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I started using Grammarly a few years ago. While perusing the Internet (one of my favorite pastimes), I saw an ad for it. When I read that it will help improve your writing by checking your spelling and grammar, my first thought was “Microsoft Word” already does that. I installed the Word add-on anyway because I love to test things out. After seeing a few of my documents, I noticed that while Word said that the spelling and grammar were excellent, Grammarly had like 50 items that I should look at. After making changes to my documents based on their suggestions, I realized that they had a better flow than before. After that, I became a Grammarly user. I installed it on Outlook and Google Chrome. For my podcast, I use Google Docs a lot, and it also checks it there as well. A few months ago, I decided to get the premium version. The free version does a great job checking your spelling and grammar, but I wanted more.
Here are some of the reasons I decided to switch to the premium version of Grammarly.
Readability
The readability of what your writing is essential. Now that I have started blogging again, I wanted to improve the readability of my blog posts. Also, this helps with papers I have to write for school as well. If you are following Flesch-Kincaid, you should aim for the grade level to be around 7th-8th grade. You might raise an eyebrow and think to yourself, but I want to write for adults. Hear me out, you are. When your writing is in the 7th-8th-grade level, your ideas come across clearer, and it is easier for the majority of people to understand your writing. This blog post is currently at a 7th-grade-level. The way to check this in Grammarly is by clicking the “see performance” link in the upper-right hand corner.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism will you in serious trouble in school. Even though it’s easier than ever to search the Internet and copy+paste, don’t do that. First and foremost, it’s unethical. Second, there are tools out there that can check if your writing is plagiarized from someone else. Grammarly also helps with that. You can click the “Plagiarism” link, and it will scour over 30,000 sites to make sure that your writing is authentic. Before you get expelled, you can quickly press and button to make sure that you can submit a piece of work without getting into trouble.
Goals
Before I start writing, I make sure to set my goals. This is my favorite feature from Grammarly Premium. You can go into Goals in the right sidebar, and you can select what kind of writing you are working, and who is the audience. On top of that, you can choose your intent and tone. Are you trying to tell a story? A cheerful or respectful one? Is it supposed to have an analytical tone? Or just casual? It’s excellent because informal writing can be completely different than a formal one. Therefore, depending on that, your alerts on what you should change will be different.
There are also two other products that they offer: Grammarly Business and Grammarly Education. If you have a small team who wants an extra check before sending something out, then check out Business. If you are an educational institution, reach out to the company and let them know.
You should check out Grammarly. Start off with the free version. If you love it and want the extra perks, then go with Premium. It isn’t expensive, and it’s a great tool that you can use for different aspects of your life.
