For anyone who has written anything digitally and shared that content beyond a community of one, Grammarly should be a mainstay in their arsenal of editing software.
Grammarly’s free software tier arms any would be writer with the tools necessary to check misspellings, grammar, and plagiarism long before any content hits the open web, a professor’s desk or executive’s inbox.
However, for those willing to shell out $29.95 monthly, be it personally or provided by a business account, will now get access to what amounts to an “inconsistency checker, ” as well as the other array of premium features.
Alongside checks for overused words, ineffective vocabulary use, hedging language, and usage statistics, premium users are now being granted with this new consistency checker which will detect and notify users of multiple variants or styles used within the same document.
When inconsistencies are found, users are notified and asked to choose a single style that is then applied throughout a document automatically, saving a writer time from having to go back and individually identify and address changes in style.
In a Grammarly blog post, the company cites several instances in which writers unwittingly deviate into inconsistent patterns such as the below example:
- Inconsistent: Please log in with your e-mail address and password. If there’s a problem, you can email our IT manager.
- Consistent: Please log in with your email address and password. If there’s a problem, you can email our IT manager.
- Consistent: Please log in with your e-mail address and password. If there’s a problem, you can e-mail our IT manager.
Grammarly is available for both Windows and macOS as a dedicated application or Office extensions, on mobile for both iOS and Android as a 3rd party keyboard app, as well as on the web or via the browser as a Microsoft Store, Chrome Web app and Mac App Store extension.
While available almost wherever users need it, the new feature appears to be only for the Grammarly Editor.
Anecdotally, I use Grammarly often and find the best application of the software is as a browser extension as most sites allow access to the software which results in real time in-line editing for most text-based experiences.
Of the browser extension offerings, I find that with the latest Edge-Chromium development, using the Chrome Web app store version to be a more consistent experience where the launch of the browser automatically signs a user in and begins the editing process. The Microsoft Store version often needs users to re-sign and a subsequent relaunch of the browser to function properly.
The Windows 10 app is solid but would require a few more additional clicks to get to the editing window.
As for the Office extension, while useful, I would advise against making it the default editing experience for two reasons, the first being, Office 365 editing experience is far more robust, and two, Grammarly pauses autosave by default last time I checked. So for those who lose battery power often, find themselves in an unprompted update process or computer shuts down randomly, the Grammarly Office extension may result in a loss of work.
Just my two cents.
