Grammarly: Writing and Editing Tool

Grammarly is one of the world’s most trusted, automated editing tools that we recommend for people who want to do their own editing.  In fact, we’ve been using it since the company was founded in 2009.  Furthermore, our online training academy were beta-testers of the tool in those pioneer years.

Since then, it has been used by educators and their students, as well as professionals and writers from all industries.  According to their website, in 2020 they had over 30,000,000 daily active users.  WOW.  That’s a lot of people who are trusting Grammarly to check their grammar, spelling, punctuation and more.

Consequently, if you struggle with knowing whether to use a semicolon, a comma or a dash in a sentence, then use this invaluable tool.  Because it gives your work a professional polish at a very low annual cost.  You can also pay for the service on a monthly or quarterly subscription if this works in with your cashflow better.

How is it different from Microsoft’s Spelling & Grammar?

Obviously Grammarly is much better than using the Microsoft® Word and other word processing software tools.  Because it picks up mistakes they miss. For example, contextual text, modifiers, prepositions and modifiers.

Also, one of the features we like about Grammarly is that it checks the Internet for content that you may have inadvertently plagiarised.  This helps us when we are working with our clients, because we take plagiarism violations very seriously!

After running their material through their automated tool checker, we can easily see if their work is 100% original, or not.  And if not, we can then recommend what changes they need.  As such, they will avoid possible prosecution from the copyright owner.

Please be aware that this automated tool is not foolproof.  Occasionally the results will show the material has been plagiarised.  However, this is where it is important for the user to look closely at the report.  Sometimes the offending work is only part of a sentence, and not enough to be in violation.

Of course, like any automated tool, Grammarly does have it’s limitations.  For instance, the user needs to have a good understanding of spelling, grammar and punctuation already.  So they can decide whether or not to accept Grammarly’s recommendations.

How we use Grammarly

• First we do a human copy edit of our client’s material and make corrections to the work.  In other words, we work off a hard copy as the brain finds more mistakes than it does looking at a screen.
• Next we run the material through the Grammarly Premium to see if we have missed anything.
• Then we assess the results and make any relevant changes.

Why do we do a human edit from hard copy first?

Most importantly, we do a human edit of our work and the material provided by our clients first.  Furthermore, we recommend that you do this too. Because we are checking for style, flow, unique voice, sense and readability. Therefore we want to make sure that the work is as good as we (or our client) can get it before handing it over to an automated tool.

In our experience, automated tools are designed to do the final polish on the item they are applied to.  Due to the fact that they cannot put the uniqueness and originality, the design and craftsmanship, or the expertise and creativity into the work. At present, machines cannot replicate the qualities that make us human.

So give your work a professional finish but first giving it to a human editor.  If you don’t want to (or can’t afford to) hire the services of a professional to do this, then use Grammarly.

You can try it out first for free now by clicking on the banner at the top or through our affiliate link here.  However, to get the full benefit of the software we recommend you upgrade to Premium.

This article has been checked by the Grammarly writing and editing tool.