Freelancer Productivity Tool Review: Grammarly

As a freelancer, it’s essential to create professional documents. Whether you’re producing blog posts, contracts, case studies, emails, or any other written communication, correctly formatted documents are paramount. Grammarly can help you accomplish this goal.

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So, What is Grammarly?

Grammarly is an application used to check spelling, grammar, and much more. It uses artificial intelligence to find many types of issues in your writing. However, it goes further than simple spell and grammar checking by attempting to understand what you are writing to pick up more nuanced issues that you might want to address.

Why Should You Use Grammarly?

You may be thinking, “I already have a spell and grammar checker built into my applications. So why do I need Grammarly?” I’ve found that Grammarly provides an exceptional grammar checking tool over the built-in tools in some software, like Microsoft Word. Also, you can use Grammarly in some places where you don’t usually have a spelling and grammar checking tool. We’ll look at where you can use Grammarly later in the article.

Grammarly can give you that extra edge to help you write better, faster, and more professionally. One feature of Grammarly that I like is its ability to provide changes to some of my out-of-control sentence structures to make my text more readable. With this feature, you can see what the current text is and the changes Grammarly suggests simultaneously, making it easy to determine which version sounds better.

Where Can You Use Grammarly?

Once you have a Grammarly account, you can use the product in many different places. Let’s look at each one.

Grammarly Desktop Apps

You can install the Grammarly native app on Windows or Mac OS computers. The Grammarly editor will allow you to check existing documents or create new ones. You can import the following file types into the editor:

• doc
• docx
• odt
• rtf
• htm
• html
• txt

You can only export a document from Grammarly to the docx file type. So if you have some other file type that you want to check and update, you’ll need to copy the text from the corrected file and paste it into the original file.

Web Application

You can access the Grammarly browser app at https://app.grammarly.com. This editor works like the desktop app, and any documents you work on in the browser app will be in the desktop app and vice versa.

Browser Extensions

Grammarly has extensions for the following Internet browsers:

Once you have the extension installed in the browser, you’ll be able to check the text you enter in almost any web page field.

Office Apps

Grammarly has add-ins you can use with Microsoft Word and Microsoft Outlook. Installing the Office add-in will allow you to check your documents while staying in Word or Outlook. After you have the add-in installed, you’ll see a “Grammarly” tab on the command ribbon of the application.

While working in Word or Outlook, you can open Grammarly, which will display a pane to the right of your document. The pane will show you any Grammarly issues. Then, as you write, you can make changes based on Grammarly’s suggestions.

To turn on Grammarly in Word or Outlook:

• Click the “Grammarly” command ribbon tab.
• Click the “Open Grammarly” icon.

Or:

• Use the Open/Close Grammarly icon on the Home tab.

Mobile Devices

On Android and iOS mobile devices, you can install a Grammarly keyboard to replace the device’s keyboard.

Apple iPad

I don’t own an Apple iPad, but there is an option to load Grammarly on an iPad.

What Types of Issues Does Grammarly Find?

Grammarly searches for several different types of issues in your writing. The app uses a different color to represent each type of issue. The colors used are:

Below I’ve listed each issue type with some examples of the specific issues Grammarly may find.

Correctness

The correctness issue type in Grammarly will detect issues with grammar, spelling, punctuation, consistency, and fluency.  

Here are some examples:

Clarity

The Clarity check looks for how easy to read, and to the point your text is. This check identifies issues with conciseness, clear sentences, and formatting.

Here are a couple of examples:

Engagement

The engagement checker makes your writing more interesting. Grammarly alerts you to times when you overuse the same word or when you use multiple words when one would do. Using engaging terms can help you expand your vocabulary and can make your text less monotonous.

Here are a couple of correction examples:

Delivery

The words you use impact how your message is received. You want your message to come across as confident and polite in most cases. Grammarly can pinpoint issues with your delivery by checking your tone, confidence, politeness, formality level, and inclusive language.

Here are a couple of correction examples:

Plagiarism

In addition to using the above checks, you can turn on Grammarly’s plagiarism check to see if any of the text in your documents is duplicated somewhere on the Internet. The tool currently checks your text against a database of over 8 billion entries. If you find some of your text elsewhere on the Internet, you can either change your version or cite the source with the information Grammarly provides you.

How Much Does Grammarly Cost?

These are the current Grammarly plans and pricing:

With the Free plan, you get some basic spelling and grammar checks in each issue type category. If there are issues beyond the basic checks, you will also see that there are “X” number of additional problems you would see corrections for if you upgraded. The Free plan does not include the Plagiarism checker.

With the Premium and Business plans, you have access to all the checks Grammarly performs. The Premium plan is for single users, while the Business plan is for teams. The Business plan includes functionality to manage team access.

For the most up-to-date details of Grammarly’s plans and pricing, visit the Plans page of the Grammarly website.

Conclusion

Grammarly is an excellent tool that helps you generate professional documents. Always remember that any spelling/grammar checker will not be correct 100% of the time, so you can always choose to ignore any of the suggestions with which you disagree.

Do you think Grammarly’s worth the price? If you do already use Grammarly, has it helped you to become a better writer? I know it has helped me.

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Brenda Keller is a software coach who helps people feel comfortable with and learn how to use software. She has been an Excel user since it was first introduced in 1985 and has taught the program in various settings. Her new Microsoft Excel: Quick Start course was designed to help those new to Excel or those wanting a refresher to get a handle on Excel’s key features quickly. Check out her course on Udemy here or view her YouTube channel here to get more help with Excel. To learn more about Brenda Keller, check out her official website here.