I’m talking about Grammarly here. It’s stalking me even as I write this and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Still, the invisible English professor peeping over my shoulder has saved me from embarrassment too many times already, and I’ve only just invited him into my writer’s den. 

But is his constant presence worth the distraction? That little red underline flashing at me and the errors stacking up on the right are so annoyingly in my face that I often have the urge to holler, especially when it makes a stupid suggestion. Wait… What? How can you “meets” someone? [Confession, my structure needed changing… again. Now meets makes sense.]

I came across a glaringly simple tip for pounding out that first draft. Turn off Spellchecker! But it’s scary now that I’ve come to count on Professor Tom standing behind me with a comforting hand on my shoulder. [Grammarly told me to use “his” hand and not “a” hand. I like “a” better, dang it!] I’m so conflicted! I don’t want to miss a single, horrible, cringe-worthy typo, and I like that the professor is always ready to help me restructure my sentence [As alluded to previously, I can bang out a sentence backasswards with the best of them]. I admit using this tool and others like it has trained my brain to type it right more often now. (I just typed “write” instead of “right.” Eeek!)

The other issue… My comforting professor is a double agent and spies for Big Brother… [I’m just adding this for drama… but it makes you think.]

A blurb from Grammarly:

Grammarly helps people communicate with confidence across devices and platforms. Our AI-powered suggestions appear wherever you write, coaching over 30 million people and 50,000 teams every day to improve the correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery of their writing.

Yes, statistics… lots and lots of statistics. My fiction writing is data now. Okay, it’s for my benefit to help me be a better writer, but Grammarly crunches all that data to learn how we humans can better engage our readers… Hey, I’m the one who invited the professor in.

Here are the statistics Grammarly highlighted for me to fix more areas… if I pay for the premium version:

Overall, no critical issues.

Wordy sentences = 3

Incorrect phrasing = 2

Unclear sentences = 2

Misplaced words or phrases = 1

Word choice = 1 (backasswards)

Intricate text = 1 (what does this mean?)

More… = 2

You might be interested to know two of the problem spots were in the blurb from Grammarly. 😁

Happy writing! Let me know what you think about Grammarly or generative AI tools like it.