Grammarly Premium - a decent AI "editor"
bikegremlin
ModeratorOG
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.
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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.
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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.
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Let's be real someday someone will be able to either replicate it or pirate it.
Synteq Technical Support, Technical Writer.
Contact me at: +1 (307) 428 8111 or [email protected]
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.
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I've been very, very reluctant.
- 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...).
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
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!
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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.
Vladimir S. - IT Consultant, Entrepreneur, Web Developer, and Disability Advocate.
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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.
Synteq Technical Support, Technical Writer.
Contact me at: +1 (307) 428 8111 or [email protected]
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
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
Hmm.
[Could compensate for my lazy typing and/or mid-sentence restructure.]
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
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.
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Grammarly, the browser plugin helps me a lot when writing in English.
It actually corrected me on this post
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
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
Ympker's VPN LTD Comparison, Uptime.is, Ympker's GitHub.
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.
“Technology is best when it brings people together.” – Matt Mullenweg
involcuration never died
Synteq Technical Support, Technical Writer.
Contact me at: +1 (307) 428 8111 or [email protected]
LowEnd LuckyDips should actually become a thing as a little joke!
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
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Seems like two contradicting claims? Native sounding sentences by people with good command of English tend to be complex
@bikegremlin
You mean sound like a "Native" while Au Naturale ? (@ehab don't get ideas)
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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.
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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.
Ah widnae ken!
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
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.
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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.
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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)
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.
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.
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.
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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.
Good point.
I think it depends on how you use it.
In addition/related to what @HalfEatenPie wrote:
I set it to be disabled until I manually "turn it on." And I did end up not always using it. Relatively often, but not always.
When I run it, it makes me re-think any stuff that I got wrong (according to Grammarly, it often gets it wrong, especially the comma use), while not being too dumbing-down.
Still not 100% sure if I'll renew the subscription (my aim is to get so proficient that I no longer really need it). Will it make me dumber instead? Not really sure. For example, most of my spelling mistakes nowadays are because I missed a key, or it got "printed" twice by mistake (yes, I will look for a new keyboard
).
It definitely helps when I wish to polish any old articles. Shows me what to re-check and edit if I conclude the suggestions are good (10 per cent of the time, but when it gets it right, it gets it right!
). Also, as a non-native speaker, it keeps me properly stuck to one "English version," either British, or the US - no mixing. I think that's good.
I have provided some feedback to the developers. The most annoying thing is, when I open a half-finished article, it does all the checks and re-marks all the "mistakes" which I had previously told it to disregard. An option to one-click delete all the current suggestions would be very helpful - so it could just check any newly-added stuff.
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This isn't a plugin but one free alternative to Grammarly for LE* forums is @AlwaysSkint.
There's no auto-correct feature but you will be corrected if and when @AlwaysSkint picks it up and decides to.
"The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
There's no replacement for a good editor!
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Anybody tried Language Tools - seems to be self-hostable equivalent (though presumably inferior)
Fame at last!
AlwaysGrammarly
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
First of all, if you are going to say this, don't make so many mistakes in your own grammar.
Other than that, not everyone is educated to a high level, grammar is a difficult skill for a lot of people. Grammarly should not be seen as a tool you use to ignore your own grammar mistakes. It should be used to identify regular occurrences and fix future instances. 100 errors this month, 50 next month, 25 the month after and so on. If you get to the stage where Grammarly is not revealing any or many errors maybe you don't need it anymore.
Around $50 per year is not expensive if you write a lot and grammar is not your best skill.
I use Grammarly every now and then. An email announcement is a good place for it. Any time you want to say something which might be easily misinterpreted, it helps to get a second opinion.
Do everything as though everyone you’ll ever know is watching.
What d'ya mean by that, eh?
/jk
In stasis until the shitposting stops/abates.
Than=compare;then=sequence:brought=bring;bought=buy:staffs=pile of sticks:informations/infos=no plural.
It wisnae me! A big boy done it and ran away. || NVMe2G for life! until death (the end is nigh).
My Engineering PhD says I can still be terrible at writing.
I just good do complx mat.
Or you come from east Texas and all y'all just can't understand what I'm sayin. But at least I have Waterburger so I've still got it better than a lot of yous, Lord willing and the creek don't rise.
Do everything as though everyone you’ll ever know is watching.
By far the single most accurate description of where I live.
Do everything as though everyone you’ll ever know is watching.
Which state within texas are you in @jarland ?
Actually just a 30-40 minute trip up 59 and over on 80 (or 20 if you’re feeling lucky) from where that was shot, Carthage sucks though so it's been a while since I did anything other than drove past it 😂
All about them pine trees boys.
Do everything as though everyone you’ll ever know is watching.
Oh how I love the People's Republic of Austin.
And also Dallas, Texas.
Would you like experience freebsd style forum where you given warnings from mods when you make to much misstakes writing?
English language has an advantage: you can make misstakes, the others will still understand the concept of what you are saying.
Use of grammarly is not good for learning people. No discussions here. Read books in english, that's all you need. Free.
I studied English activelly, since 9 years old, for over a decade.
Music, films, and a ton of books (and other texts) in English - always.
Still, my every written article has parts that need editing, and I often can't figure it out myself.
And I find Grammarly's suggestions to be helpful at least with a few sentences per article (and I like to think those examples help me learn).
Of course, I may just be suprisingly stupid - one doesn't realize when they are, usually.
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Reading a book shows you, it does not teach you why. But carry on.
I think it can be said that reading books can help a lot.
Even with one's native language improvement.
Though active learning does help tremendously, no doubt about that.
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it surprised me that many native english speakers here still need this kind of tools to help them writing for letters or even just a forum post..
i thought you all get grammar lessons since kindergarten, mastering it when you grow up, then can easily become an english teacher such in asian/african/latino country