Grammarly (http://www.grammarly.com/) is an online grammar checker and plagiarism checker that checks users’ writing for grammar errors, plagiarized text and style issues. Grammarly touts itself as being the “world’s most accurate grammar checker.” However, Grammarly’s huge assortment of grammar tools and other resources tend to perform unevenly at times. As a result, many users who are just starting out might grow frustrated with Grammarly’s inability to provide consistent results.
Here’s a review of the Grammarly online grammar checker that is based on first-hand experience using the product. As you will notice, Grammarly’s features might be better suited towards writers who have some experience editing their own work.
—Grammarly features many outstanding features that should make it a great grammar checker.
Layout:
Grammarly’s layout is simple and clean. It features a simple text editor which allows users to type in text or paste document files. It also features a small console at the top of the screen. This console allows users to cut copy and paste text into the screen. Grammarly’s console also contains a one-click drop-down menu which allows users to select from several types of editing formats. As you will see in a bit, this ability to customize Grammarly’s editing tools should make Grammarly a top-notch grammar checker.
–Grammarly’s ability to customize editing requirements includes features for academic and business writing:
Grammarly allows users to customize the grammar checker’s features to produce work that is suitable for a wide range of audiences. For example, users who opt to use Grammarly’s “Academic” mode can check their work for problems with passive voice use. Other users have found Grammarly’s “Business” mode to be just the thing to edit blogs, product guides and other less formal articles. This ability to customize the grammar checker’s editing tools is a welcome asset that most writers might enjoy using if they can get past Grammarly’s bugs (See below for more details.
—Grammarly also features over 150 grammar check tools.
Grammarly can help users find over 150 grammar mistakes. For example, users can use Grammarly to check their work for the usual spelling errors and missed punctuation marks. Furthermore, it can also help users spot many more grammar errors that even grammar experts might miss. Here is a list of some of the grammar errors Grammarly can help users locate:
–Problems with article use
–Faulty use of conjunctions
–Incorrect use of nouns, adjectives, adverbs numbers, pronouns and prepositions
— Problems with faulty parallelism and confusing modifiers
–Verb agreement problems
–Problems using modal verbs
—Grammarly’s Microsoft Office integration package is also quite handy.
Grammarly’s Microsoft Office integration package is available free to registered users as a downloadable application. It features a small console which allows users to integrate Word’s word processing features with Grammarly’s editing tools. This makes using Grammarly on a Window’s-based computer a bit easier to manage.
-Finally, Grammarly’s plagiarism checker is quite handy and worth using.
Grammarly’s plagiarism checker is easy to use. All you need to do is push a button and you’re on way to checking your work for plagiarized text. It also does a great job locating plagiarized text because it uses an advanced search algorithm that lets it compare your work to almost all known articles and websites published on the Web. This benefit alone might be worth the cost of a monthly subscription if you can learn to live with Grammarly’s bugs.
I say that because even though Grammarly’s benefits should make it the number one selling online grammar checker in the business, it has several glaring bugs which might drive some users nuts.
–For example, Grammarly’s grammar checker tools have a hard time editing homonyms and compound adjectives correctly.
For my money, any grammar check application worth buying should be able to handle tough editing tasks such as editing homonyms and compound adjectives with ease. This is true because grammar checkers that can’t handle these editing tasks make it more difficult for writers to product a high-quality product.
Unfortunately, Grammarly often has trouble editing homonyms and compound adjectives. From personal experience using this product, I can tell you that Grammarly’s grammar checker often has trouble distinguishing between homonyms such as “To” and “Too”, “Four” and “For” and “Its” and “It’s.”
The grammar checker also seemed to have a hard time distinguishing between compound adjectives. For example, Grammarly’s grammar checker had a hard time editing this sentence that contained a compound adjective: “Her fifteen-minute presentation about cats was wonderful!” Grammarly routinely treated the compound adjective “fifteen-minute” as two misspelled words that needed to be respelled.
–Furthermore, Grammarly’s grammar checker also has trouble finding typos in sentences which incorrectly use numbers.
For example, when we tested the sentence “1 cat is all you need for a happy life!” as part of a sample paper for this article we were told it was a grammatically correct sentence even though most English speakers understand that you should never start a sentence with a number.
These problems can make it difficult to use Grammarly’s grammar check to edit out bothersome typos which can wreck your writing.
–Finally, Grammarly’s plagiarism checker sometimes goes overboard deciding what “borrowed” text is and what “original” text is.
No review of the Grammarly grammar checker can be complete without mentioning this problem. Grammarly sometimes considers every-day phrases such as, “For more information, please contact…” as “borrowed text” that needs to be corrected. It can also “find” “borrowed” text that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. For example, according to a Grammarly review conducted by the website Toptenreviews.com, one user was told that the phrase “is a time to go to the cemetery” was “copied” from a text about visiting a cemetery. The only problem was that it was used in text about Halloween traditions.
This problem might driver some users away from using the Grammarly grammar checker because they might have trouble trusting Grammarly’s ability to accurately detect plagiarized material.
This would be a pity because Grammarly’s customizable editing tools and simple interface can make editing most grammar typos a bit easier to manage. As a result, Grammarly’s grammar checker and plagiarism checker might be better suited for writers who have some prior experience editing their work.
