Do you remember the good old days, when we had been writing documents in Microsoft Word? Well, those days are long gone, and now we write online most of the information. And if we can poorly correct spelling with the built-in browser or operating system spell checker – the correction of grammatical errors is really a problem here. Especially if you’re an ESL speaker.

Yes, Microsoft Word has basic grammar checker tool, but its abilities are so limited that it’s even fun, but then it’s sad.

Different devices – one problem

I can edit and review my blog post on any device I have – either my PC or laptop. If I need to change place, this is only laptop that can be accepted.

But there’s one problem. Have you noticed that the vocabularies on your different devices do not synchronize? You can add words to your spellchecker vocabulary while working on PC, but when you’re on laptop, you have to do it again. That is not cool.

How Grammarly can help bloggers?

If you blog not just for fun, but for profit –  you already know that you just can’t achieve anything without proper spelling and grammar. Nobody will read poorly written posts. Nobody will ever accept your guest posts if you decide to go with content marketing.

Being a blogger, an ESL teacher, and ESL speaker at the same time, I need a useful tool which will check my grammar just in the current moment of writing a post right on my blog page. And desktop programs, like Microsoft Word, are certainly not my choice for that.

So I decided to try Grammarly and here’s my review.

What touched me before I tried it was the curious fact about this service: it was founded by two friends – and both of them are ESL speakers just like me. They wanted to help people to write and speak a better kind of the English language. Today in their team there are more than 100 computational linguists, software engineers, and professional grammar users. Isn’t this great?

The company states that Grammarly corrects hundreds of complex errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style. It also promises to make different spellcheckers for British English, and US English.

 

You can use Grammarly in a variety of ways – online editor, browser extension or desktop app.

What is the practical difference to a writer between Microsoft Word and Grammarly?

Microsoft Word	Grammarly
●     This application can be taught new words.	●     This application learns new words daily.
●     No free “lifetime” version. You should pay Microsoft once to use it on one device. If you have more, you should pay every month or year as you choose.	●     Grammarly is completely free if you want to use it with basic set of features. Only premium features are paid. Its extension for your browser is also free of cost.
●     You cannot sync the spellchecker vocabulary between your devices.	●     Grammarly offers cloud application accessible from any of your devices.
●     Word gives you a brief and not user-friendly notification about your mistake. Sometimes it doesn’t give you the correct option because it doesn’t understand your misprints. It also changes the word before you notice this.	●     Grammarly gives a detailed and comprehensive explanation of the mistake you may have made. Maybe it’s not an error at all but the inconvenient place of the word. It says something like «Consider using another adjective to make your sentence more sharp and clear.» Then it provides me with another possible adjective.
●     Currently, Word marks all my British spelling efforts as wrong.	●     Grammarly shows some doubts about my correct writings when I write in UK English.
●     Word has a static built-in dictionary that doesn’t change as swift as the language does.	●     Grammarly regularly follows the language changes: grammar, vocabulary, and their new constructions.

Though there are some negative sides of Grammarly:

• It doesn’t always see some of my incorrect spellings.
• It can also give a completely wrong piece of advice.
• Also, my first effort to use its extension for Mac failed: it corrected everything in its best way, but my browser became slow as hell, so I had to remove the app.

Anyway, I think that Grammarly is the best choice among current offerings. Even with free version, you have the experience you’ll never have with any other grammar checking service or app. With premium version (starting from $29.95 per month), you’ll get advanced features like vocabulary enhancement suggestions, genre-specific writing style checks, plagiarism detector and more.

And if you get used to your old Microsoft Word interface – this is not a problem, because there’s even a Grammarly extension for Microsoft Office!

Okay, I wouldn’t waste your time any longer with this review – just sign up here and try it for yourself.

Best!