Tag: firefox

Uncategorized

Back to Basics with Spell‑Checking

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.

Uncategorized

The Grammar Spammer

Every week, Grammarly sends me an e-mail, showering me with praise about how well I’ve written that week. I’ve been using the software for more than four years; it even works in addition to the auto-correct in Microsoft Word and Firefox. As such, the company has collected a lot of data about how I type.

In yesterday’s bulletin, it was noted that I was: more productive than 94% of other users. more accurate than 83%, and using more unique words than 92% of folks.

It also notes my top three mistakes, which are usually minor matters involving punctuation. For example, Grammarly doesn’t favour an Oxford comma as much as I do; conversely, I don’t like the software’s style of writing ‘3 PM’ rather than ‘3pm’.

Which brings me to an important point that software can miss certain errors. Depending on the construction of the sentence, ‘from’ might be interchangeable with ‘form’, when only one is correct.

My best advice on the matter, which I repeat often, is to read out loud what you’ve written to see whether it flows and makes sense. If you don’t have the privacy to do that, a decent substitute is to find text-to-speech software and listen through headphones. If it detects a word out of place, it’ll be obvious when it’s read out.

Either way, spelling and grammar checkers should be used as a safety net rather than an authority, however much praise they heap onto their users.