Recently, I had to write a paper for an art history class of mine, and although I consider myself to be a decent writer, I decided to give the Grammarly app a try.
Grammarly is a free chrome extension that aims to help correct not only your typos and spelling errors in general, but also “makes sure everything you type as clear, effective, and mistake-free.”
A few of the positive things I found about using Grammarly is that it’s free, easily accessible via the web (downloading the chrome extension is not necessary; as long as you have an account, you can login to use straight from their website), and can easily and quickly show you any grammar errors made within anything you happen to be writing. You are also able to download Grammarly to use off the web and within the Microsoft Office suite.
A couple things I found negative about Grammarly are that it does not currently support use within Google applications, such as Google Docs, which happens to be my preferred method for word processing. Whenever I wanted to check any part of my writing, I had to copy and paste my text while using their website. Their features are also limited. Only if you decide to pay the monthly premium price, Grammarly will not do the following:
- Advanced checks for punctuation, grammar, context, and sentence structure
- Vocabulary enhancement suggestions
- Genre-specific writing style checks
- Plagiarism detector that checks more than 8 billion web pages
Overall, Grammarly didn’t do a bad job of assisting me in making sure I wrote my paper well. However, being a college student, I much prefer apps that don’t work on a Freemium platform. In addition, I don’t typically write papers or write enough in general to justify even contemplating paying for their premium plan. In all honesty, I can put that $30 towards something more important and/or useful every month instead.
Rating: 3.5/5
