Grammarly Premium - a decent AI "editor"

bikegremlin · July 2022

I've given Grammarly Premium service a try.

It may help any "content writers" or anyone who writes a lot in English.
( @Ympker @Vyas and any other content writers I may have missed )
My native is not supported, and I don't write articles in other languages.

Not very cheap - about $150 per year.
However, even if you don't create more than one article per month, it costs less than a good editor.

What it does:
Urges you to write shorter and simpler sentences if your English is not very good.
Helps you create more "natural," "native-sounding" sentences if your English is good.

For the longer, more complex sentences, you must know when to disregard its suggestions. It doesn't handle the complex stuff perfectly every time. Nonetheless, even when it gets stuff wrong, it warns you to reconsider the wording and the structure. I found this very helpful.

For any sponsored (paid for) articles, I still consider it unprofessional to not hire an editor. But for most other articles - I think it improves quality at a fraction of a cost and speeds up my workflow (not going back-and-forth with an editor for the "small stuff").

More long-winded, with all the pros, cons, examples, and bugs:
My Grammarly Premium "review"

I've reported all the bugs and problems to the Grammarly team, and we'll see if they'll do anything about those. I'm not an optimist, but the bugs aren't too bad, it's still quite workable.

skorupion · July 2022

Ye, tbh I wanted to get Grammarly premium, as I already use normal Grammarly on a day-to-day basis, but the price is just a big fat NO.

bikegremlin · July 2022

@skorupion said:
Ye, tbh I wanted to get Grammarly premium, as I already use normal Grammarly on a day-to-day basis, but the price is just a big fat NO.

They did brilliant marketing:
While I was using their free "version," they would show me a sentence re-structure example once per article, and state I'd get that all the time with the Premium.

Those examples were scaringly good.
Including a lot of rewording, switching places, and even removing several words - with a result that looks so easy to read and understand I felt stupid.

This made me go with a 7-day trial when I had some articles to do.
And I considered it worth keeping.
For me, it's a language learning and writing style improving tool - as if I'm paying for a tutor.

But I wouldn't have tried it without the showcases of what it does, nor if I never earned any money from my writing.

A good alternative is the Hemingway Editor.
But it doesn't come with a browser plugin (so can't be used directly with WordPress editor), and no Linux app.
While the online editor is a bit "bulky" for me to use.

skorupion · July 2022

Let's be real someday someone will be able to either replicate it or pirate it.

MikeA · July 2022

My dad had dyslexia and he mentioned Grammarly to me once or twice, he didn't use it really but I know it was useful when he was writing important emails and whatnot. It's great from what I've seen.

bikegremlin · July 2022

@MikeA said:
My dad had dyslexia and he mentioned Grammarly to me once or twice, he didn't use it really but I know it was useful when he was writing important emails and whatnot. It's great from what I've seen.

I've been very, very reluctant.
I thought it's better to just learn and pay attention when writing (and editing).
Also, I try to avoid paying when possible - things add up pretty easily, pretty quickly, and more costs make you less independent
(when you are used to being poor and hungry, and make peace with the fact you'll die tomorrow, or pretty soon anyway, no one can enslave you, not really - the power of negative thinking is what I call this. I'll make some life-coaching seminar out of it and make millions one of these days... now, where's my medication...).

My first eye-opener was starting to work with a good editor.
"Bed spilling" and poor grammar are relatively trivial to fix, at least for me.
Yet, a good editor's feedback was a big eye-opener regarding sentence structure and readability.
I still don't always get that right.

Then, I saw that Grammarly Premium got pretty close.
More often than not, I disregard its suggestions.
However, they make me pay attention to "tricky," hard-to-comprehend sentences, so I can see how to restructure them.

Fun fact:
Grammarly rates this post's first paragraph as a complete incomprehensible clusterfuck.
So it does get it right sometimes!

iVlad · July 2022

Grammarly is awesome, and I use it every day. I do have an editor, but with Grammarly, I don't completely look stupid when I do have to use an expert.

skorupion · July 2022

Not going to lie even with normal very casual writing (like the one I'm going rn) it fixes any mistakes like small i instead of capital I, and even miss presses on the keyboard.

Ympker · July 2022

I've been using Grammarly free for a while ajd also once had access to a Grammarly Premium account from another LE member ( @sanvit iirc?). It was definitely quite useful and produced surprisingly good results. I might get premium again when I write my thesis paper

AlwaysSkint · July 2022

Hmm.
[Could compensate for my lazy typing and/or mid-sentence restructure.]

vyas · July 2022

Interesting..
I have a couple of tools (copywritely and zoho writer) that have similar features, so also Ink App. So never felt the need for grammarly.

But now I am thinking.... while narrating the audio version of my book (published; 2014) I discovered a few typos. Maybe I can use the trial of something like Grammarly and do a content "sanity check" refresh on my book- atleast the electronic version will get updated that way.

And do a sort of A/B testing with Zoho & Grammarly.

.#foodforthought.

mikho · July 2022

Grammarly, the browser plugin helps me a lot when writing in English.

It actually corrected me on this post

Ympker · July 2022

Does anyone remember the times before Grammarly, though? The times where cociu would teach us involucration and other intriguing vocabulary. Where it was about guessing the meaning of the phrase, only to realize that what you thought you knew about sisters was entirely wrong? People would still understand each other because no matter the sisters or the extent of involucrated vps, as long as the discounts were coming, ppl were coming

mikho · July 2022

@Ympker said:
Does anyone remember the times before Grammarly, though? The times where cociu would teach us involucration and other intriguing vocabulary. Where it was about guessing the meaning of the phrase, only to realize that what you thought you knew about sisters was entirely wrong? People would still understand each other because no matter the sisters or the extent of involucrated vps, as long as the discounts were coming, ppl were coming

Perhaps that's the reason why people have so many VPSs?
No one actually understood what they bought, it was just $7 and BAAM! Got another one.

skorupion · July 2022

@Ympker said:
Does anyone remember the times before Grammarly, though? The times where cociu would teach us involucration and other intriguing vocabulary. Where it was about guessing the meaning of the phrase, only to realize that what you thought you knew about sisters was entirely wrong? People would still understand each other because no matter the sisters or the extent of involucrated vps, as long as the discounts were coming, ppl were coming

involcuration never died

chris · July 2022

@mikho said:

@Ympker said:
Does anyone remember the times before Grammarly, though? The times where cociu would teach us involucration and other intriguing vocabulary. Where it was about guessing the meaning of the phrase, only to realize that what you thought you knew about sisters was entirely wrong? People would still understand each other because no matter the sisters or the extent of involucrated vps, as long as the discounts were coming, ppl were coming

Perhaps that's the reason why people have so many VPSs?
No one actually understood what they bought, it was just $7 and BAAM! Got another one.

LowEnd LuckyDips should actually become a thing as a little joke!

Logano · July 2022

@mikho said:
VPSs

Does Grammarly say it's VPSs? I always thought it was "-es after s"

bikegremlin · July 2022

@Logano said:

@mikho said:
VPSs

Does Grammarly say it's VPSs? I always thought it was "-es after s"

VPSs or VPS-s - either of the two is fine, apparently.
/According to Grammarly

havoc · July 2022

@bikegremlin said:
Urges you to write shorter and simpler sentences if your English is not very good.
Helps you create more "natural," "native-sounding" sentences if your English is good.

Seems like two contradicting claims? Native sounding sentences by people with good command of English tend to be complex

vyas · July 2022

@bikegremlin

Helps you create more "natural," "native-sounding" sentences if your English is good.

You mean sound like a "Native" while Au Naturale ? (@ehab don't get ideas)

bikegremlin · July 2022

@havoc said:

@bikegremlin said:
Urges you to write shorter and simpler sentences if your English is not very good.
Helps you create more "natural," "native-sounding" sentences if your English is good.

Seems like two contradicting claims? Native sounding sentences by people with good command of English tend to be complex

I see your point.

Depending on your target audience (that can be set), Grammarly may not "complain" about complex sentences.

However, since its suggestions aren't always good with long sentences, for people who aren't fluent, it's best to stick with shorter sentences - Grammarly gets those right 99% of the time (also, such people are more likely to make mistakes when trying to write long sentences).

Likewise, for those who are fluent, long sentences should generally be avoided unless there's a good reason.
You can write and talk naturally without using long sentences or "complex" words.
This does largely depend on the target audience and the goal of your writing though.

ralf · July 2022

A counter point to this is that I've helped proof-read some Chinese friends' theses before they submitted. They'd already done a couple of iterations through grammarly and it was happy with their work, but as a native English speaker I found them all to have glaringly bad grammar errors. Maybe they just ignored those errors or maybe the paid-for one is better, but from having seen this from a number of people's work, I'd say that grammarly is maybe useful as a tool for spotting some errors, but you shouldn't get used to relying on it to catch everything, even obvious things.

AlwaysSkint · July 2022

Ah widnae ken!

bikegremlin · July 2022

@ralf said:
A counter point to this is that I've helped proof-read some Chinese friends' theses before they submitted. They'd already done a couple of iterations through grammarly and it was happy with their work, but as a native English speaker I found them all to have glaringly bad grammar errors. Maybe they just ignored those errors or maybe the paid-for one is better, but from having seen this from a number of people's work, I'd say that grammarly is maybe useful as a tool for spotting some errors, but you shouldn't get used to relying on it to catch everything, even obvious things.

I agree.

In its free version, it basically only fixes your "bed spilling."

The paid version is more powerful.
Regarding the thesis example: did your friends stick to short, simple sentences? If not, then Grammarly Premium can make them be "technically" grammatically correct, but it can't interpret the meaning of the whole article (even one whole paragraph), so it's not a foolproof solution.

Again, the free version doesn't even attempt to do any real grammar correction, apart from the simplest things.
In other words, we're not talking about the same tool.

havoc · July 2022

Surprised there isn't a self-hosted version of this. Like in theory text should be easier than say speech

bikegremlin · July 2022

@havoc said:
Surprised there isn't a self-hosted version of this. Like in theory text should be easier than say speech

If they are smart, they should be training the AI using user feedback (available from their browser plugin and on-site tool) and millions of articles they analyze daily.

If they're really smart, they should be storing and selling all the personal data and passwords that get analyzed if the browser plugin is left active while working with them.

tridinebandim · August 2022

I just saw quillbot in a YouTube video. It may be an alternative or may have a better free tier. I don't know. I didn't use it. I just wanted to toss it into the thread (toss verb suggested by quillbott)

Lee · August 2022

@bikegremlin said: Not very cheap - about $150 per year.

Been using it for years, and never paid more than $50 for it. They are constantly running offers at the $50 mark. So anyone considering it, do not pay $150 or close to it.

It is good though, keeps you right when you are typing long content at speed.

HalfEatenPie · August 2022

I know I'm late to this thread.

But I used to use Grammarly for a short period but... Their popup and well... everything was freaking annoying.

Also, their metric for calculating their "checked with grammarly" (early on anyways) was based on how frequently your writing was submitted for review. Something that was done maybe every character click or "state" change.

I got tired of it and removed it. I was happy with the product, but wasn't happy with how many "bubble notifications" kept popping up.

hostdare · August 2022

I had been using Grammerly free a long time ago but it crashed or slowed my browser a few times for some reason. I removed it.
I reinstalled it again after this thread. My English is not great but I do not think I will pay 150 for the premium version.

legendary · August 2022

Is it grammarly not doing "a favor of bear"? I mean you have to less think about grammar your-self and rely on a tool. This effectively reduce your own ability to learn language nuances. Dangerous tool + expensive.

Grammarly Premium - a decent AI "editor"

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