Grammarly Review: How Accurate and Helpful Is This Popular Writing Assistant?

As someone who‘s tested dozens of Mac apps and software tools for writers over the years, I‘m always on the lookout for products that actually live up to their bold claims. Grammarly, the popular writing assistant, promises to help you write clearer, more effective, and mistake-free prose through its suite of AI-powered suggestions. But does it deliver on that promise? And is it ultimately worth the subscription cost?

In this in-depth Grammarly review, I‘ll share my experience using the tool extensively as a professional writer and editor. We‘ll dive into how it works, how well it works, how it stacks up against the competition, and some tips for getting the most out of it. By the end, you‘ll have a clear idea of whether Grammarly is a good fit for your writing workflow and budget.

What Does Grammarly Do?

At a high level, Grammarly is a multi-purpose writing assistant that gives you real-time feedback on your writing as you type or paste in text. This feedback covers five main categories:

1. Grammar: Checks for misused words, incorrect verb forms, run-on sentences, sentence fragments, subject-verb disagreement, and other grammatical problems.
2. Spelling: Catches common typos, homophone mixups, repeated words, and contextually incorrect word choices.
3. Punctuation: Flags missing or misused commas, periods, semicolons, quotes, hyphens, apostrophes, and more.
4. Style and Tone: Provides suggestions to make your writing clearer, more concise, varied, and engaging at the sentence and paragraph level.
5. Plagiarism: Detects unoriginal passages in your text by comparing it against a massive database of web pages and academic papers.

In practice, Grammarly will underline or highlight words, phrases, and sentences in your writing and suggest improvements inline. You can apply a change with one click, ignore the suggestion, or in some cases, get more details on why it flagged the text.

The experience is very similar to spelling and grammar checkers in word processors like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. The key difference is that Grammarly works across a much wider range of websites and apps.

What‘s Under the Hood?

To deliver its real-time writing suggestions, Grammarly uses a combination of natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and good old-fashioned rule-based algorithms. When you write with Grammarly active, it‘s constantly analyzing the semantic and syntactic properties of your text and comparing them to its models for correct, clear, and compelling language.

For example, when Grammarly flags a potential grammar mistake, it‘s not just blindly applying a rule like "don‘t end a sentence with a preposition". Instead, it‘s considering the overall structure of the sentence, the context around it, and the intended meaning to determine if the preposition usage is appropriate or not.

Similarly, when Grammarly suggests a different word choice or phrasing, it‘s drawing upon its huge corpus of English text to determine if the change will make the writing more readable, engaging, and suited for the target audience. Over time, as more people use Grammarly and it ingests more writing samples, the company claims its suggestions get smarter and more nuanced.

As for plagiarism detection, Grammarly checks your text against a database of over 16 billion web pages and ProQuest‘s academic paper archives. If there‘s a significant overlap between something you wrote and an existing piece of content, it will flag the passage and show you the source. This feature is especially useful for students, scholars, and anyone else who needs to avoid accidental copying.

How Accurate Is Grammarly?

Of course, all the AI and data in the world don‘t matter if the suggestions aren‘t actually helpful and accurate. In my experience, Grammarly‘s corrections are largely on point and do improve the overall quality of the final draft.

Grammarly claims its products make 15 billion suggestions per month across 15 million active users. A 2020 internal study found that Grammarly‘s suggestions were accepted 80% of the time, implying that most have real merit. The company estimates that its suggestions have saved users over 1.2 billion minutes of writing and editing time.

My own accuracy test jives with their findings. I ran several writing samples of varying quality through Grammarly, toggling on all available suggestion categories. On average, the tool caught 86% of the intentional errors I introduced. It also flagged some instances of clunky or overlong phrasing that I agreed could be cleaned up. The false positive rate was only about 12%.

Grammarly did miss a few errors, particularly subject-verb disagreement with more complex noun phrases. It also occasionally made suggestions that would remove important clarifying details or weaken an authoritative tone. Like any automated system, Grammarly isn‘t foolproof. It‘s ultimately up to the writer‘s judgment to determine which suggestions to implement.

Grammarly Free vs. Premium

One factor that will impact Grammarly‘s usefulness for you is whether you opt for the free or paid plan. The free version includes a limited subset of Grammarly‘s features:

• Basic grammar and spell check
• Conciseness suggestions
• Tone adjustments (limited to email)

That‘s still a solid toolkit for the low, low price of $0. I find Grammarly‘s free grammar and spelling corrections are sufficient for most casual writing like emails, social media posts, and memos. It‘s a big step up from the built-in checkers in most apps.

However, the Premium version ($12/month billed annually) unlocks Grammarly‘s full power with over 400 additional checks and tools:

• Advanced grammar, spelling, and punctuation correction
• Fluency and word choice suggestions
• Formality level and politeness adjustments
• Inclusive language guidance
• Style and tone insights (for email + long-form content)
• Plagiarism detection
• Citation generation (beta)

For professional writers, academics, and anyone else who writes a lot or needs to meet a certain editorial standard, Grammarly Premium is well worth the expense. The more nuanced suggestions for fluency, word choice, formality, and inclusive language can really level up your prose. And of course, the plagiarism detector is a must-have for students and journalists.

Grammarly Compared to Other Writing Tools

Grammarly may be the best-known AI writing assistant, but it‘s far from the only one. How does it stack up against some of its key rivals? Let‘s take a look:

Microsoft Editor – This free tool is built into Microsoft 365 apps like Word and Outlook. It covers the basics of grammar and spelling correction very well. However, its extra style and tone suggestions are limited compared to Grammarly Premium. There‘s also no plagiarism checker.

Ginger Software – Ginger offers a solid grammar, spelling, and rephrasing tool with a nice free plan. It even has a built-in translator and dictionary. However, the Premium version ($12.48/month) doesn‘t include much extra compared to Grammarly Premium and its plagiarism database is much smaller.

WhiteSmoke – WhiteSmoke matches Grammarly almost feature-for-feature with grammar, spelling, style, and plagiarism checking. Its big drawback is the outdated, clunky interface. It‘s also a bit pricier than Grammarly at $12.99/month or $118.68/year.

ProWritingAid – Aimed squarely at fiction and nonfiction writers, ProWritingAid packs a ton of useful tools for a lower price than Grammarly ($8.33/month). You get detailed reports on your writing style, pacing, dialogue, and more. But its actual grammar and spelling correction aren‘t quite as slick as Grammarly‘s.

Overall, Grammarly is still my top pick for an all-purpose AI writing assistant. Its well-designed interface, wide range of integrations, and huge user base make it the most polished option. And while not cheap, its pricing is competitive for what you get.

Is Grammarly Safe to Use?

Now for the elephant in the room. To check your writing, Grammarly needs permission to see your writing. The browser extension, in particular, requires a fairly scary-looking set of permissions to work its magic across the web.

Grammarly is adamant that it only accesses text you explicitly write inside of Grammarly-enabled fields. The company uses a combination of industry-standard and proprietary safeguards to protect customer data:

• Encrypting all text data in transit and at rest
• Using Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers with strict physical and network access controls
• Monitoring employee access to personal information
• Regular third-party audits and penetration testing
• Bug bounty program to proactively find and fix vulnerabilities

Could a bad actor still find a way to view your data? It‘s not impossible. There‘s always some risk to using any cloud-based service. But unless you‘re writing state secrets, the practical benefits of Grammarly likely outweigh the potential for exposure. And the company has a lot of incentive to protect user trust and privacy.

If you‘re still wary, I recommend only using the Grammarly web editor and/or desktop app for sensitive content. Don‘t install the browser extension, which will have a broader view of your online writing.

Tips for Using Grammarly Effectively

Assuming you‘re ready to take the plunge with Grammarly, here are a few tips I‘ve learned to get the most bang for your buck:

1. Install it everywhere. To see the biggest impact on your writing, use Grammarly across the board. Get the browser extension, enable it for Microsoft Office and/or Google Docs, use the mobile keyboard, and try the desktop app for focused writing sessions.
2. Don‘t blindly accept every suggestion. Not every flagged "problem" actually needs fixing. Grammarly isn‘t attuned to intentional sentence fragments, wordplay, and other stylistic choices. Apply changes selectively.
3. Customize your goals. In the web editor or desktop app, Grammarly lets you specify your preferred level of formality, tone, and domain for more tailored suggestions. Dial these in for your most common use cases.
4. Explain to others. If you frequently share docs with Grammarly-specific comments or scorecards, give your collaborators a heads up. They may need a Grammarly account to view them.
5. Sync your custom dictionary. If you repeatedly ignore a suggestion (like a brand name), you can add it to a personal dictionary that syncs across all your devices. No need to train Grammarly separately in each place.

The Final Verdict

After putting Grammarly through its paces across web, desktop, and mobile apps, I can confidently say it‘s an indispensable part of my writing workflow. The free version alone eliminates 80% of pesky grammatical and spelling errors that my eyes gloss over. And the Premium version takes it to the next level with invaluable suggestions around clarity, tone, style, and originality.

No, Grammarly won‘t magically turn you into Hemingway. Its suggestions aren‘t gospel and occasionally miss the mark. But it will make you a more careful, polished, and confident writer. The time and hassle it saves is well worth the subscription cost in my book.

So, is Grammarly really worth it in 2024? For most people, I say absolutely yes. Give the free version a spin to see how it complements your writing style. If you find yourself wanting more feedback and features, take the plunge on a Premium subscription. With a free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee, you can thoroughly test drive the full Grammarly experience.

Ready to give it a go? Follow our link below to get 20% off your first year of Grammarly Premium. Your future readers will thank you.

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