Does Grammarly predominantly give the correct use of English? [closed]

Question

I make use of Grammarly, often to aid with writing what I suppose, with the suggestions provided, to be correct English. With regularity, Grammarly makes suggestions that I feel compelled to ignore, such as;

These are from SE answers recently,

• Change ...value for the site user to pay you to value for the site used to pay you - perhaps 'site user' could be hyphenated?
• Change generally paid per-click to generally paid-per-click
• Change Or, a donation banner drive with email-out. to Or, a donation banner drives with email-out.
• And, several more.

Does Grammarly predominantly give the correct use of English?

Answer 1

You may get someone who uses Grammarly answering your question here. But you could also do a Google search which should pull up user experiences. One grammar expert who has nothing good to say about computerized writing checkers is Professor Pullum, co-author of A Cambridge Guide to English Grammar and contributor to Language Log.

Here is an extract from his post A virus that fixes your grammar:

Free-standing tools like Grammarly are similarly hopeless (i.e. similar to Microsoft Word). They merely read and note possible "errors", leaving you to make corrections. They couldn't possibly be modified into programs that would proactively correct your prose.

As a second example, here's an extract from the Arrant Pedantry blog by linguist Jonathan Owen (Fifty Shades of Bad Grammar Advice). In it he analyses the corrections to mistakes that Grammarly claims to have found in Fifty Shades of Grey:

So, just to recap, that’s nine supposed grammatical errors that Grammarly says will ruin your prose, most of which are not errors and have nothing to do with grammar. Their suggested fixes, on the other hand, sometimes introduce grammatical errors and always worsen the writing. The takeaway from all of this is not, as Grammarly says, that loves conquers all, but rather that Grammarly doesn’t know the first thing about grammar, let alone good writing.

Of course, the fact that Grammarly clearly sometimes gives wrong advice, does not necessarily mean that it does not "predominantly give the correct use of English". Perhaps some users of Grammarly can confirm whether, in their experience, it does or not. And even if it doesn't, some might find it useful to be alerted to a potential error even if it is not an actually error or the suggested correction is erroneous.

Answer 2

I use Grammarly's online text checker. It is checking this answer as I type and flags many, but not all, obvious typos and grammatical mismatches, etc.

It's good for that, but I still reject many of those suggestions.

My experience as a native speaker with other, but similar, grammar checkers is they are a serious waste of time and energy. They flag far too many "errors" that are correct - often a style choice or idiomatic use I specifically wanted.

Note that most of Grammarly's paying customers are businesses. It is designed to suit their needs, not the needs of ordinary folk wanting to improve their communications skills. It is a useful tool for businesses wanting to check their technical documents. I wish more IT businesses would use it to check their so-called User Manuals.

The point I would make for someone learning English is any benefits of using their detailed reports will fade over time - if you are using it wisely.

You should never just accept its suggestions. Instead, look into the reasons behind them. That should help you identify some of the finer points of grammar you should be trying to learn.

Most of all, do not apply its suggestions unless you understand why they were made and you agree they are appropriate in this instance. Hopefully, after not very long, the free online checker will then be you all you really need.