A Grammarly Overview

Grammarly offers an exceptional grammar review and spell check tool that comes in handy for virtually every writing occasion. Though it perhaps falls short when compared against a top-notch human proofreader, it certainly minimizes errors and ensures that every piece of writing is thoroughly reviewed and free of any embarrassing grammatical mistakes.  Here is my review of Grammarly.

Checking Your Work Using the Grammarly Tool

There are two simple ways for users to check their work using the Grammarly program. Either you can copy and paste your text directly into the blank review sheet on the Grammarly website or you can upload your document directly into the Grammarly review page. Both of these options are easy and it takes mere moments for the tool to upload the document, scan the text, and produce customized, in-depth suggestions. Once the user accepts corrections and incorporates Grammarly’s edits into the text, the newer, finalized file can be saved back onto the computer’s hard drive for a seamless transition.

The site itself is wonderfully intuitive and the no-frills approach makes it virtually idiot-proof. As a writer who regularly deals with frustrating technology, the Grammarly review tool is a breath of fresh air.

The synonym tool is most useful for my day-to-day writing tasks, although the plagiarism check is a close second. Microsoft Word offers pretty decent internal synonym options, but Grammarly takes it a step further and offers unique, on-point alternatives to the original word choices. I appreciated the relevance of all the suggestions and found that they were truly a step above hum-drum thesaurus software.

The grammar check’s approach to split infinitives was a bit nit picky for my liking. I’ve read recently that split infinitives are now accepted in formal writing and no longer considered to be poor grammar. I understand that Grammarly is weeding through blocks of text with a fine-toothed comb picking out anything that could be deemed improper, but I prefer to maintain some semblance of my voice when I write, rather than strip my work down to textbook sentence structure. The good thing is that everything is simply a suggestion; if I don’t like what is being pointed out, I simply ignore it.

Although Grammarly users can select the type of text entered into the Grammarly review program (academic essay, report, book review, creative writing, business document, blog post), the software does not seem to accurately distinguish between when the tone should be kept casual and when immaculate grammar is a necessity.

I would not consider this to be a flaw in the system, rather something a Grammarly user should be made aware of.

The Grammarly Scoring System

Grammarly scores each article it reviews on a 100 point scale, and I personally found the scoring system to be a bit harsh. My grammar is by no means perfect, but Grammarly found issues with several sentences where the structure was actually perfectly acceptable. The user can opt to receive the long or short explanation for each error. The short explanations are extremely comprehensive. The longer versions could potentially serve as a teaching tool for non-native English speakers. It offers an extremely in-depth analysis and suggests alternate phrasing to fix the problem in a manner that closely follows the overall tone and style of writing.

Though Grammarly’s scoring system is effective and allows you to hold yourself to a certain standard (and track progress over time), when you accept the grammar-checker’s edits, it does not alter your score to reflect the improved grammar. Ideally the user would gain points back if all corrections were taken to heart and incorporated into the piece. This is simply the perfectionist in me wishing I could get an A+ for every piece I submit for the Grammarly review!

Who Should Use Grammarly?

Update: Be sure to check out what Forbes said about Grammarly.