As a content marketer, you’re constantly checking up on your strategy, optimizing it, keeping up with a content calendar and creating a whole lot of content.
You’re writing content for the website, the blog, social media, emails, you name it.
Since most of it is written content, there’s a good chance of going wrong with the grammar.
Sometimes, the little mistakes are passable. But at other times, these mistakes could undermine your credibility.
Then why risk coming across negatively to your audience due to grammar mistakes when this can easily be avoided?
Instead of acting like your own proofreader and letting those poor grammar nuances slip by, use a smart tool like Grammarly!
What is Grammarly?
Grammarly is a freemium tool used to analyse any written text. The free version checks for basic errors like grammar, punctuation and spelling, while the premium version takes it a notch higher with plagiarism check, readability score, tone adjustments and much more. It also provides a comprehensive explanation of all the errors so you’re better aware of the potential mistakes you could make in the future.
It is available as both a desktop app and a browser extension to help you easily spruce up any piece of written content you want to put across to your audience.
What does Grammarly help you with?
The importance of writing clearly and accurately could mean the difference between a lead and a prospect. The most important and perhaps the only goal of writing is to deliver a message. If the message itself is hard to comprehend, your readers might find it hard to resonate with the point you’re making.
Grammarly can help straighten out your writing and flag all those little mistakes that usually go unnoticed. It can help you with:
1. Grammar and punctuation
It detects all grammatical errors from the most basic ones that you just don’t seem to notice even on the nth draft of your document to the most advanced errors that even the most qualified editors and proofreaders miss due to human negligence. It covers as many as 150 grammatical errors including:
- missing apostrophes
- sentence structures
- Wordy sentences
- pronoun disagreements
- comma splices and run-on sentences
- error in word choices
- capitalization problems
2. Spell check
It also works like a spell checker which is more comprehensive and robust compared to other spell checkers available. It is an add on to all the other amazing features Grammarly has to offer.
Remember those times when you just can’t seem to figure out the spelling of ‘itinerary’ – yes, we’ve all been there too!
3. Plagiarism check
Let’s face it – most cases of plagiarism are accidental. Giving your content a thorough rundown by comparing it to billions of web pages can prevent any case of plagiarism, accidental or not. Grammarly helps you point out all cases of plagiarism in your document and generates citations for each one of them.
This one’s especially important for times when you’re repeatedly writing on a specific topic or theme. It will also prevent you from sounding repetitive.
4. Writing style
Grammarly provides real-time insights into the correctness, clarity, engagement and delivery of your content. It adapts to your writing style and suggests improvements based on the kind of audience you hope to cater to or the goal you’ve set for the content piece you’re writing.
5. Readability
Grammarly reads through your document like an extra pair of eyes you can rely on to point out all those clunky sentences confusing your readers, break up your paragraphs for you and help you rewrite your passages to make them clear, concise and reader-friendly.
Think about the last time you wrote in a ‘flow’ and ended up writing really long paragraphs that were more suited for a thesis instead of a social media post!
Benefits of using Grammarly
Grammarly is easily one of the best tools out there for both amateur and professional writers. Here are some of the benefits that make it stand out among all the other tools available:
1. Setting writing goals
Writing is not just about using the right words and punctuations. While it may help with the technicality, a stable rhetorical connection can only be built when your writing is tailored to the kind of audience using your content.
Grammarly helps you set your writing goals and provide constant feedback as to how your content would perform based on the reading expertise of your audience (general, knowledgeable, expert), tone of delivery (neutral, friendly, analytical, etc), intent (inform, convince, describe, tell a story), level of formality (informal, neutral, formal) and domain (academic, business, general, email, casual, creative).
Once you’ve set your writing goals, Grammarly uses its algorithms to provide the most suitable suggestions based on your goals.
2. In-depth recommendations
Grammarly can constantly make you aware of all your worst writing habits and tell you why something needs to be corrected and how it affects your writing.
Here’s an example:
The phrase, Revise a wordy sentence in an effortless manner raises a message saying, “the phrase in an effortless manner may be considered wordy. Consider changing the wording” and suggests an improved phrase, effortlessly revise a wordy sentence. It also points out that the conciseness of the document is affected due to the error.
You can simply hover over the red line and trust Grammarly to give you the most accurate suggestions. You can choose to take Grammarly’s suggestion, ignore it or delete it for good. Though Ignored errors may pop up whenever you repeat the same mistake.
It can flag words that may be relevant to your document but are technically incorrect. In such cases, you can add all these words to the dictionary so Grammarly can recognize these words in the future.
While it may make you painfully aware of all your writing pet peeves, it will make you a marginally better writer in the long run.
3. Clear explanations tailored for you
Grammarly clearly explains how a particular error affects your document. It has a visually represented score under every category.
The scoring categories available are:
- Correctness: spelling grammar and punctuation
- Clarity: helps make your writing easier to understand
- Engagement: helps make your writing more interesting and effective
- Delivery: helps you make the right impression on your reader
These scores can help you actualize all your writing goals easily, and also internalise changes your writing needs over a period of time.
4. Human proofreading
But Grammarly isn’t always right, it is still just a computer program that’s trying to learn out of its many, many mistakes just like us humans.
It can miss the context of a sentence sometimes and ignore an ill-fitting word or two just because it’s spelt correctly. Grammarly offers a solution to this problem too.
At an additional cost, Grammarly offers an expert proofreading service. It is an optional feature that is offered in addition to a Grammarly premium subscription.
Grammarly has a team of expert writers who check for any grammatical inaccuracies and ensure that the writing sounds fluent to native English speakers.
PS: It is not available to users with Grammarly business and EDU accounts.
And of course, if you ever need help with creating content, you can always reach out to us.
5. Conventions
Writing conventions help a reader clearly understand the piece of text they’re reading. Focussing on the most obvious aspects of writing like grammar and punctuation can take your attention away from higher-order aspects like the flow of content and idea generation.
Grammarly takes care of all the little details so you can fully focus on the bigger picture.
6. Writing clarity
Producing crisp and clear writing can get your readers attention and help them focus on the point being made instead of distracting them with unnecessary words and poor sentence structures.
Grammarly tries to shorten your sentences and get rid of redundant words to improve clarity.
It also helps you define words that your audience may not be familiar with. This makes sure you let your readers know exactly what you’re talking about without putting in too much effort to understand your language.
7. Simple user interface
The algorithm Grammarly runs on can be incredibly complex and advanced but its user experience is equally simple. You don’t need any kind of technical expertise to take advantage of all its benefits. It can be used as:
- A free browser extension
- An online editor
- A desktop app
- A mobile app
8. Passive voice
Using passive voice to make your point can make you sound less bold, less precise and make the message at hand unclear.
I will compose the email – sounds authoritative and compelling, whereas, The email will be composed by me (passive voice) – sounds unnecessarily lengthy and cloudy.
Grammarly eliminates this problem by detecting all the occurrences of passive voice and suggesting an alternative that helps you make your document look more concise.
There are a few instances where the use of passive voice is recommended and you may choose to trust your instincts and ignore the suggestions altogether.
However, this option is only available with Grammarly premium which comes at the cost of $144/year (which is the most affordable plan out of all the others. Keep reading for details).
9. Writing style improvements
Good writing style helps the reader move through the content seamlessly. Having a consistent writing style helps you leave a lasting impression on the audience.
Grammarly learns through the writing patterns of millions of its users and suggests corrections accordingly. This prevents you from compromising on creativity and helps you deliver the message while retaining your personal touch.
It also generates an overall score for your document which works fantastically for those of us who are constantly trying to improve our writing style.
10. Real-time suggestions
It also provides real-time suggestions on the correction of these mistakes. This can prove to be a game-changer when it comes to checking your work and editing it because it catches your mistakes as and when they happen, which allows you to correct them right away, resulting in a polished first draft.
Grammarly pricing
1. Individual plans
Grammarly has a free plan for all its registered users. It gives you a peek into some of Grammarly’s basic features like grammar, spelling, punctuation, tone correction and clarity check. It is significantly better than most standard spell checkers available out there.
The free plan:
- Provides accurate suggestions
- Can be integrated into the browser, Microsoft word, desktop and other devices
- Suggests based on writing goals
- Supports American, British and Canadian English
Anyone who is unsure about getting the paid version can choose to start with the free plan.
However, the free plan does not offer services like plagiarism check, style suggestions, fluency and consistency check. These features can be unlocked by paying for a premium plan.
The subscription for Grammarly premium is available on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis.
- Monthly – costs $30 a month.
- Quarterly – costs $20 per month. It is billed as one payment of $60
- Annually – costs $12 per month. It is billed as one payment of $144
2. Team Plan
Grammarly also offers a business plan that ensures whatever your team writes, reflects positively on your business. It has features like:
- company style guide,
- centralised billing,
- Team usage statistics
- Priority email support
- User management tools
The business plan also includes all the features of Grammarly premium.
It can be billed on a monthly and annual basis for up to 149 team members.
- Monthly – costs $25 a month/member
- Annually – costs $12.50 a month/member and requires a minimum of 3 members
Conclusion – Is it worth it and do you need it?
The free plan works well as a grammar and spell check tool. But it’s the premium version of Grammarly that’s the real deal.
If what you need is a proofreader and not an editor, Grammarly does the job for you. It takes you less than a minute to set up, is easy to use and will ensure you reach your audience with the right style and tone.
It not only adds to the quality of your work but also makes you a better writer while it’s at it.
The free version can come in handy with any kind of content but whether or not you need the premium version depends on the type of content you’re creating, the audience you’re addressing, and where your content is getting published.
But at the end of the day, Grammarly can mean the difference between good content and great content. It does what you need it to do and serves the purpose of creating compelling, error-free content.
As a content marketing agency, do we recommend Grammarly in your toolkit? Yes.
Grammarly alternatives
If you’re looking for different features, a different price structure, a comparison or to simply try something new, here’s a list for you:
Also, every tool mentioned above has a free plan so you can start experimenting free of cost!
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