I’ve been using the free tier of Grammarly since 2017, but I’d disabled the extension in Firefox.
This was primarily because my old computer didn’t have enough RAM and couldn’t easily handle the extra work. Even once I invested in upgrading the memory, I simply didn’t think to turn it on again.
So for a long time now, I’ve been writing these entries without the aid of a spell-checker, and that’s led to a few errors that weren’t picked up manually.
Last week, I decided to switch it back on, and I was quickly reminded of the other reasons I’d disabled it.
When a suggestion box appeared underneath the text, like correcting suggesiton to suggestion, I found this useful.
But Grammarly also constantly pushed its Pro membership level through these boxes. The software was set up to reveal only a few advanced suggestions per day before blanking them out and telling the user to upgrade.
I found those few advanced suggestions would amount to little more than a find-and-replace with a thesaurus; found might be changed to discovered, or stay to remain. There appeared to be no way to switch these off or even to snooze them for a fixed period
I’ve been writing long enough to know I need a strong spell-checker but a low-level grammar checker that only looks for obvious errors like should of rather than should have.
Grammarly was already beginning to bloat with features even in 2017 and this has only continued to grow. It must be stated, however, that’s far from exclusive to this software, and there are writers who will benefit from that Pro level subscription. I’m simply not one of them.
After closing my account, it was time to take advantage of the spell-checker built into Firefox. By adding a third-party dictionary to ensure all words belonged in British English, I’ve been able to catch the majority of errors without the need for further suggestions.
Gavin Cameron 