2014-12-15

Grammarly is a powerful tool that helps bloggers and writers improve their writing by minimizing mistakes and errors. Being conscious or unconscious, people make mistakes in writing, such as wrong spelling, confusing words and wordy sentences. Grammarly, therefore, works to find out the mistakes, explain the causes of them, and offer suggestions on modification.

On the other hand, some people doubt whether a mechanical grammar check tool can really pick out mistakes and correct them in the right way. To give an end to the controversy, we now work out this comprehensive Grammarly review to share our thorough understanding about the application and our experience in using it.



Grammarly Review

Website: http://www.grammarly.com/

Reputation



Features



Ease of Use

Support

Price

$10.21/mo, 30% off $14.58/mo regularly

About Grammarly

Grammarly is developed by Grammarly Inc. which is founded in 2008 with offices in San Francisco and Kiev. It is claimed to be the most accurate grammar checker in the world. At present, Grammarly has over 4 million registered users and a large community with 4.5+ million fans on Facebook and nearly 1.6 million followers on Google Plus.

Grammarly has powerful grammar check algorithms developed by world’s leading linguists. It scans text to check whether you are strictly following the built-in 250+ grammar rules, and detects the proper use of vocabulary to help you be a pro in writing blog posts or anything else. In below, we will explain the tool in detail.

Is Grammarly Free or Paid?

Grammarly has subscription plans for both individuals and enterprises. The individual plan can be billed monthly, quarterly and annually, and the fees depend on the length of billing cycle. With regular price starting from $14.58/mo (annual billing), the plan is now discounted at 30% for subscriptions through the promotional link below, available from $10.21/mo. Pricing details are offered in the table below.

Billing Cycle

1-Month

3-Month

12-Month

Regular Price

$37.95/mo

$24.98/mo

$14.58/mo

Discount

30%

30%

30%

Special Offer

$26.57/mo

$17.49/mo

$10.21/mo

Grammarly Promotional Link Activation

Enterprises, governments, colleges, universities and some other education institutions have another subscription plan which charges based on the number of students or users.

In addition to paid services, Grammarly has a free extension for Google Chrome. You can just install the extension in your web browser and open a free account, then you can enjoy the service anywhere on the web. The features are limited compared to the paid version, of course.

What Does Grammarly Provide?

Everybody knows that a grammar tool is used to check grammar errors, but we believe only a few have clear understanding about how Grammarly works to perfect your writing. Below are the most important things that the application does to improve the quality of content and user experience.

Easy-to-Use Interface

Grammarly works in all modern web browsers. You do not need to download and install it to your local computer, and instead, you can only go to the official website, log in, and then start your journey. The application has a very simple interface whether you can manage your profile and subscription, contact support, browse the check history and search for any document that you have checked here.

When you want to check a new document, you can click on the “New” and paste your text on the blank page, or you can simply upload your document by clicking on the “Upload” link. A few seconds later, Grammarly will finish the scanning and return the results telling you the score of your text and the mistakes you’ve made. When you have finished checking and modifying, you may choose to copy the text or download it directly.

Grammar Check

With more than 250 built-in grammar rules, Grammarly performs an all-round checking for the grammar of documents. It checks the structure of predication, the use of verb tenses, misuse of articles, verb forms, dangling modifiers, and so on. Besides, you can choose to check punctuations, sentence structure and writing style to prevent potential issues like the incorrect or improper use of comma, redundancy, and wordiness.

When you have a check, all grammar issues are well categorized and clearly displayed, so that you can review and revise the words or sentences easily after reading the detailed explanation about the errors. Besides, all explanations include some examples that help you understand the grammatical rules.

Spell Check

It is inevitable that sometimes you make spell errors for some reasons. When you turn on contextual spelling check, Grammarly will check for the wrong spellings in your text and offer suggestions. Another highlight is that the application can also detect the wrong use of words in a context even if you have spelled the words right. For example, you may misuse “affect” and “effect”, “too” and “two”, etc.

Word Choice Suggestions

In addition to picking out the mistakes and errors in your text, Grammarly also works to help improve your content quality by offering some suggestions about the use of synonyms in your text. When the application detects some vague adjectives like “great” and overuse of words, it gives enhancement suggestions to assist you to diversify the content. This feature is great for people lacking a large vocabulary.

In addition, if you double-click a word, there will be some synonyms about the word and useful suggestions about how to enhance the word, just as the following screenshot.

Plagiarism Detection
Content plagiarism is a serious issue which is penalized by search engines including Google. Copying either the content of others or that written by yourself before is not allowed. It is hard to find out duplicate content manually, but fortunately, Grammarly has a function to find the unoriginal part in your content to inform you that there are some changes to be made to prevent punishment.

Once some words or sentences are detected to match the text of other web pages on the web, they will be highlighted so that you can easily modify them.

Diversified Document Types

Grammarly does not treat all content types in the same way because it realizes that texts in different use should remain some differences in grammar. The application allows you to select document type from 7 options including General, Academic, Business, Technical, Medical, Creative and Casual to suit the style of your content and to make the correction more accurate.

Every document type mentioned above is further divided into several detailed branches. For example, the Technical writing includes marketing, technical documentation and end-user assistance document, and Academic covers Essay, Report, Case Study, Book Review, Admission Letter, and many more. For each type, there are different criteria on writing, which benefits all people in making their content professional.

Word & Outlook Compatibility

In the Grammarly interface, there is a notification reminding you to download and use the Grammarly add-in in Microsoft Office. If you want to easily check grammar issues directly in Word or Outlook, you can use the add-in to achieve a quick result. This is also a highlight that is rarely seen in the current market, which wins the application more scores.

Advanced Proofreading

When you are checking a document, you can find an icon looking like a magic wand in the left sidebar. The icon is used to get a professional proofreading conducted by a proofreader of Grammarly. If you want the service, you can click the button that says “send to a proofreader” to get your document delivered to a professional who knows how to make improvements.

Additional fees are charged for this service, depending on how long you would like to get your document back and how many words are in your document. The fees range from $0.08 to $0.02 per word, and the shortest time for getting a document returned is 30 minutes. Proofreading is reachable 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Support

Grammarly has a support portal in which you can submit a support request, check the status of existing requests, ask for proofreading, and search for answers to frequently asked questions about account, subscription, etc. For other ways of seeking help, you may choose to send emails to the support team also.

Is There Any Limitation?

Nothing is perfect, neither is Grammarly. The features are good, and the price is affordable, but there are indeed some limitations that you should pay attention to. Besides, to prevent potential TOS violation, you’d better read through the terms of service in detail.

In below, we’d like to discuss some issues about the service of Grammarly.

Limitation for Checking Requests

As is presented in Grammarly TOS, you are given personal, limited and non-transferable access to the application. You can use the services only for limited purposes and under some limitations.

For the checking of documents, you can have a maximum of 300 documents with no more than 150,000 words in total checked in any 30-day period, and likewise, you can never hit the top of 100 documents and 50,000 words in any 24-hour period. This rule applies to all subscriptions of personal plan and all users of enterprise subscriptions.

Occasional Improper Error Checking

No matter how comprehensive Grammarly is, it cannot be 100% accurate in presenting errors and providing suggestions. Sometimes the application may pick out frivolous errors. For example, it collects all uses of passive voice to suggest you to replace them with active voice. And whenever you use a preposition at the end of a sentence, Grammarly tells you that you have made a mistake. However, this situation is understandable because it has certain algorithms performed automatically.

Final Judgment

Although being with some limitations, Grammarly is worth trying, no matter you are a blogger, a student, a technical writer, or a novelist. It saves much time and effort in revising text, and it is quite affordable. Grammarly is a good helper in writing.

The post Grammarly Review – The Indepth Review You Must Read appeared first on WPMatter - WordPress Coding, Web Hosting, Theme, Plugin and SEO Matters.

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