Thoughts On Using Grammerly

I have a tendency to skim over my work, not see all of the typos/errors, call it good, and hit publish. I refer to myself as a writer, so this is not a good thing. I put a lot of writing up on the Internet, and I was having to go back and make a lot of corrections - often after friends had alerted me that something wasn't kosher. The Grammarly app came to my attention, so I thought I would give it a try. First I will give a synopsis about what Grammarly does, then I will highlight my experience with it.

From Wikipedia: " Grammarly is an online grammar checking, spell checking, and plagiarism detection platform developed by Grammarly, Inc. The software was first released in July 2009. Grammarly's proofreading resources check against more than 250 grammar rules." The version that I use is Grammarly For Chrome. Grammarly highlights both spelling and grammar errors as you are typing so that you can make corrections in a timely manner. It works for messages, documents, and social media posts, as well as e-mail. Grammarly features a contextual spelling checker, along with a grammar checker. The premium version of Grammarly checks for over 100 additional types of errors, makes vocabulary enhancement suggestions, detects plagiarism, gives citation suggestions, and gives suggestions for different writing styles (i.e. academic, technical, and creative).

Overall, I really like Grammarly. When I hit the publish button, I am not as concerned that I am unleashing a gazillion typo's, which is a very good feeling! There are a couple of issues that I find irritating though. For one thing, Grammarly and I hit head on over the use of commas! This happens so often that I have decided to just say the heck with it, and leave the commas where I want them to be! The second irritation that I have with Grammarly is that it will sometimes (not often) suggest another version of a word. So far, their suggestions have been totally out of context, so I choose to ignore them.

A little side benefit (even for the free version, which is what I have) is that I get a monthly report from Grammarly. This includes notes on productivity (number of words written), accuracy, vocabulary (unique words used), and top grammar mistakes (yes, commas always make this part of my report!). 

In time, I will be purchasing the paid for version of this app.

(c) April 2019 Bonnie Cehovet

Reproduction prohibited without written permission of the author.