Grammarly
Updated for version:
Accessible via: https://app.grammarly.com
Requires login via: Google, Facebook, Apple
Page contents
Ratings
Accuracy / Quality ★★★☆☆
Flexibility / Features ★★★☆☆
Data security / Privacy ★★☆☆☆
Pros/cons
Pros
- Rewriting text based on tone
- Does not use user input for model training
- Maintains text content
- Emphasizes content improvement suggestions over automatic adjustment
Cons
- No source listing for generated text
- Volume of suggestions significantly smaller in free version
- Only 100 prompts per month for the Generative AI feature
Description
Designed as a spelling and grammar correction tool primarily, Grammarly provides suggestions to the user for the correction of spelling or grammatical errors, or the improvement of the understanding or flow of the text. Since generative AI has been integrated into Grammarly, the tool also allows the formulation of draft texts, the detection and adjustment of the tone of the text, and more advanced text flow suggestions. While some of these suggestions are locked behind a subscription, the free version of Grammarly can already provide a helpful insight into potential avenues for improvement for your written text without an AI taking over the writing process.
Features and examples
Spelling and grammar suggestions
The key feature to Grammarly is to assess the spelling and grammar of a text and provide the user with suggestions for improvement. It is up to the user to determine whether to agree with the proposed change, or to disregard the suggestion. This way the control remains in the hands of the user. In the example below the text submitted contained a sentence which was potentially not optimally formulated according to Grammarly, so it suggested a change in wording to improve the clarity. It is then up to the user to agree with the suggestion, or to disregard it (as it could have been a stylistic choice by the author of the text to use the original wording).
Text (re)writing and documentation
When using Grammarly you can consult the ‘Generative AI’ menu on the right-hand side of the interface. Opening this will present you with a chat window in which you can generate draft texts, or input existing texts for revision. In the example below, we use Grammarly to write a draft text. We specify the contents and length of the text, and revise the text later.
It is allowed to reformulate a handful of sentences, but full paragraphs or texts risk being in violation of the Examining Board rules for students against AI fraud.
Chat sharing
The resulting text did not meet our expectations, hence we requested that Grammarly rewrote the second paragraph to be more in line with the content we envisaged for that paragraph.
After using this tool it is good to also document the usage of Grammarly. For this the chat window provides the ‘Acknowledge Grammarly gen AI use’ option in the ‘More ideas’ dropdown list. The resulting output can be placed in the appendix of your report to provide transparency regarding your use of AI within the Grammarly environment beyond the use for spelling and grammar checking.
In the example above you can also see other options for changing the tone of the text or to rewrite the text with a specific target length or complexity. The tone of the text is especially prominently featured in Grammarly, with a distinct change in the choice of words for the suggestions made by the AI depending on the requested tone. You can also see the ‘Insert’ button on the right, indicating that any output provided by the Grammarly AI should be taken only as suggestion, and the choice to include it in the actual document is the responsibility of the user.