On this day, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends.
This coming Sunday, the 12th of November we observe Remembrance day in the UK (and other Commonwealth Countries) so in the spirit of peace and reconciliation, I want to end my war with the Grammar Nazis.
To do this I’ve started to use a tool called Grammarly which will hopefully pick up more of my spelling and grammar errors and stop the Grammar Nazis in their tracks.
What Is Grammarly?
Grammarly is a spell checking and grammar correcting software service. grammarly.com
As you type a document the content is checked and any issues are highlighted with a red underline.
Nothing remarkable there, I hear you cry, and I agree, but let me flesh it out.
The software comes in a number of forms, an extension for Google Chrome which sits monitoring your typing.
An online editor which I’m using to write this post in its first draft.
A Windows App you can download and run on your PC that acts as an editor.
I’ll probably stick with the Chrome extension, but I thought I would use all the tools in the spirit of a full review of Grammarly.
Freemium
The software is free with a set of premium upgrades. The premium version is not cheap at £22.84 per month. I’m using the free version (cheap or frugal, you decide).
The premium version has advanced features such as plagiarism checks, style guide and word choice tools.
Why It Beats The Native WordPress Spell Checker
The A.I. behind the scenes is far better than the native WordPress spell check, it’s picking up far more grammar issues with my writing.
It has dictionary and grammar guides for British English which is different from US English used in many spell checkers.
The punctuation correction is amazing, it spots missing commas before I do a read through which really helpful.
It picks up on a lot of words I use which should be hyphenated, for example, I use the word setup a lot which should be hyphenated to set-up.
I miss full stops (periods to my American chums) at the end of sentences an awful lot it turns out.
It’s Not Just For WordPress
It’s not just for my blog posts, any typed content in your browser can be checked, it’s working wonders for my email.
Wrap Up – Review Of Grammarly
A gushing review I’m sure you will agree. I’m a fan but would I pay £20 plus per month for the premium version? Probably not.
Check out https://grammarly.com
Photo Credit: Infomastern Flickr via Compfight cc.
I’m doing the SEO density dance for Review of Grammarly.