In this review, we will analyze not the device, but the Ukrainian online service Grammarly , created to improve the skills of written English. The service is aimed at everyone who often communicates in English, teaches it in courses or at the university, conducts business correspondence, and so on. Next, we will explain what exactly are the advantages of Grammarly, and what are the disadvantages, for whom the service will be indispensable, and for whom it is better to look for something else.

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What is Grammarly

The Grammarly IT company was founded in 2009 by three natives of Ukraine: Maxim Litvin, Alexey Shevchenko and Dmitry Lider. The service he created works on the basis of artificial intelligence and helps to comprehensively improve what is written in English.

Grammarly has free and paid versions. The basic version makes it possible to track spelling, punctuation and grammar. Premium adds text optimization to improve clarity, better word selection and vocabulary diversity, creating a general tone of text depending on its purpose, and, importantly for these times, monitors the inclusiveness of the English language. That is, the program in every possible way avoids expressions that can even remotely be perceived by users of Western culture as insulting, sexist, and so on.

Grammarly paid subscription can be of two types: individual (Grammarly Premium) and for organizations (Grammarly Business). The second option includes all the features of Grammarly Premium, as well as individual features for organizations and teams (Style Guides, snippets, advanced analytics, etc.).

A month of Premium in the first case costs 12 dollars (340 hryvnias), but subject to payment for a year in advance. If you pay once a month, then it is already 30 dollars (851 hryvnia), and once a quarter – 20 dollars (567 hryvnia). A group subscription is priced starting at $12.5 per month per user when billed annually. There is a discount for teams of more than 10 people.

Grammarly Interface

Grammarly is ascetic in terms of design and as easy to use as possible. After registration, the program offers to conduct a virtual tour, select the type of future texts and the option to use the service, and then sends the user to the main screen.

On the left there is a list of sections, and on the right is the information inside each of them. The My Grammarly section is the home page. There are examples of editing texts using the service. Here, the necessary documents are loaded from the outside or new ones are created.

The Account section contains all the account data and its settings, and in the Apps section, you can install one of the available extensions, download a utility or a desktop version of the online service. In the Premium section, you can switch to a paid version and learn about its advantages over the free one. At the very bottom there is a transition to the support section and a button to log out of your account.

Features Grammarly

Grammarly is a cross-platform service that is available on all popular platforms:

• online editor (web version);
• browser extensions (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Microsoft Edge);
• desktop applications for Windows and Mac;
• a set of applications for iOS (application for iPad, browser extension for Safari, editor for iPhone);
• mobile keyboards for Android and iOS;
• add-ins for Microsoft Office

In the extension format, the service works with almost all sites and applications. It can be used in mail, documents, website layout and content.

The mobile phone version (Android and iOS) is an application with a convenient Grammarly mobile keyboard, which contains a menu with account settings, a synonym selection function, a tone detector, etc. Incidentally, Grammarly’s tone detector uses a combination of rules and machine learning to identify signals in text that shape its overall tone. By analyzing word choice, wording, punctuation, and even capitalization, Grammarly can show what impression a message is likely to have on its reader (sounding neutral, optimistic, grateful, aggressive, excited, formal, etc.)

The PC version of the service is integrated at the operating system level, which allows it to be used in a number of applications for which the service was previously unavailable – Slack, Discord, and so on.

The most convenient option is the Grammarly extension for Google Chrome. In this case, the service works on almost any page, be it Google Docs, mail, a text editor, a website builder, for example, our WordPress, and so on.

When English text appears at a specific location on the page, a green Grammarly icon appears. For example, in Google Docs, it is in the lower right corner. The text is immediately checked and underlined words or sentences appear in it, for which the service has questions. If desired, a menu of corrections opens on the right side. Here you can see the overall assessment of the text, correction options, spelling rules, suggestions for replacing words, and more.

Even in the free version, Grammarly is a pretty good tool for working with English text. The desired document, speech or letter can be uploaded as a file or simply copied into the built-in text editor.

The online service finds typos and frequently repeated words, suggests replacing misspelled and highlights grammatical errors, and also explains the rules that help you avoid making them again.

The basic version of working with text in English significantly improves letters sent to clients or partners, student homework, correspondence with foreign friends, and so on.

In the Premium version, the interaction with the text becomes even deeper. For more accurate editing of words and sentences, the service offers to configure its work in a special window. A number of important parameters are selected here: for whom the text is being written, what is its type, what tone is required and what is the purpose of the written text, for example, to tell a story or simply to inform about new rules within the company.

The full list of possible text target settings is as follows:

• Audience (general, competent (having specialized knowledge), expert)
• Level of formality (informal, neutral, formal)
• Field (academic, business, general, email, casual, creative)
• Tone (neutral, confident, joyful, optimistic, etc.)
• Purpose (inform, describe, convince, tell a story)

To get started, you need to click on the New icon on the My Grammarly or Upload tab just below to upload a ready-made version. If desired, the document can be downloaded or deleted.

Inside Grammarly, a minimalistic and fairly convenient text editor is built in. It is into it that the user enters after the actions above. In the upper left corner, there is a green Grammarly icon with three horizontal stripes. Clicking on it brings up a vertical menu on the left side. Here you can also create or upload a new document, print text, select a language (various versions of English), copy, paste, contact support, and so on.

At the very bottom, they placed a toolbar where they let you work with fonts, their sizes, highlight the title, put a link, and so on. All this helps to bring any text into the most ready state for sending or publishing.

On the right side there is a menu with hints and layers for working with text. The above-mentioned parameter selection window is immediately available, various tips for correcting are given, the rules are explained and the text is evaluated according to various criteria.

In the lower right corner there is a button to check the text for plagiarism.

The overall assessment of the written can be viewed in a separate window. Here are the readability parameters, the number of words, the time to read, vocabulary, the percentage of unique and rare words.

Use cases

Below we will look at several examples of text (a business letter, informal communication, an article and an excerpt from a fiction book), find out what Grammarly proposes to do with them and what will happen before and after all the proposed edits.

After uploading the text to the service, Grammarly gives it an overall score and suggests edits highlighted in different colors. All Grammarly errors are grouped into four categories, hence the four different colors of underlining: correctness (grammar, spelling and punctuation), clarity (conciseness and clarity of text), fun (variety of vocabulary and avoidance of repetition), tone (formal, polite, confident and other). For better work on texts, especially if they are of different types, be sure to select the desired options in the Goals window on the right vertical panel.

In the case of business correspondence , Grammarly pointed out the misspelling of the word, noticed the mismatch of punctuation marks, and also suggested shortening the sentence and making it more readable.

The base was initially not bad and received 87 points out of 100 possible. After minor corrections, the letter scored 96 points. As it was written above, the service stubbornly recognized my last name as an error and tried to replace it with another one (however, this problem can be solved very simply, just add the last name, first name and other rare words to the user dictionary). If not for this, then the letter could well have received 99 or 100 points.

Text before:

Hello. My name is Pavel Chuikin, I am the author of reviews of the Ukrainian IT publication ITC.ua. Our media is the first in Ukraine in terms of views and the number of visited pages among publications that write about technology. We like your gadgets and various devices, so we would like to take some of them for review and work on this scheme further. Tell me who you can talk to about this and how all this can be organized?

Below I leave more detailed information about our publication, my contacts, contacts of the advertising department, the editor-in-chief and his deputies.

With best regards, Pavel Chuikin

Text after:

Hello. My name is Pavel Chuikin. I am the author of reviews of the Ukrainian IT publication ITC.ua. Our media is the first in Ukraine regarding views and the number of visited pages among publications that write about technology. We like your gadgets and various devices, so we would like to take some of them for review and work on this scheme further. So tell me who you can talk to about this and how all this can be organized?

Below I leave more detailed information about our publication, my contacts, contacts of the advertising department, the editor-in-chief and his deputies.

With best regards, Pavel Chuikin.

When checking informal correspondence with a friend, it also turned out that I had an excellent initial version with 92 points. But it also had room for improvement, so in the end the maximum result came out. Grammarly pointed out the semicolon and semicolon errors and suggested that the sentence be reworked to make it sound better.

Text before:

Hello, Anna This is Pasha from Odessa. If you remember, we met in Prague, then we went to the Carpathians together.

How are you? How is your leg? ?

I wanted to say that I will soon be with you in Belgrade and would like to meet in person. I will be there for a few days.

Text after:

Hello Anna. This is Pasha from Odessa. If you remember, we met in Prague, and then we went to the Carpathians together.

How are you? How is your leg? ?

I wanted to say that I will soon be with you in Belgrade and meet in person. I will be there for a few days.

The service immediately rated a randomly selected article about Leonardo Da Vinci at 96 points, but at the same time offered some useful edits: pointed out the incorrect spelling of age in words, suggested adding an article, rearranging the phrase and replacing several individual words with more suitable ones. As a result, again, the highest score came out.

Text before:

They called him “fat boy,” this seventeen-year old apprentice in the studio of Florentine painter Verrocchio who would receive care packages from his step-father, a pastry chef. The bastard son of a Florentine notary and a lady of Vinci, the boy’s doting step-father gave him a taste for marzipans and sugars from a very young age.

After three years as an apprentice, twenty-year old Leonardo took a job as a cook at the Tavern of the Three Snails near the Ponte Vecchio, working during the day on the few commissions his master sent his way and slinging polenta in the evenings. Polenta was the restaurant’s signature dish, a tasteless hash of meats and corn porridge. When in the spring of 1473, a poisoning sickened and killed the majority of the cooking staff of the tavern, Leonardo was put in charge of the kitchen. He changed the menu completely, serving up delicate portions of carved polenta arranged beautifully on the plate. However, like most tavern clientele, the patrons preferred their meals in huge messy portions. Upset with the change in management, they ran Leonardo out of a job.

Text after:

They called him “fat boy,” this seventeen-year-old apprentice in the studio of Florentine painter Verrocchio who would receive care packages from his step-father, a pastry chef. The bastard son of a Florentine notary and a lady of Vinci, the boy’s doting step-father gave him a taste for marzipans and sugars from a very young age.

After three years as an apprentice, twenty-year-old Leonardo took a job as a cook at the Tavern of the Three Snails near the Ponte Vecchio, working during the day on the few commissions his master sent his way slinging polenta in the evenings. The polenta was the restaurant’s signature dish, a tasteless hash of meats and corn porridge. When in the spring of 1473, a poisoning sickened and killed the majority of the cooking staff of the tavern, Leonardo was put in charge of the kitchen. He changed the menu completely, serving up delicate portions of carved polenta arranged beautifully on the plate. However, like most tavern clientele, the patrons preferred their meals in huge messy parts. Upset with the change in management, they ran Leonardo out of a job.

In the final, I decided to check the first paragraphs of the book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” from a native speaker JK Rowling. Grammarly gave this passage only 71 points, and then suggested a number of spelling and stylistic revisions. Most of the complaints were to the point in use Mr. and Mrs. In fairness, we note that the forms of address have different spelling rules in different versions of the English language.

The service also showed options for replacing some words with more suitable ones, but did not reshape already cult sentences. After the corrections, the maximum score came out. It is worth noting that in this and the previous case, Grammarly pointed out plagiarism and immediately issued a number of necessary sources and links to them. Often, book texts are distinguished by a pronounced author’s style and involve a departure from academic writing rules to enhance the artistic component, so Grammarly scores in such cases are not very indicative.

Text before:

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere.

The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

Text after:

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.

Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a giant mustache. Mrs Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley, and in their opinion, there was no more delicate boy anywhere.

The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn’t think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for several years; in fact, Mrs Dursley pretended she didn’t have a sister because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. The Dursleys shuddered to think what the neighbors would say if the Potters arrived in the street. The Dursleys knew that the Potters had a small son, too, but they had never even seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child like that.

Who needs Grammarly

Ultimately, Grammarly is a service for anyone who wants to improve their communication in English. It can be both native speakers and those for whom English is foreign (more than 2 billion people in the world communicate in English, while for 2/3 of them this language is not native).

But for beginners, this service is difficult to recommend – the interface here is exclusively in English, like all explanations of grammar, punctuation and other things. Therefore, it will be difficult for a beginner to understand, and sometimes impossible. Alternatively, you can simply follow the prompts of the application, but it also sometimes makes mistakes, so it can add errors to the text that were not originally there.

For example, Grammarly suggested correcting my last name (Chuikin) just because it wasn’t in his dictionary. And Chaikin was, which means it was right (the problem is solved only with the help of a personal dictionary). In addition, the service sometimes did not recognize deliberately made mistakes in the spelling of words. And people who speak English perfectly, work and live abroad, speak about the impropriety of Grammarly at a higher level. For example, it reports the informal use of words in a specified type of business correspondence. And here there are complaints about the omission of various errors, both basic spelling and more complex ones, which are almost impossible to notice for people with an average level of knowledge of the language.

I would very much like to see the same or a similar program with such capabilities for the Ukrainian and Russian languages, but there are none yet. Services have more or less similar capabilities Language Tool , glvrd.ru , Orfogrammka , however, they all work only with the Russian language. If you know similar programs for the Ukrainian language, then write their names in the comments. By the way, as part of a volunteer project, the Grammarly team created the first annotated GEC corpus of the Ukrainian language , which can be used to create Ukrainian spell check services.