A Modern Writing Setup For Neovim

Whether it's in a git commit, blog post, or README, writing syntactically correct English is often harder than writing syntactically correct code.

Fortunately, we have plenty of quality grammar-checking software out there to help us out. But, if you're writing in Neovim, you're going to have to configure them yourself. While there are many plugins and tutorials to help you through this, they're all quite outdated and don't use the luxuries of modern Neovim:¹

Built-in LSP support
Diagnostics
Lua APIs

In this blog post, I'm going to show you how to set up Neovim for writing, complete with advanced grammar checking and spell checking, using modern LSP tools like nvim-lspconfig.

Setting up ltex-ls

ltex-ls is a batteries-included provider of LangaugeTool grammar-checking via the Language Server Protocol.² You can install it through a variety of methods:

The command line (Homebrew, AUR, etc.)
mason.nvim
The official releases

Once it's been installed, all you need to do is set up the language server using lspconfig!

require('lspconfig').ltex.setup {
  on_attach = function()
    -- ...
  end,
  filetypes = { 'markdown', 'text', 'tex', 'gitcommit' },
  flags = { debounce_text_changes = 300 },
}

By now, if you enter a Markdown file, the LSP should be up and running! Go ahead and do some experimentation!

Getting everything working

You might notice that some code actions aren't working, like "add to dictionary." That's because lspconfig doesn't support them on its own.

So, we'll need to use another plugin, ltex_extra. This will add handlers to the "add to dictionary" action, along with a few others. Install the plugin with your Neovim plugin manager, and add the following to your configuration:

require('lspconfig').ltex.setup {
  on_attach = function()
    require('ltex_extra').setup {
      -- This is where your dictionary will be stored! Replace this directory with
      -- whatever you want!
      path = vim.fn.expand '~' .. '/.config/nvim/ltex',
    }
    -- ...
  end,
  filetypes = { 'markdown', 'text', 'tex', 'gitcommit' },
  flags = { debounce_text_changes = 300 },
}

All the code actions should be working now!

Pedantic lints

There are some LanguageTool lints that are labeled "picky". They aren't necessary, but I personally prefer writing with them on, since they help with style and some advanced grammatical forms.

Anyway, you can enable with them with the following:

require('lspconfig').ltex.setup {
  on_attach = function()
    require('ltex_extra').setup {
      -- This is where your dictionary will be stored! Replace this path with
      -- whatever you want!
      path = vim.fn.expand '~' .. '/.config/nvim/ltex',
    }
    -- ...
  end,
  settings = {
    ltex = {
      additionalRules = {
        enablePickyRules = true,
      },
    },
  },
  filetypes = { 'markdown', 'text', 'tex', 'gitcommit' },
  flags = { debounce_text_changes = 300 },
}

Wrapping up

That's it! By now, you should have a fully-functional writing setup, using modern Neovim systems.

As always, feel free to submit an issue if you have any problems, suggestions, or questions related to this post!

To name a few: vim-grammarous, vim-LanguageTool, and LanguageTool.nvim. ↩︎
By "batteries-included," I mean that you don't need Java or LangaugeTool pre-installed on your system to use it. ↩︎