Grammarly: The Dandelion of Proofreading Apps

I use Grammarly with quite a few reservations. I’m comparing this popular proofreading software to dandelions, which can be pretty and even useful –dandelions even have medicinal benefits. Yet dandelions can also get out of control and take over your yard or garden. Similarly, Grammarly has its uses but tends to intrude on all your writing, even when you don’t want or need it, and often enforcing dogmatic interpretations of grammar.

I should mention that I only have experience with the free version of Grammarly. I suspect that most of what I say here also applies to the paid version, but I can’t be sure. No way I’m going to be upgrading either.

Grammarly: What’s Good

Let’s start with the good. This is fairly obvious. Grammarly can help to point out spelling and grammatical errors as well as careless typos. That’s important, especially if you’re a writer, editor, or even a personal blogger who wants to maintain some semblance of a professional image. That’s about it for the good, but it’s no small thing when you write a lot.

The Ads Are Everywhere

One of the main weedlike qualities of Grammarly are the ubiquitous ads, which you can’t avoid whether you use the app or not. They seem to be especially aggressive on YouTube. I tend to develop…