Tag Archives: Grammarly

Are online writing tools that check your grammar and writing style, any good?

Have you ever used writing tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid?

Even when you are working in Google Docs or MS Word, they have their own features to highlight glaring spelling and grammar mistakes.

They even advise you, just like the writing tools mentioned in the first sentence, to avoid passive voice or redundant adverbs and adjectives or to use a single word instead of multiple words for expressing something.

A couple of years ago I purchased a copy of the Hemingway app. A few weeks ago, I downloaded the latest version and tried using it for a while. The Hemingway app works just like Grammarly or ProWritingAd but in a much toned-down way. It doesn’t have advanced features like these two services. I couldn’t use it even for a single writing project.

Whether these writing tools help you or become a hindrance depends on how comfortable you are writing. They highlight common and uncommon grammar mistakes, so that’s a plus. At least when you are writing professional emails and blog posts, you won’t be committing silly grammar mistakes, which can be quite embarrassing.

These tools also make your writing crisp, or at least aspire to make your writing crisp.

By crisp I mean, often, when we are in a thought flow, we write lengthy sentences. Compound and complex sentences with lots of “and”, “or”, “but”, and so on. These writing tools advise you to create direct, shorter sentences, preferably simple sentences.

For example, the following sentence will certainly make all the writing tools go crazy.

“Seeing that the sky was overcast I decided to take my umbrella with me but just as I was stepping outside my house I saw a dog running towards me surely with an intention to attack me and therefore I ran back quickly, shut the door, put the umbrella on the side table and waited for the dog to go away, and this is why, when I started from home, the second time, I forgot to take the umbrella with me and consequently, I was drenched by the time I reached my office, only to find that  the basement of the office had been flooded and all the employees were trying to rescue whatever could be rescued.”

The writing tools like Grammarly also tell you whether your writing is easier to read are not, according to various reading ease scores, with the Flesch Reading Ease score being one of the most prominent.

If you are using difficult and long words, it will suggest you use simpler and shorter words. Before evaluation, you can tell the writing tool whether you are writing something professional, academic or casual. The writing is evaluated accordingly.

Should you use writing tools that makes grammar and writing style suggestions?

You can use them if you are a beginner or if you make lots of writing mistakes when you are in the flow. For a person like me, more than a facility, they act as hindrances.

I commit grammar mistakes on rarest of the rare occasions. And even those grammar mistakes are less of grammar mistakes and more of structural choices. Sometimes I write sentences that don’t fit in the traditional “right grammar” mould.

Sometimes I use a peculiar writing style that may not fit into the conventional “proper” writing, but otherwise, there isn’t any problem in it. Hence, lots of highlights by the writing tool can be distracting.

You can certainly use writing tools to make improvements, but you don’t need to use them 100%. You can use them to point out glaring mistakes like lots of passive sentences or compound sentences or needless conjunctions.

Although I know that I should write “I did that” but sometimes I end up writing “it was done by me”, so, it can be helpful if the software highlights such things, and I can correct them.

But, are they worth the cost? Personally, I don’t think so. If you can afford them, well, why not?

Most of the writing tools are exorbitantly expensive. It might be because they are a novelty right now and the mainstream word processors aren’t shipping inbuilt tools to process language. I’m pretty sure in near future Microsoft is going to purchase one of these companies to provide writing assistance in all its Office products.

They may be helpful, or they may be a nuisance – it depends on how comfortable you are expressing yourself.

Nice analysis of how Grammarly attracts 41.46M monthly visitors with content marketing

Grammarly content marketing strategy

Grammarly content marketing strategy

I just checked my old email inbox that I used to use around 2010. In 2011, they were just in the process of launching Grammarly and one of their representatives had filled up my contact form inviting me to write a review for their writing tool in exchange for a three-month Grammarly subscription.

Through the email thread it isn’t clear whether I actually wrote the review or not – in a couple of years I had to take down my old website because another website had completely hijacked my content and due to that, my search engine rankings had dropped to 0.

I don’t have much problem with grammar and I’m not their ideal customer, nonetheless, a few times I have tried to use their service but have always found it a bit expensive, especially for my limited needs.

But that’s another story.

Here is a nice analysis of how Grammarly uses content marketing to attract 41.46 million monthly visitors to its website. The writer of this blog post says that Grammarly uses strategically connected content clusters.

What are content clusters? It is the grouping of multiple web pages and blog posts under one primary topic.

So, you create a blog post briefly explaining the main topic, and then for all the related subtopics you write separate blog posts and then link to those blog posts from the main blog post.

Why content clusters help?

Content clusters are good for conversion rate as well as search engine rankings.

Why content clusters are good for conversion rate?

Around 50% B2B buyers prefer to read 3-5 content pieces before they make a buying decision. Normally they read a blog post or a web page. Then they navigate to another website. Then you again make an effort to bring them back to your website. This goes on multiple times. Most of the times they lose the track.

When you create a content cluster, they are immediately exposed to all the relevant content pieces. Whatever they need to read before deciding, it’s right in front of them. You don’t have to get them to your website multiple times, wasting your own time and resources.

Why content clusters are good for your SEO?

Google evaluates your rankings on the basis of the relevance and comprehensiveness of your content as well as the way people react to your content. When you create content clusters you already create comprehensive content.

If people find your link on Google, go to your website and then leave your website to carry on with the search, Google assumes they didn’t find the information they were looking for and hence you shouldn’t be ranking for the search term used. Your ranking for that keyword or search term is lowered.

Conversely, upon finding your link on Google, when people click it, go to your website and then spend some time exploring your website and going through additional links, Google assumes that your website contains relevant information and consequently, improves your rankings for that keyword or search term

Coming back to Grammarly…

The SaaS company knows that it is a service for writers or people who take their writing seriously whether they are scholars, writers or business persons. Consequently, there is lots of written content on their blog. The above-linked blog post says that Grammarly has 2100 content pieces on its blog.

On second thought, 2100 content pieces isn’t much for a company with a valuation of 100-US$ 500 million (source), but still, it is enough content to make it into a content marketing powerhouse, especially when the content pieces are strategically grouped together in the form of logical content clusters.