How to use Grammarly

In this article, we want to cover using a great grammar checker out there: Grammarly. We'll tell you what it is, how it works, and how to use it. Also, you can just sump to the How to use Grammarly section immediately.

What is Grammarly?

Grammarly is a "writing aid" that job hunters, editors, and other professionals can use to proofread or edit their documents. It can check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes and enhance vocabulary usage.

Grammarly is more than the traditional tools offered by Word or email. It allows users to select editing input based on six business; academic, casual, technical, and general styles.

Grammarly has been available since 2009. 1 It is a sophisticated artificial intelligence system (AI) that has been refined and improved upon over time. It was developed by engineers and linguists who created algorithms to recognize patterns in good writing.

Grammarly states that Grammarly's machine learning system reviews every sentence and finds the correct replacements for any errors. It is cloud-based. There are two versions: a web version and one that integrates with MS Word.

The service is excellent for bloggers, too. If you're among them, see also the blogging ideas for beginners.

How Grammarly works

Grammarly assigns your document an overall score based on how many errors and issues it finds. The system then walks you through each possible grammatical issue, one by one. The system provides both a brief and a long explanation for each issue.

These explanations include examples of correct grammar. In some cases, the system will suggest alternative wording. However, the system will not force you to make changes. If you aren't satisfied with the suggested adjustments, you can decide to skip them.

A list of alternate spellings is provided, along with an indication of misspellings. The handy plagiarism checker will help writers find inadvertently copied content. It will alert you to similar texts found elsewhere and suggest citations that could be used to validate the text.

The synonym checker allows users to select optional words and avoid repetition. In addition, Grammarly provides explanations of suggested changes and information about the type of error you have made. To begin the process, users can copy and paste a document to the Grammarly website.

How to use Grammarly

There are many specific use cases you may have to use the service. But, generally, there is one primary purpose: to do a proper grammar check.

Register on Grammarly via a social provider or an email to start using the service. Then, you can see your dashboard, where you begin creating your documents to fix grammar issues.

It's all a web app, which you can access from any device with the Internet. In addition, mobile apps for iOS and Android(and keyboards extensions for them) and browser extensions are also available.

When you create a document(or create a new one), you'll see the page with the necessary features. That's where we do the job. On the left, you can see the body of a document, the text being checked. There are suggestions on how to fix your spelling and grammar issues on the right. You may accept them or dismiss them.

The most compelling details are shown on the right panel. Let's cover every metric one by one.

Overall score: Performance

This metric tells you how well-written a text is on the left. The score should increase once you apply the suggestions as your grammar issues disappear. However, if you add new spelling issues, the score goes down. The bigger the overall score, the better. Ideally, you would want a score of 100.

Overall score: Word count

This metric is what it tells us: it shows the metrics regarding word count, how many characters your text has, and how long it takes to read and speak.

Overall score: Readability

Also, one of the self-explicatory metrics is that it tells us how easy the text is to read. The principal metric in the section is the "Readability score" which is based on the Flesch–Kincaid readability test. 0 points mean the text is super challenging to read, whereas 100 points mean the text is straightforward to read.

Set goals: audience, formality, intent

In this section, you may adjust the writing goal for the text. Who is your audience? Is your text going to be formal or for everyone? What are your intent and niche? You make Grammarly suggestions better suited for your use case by answering these questions.

Correctness

This metric shows grammar and spelling mistakes by underlining them in red. This report is the most popular out there. The "Accept all ideas" feature is also a favorite of mine. The feature allows one to quickly review multiple writing suggestions and decide whether or not to accept them all.

Clarity

Grammarly will review a piece for awkward or clumsy sentence structure. The blue line highlights any clarity issues. Grammarly also loves to scan sentences using passive voice, which is a clarity issue.

The platform employs ML models to propose rewrites or other fixes. Therefore, these recommendations are not necessarily relevant. You will need to make your judgment. Despite that, many of these recommendations impressed me.

After you have corrected grammar errors, see how this metric changes.

Engagement

Grammarly will review a piece of writing and highlight difficult words or overused words. Grammarly also checks for awkward sentences. This report will help you improve your writing skills by identifying better synonyms.

Delivery

Grammarly evaluates a piece based on the tone and audience you prefer. It highlights purple issues. This report didn't provide me with as much value.

Plagiarism

Grammarly's plagiarism report is my favorite tool. Unfortunately, this tool is only available to premium users. Grammarly scans your writing and scans the Internet to highlight potentially plagiarized content.

This tool is ideal for college students and essayists who are concerned about not citing enough from their sources without proper attribution. This feature is an excellent tool for academic writers as well. In addition, it's helpful for peer review and checking for accidental plagiarism.

Grammarly's plagiarism detector can also be used if you have written an article but cannot remember where it came from. Writers can find out if they have inadvertently copied text or links from research sources. It is also possible to check if the freelancer you are working with is providing original content. This detector is also used to detect if someone has plagiarized popular articles on this site. I can then issue DMCA removal requests.

Using Grammarly to-do list

So, we've covered the fundamental Grammarly features to check the grammar of your texts. To start using the service, you should:

1. Register on Grammarly.
2. Go to the dashboard and create a new document to edit.
3. Click on the newly created document.
4. Adjust the goals of the writing to make suggestions better.
5. Notice how many grammar suggestions you have. Start fixing them.
6. Increase the overall score of the writing. People should understand the text easily.
7. Optional: run the plagiarism check to ensure your text is unique.
8. Optional: download Grammarly on your smartphone to use it on every device.
9. Optional: replace the default smartphone keyboard with the Grammarly keyboard.
10. Optional but recommended: install the Grammarly extension to do grammar correction online over many websites such as Google Docs and web messengers.

Why do we like Grammarly

Grammarly is a helpful tool for bloggers, occasional writers, and college students. When we looked for a grammar checker, some solutions provided part of Grammarly's functionality. However, they can't beat the machine learning approach and a vast database of texts the service used to make predictions and propose recommendations on how to improve. Primarily, it's helpful for English grammar correction: we suppose most of the texts in the database are in English. The platform also has a decent free plan.