reverse some of them during the rest of his time in office, but that is not how history remembers his presidency. By the end of his second term, the top individual rate was only 33 percent.

Anti-tax activists made cutting taxes an explicit political litmus test . In 1988, George H.W. Bush famously pledged, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” Twenty-five years later, Barack Obama modestly raised taxes on the highest-earning Americans, but he kept quiet about it, instead touting middle-class tax cuts that, he said, left middle-income families with a lower tax rate than at “almost any other period in the last 60 years.”

Fast-forward to Mr. Biden, who is making $5 trillion in tax increases central to his re-election campaign. During his State of the Union speech this month, he even made fun of Republicans for favoring cuts. Getting the rich to pay their share is right up there with getting greedy companies to stop charging you junk fees and, he said, shrinking your Snickers bars .

What explains the pivot? The president is following the money. Over the past decade and even more since the pandemic, wealth concentration has shot up astonishingly. Elon Musk was worth about $25 billion in 2020 and at the end of 2023 was worth almost 10 times that. In 1990 there were nearly 70 American billionaires . Today there are nearly 700. To what earthly end are we encouraging trillionaires?

The trend toward extreme inequality has fueled tremendous populist outrage, like the tax revolt in reverse. It may have been the Bernie Sanders left that started the “billionaires are a policy failure” meme, but poll after poll shows that two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans want higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

It isn’t all outrage, though. A lot of it is common sense. As one of the wealthy nations with the lowest tax rates, the United States has put off investing in our families and children. This deferred maintenance is costly: Our child care, health care, family leave and higher education systems are, as a result, among the most expensive and least accessible in the world. Making these arenas a priority is affordable and effective, and they have waited far too long.

Raising high-end taxes can be good for business, too. In the 1960s, George Romney, Mitt’s father, regularly turned down his bonuses from his auto executive job, perhaps in part because his marginal tax rate would have been about 90 percent. It made more sense for companies then to invest excess profits back into their businesses rather than in C.E.O. pay packages. Today, C.E.O. pay at the largest companies has skyrocketed while businesses have invested less in research , physical plant and other capital assets.

“Tax and spend” wasn’t always an epithet. Reagan Republicans and 1970s-era right-wing populists weaponized the label every chance they got. “You could be talking about the Mets versus the Dodgers,” the former U.S. Representative Steve Israel of New York recalled , “and good Republican operatives would be able to weave in tax-and-spend.”

But the term, as Mr. Biden and his team clearly know, no longer stings in quite the same way, especially not if taxes are linked to a vision that would make Americans’ lives less anxiety-ridden and more stable. Donald Trump’s hallmark legislative achievement, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut more than $1 trillion in taxes — mostly for the wealthy and corporations — has major provisions that are set to expire next year. A partisan battle will ensue. Mr. Biden’s 2024 push on taxes is a shot across that bow. Can we imagine an even bigger shift on taxation than the one Mr. Biden is making?

Could we get past the sense that taxes are what the government takes and toward an idea of taxes as a means of patriotism, a kitty we all pay into to build something for community use: a school, a library, a road, a college, a hospital? What if taxation could bring us all together? It’s not that wild an idea. As the political scientist Vanessa Williamson notes, both liberal and conservative Americans view paying taxes as a moral duty. Just think of the pride with which people refer to themselves as taxpayers.

Of course, taxes are a civic good only if the tax rules are perceived as being fair. Which is why Mr. Biden’s calculated risk could pay many dividends come November.

Felicia Wong is the president and chief executive of Roosevelt Forward, the advocacy partner of the progressive think tank the Roosevelt Institute.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

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The Case for Marrying an Older Man

A woman’s life is all work and little rest. an age gap relationship can help..

In the summer, in the south of France, my husband and I like to play, rather badly, the lottery. We take long, scorching walks to the village — gratuitous beauty, gratuitous heat — kicking up dust and languid debates over how we’d spend such an influx. I purchase scratch-offs, jackpot tickets, scraping the former with euro coins in restaurants too fine for that. I never cash them in, nor do I check the winning numbers. For I already won something like the lotto, with its gifts and its curses, when he married me.

He is ten years older than I am. I chose him on purpose, not by chance. As far as life decisions go, on balance, I recommend it.

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence. Each time I reconsidered the project, it struck me as more reasonable. Why ignore our youth when it amounted to a superpower? Why assume the burdens of womanhood, its too-quick-to-vanish upper hand, but not its brief benefits at least? Perhaps it came easier to avoid the topic wholesale than to accept that women really do have a tragically short window of power, and reason enough to take advantage of that fact while they can. As for me, I liked history, Victorian novels, knew of imminent female pitfalls from all the books I’d read: vampiric boyfriends; labor, at the office and in the hospital, expected simultaneously; a decline in status as we aged, like a looming eclipse. I’d have disliked being called calculating, but I had, like all women, a calculator in my head. I thought it silly to ignore its answers when they pointed to an unfairness for which we really ought to have been preparing.

I was competitive by nature, an English-literature student with all the corresponding major ambitions and minor prospects (Great American novel; email job). A little Bovarist , frantic for new places and ideas; to travel here, to travel there, to be in the room where things happened. I resented the callow boys in my class, who lusted after a particular, socially sanctioned type on campus: thin and sexless, emotionally detached and socially connected, the opposite of me. Restless one Saturday night, I slipped on a red dress and snuck into a graduate-school event, coiling an HDMI cord around my wrist as proof of some technical duty. I danced. I drank for free, until one of the organizers asked me to leave. I called and climbed into an Uber. Then I promptly climbed out of it. For there he was, emerging from the revolving doors. Brown eyes, curved lips, immaculate jacket. I went to him, asked him for a cigarette. A date, days later. A second one, where I discovered he was a person, potentially my favorite kind: funny, clear-eyed, brilliant, on intimate terms with the universe.

I used to love men like men love women — that is, not very well, and with a hunger driven only by my own inadequacies. Not him. In those early days, I spoke fondly of my family, stocked the fridge with his favorite pasta, folded his clothes more neatly than I ever have since. I wrote his mother a thank-you note for hosting me in his native France, something befitting a daughter-in-law. It worked; I meant it. After graduation and my fellowship at Oxford, I stayed in Europe for his career and married him at 23.

Of course I just fell in love. Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal , and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.

The reception of a particular age-gap relationship depends on its obviousness. The greater and more visible the difference in years and status between a man and a woman, the more it strikes others as transactional. Transactional thinking in relationships is both as American as it gets and the least kosher subject in the American romantic lexicon. When a 50-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman walk down the street, the questions form themselves inside of you; they make you feel cynical and obscene: How good of a deal is that? Which party is getting the better one? Would I take it? He is older. Income rises with age, so we assume he has money, at least relative to her; at minimum, more connections and experience. She has supple skin. Energy. Sex. Maybe she gets a Birkin. Maybe he gets a baby long after his prime. The sight of their entwined hands throws a lucid light on the calculations each of us makes, in love, to varying degrees of denial. You could get married in the most romantic place in the world, like I did, and you would still have to sign a contract.

Twenty and 30 is not like 30 and 40; some freshness to my features back then, some clumsiness in my bearing, warped our decade, in the eyes of others, to an uncrossable gulf. Perhaps this explains the anger we felt directed at us at the start of our relationship. People seemed to take us very, very personally. I recall a hellish car ride with a friend of his who began to castigate me in the backseat, in tones so low that only I could hear him. He told me, You wanted a rich boyfriend. You chased and snuck into parties . He spared me the insult of gold digger, but he drew, with other words, the outline for it. Most offended were the single older women, my husband’s classmates. They discussed me in the bathroom at parties when I was in the stall. What does he see in her? What do they talk about? They were concerned about me. They wielded their concern like a bludgeon. They paraphrased without meaning to my favorite line from Nabokov’s Lolita : “You took advantage of my disadvantage,” suspecting me of some weakness he in turn mined. It did not disturb them, so much, to consider that all relationships were trades. The trouble was the trade I’d made struck them as a bad one.

The truth is you can fall in love with someone for all sorts of reasons, tiny transactions, pluses and minuses, whose sum is your affection for each other, your loyalty, your commitment. The way someone picks up your favorite croissant. Their habit of listening hard. What they do for you on your anniversary and your reciprocal gesture, wrapped thoughtfully. The serenity they inspire; your happiness, enlivening it. When someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them.

When I think of same-age, same-stage relationships, what I tend to picture is a woman who is doing too much for too little.

I’m 27 now, and most women my age have “partners.” These days, girls become partners quite young. A partner is supposed to be a modern answer to the oppression of marriage, the terrible feeling of someone looming over you, head of a household to which you can only ever be the neck. Necks are vulnerable. The problem with a partner, however, is if you’re equal in all things, you compromise in all things. And men are too skilled at taking .

There is a boy out there who knows how to floss because my friend taught him. Now he kisses college girls with fresh breath. A boy married to my friend who doesn’t know how to pack his own suitcase. She “likes to do it for him.” A million boys who know how to touch a woman, who go to therapy because they were pushed, who learned fidelity, boundaries, decency, manners, to use a top sheet and act humanely beneath it, to call their mothers, match colors, bring flowers to a funeral and inhale, exhale in the face of rage, because some girl, some girl we know, some girl they probably don’t speak to and will never, ever credit, took the time to teach him. All while she was working, raising herself, clawing up the cliff-face of adulthood. Hauling him at her own expense.

I find a post on Reddit where five thousand men try to define “ a woman’s touch .” They describe raised flower beds, blankets, photographs of their loved ones, not hers, sprouting on the mantel overnight. Candles, coasters, side tables. Someone remembering to take lint out of the dryer. To give compliments. I wonder what these women are getting back. I imagine them like Cinderella’s mice, scurrying around, their sole proof of life their contributions to a more central character. On occasion I meet a nice couple, who grew up together. They know each other with a fraternalism tender and alien to me.  But I think of all my friends who failed at this, were failed at this, and I think, No, absolutely not, too risky . Riskier, sometimes, than an age gap.

My younger brother is in his early 20s, handsome, successful, but in many ways: an endearing disaster. By his age, I had long since wisened up. He leaves his clothes in the dryer, takes out a single shirt, steams it for three minutes. His towel on the floor, for someone else to retrieve. His lovely, same-age girlfriend is aching to fix these tendencies, among others. She is capable beyond words. Statistically, they will not end up together. He moved into his first place recently, and she, the girlfriend, supplied him with a long, detailed list of things he needed for his apartment: sheets, towels, hangers, a colander, which made me laugh. She picked out his couch. I will bet you anything she will fix his laundry habits, and if so, they will impress the next girl. If they break up, she will never see that couch again, and he will forget its story. I tell her when I visit because I like her, though I get in trouble for it: You shouldn’t do so much for him, not for someone who is not stuck with you, not for any boy, not even for my wonderful brother.

Too much work had left my husband, by 30, jaded and uninspired. He’d burned out — but I could reenchant things. I danced at restaurants when they played a song I liked. I turned grocery shopping into an adventure, pleased by what I provided. Ambitious, hungry, he needed someone smart enough to sustain his interest, but flexible enough in her habits to build them around his hours. I could. I do: read myself occupied, make myself free, materialize beside him when he calls for me. In exchange, I left a lucrative but deadening spreadsheet job to write full-time, without having to live like a writer. I learned to cook, a little, and decorate, somewhat poorly. Mostly I get to read, to walk central London and Miami and think in delicious circles, to work hard, when necessary, for free, and write stories for far less than minimum wage when I tally all the hours I take to write them.

At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self, couldn’t imagine doing it in tandem with someone, two raw lumps of clay trying to mold one another and only sullying things worse. I’d go on dates with boys my age and leave with the impression they were telling me not about themselves but some person who didn’t exist yet and on whom I was meant to bet regardless. My husband struck me instead as so finished, formed. Analyzable for compatibility. He bore the traces of other women who’d improved him, small but crucial basics like use a coaster ; listen, don’t give advice. Young egos mellow into patience and generosity.

My husband isn’t my partner. He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did. Adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations. But his logistics ran so smoothly that he simply tacked mine on. I moved into his flat, onto his level, drag and drop, cleaner thrice a week, bills automatic. By opting out of partnership in my 20s, I granted myself a kind of compartmentalized, liberating selfishness none of my friends have managed. I am the work in progress, the party we worry about, a surprising dominance. When I searched for my first job, at 21, we combined our efforts, for my sake. He had wisdom to impart, contacts with whom he arranged coffees; we spent an afternoon, laughing, drawing up earnest lists of my pros and cons (highly sociable; sloppy math). Meanwhile, I took calls from a dear friend who had a boyfriend her age. Both savagely ambitious, hyperclose and entwined in each other’s projects. If each was a start-up , the other was the first hire, an intense dedication I found riveting. Yet every time she called me, I hung up with the distinct feeling that too much was happening at the same time: both learning to please a boss; to forge more adult relationships with their families; to pay bills and taxes and hang prints on the wall. Neither had any advice to give and certainly no stability. I pictured a three-legged race, two people tied together and hobbling toward every milestone.

I don’t fool myself. My marriage has its cons. There are only so many times one can say “thank you” — for splendid scenes, fine dinners — before the phrase starts to grate. I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that shapes the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him. He doesn’t have to hold it over my head. It just floats there, complicating usual shorthands to explain dissatisfaction like, You aren’t being supportive lately . It’s a Frenchism to say, “Take a decision,” and from time to time I joke: from whom? Occasionally I find myself in some fabulous country at some fabulous party and I think what a long way I have traveled, like a lucky cloud, and it is frightening to think of oneself as vapor.

Mostly I worry that if he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive, but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials, the way Renaissance painters hid in their paintings their faces among a crowd. I wonder if when they looked at their paintings, they saw their own faces first. But this is the wrong question, if our aim is happiness. Like the other question on which I’m expected to dwell: Who is in charge, the man who drives or the woman who put him there so she could enjoy herself? I sit in the car, in the painting it would have taken me a corporate job and 20 years to paint alone, and my concern over who has the upper hand becomes as distant as the horizon, the one he and I made so wide for me.

To be a woman is to race against the clock, in several ways, until there is nothing left to be but run ragged.

We try to put it off, but it will hit us at some point: that we live in a world in which our power has a different shape from that of men, a different distribution of advantage, ours a funnel and theirs an expanding cone. A woman at 20 rarely has to earn her welcome; a boy at 20 will be turned away at the door. A woman at 30 may find a younger woman has taken her seat; a man at 30 will have invited her. I think back to the women in the bathroom, my husband’s classmates. What was my relationship if not an inconvertible sign of this unfairness? What was I doing, in marrying older, if not endorsing it? I had taken advantage of their disadvantage. I had preempted my own. After all, principled women are meant to defy unfairness, to show some integrity or denial, not plan around it, like I had. These were driven women, successful, beautiful, capable. I merely possessed the one thing they had already lost. In getting ahead of the problem, had I pushed them down? If I hadn’t, would it really have made any difference?

When we decided we wanted to be equal to men, we got on men’s time. We worked when they worked, retired when they retired, had to squeeze pregnancy, children, menopause somewhere impossibly in the margins. I have a friend, in her late 20s, who wears a mood ring; these days it is often red, flickering in the air like a siren when she explains her predicament to me. She has raised her fair share of same-age boyfriends. She has put her head down, worked laboriously alongside them, too. At last she is beginning to reap the dividends, earning the income to finally enjoy herself. But it is now, exactly at this precipice of freedom and pleasure, that a time problem comes closing in. If she would like to have children before 35, she must begin her next profession, motherhood, rather soon, compromising inevitably her original one. The same-age partner, equally unsettled in his career, will take only the minimum time off, she guesses, or else pay some cost which will come back to bite her. Everything unfailingly does. If she freezes her eggs to buy time, the decision and its logistics will burden her singly — and perhaps it will not work. Overlay the years a woman is supposed to establish herself in her career and her fertility window and it’s a perfect, miserable circle. By midlife women report feeling invisible, undervalued; it is a telling cliché, that after all this, some husbands leave for a younger girl. So when is her time, exactly? For leisure, ease, liberty? There is no brand of feminism which achieved female rest. If women’s problem in the ’50s was a paralyzing malaise, now it is that they are too active, too capable, never permitted a vacation they didn’t plan. It’s not that our efforts to have it all were fated for failure. They simply weren’t imaginative enough.

For me, my relationship, with its age gap, has alleviated this rush , permitted me to massage the clock, shift its hands to my benefit. Very soon, we will decide to have children, and I don’t panic over last gasps of fun, because I took so many big breaths of it early: on the holidays of someone who had worked a decade longer than I had, in beautiful places when I was young and beautiful, a symmetry I recommend. If such a thing as maternal energy exists, mine was never depleted. I spent the last nearly seven years supported more than I support and I am still not as old as my husband was when he met me. When I have a child, I will expect more help from him than I would if he were younger, for what does professional tenure earn you if not the right to set more limits on work demands — or, if not, to secure some child care, at the very least? When I return to work after maternal upheaval, he will aid me, as he’s always had, with his ability to put himself aside, as younger men are rarely able.

Above all, the great gift of my marriage is flexibility. A chance to live my life before I become responsible for someone else’s — a lover’s, or a child’s. A chance to write. A chance at a destiny that doesn’t adhere rigidly to the routines and timelines of men, but lends itself instead to roomy accommodation, to the very fluidity Betty Friedan dreamed of in 1963 in The Feminine Mystique , but we’ve largely forgotten: some career or style of life that “permits year-to-year variation — a full-time paid job in one community, part-time in another, exercise of the professional skill in serious volunteer work or a period of study during pregnancy or early motherhood when a full-time job is not feasible.” Some things are just not feasible in our current structures. Somewhere along the way we stopped admitting that, and all we did was make women feel like personal failures. I dream of new structures, a world in which women have entry-level jobs in their 30s; alternate avenues for promotion; corporate ladders with balconies on which they can stand still, have a smoke, take a break, make a baby, enjoy themselves, before they keep climbing. Perhaps men long for this in their own way. Actually I am sure of that.

Once, when we first fell in love, I put my head in his lap on a long car ride; I remember his hands on my face, the sun, the twisting turns of a mountain road, surprising and not surprising us like our romance, and his voice, telling me that it was his biggest regret that I was so young, he feared he would lose me. Last week, we looked back at old photos and agreed we’d given each other our respective best years. Sometimes real equality is not so obvious, sometimes it takes turns, sometimes it takes almost a decade to reveal itself.

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