Nowadays, most of us have to write more using a keyboard rather than writing using pen and paper. Grammatical errors and writing mistakes can prove to be a disaster, whether you are submitting a resume to get a job or sending an official mail to someone.
People who don’t know you might doubt your level of education if you frequently commit grammatical and writing mistakes. If you are a blogger or a content creator, you need to be extra cautious of grammatical and writing errors. Most of the readers immediately stop reading the content if they encounter writing errors. So, even if your content quality is excellent, it won’t get the response it deserves.
This article will tell you about Grammarly – one of the best online tools or plugins that can remove grammatical errors from your content and improve your writing styles. This review article will tell you about my experience with Grammarly and everything you need to know. Grammarly is quite ubiquitous, and most of you might have even used its free version. You should read this article till the end to know about some exciting features that you might not know about yet.
You will get an answer to the frequently asked question- is Grammarly premium worth buying?
Know the background
Being a professor at IIMs, an author, and a blogger, I cannot afford grammatical mistakes in my writings. English is our non-native language, and unintentionally we can make some typing and grammatical errors. I had used the free offerings of Grammarly, and after knowing about the premium version, I opted for it the same day. We will discuss the differences between the free and paid version later in the article.
What is Grammarly?
Imagine that you have an expert editor sitting next to you and constantly checking your text while you write. You don’t have to be afraid of any grammatical or spelling mistakes; you don’t even have to think of better words to make your writing more eloquent. How efficient would it be, right?
This is what Grammarly can do for you. Using AI, Grammarly can offer you suggestions to remove the passive voice, complex sentences, and redundant words.
Using the Grammarly plugin, you can proofread your writings before sending them. Even this post was proofread by Grammarly.
Grammarly offerings and key features:
Although Grammarly has many features available for free, some features are exclusive for premium users only. All the features that we will discuss here will include the exclusive ones as well.
Use Grammarly to detect plagiarism
Sometimes while writing, we unintentionally write down some text that already exists on the web. On some types of content, such as blogs, we want to have almost zero plagiarism for a good SEO, whereas while doing some projects, documents we have a limit of plagiarism that is allowed, say 20%.
Using the Grammarly plagiarism detector, we can accurately find out the percentage of plagiarism in our text. We will also get to know the websites/pages on which our lines already exist.
Most plagiarism detectors online have a lower word limit, while some are inefficient in searching millions of websites and pages. Even if some have a higher word limit, then they are too slow. But this is not the case with Grammarly; the plagiarism detector tool can search millions of websites and pages in a few seconds, even if the word count is above 10000 words.
Try the best plagiarism checker here.
Use Grammarly to generate a content report
You can generate a performance report for your text using Grammarly. The report contains the complete text, readability score, plagiarism results, performance score, word count, and several other details about the content. If you are a freelancer or a content writer, you can send that report to your clients to look professional even if you are doing some projects, thesis, papers, etc. You can always generate the report as an assurance.
The point here to note is that this report cannot be generated through Grammarly plugins and add-ins. You have to open the Grammarly application.
Set your writing goals
You can set your writing goals on Grammarly and get tailored writing suggestions based on your goals and audience. There are the following options that you can choose from:
Know your audience?
You need to tell Grammarly whether you are writing for a general audience or for highly technical and knowledgeable readers. Grammarly will adjust the readability and clarity of your content accordingly.
General- You will get suggestions that will make your text easy to read and understand with minimal effort. Grammarly will focus more on increasing the readability score of your text.
Knowledgeable- Comprehension of the text might require a little focus.
Expert- Choose this mode if your content is intended for highly specialized readers.
How formal do you want to sound?
Sometimes, you need to be very formal, like writing an official email to someone, whereas sometimes, you need to be a bit cold or pretentious while writing a message to your friend. You can choose your formality as informal- to allow slangs and casual usages, neutral- to allow common colloquial uses but restrict slangs or formal- to restrict all slangs and colloquialisms. Grammarly will give you more relevant suggestions for each type of formality.
What is your writing domain?
You can have different strategies for every kind of writing you are doing. For instance, when you write formal research papers, you need to avoid writing in the first person. However, while writing a blog, you need to avoid passive voice.
Grammarly premium has six document types such that you can get personalized suggestions for every kind of writing. These include- academic, business, email, casual, general, and creative type writings.
How do you want to sound?
In English, certain words will tell your readers about your writing mood. Words have different connotations and tones. The tone defines the author’s general character, sentiment, and attitude towards a piece of writing. Grammarly offers suggestions based on different tones, including- neutral, confident, analytical, optimistic, respectful, friendly, joyful, and urgent.
What is your intent?
By setting your intent, you can tell Grammarly what you are trying to do. Do you want to give some kind of information? Are you trying to describe something? Are you telling a story, or you want to convince someone? Choosing your intent can help Grammarly in building new suggestions.
You might wonder- how do I use Grammarly when you have to check your writings on different software or an app? Do I need to copy-paste the text to check your writing every time? If it is so, it would not be helpful to check 1-2 lines when messaging. Right?
Different ways to use Grammarly:
This is not the case with Grammarly, as there are many ways to use Grammarly, ranging from extensions to applications. What all you need is an active internet connection as Grammarly is an internet-based tool. I will tell you about how to use the different ways effectively.
Grammarly browser extension:
One of the most useful and easiest ways to use Grammarly is to download the browser extension. Whether you are writing an email, message, reply, feedback on any website Grammarly is there to assist you in writing.
The browser extension will also work on Google Docs and Gmail, along with another plethora of websites. This is how I use Grammarly the most.
Webtool
You can copy-paste your text or write directly on the platform.
The most helpful feature of the web tool is that it can generate a detailed writing report. Let’s give it a try.
Grammarly for Word
Suppose you are comfortable using Microsoft Word for writings due to its sophistry and features. You can download Grammarly add-in for Microsoft Word, and Grammarly will keep a check on your writings.
Grammarly for your phone
You can download Grammarly from the play store and use the Grammarly keyboard on your device. The intelligent keyboard will provide you suggestions for fast typing, and you can use it to compose emails and send messages.
Grammarly for Windows/Mac
You can also download the Grammarly app for your windows/mac, which will provide a similar interface as the web tool, but remember that it will also require an active internet connection.
What will you get for free?
In most cases, we observe that the trial or a free pack of a product is usually a minimal version of itself. But, this is not the case with Grammarly.
The free version of Grammarly provides basic writing suggestions, including spellings, grammar check, and punctuation, and it is much more powerful than a word processor. The free version is ideal for you if you are a writer or a blogger and cannot pay for a writing tool.
Should you go for a premium?
Grammarly premium has many exclusive benefits that make it worthy of its cost.
Apart from everything you get in a free version, you will get suggestions based on your style, clarity improvements, and other advanced corrections.
The leverage to get suggestions based on your writing goals discussed previously can only be taken through a premium version.
The main reason why I opted for Grammarly premium is its unmatched plagiarism detector and readability. Indeed, if you are a professional writer or a freelancer, then having a premium version is necessary.
What is Grammarly’s price?
The premium version starts at $11.66 per month if paid annually. Otherwise, you have to pay $19.98 and $29.95 per month for quarterly and monthly subscriptions, respectively. I prefer to go with the annual plan due to the significant difference in pricing.
I have discussed all the essential aspects of the best online writing tool – Grammarly. If you have read this far, you must be feeling an urge to try this fantastic tool. If you have not clicked any of the article’s links until now, tell me what else you want to know about in the comment section below.
If you have some other similar writing tools, such as Turnitin, in mind, you can look at the pros and cons given below that might help you choose the best writing tool for you.
| Pros | Cons |
| Easy to use and much more powerful and accurate than the word processor. | Grammarly proofreading is adequate, but a machine can never beat a human proofreader. |
| You can switch between the US and British English. | Plagiarism is always a little lower in Grammarly. P.S. fun for some, curse for others. |
| Available in various forms- web extension, plug-in, web tool, desktop Grammarly app. | Grammarly picks up basic errors and typos effectively, but English is full of inconsistent rules, so sometimes, you might get some weird suggestions. |
| Best online writing tool for writers, researchers, bloggers, and authors. | You might not be willing to pay for a writing tool. But, you should give it a try to know its actual worth. |
| You will also get an explanation for why your mistakes are wrong. |
How do I rate Grammarly:
Ease of use: 5/5
Pricing: 4/5
Features: 5/5
Overall: 9.5/10
Review in a nutshell:
- If you are a blogger or a content creator, you need to be extra conscious of grammatical and writing mistakes. Most of the readers immediately stop reading the content if they encounter writing errors.
- Using AI, Grammarly can offer you suggestions to remove the passive voice, complex sentences, and redundant words. The plagiarism detector tool can search millions of websites and pages in a few seconds.
- You can set your writing goals on Grammarly and get tailored writing suggestions based on your goals and audience.
- Grammarly is quite user-friendly, and there are many ways to use Grammarly- web extension, webtool, Microsoft word add-in, android/ios/mac app/ windows app.
- The free version of Grammarly provides basic writing suggestions, including spelling, grammar, and punctuation. However, the plagiarism detector, advanced suggestions, readability, fluency, word choice, formality level features are exclusive to the premium version.
