Although I don’t generally have a problem with spelling or grammar, I like to use Grammarly software as a double-check. It’s especially useful in a browser, which tends only to have basic correction functionality.
Every week, I receive an e-mail with some statistics about my writing. This week, I was advised I have a voluminous vocabulary. Let’s take a look at what that means:
- You were more productive than 85% of Grammarly users.
- You were more accurate than 78% of Grammarly users.
- You used more unique words than 86% of Grammarly users.
So far, we’re onto a winner. Reading on, here are the tones it’s detected in my writing and the percentage of the time I’ve used them.
- Informative: 20%
- Informal: 16%
- Joyful: 13%
- Appreciative: 12%
- Formal: 9%
- Friendly: 7%
- Neutral: 7%
And the number of words checked since 18 Jan 2017?
1,033,593
Now let’s see the weaknesses:
- Missing period: 16 alerts
- Missing closing punctuation: 16 alerts
- Missing comma in compound sentence: 13 alerts
The is where Grammarly and I disagree most. I like to use an Oxford comma and the software doesn’t. And fet it would like me to use them before and after ‘therefore’, whereas I think that slows down the sentence unnecessarily.
The purpose of these e-mails is not merely informative, but to encourage me to upgrade from the basic package. I used to subscribe to the Premium servies, but I find it has more features than I need.
But if spelling and grammar is your sticking point, or you’re worried about accidental plagarism, it’s definitely worth subscribing.
Gavin Cameron 