It’s a grammar checker, but it checks more than just that. For academic writing, it checks for passive/active voice, infinitive splitting, ending sentences with prepositions, word confusion (less/fewer, etc.) and much more; you can adjust what kind of writing you want it to check for (academic, business, etc.). It tries to determine context, offers suggestions to improve your diction and cautions against word repetition.
Sometimes it offers unnecessary or ill advised suggestions, but you shouldn’t take any feedback blindly. If anything, it lets the writer be discriminatory on which suggestions to implement and which to ignore. It does not replace human proofreading, but it does strengthen essays by eliminating most if not all errors which may have snuck their way in the paper somehow.
The price of $29 a month is a ripoff for most people. If writing is a significant part of your career. In a student discount, I paid $45 for a year-long membership. If you can get it at a rate like that, then it is definitely worth the money. I most likely won’t renew but using it has made me more self-aware of my writing so that I am better able to proofread on my own.
I would recommend Grammarly for:
- Students who can get a student discount
- Professionals who write a lot for their career
There is also a free version of grammarly that exists as a chrome extension. It lacks some features; I forget which ones.
I use the free extension version. It’s not that bad without the full feature. For basic grammar/spelling it works pretty well, however, it’s not perfect. Some of the features you miss out on are the plagiarism checker, vocabulary enhancer, and advanced grammar checker. Plagiarism checker really isn’t needed and same goes for the advanced grammar checker. For advanced errors, I usually check what they are and isolate sections to find where they are. If it’s a really important essay/paper, I’ll look up the advanced error (ie. passive voice) and find ways to solve it myself. I think that helps me out more as a writer than just having Grammarly suggest edits. I’d say get the free one because that’s all you really need. All the fancy additions you could do yourself.
After my membership expires, I will go for the free version.
I use it daily to check emails and writing at work along with essays for school. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I’m a skilled writer and Grammarly makes me an even stronger communicator.