Let’s be real here, the Grammarly free version has come a long way.
If you’re like me who has been using Grammarly for a long time, then you already know how Grammarly was back then.
Sure, it can detect all sorts of grammatical errors way better than Word.
But some mistakes still got slipped under the radar.
It’s only when you do paper proofreading you notice the glaring mistakes that Grammarly failed to detect.
Here we are years later, Grammarly has become so much better than it was many years ago.
And it comes with other cool new features that can take your writing to the next level too.
What the Grammarly free version is all about
While Grammarly needs no introduction to many of us, we still have a handful of us who are in the dark about it.
So, what is Grammarly, and why you should consider using it in your writing?
To put it simply, Grammarly is a spell and grammar checker.
Once you sign up and enable it in your browser or Word, it will detect and correct any grammar and spelling mistakes in your writing.
This is how it looks like once you enable Grammarly.
Correcting the mistakes is easy peasy too. All you need to do is click on the correction and it will automatically correct the mistakes for you.
No more having to retype just to correct the errors.
The free version does come with spelling and basic grammar detections.
But don’t sleep on the Grammarly free version just yet since it can do more than just correct your spelling and grammar mistakes.
What makes the improved Grammarly free version worth considering
So, what other things can you do with Grammarly besides correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, you ask?
Well, here are the features that can take your writing to the next level.
Grammarly Assistant feature
If you’re using the Grammarly extension, you will have to do a bit of toggling to see this feature.
But if you’re using the web or desktop app, you’ll get to see your writing’s overall score right away.
This is how it looks like once you upload your writing on the app.
From there, you can see what you need to do to increase your overall score.
On the surface, it may seem like a complicated ordeal to improve your score.
But the good news is your writing’s clarity, engagement will improve right away the moment you fix those alerts.
Of course, the suggestions given to you will depend on what kind of writing you do.
If you upgrade to a premium account, you can change the document type so that it can give you a better assessment of your writing.
Curious about the premium version? You can read this post here if you’re curious.
Tone detection
Back then, it wasn’t so hard to know what kind of tone your writing had since it’s out in the open like the one you see here.
But now, it can be hard to see the tone of your writing when this feature gets buried among other new features.
Or maybe I just have no idea where to find it.
The only time I know how my writing fares tone-wise is when I receive my Grammarly weekly stats through email.
To be honest, I don’t worry much about how my writing sounds to my audience since the only thing I care about is getting my point across.
But if your goal is to evoke specific emotion through your writing, then this feature can help you with nailing down the kind of tone you want your readers to experience with your writing.
Rewrite the sentences
Just like ProWritingAid, you can also use Grammarly to rewrite the sentences. But the difference is that you can let Grammarly make your writing more persuasive or assertive.
Don’t like the suggestion Grammarly provides to you?
You can click on More Ideas for other sentence suggestions.
Funnily enough, I forgot about this feature until recently.
So, I can’t say much about how effective the rewriting feature is since I tend to do the rewriting manually as far as blogging is concerned.
But when it comes to writing fiction?
Boy, I sure do need a helping hand with this one. And I have ProWritingAid to thank for making rewriting the sensory description a total breeze.
There’s no doubt that ProWritingAid wins in this department when it comes to rewriting for creative writing.
But for nonfiction or any form of formal writing, this feature will come in handy for you.
Generate text for you
Not sure how you want to begin your sentence?
Or perhaps you already have a rough idea of what you want to write but can’t seem to figure out how to put everything together?
Let Grammarly do that for you.
The best part about this feature is that you can set how you want the generated text to sound.
If you’re prone to writing an angry email to someone, then this feature should come in handy for you.
Rather than having your email sound like you’re sending a death threat, let Grammarly help you with writing an email with a friendly tone.
From there, you can choose to improve or shorten it if it sounds too long to you.
This is another feature that I don’t give much time to test out considering that I have no problem with writing the opening paragraph most of the time.
That’s the power of blogging consistently especially when you do it for a long time.
Free premium suggestion
Yes, you can get premium suggestions even when you only use the free version.
The only caveat is that you can only get up to 3 premium suggestions in a day, though.
If you need to fix more than 3, then you will need to upgrade to the premium version.
What you should know about the free version of Grammarly
I won’t deny that Grammarly has improved a lot over the years. But I still don’t think it can replace the paper proofreading or you can skip hiring a proofreader altogether despite the improvement.
Well, maybe it can with given time.
But for now, I don’t see it as a replacement for paper proofreading or hiring a proofreader.
If anything, it can speed things up for you and the proofreader considering that you have fewer errors to correct in your writing.
Is Grammarly right for you?
While Grammarly only offers basic features for the editing process, it sure does a good job as a final proofreading tool.
If you’re looking for a tool that can help you with doing some polishing before sending your manuscript to the editor or a proofreader, then Grammarly can help you with that.
Not only does it speed up the process if you’re doing a paper proofreading. But you can easily correct these errors with a click of a button too.
Want to get started with using Grammarly? You can sign up for free right here: