To Err Is Human; To Edit, Divine

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I'm a naturally skeptical person on a tight budget with no room for impulse subscriptions.

Any software I buy must past a rigorous, three-step system before earning my credit card number.

1. I must like it enough to use it more than once.

2. I must use it enough to add it to my "Quick Access" folder.

3. When, and only when, it migrates to my dock or desktop then I buy.

Grammarly skipped steps one and two the moment I read a draft and thought, "Wow, this is way better than what I had." See for yourself.

Grammarly's helped me craft everything. Academic essays, cover letters, product and service copy, business plans, marketing plans, articles for every occasion, lengthy social media posts, make-or-break emails, video synopses, short stories, my still-in-progress novels, and even melancholy 2 AM poetry. If it involves words, it involves Grammarly.

What I Love

Yes, there's the on-page functionality, but it's the real-world shift in my writing process that's made the difference. By automating the simple edits, I'm free to improve my writing instead of scrounging Google for niche, grammatical use cases. It's changed the steps I go through between inception and publication.

On a less systematic note, I love the assistant’s little one-liners. They bring joy and dopamine and those are excellent motivators.

I love that Grammarly eased so much of my "send" anxiety. I used to reread everything several times before hitting send/publish (I still do). Then I’d press the button. Then I’d read it over and over again, inevitably finding simple errors and passages that I could tactfully paraphrase (this still happens, only more rarely).

I love the start-of-doc goal setting. This little (and optional) pop-up does two things. First, it informs Grammarly, leading to more relevant edits. Second, the mere act of goal setting orients your train of thought, tuning your voice to the task at hand.

I LOVE the fact that Grammarly renews my perspective on something I’ve only just written. It feels like I’m reading with fresh eyes whenever text moves between word processors (still give content time to marinate before calling it a final draft).

I especially love the organizational depth introduced in the latest update. Instead of just explaining what rule was broken, Grammarly tells you how that error translates to the organization of your thoughts. It does this by categorizing mistakes into correctness, clarity, delivery, and engagement. The editor pinpoints what words and phrases aren't sending the message you want to send, and that matters.

Most of all, I love that, despite Grammarly doing all the heavy lifting for you, merely using the software will enhance your communication skills. It starts with the realization that you can more eloquently tell that bar story you’ve told for years. Your linguistic improvement just spirals upwards from there, as long as you know when to break a few rules.

What I Hate

The absolute worst thing about Grammarly happens to be the only aversion on the list: a distinct lack of formatting. I often start writing outside Grammarly before bouncing the text back and forth as I edit. I lose all composition in the process. To mitigate this, I’ve appropriated square parentheses notes as indicators of text format ([itc] or [bld], for example). Sure, it works, but it’s far from the most efficient system for editing large blocks of formatted text. This has been my only unresolved qualm in three-ish years of using Grammarly.

(UPDATE August 2, 2019: Grammarly now supports Rich Text Formatting. There is officially nothing I don’t like.)

Frankly, I don’t know what happened or when, but the next problem disappeared from Grammarly and my list of concerns. I’ll share it anyways; just for fun.

Once upon a time, if you manually changed an error, instead of making the assistant’s recommended change, Grammarly would consider the error resolved and fling you down the page to the next edit.

As someone who regularly plays around with alternatives before deciding on a solution, this was infuriating. In the middle of typing a different word, my cursor would spontaneously move, leaving an edit’s butt in the middle of an unrelated paragraph.

Again, this problem isn't a problem anymore. Do what you will with that bit of information.

(UPDATE March 30, 2020: There's more thing I hate about Grammarly. It isn't integrated into every text editor on the internet, so I'm still stuck copy-pasting my content back and forth. July 28, 2020: There's been a chrome extension for a while, I've just been using Opera.)

Is Grammarly worth it?

I’ve given you my pros and cons of Grammarly, bringing us to the question of USD$139.95/ year ($11.66/month): is it worth it?

As far as subscriptions go, Grammarly is affordable, fitting snuggly between Spotify’s $10/month and Netflix’s $13/month, assuming you opt for the yearly plan. You get access to all their premium features on the desktop client, the chrome extension, and the mobile keyboard.

In my experience, most of my content is what it is because of Grammarly, and a some select Spotify playlists, and it's hard to say which has greater influence on the final product.

So, to better answer the, “is it worth it” question, I have to ask you a question: what will you use Grammarly for? If your quality of life is divorced from the words you use and how you use them, then this isn't for you.

Grammarly is for your if you care about how you come across in our text-centric world, and want your thoughts to be understood.

I want to share this responsive software with the kinds of people who have something to gain from it. Click here to transcend spellcheck.

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