Brennen Fox

Kjirsten Goeller

ENG 1101.532

29 September 2021

"An evaluation of Grammarly"

Everyone has had difficulty punctuating, capitalizing, or editing papers, essays, emails. Whether
it be a simple text or a formal business letter, we all have trouble getting every grammar flaw out
of our writing. Come on; we are human, after all. This is why AI writing assistants are so helpful.
Arguably the most popular one is Grammarly. Grammarly is one of the best available AI writing
assistants. It combines concise spelling and punctuation suggestions with top-of-the-line AI that
checks writing engagement, delivery, and clarity. It takes your everyday spell check and gives it
so much more.

Since pretty much ever, if someone wanted their writing to be edited, they would either have to
do it themselves or get someone to do it for them. It was not until around 1970 that the first
actual spell check came out. Over the following decades, we saw massive leaps in the AI writing
assistant field. We now have spell-checking software built into pretty much everything we use.
In modern times we see three significant Writing assistant designs. Most popular is a website,
writing platform, search engines such as Google or Safari, and other similar applications.
Number two is software or an app that can be downloaded onto a device and used in cohesion
with almost everything that requires writing. Number three is writing platform websites that are
geared to grammar corrections. Typically these websites have a more advanced, and therefore
better, writing assistant. Grammarly takes all three of these and puts them under one name. It can
share information between platforms, which means whichever one is used, personal settings and
writings will be available on all platforms.

Grammarly comes in three different platforms. One, a writing platform website that provides a
very detailed AI writing assistant. Two, a downloadable app that implements a writing assistant
in texting, emails, and the like. Number three is very similar to the app, except it applies to a
computer, not a phone. The website is detailed and easy-to-use, suited for writing papers, essays,
and just writing in general. While the other two are mainly spell checkers. However, they can be
used with other writing platforms such as Google Docs, Pages, and many others. There are a lot
of other writing assistants out there, but none have all three platforms together. Grammarly
comes in free and premium versions. The premium version is relatively affordable at $30/month,
$60/three months $144/one year. It gives a range of not only grammar corrections but also
writing style suggestions, checks for plagiarism, and access to actual human editors that will, for
a price, go over your writing. This takes you from a "paper polisher" to a writing assistant that
can make actual constructional suggestments to writing. It is very useful for formal writing and
writing for school because it has customizable settings to provide suggestions to make writing
more formal or conform to grammar rules specific to the writing that needs to be done. The free
version provides spelling, grammar, and punctuation corrections. It is adequate for the everyday
writer and is very comparable to other spell checkers such as Jarvis and Rytr.

For an AI writing assistant to work effectively in everyday life, it has to be used in conjunction
with a suitable writing platform. It should be equipped with all the necessary writing tools and
abilities that are needed to create an MLA-compliant essay or even something like a chart for a
business presentation. This brings me a problem with Grammarly. Grammarly is designed
against the backdrop of an easy-to-use, concise writing platform, so it lacks some of the tools and
options that a more in-depth writing platform might have. If compared to a very popular writing
platform such as Google Docs, it pales in comparison. Google docs seems to have an infinite
amount of tools and options to change fonts, size, and text boxes, and so much more. But this is
also the genius of it. This criticism only applies to the website version. With the downloadable
Grammarly software on your computer, it works directly on your favorite writing platform,
whether that be google docs or Apple's Pages. It gives you the power of choosing the writing
platform and then adds its amazing AI writing assistant to it.

In conclusion, Grammarly is one of the most versatile writing assistants out there. It provides
excellent grammar suggestions and other practical writing suggestions that will better enhance
and improve your writing. It gives you not just a "paper polisher" but a "paper engineer."