4.3 - On Grammarly - Own Your Distortion

You don’t have to go very far nowadays before someone suggests using Grammarly as a way to improve your writing. Overall, I have no problems with Grammarly. It is a very fine program that will check your spelling and grammar. However, just because Grammarly suggests something doesn’t mean the suggestion is right.

Correct, maybe, but not always right.

Despite its name, Grammarly isn’t a grammar checking tool. It is a tool that leverages AI to judge what you’re writing against the audience it thinks you’re writing for (formal, casual, salesy, whatever). It then goes through and suggests word and phrasing changes to make your stuff more effective. 

Also, yeah, it checks for spelling and blatant grammar errors. 

If you want to improve how easy it is to read what you have written, don’t take Grammarly at face value. Write several drafts without Grammarly (or any variety of spelling/grammar checking tools), get to the end. In your drafting process, you know the early drafts are to get your ideas straight, and the later drafts are to get your language right. Save spell-check until the end.

I don’t touch Grammarly until the deadline looms nearby and there is absolutely nothing else I can do. Grammarly is my way of getting one more set of eyes before I hit the final “submit” button. I let it trace red and purple and green lines all over my work and I take each suggestion with a grain of salt.

Just because something has a squiggly line doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Remember: you’re writing for people, real flesh and blood folks, not robots and algorithms.