![]() Recent research about Grammarly highlights that it can be a useful but imperfect tool. The accurate corrections on my writing are most often typos related to missing or double words, also represented here. The inaccurate corrections are most often with articles and punctuation, as represented here. Here are some examples of some of the recent corrections Grammarly has given me. I tried Grammarly with some text that I had recently written, and it found 15 errors that Microsoft Word’s grammar checker didn’t find, most of which were accurate corrections. Instead, I was hopeful that I could find a tool to share with students who have concerns about lower-order concerns as they do final edits. This time I was not worried about being replaced. In the more than five years that have passed since the last time I considered Grammarly, I thought maybe it had improved greatly, so I decided to give it another try. It also now has services and features for more global concerns including a “tone detector.” An October 2020 product update suggests the Grammarly Premium “helps multilingual English speakers write more fluently.” According to its website, Grammarly now has 30,000,000+ daily users, is licensed by 1000+ educational institutions, has free extensions for web browsers so that it can give feedback on writing any text field (e.g., in Canvas message boards, Tweets, etc.) as it’s being written, and has a Microsoft Word plug-in. It offers me feedback as I draft emails in the web version of Outlook, collaborate on drafts in Google Docs, and elsewhere (whether I want corrective feedback or not). In my work and personal communications, automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) software seems to be everywhere I type. It’s many years later, and I’m now a Faculty Associate with UW-Madison’s Writing Center. I continued to provide writing support that didn’t include room for corrective software at the final editing stage. Occasionally students would ask me about Grammarly, but I would tell them that it might do more harm than good. My fear of being replaced by a machine was quickly assuaged. ![]() Many of the corrections were simply wrong, and some weren’t wrong but could be more confusing than helpful. I played around with different texts and wrote sentences with common grammar issues that I encountered in my work at the writing center to see what kinds of corrections Grammarly offered. At the time, you copied and pasted your text into the grammar checker on the Grammarly website. I was sure that it wouldn’t be able to catch errors in idiomatic phrases, collocation, and articles–and surely it would have just as many faulty corrections as correct ones. We’re here to help.I went to the Grammarly website to set my worries to rest. If you are struggling to understand the feedback you receive from Grammarly, come visit us in the Writing Center. This is why it is so important for you to engage with the revision and editing process by reading the suggestions carefully and understanding the concepts before deciding whether or not to incorporate the suggested changes. As a result, the program will occasionally make suggestions that are inappropriate for your paper. It is not, however, a substitute for classroom instruction or time spent in the Writing Center.Īs you use Grammarly, keep in mind that its suggestions are based on computer algorithms that can’t possibly account for all the nuances of the English language. It also helps reinforce the importance of revision and editing in the writing process. It can help point out areas of weakness in your writing and give you the talking points you need to get constructive feedback from your teachers and tutors. Grammarly is meant to act as a supplement to the instruction and help you are receiving from your instructors, your peer editing sessions, and your Writing Center visits. Although Grammarly addresses sentence-level issues of grammar, punctuation, and usage, it cannot address issues of content and development. We all want a quick fix from time to time, but there are no foolproof shortcuts when it comes to the writing process. No, but it can help you improve both your papers and your proofreading and editing skills. Questions or concerns? Contact the Writing Center at or call (315) 386-7308.
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