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What is Grammarly? In their own words: Take the guesswork out of great writing. Check your emails, documents, essays, and more. Take the guesswork out of writing great emails, documents, and posts. Eliminate grammar errors. Easily improve any text. Eliminate grammar errors? Personally, I would have worded it as "Eliminate grammatical errors", but it's still an intriguing idea for a writer. I saw a few people talking about this as a valuable tool in the writing process, so I decided to check it out. Grammarly has two options, one is free, or a premium version. I went with the Premium version in order to give it a fair shake. The premium version has several payment options. You can pay $29.95 for one month, $59.95 for three months, or $129.95 for a whole year. Obviously if you decide this is for you, I would recommend buying the yearly option, which comes out to about $11.00 a month, quite a discount. What is Grammarly offering exactly? I'll let them tell you:  So, if they can deliver what they promise, this could be a bargain. The first time I logged into their interface, I found it quite easy to navigate. Profile setup is easy, you will choose what type of writing you are doing, and that's pretty much all. The feedback will be different based on your selections. If you are writing say e-mails for an office settings, the suggestions will be different than if you are telling a story. You can either upload a document or open a blank document and manually paste your work. It will then automatically check for errors. Now, I'll say this right off the bat. Not every error the program spots is going to be a genuine error, especially for those of you writing fantasy or science fiction. Fortunately, there is an option to add things like names to a dictionary, similar to Microsoft Word. The program does not automatically change anything, the choice is always yours. But a picture is worth a thousand words, so how about I just show you an example?  As you can see, Grammarly correctly detected my missing comma, as well as two misspellings. However, the program is clearly not 100% accurate, as it failed to pick up my use of the word "butt" rather than the correct "but". It also does not point out the fact that croutons are obviously not grown on farms. So, the program has its limits. If you think this will be a much cheaper alternative to hiring a professional copy-editor, you will be sorely disappointed. Obviously, one sixty-four word paragraph does not tell the whole story. So I ran several chapters of my own work through as well. Now, I won't show those, since they are not ready for release yet. But, I was actually fairly impressed at its ability to spot things like punctuation errors, as well as incidents where I was using certain words repetitively, or my sentences were running a little long. There are a few other features Grammarly offers. One is a weekly e-mail breaking down how many words you checked, your errors, and how you stack up to other Grammarly users. Grammarly also breaks your work down on a deeper level, as shown below. This can be handy.  , and it has its weaknesses. So, what's my overall opinion of Grammarly? I think it has its place in a writer's toolbox. As I said earlier, this is not going to come anywhere close to replacing a good copy-editor. I think the $29.95 a month price tag is definitely on the steep side, though if you can afford to buy a year in advance, it makes this an easier pill to swallow.
I wish they offered a free trial of their premium version to allow users time to decide for themselves, though their free version should at least give you an idea if it is right for you or now. I recommend giving Grammarly a shot. I don't think it will be for everyone, but it will be a valuable aid to some. The feature I found most useful was the ability to spot run-on sentences, which are a constant struggle for me. I hope this review helps you decide if Grammarly is a program you might want to try. Please note, this is not a sponsored review. The thoughts and opinions above are solely my own, and I have not been paid to provide them. Until next time! ~Pete Follow me on social media! Instagram Youtube
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