Those were the best 3 years of my live.

My main mission here is to sea the best of what Australia has to offer.

The rising trend of outdoor accomodations.

The above are just some of the examples of the mistake I’ve made ever since I’ve started to write professionally. I like to think that I’m a somewhat decent writer. I’m not going to win any Nobels or Pulitzers but put me in charge of teaching a classroom of fifth graders on creative writing and I’m pretty sure I’d do a decent job of it. To sum up, I’m good but still vulnerable to silly typos and other grammatical errors.

Even in the age of internet speak and slang, YouTube videos, Instagram stories and Cardi B (God bless her), grammars are still a priority. In a survey from the dating site Match.com, grammar ranks as the second most important factor for both men and women when it comes to dating, after teeth. Good grammar doesn’t necessarily make you sound sophisticated but it would at least make you sound much less like a fool.

As a professional writer in an SEO services industry, no matter how much misguided belief I have in my own prowess, I still have to admit that even in the best of times, I’m still prone to obvious mistakes. It’s fine if I’m writing for myself but when it’s a commissioned piece, it’s my own reputation that’s on the line. The routine was that once I’m done writing, I do a double check to see areas that can be improved and mistakes that can be corrected. Once that’s done, I gave it a final look over to see if I missed anything and only then I gave it for submission.

As you might’ve guessed, this process can take a while and might be exponentially longer depending on the length of the piece. I was never a fan of checking my own work, never have since elementary school, and it’s an understatement to say that sometimes, mistakes slip past my radar. It’s precisely because of this that I’ve begun to rely on Grammarly as my very own personal, yet flawed, editor.

What is Grammarly and how does it work?

As you might’ve probably guessed, Grammarly is an online grammar checking tool available as a web app, a desktop app, a browser extension, an add-on for Microsoft Word or even as an alternative for your smartphone keyboard. It’s available as both a free and premium service but both requires you to create an account first although you could simply use either your Facebook or Google credentials to register.

In the web app, you have the option of begin typing right in the web app, paste a text into the document or upload a text document of your own to begin the review process. Once that’s done, Grammarly underlines the text they consider problematic and gives you the reason why they think it should be corrected and to what. The neat thing is, if Grammarly detects a string that doesn’t exist in their dictionary (like an actual brand name or a slang), you can add it into your own personal dictionary for further references.

How useful Grammarly can be

The free version is strictly limited to simple grammatical errors, typos and punctuation issues but it’s the premium version that’s simply wonderful. For one, it gauges the readability of your piece using the widely accepted Flesch Readability Score and its measurement criteria. Like with the simple mistakes, Grammarly also suggest ways in which your particular piece could be improved in terms of readability, as any decent form of constructive criticism tool should work.

The second feature available for premium users is the plagiarism checker. There is a lot of other free plagiarism checker available on the internet and I’m not entirely sure if Grammarly’s is any better. Last but not least is the feature to have your own writing checked by Grammarly’s own team of proofreader. Yes, if you fancy a bunch of strangers digging into how your last romantic endeavors crumbled like a house of cards, you can actually do that.

For copywriters and content marketers, whose output volume are usually tightly monitored and scheduled, making sure that the quality of your writing doesn’t suffer from the pace of your writing is paramount. Grammarly acts as an expedient editing process. No, machine learning and natural language processing is still not sophisticated enough to replace human editors but no human editors could work as fast as Grammarly either.

The premium subscription though is quite a hefty ask, especially if it’s strictly for personal use. If you do care about your writing and is open to self-improvement from a machine learning algorithm though, Grammarly makes for an interesting value proposition. For those already working under an actual editor, going with Grammarly’s premium subscription is a tough ask but for independent writers, Grammarly could go a long way in helping you to improve your writing.