Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi folks. My name is Matthew Wayne Selznick
I'm an author and creator and you can find
me over at mattselznick.com
and recently I was surprised
to be invited to do a grammarly review
and so I'm doing that. Full disclosure: they're
giving me a hundred-dollar Amazon gift cards
for writing a blog post about grammarly
but I thought Iwould go to a step farther and
actually do this little video walk through and the thing about this is
I haven't used this yet I'm I don't really know
how it works how well it works so this is going to be almost
almost unboxing video of
their service. We're going to use the service to do
two different things: we're going to test it on nonfiction, we're going to use a blog post
that I wrote and we're going to test it on
fiction which I suspect will be a bigger challenge for the system
we're gonna test on a short story that I wrote.
so let's dig in and as you can see
grammarly bills itself as the world's best grammar checker
this is a for pay service we'll get into the pricing and whatnot
later on you can see if you just
if you just dropped text in
to the free version... I'm going to use this blog post here
and I'm just going to get it from my
text editor so I'm just going to drop this blog post in
what I want to do is see how grammarly
in the free version reacts to check your text
right... so we're not logged in, not paying for this at this point
so: check your text... let's see checking for
all kinds different things as it goes through zip zip zip
cute little interface there
and here we go
so up comes the analysis along with
the the soft sell grammalry found 27 critical writing issues
weak needs revision I love it
he first thing is this is interesting they test for plagiarism
looking at the website so naturally this blog post is public on the web so they're
going to consider
in plagiarized and call it unoriginal text
I like that I think that's actually good
It's a quick and free way to test and see if something is plagiarized or not
and a contextual spelling check three issues
grammar 10 issues
punctuation and of course now they want me to actually
get a seven day free trial to
find out you know what the specific issues are
so what we're going to do is we're going to log in
and they've given me a temporary membership so that I can
review all the features and whatnot so we log in and right away we see
that the interface is completely different it's more like
an app than a website okay, that's kind of
neat Microsoft office down load
an add on you can add that might be interesting to use their service
within Microsoft Office okay well and good
but alright let's do the exact same thing let's take that same
piece of text
and paste it in
oh, it's much much neater much neater
copy paste process almost managed to
find all my paragraph breaks this was a blog post
so there are some things like this here should have been heading
of a subsection but whatever so let's see
start review, oh, this is neat
select type of paper I'll call this
casual as it's a blog post as you can see you can check
different styles of writing
and we will start the review I'm
this is interesting its much slower
than the free version
I imagine that it's going through
a lot more carefully
my this is not a long
ok well there we go I
okay so there is some lag
on the progress bar let's see here
26 issues found a score of 78 out a hundred
so here's the first one
the original sentence section was certainly not a mere twenty odd years of imperial
role
and they say that
this might be a problem
they want me to write now certainly not mere twenty odd years well
that's that's not right and I'm going to ignore that and move on to the next one
they think maybe that weak excuse in this context might require
an article in front of it again
the context why does Luke accept Obi-Wan's weak excuse
so they're incorrect about at then I guess it's nice that they're
watching out for it because they don't do cliches because I did write sort of a
cliche
here not beyond the realm of possibility
and they're suggesting again
at least they say may require an article
not not flat out saying you should do this
we're gonna ignore that same thing
place should be the place and what's the drop down
ignore all yeah we want more of how to go through this step-by-step
review this sentence for pronoun and verb agreement
alright this is something different ensure the pronouns are in agreement with your
verbs
so the the sentence in question two movies later
when Luke calls him out on this Kenobi glosses it over with
what I told you was true from a certain point of view and Luke is
astonishingly okay with that I think that sentence makes
sense but I do like that they
have this here let's take a look at the long explanation
the pronoun you does not agree with the verb was
yeah I think that sorta this doesn't seem to be
completely smart on
on syntax I'm going to ignore that too
review this sentence for squinting modifiers I've never even heard of a squinting modifier
and
I get paid to write I let's see the modifier
in maybe defining either close near sentence therefore is this
squinting modifier
so they give an example incorrect while talking in his ear quietly she slid the
money
out of his pocket so I understand that it's unclear
quietly is modifying while talking in his ear or she slipped the money in his pocket
so let's see my sentence of course being casual was all over the place
with
all kinds of, well, casual voice so my sentence was at the end of Return of the
Jedi
a title that says it all really and was originally
and rightfully to be called revenge the jedi I believe
the jedi slash light side was in total control the force
in the galaxy and their most powerful living member is in a perfect position
to build a new jedi Order
with no opposition again a conversational casual style
I think this makes sense
so we're gonna ignore this I was really hoping that
I would make something really horrible some sort of problem
with this but so far I guess
I guess I'm alright I'm going to ignore this
split infinitives huh this one might
I might buy this one so let's see here what we're dealing with
move obi-wan Kenobi into the spirit world where he would be
where he would come to be oh I see a type where he would be come
should be become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
and be in a position to psychologically manipulate
and mentor the conspiracy's puppet
so how does it want me to fix this
I think this is OK you know feel free to correct me in the comments
but this reads like it make sense
to me that's the bottom line does your writing make sense
sometimes that trumps grammar
and this might be one of those instances
I feel like I should ignore this again review this sentence for subject-verb
agreement
the subject of your sentence the risk of c3po's memory
is a singular or unaccountable noun ok in the sentence again we're talking about here
bonus could the risk of c3po's memory wipe
being imperfect be why the droid was dismantled the cloud city during
the empire strikes back I wonder you know I guess I could rewrite this
could the risk of
an imperfect memory wipe of c3po
or could the risk of c3po's
imperfect memory wipe
I think this one could have been
better I could have written this better okay
we're not going to ignore this one
review your work for missing verbs
we have to ignore this because I'm quoting dialogue
so in
dialogue all bets are off when you're doing dialog
you want a second opinion you think it's a bad verb form use possibility
again casual conversational writing
this flies out the window now I'm
review this sentence for commas after introductory phrases
yes I agree I should put
in the summer 1977 I was 10 years old
comma and see how you can actually
you can actually
edit as you go so I put a comman in there
yeah which is what they suggest
you can even just click the suggestion and they put it in there for you
which is nice I like that
alright they want so here
they want me to put a comma after my little
interjection and again casual dialogue casual writing that wouldn't
would make sense so we're going to ignore that
here's something where they think maybe I have too many commas
Anakin was not seduced into evil by Palpatine
I'm sorry the sentence was Anakin and Yoda
and obi-wan yeah I could see that
that doesn't need the comma there I put one in there
for pacing's sake and so that comes down to
style they don't like
the spelling droid they think it should be capitalized because I guess now its
trademark
Google we can either add that dictionary or
ignore I'll go ahead and add it to the dictionary
superhuman I put dash between
super and human let's change it to no dash
okay and
they're not going to know midi chlorians so we'll ignore that one
they caught my be come mistake which is really good
that's the sort of thing that your traditional spell checkers would just think it's the
two words be and come so it understood the context
that just excellence really like that
sky walkers when we'll ignore
we're gonna actually ignore all story world's
is a word that we're gonna add to the dictionary
and there we are now let's
take a look here the synonyms what is this supposed to be
you see recommended synonums or all synonyms well
we'll try recommended first
how does this work
maybe there aren't any
alright
let's try the summary
my writing was adequate I
could benefit from a revision and so
okay so yeah I think perhaps
grammarly would be excellent if
I'm doing non-fiction if you
aren't writing in a conversational style
I wonder how this treats it
if we use creative style 26 issues
78 out of a hundred if we review with creative style
let's see how it works out
once again it's going through all that stuff
see what it does look you can hear my
dog whining the background
(waiting)
and we're almost done
97 out of 100 when dealing
in the creative style
maybe that's what we should be using for
for blog posts so let's see
three issues subject-verb agreement
how do we get to this
let's look at the summary
waiting for the summary to come up I'm not sure
is it frozen
mmm
I tell you what it seems to have
frozen
well we'll check the
plagairism that button worked I'm I'm
checking for plagiarism we notice that there is no way
to you who back or is there
no you're stuck while it's doing that not sure how I feel about that
what if
we press the Escape key no no good
while its processing plagiarism
it does nothing else
that's kind of a drag mom I wonder how long it's going to take.
I'm
totally stuck
we're gonna pause and then we'll come back
okay well what I did is
I just went ahead and used the back button on the browser
to cancel the plagiarism check
not happy with how long it took
to check such a short article especially an article
that means very well indexed in the search engines
should found that right away
okay so now back to the grammarly review
let's try a
fiction test we're going to use the world revolves around you
a short story that I wrote and
again I'm going to get a text version
plain text version of the story and copy/paste in
one second here
make sure we get it
come on
I'm mmm
it's not letting me grab it
there we go interesting how the Windows change shape
there we are
um... doesn't want me to start the review
perhaps we need to
refresh this entire page
let's see so that's a little
a little wonky okay
there we are stories in there
we're going to start it on
creative start review
and now
same as we've seen all along very curious how it's going to handle
dialogue and slang and things like that I'm
moving through see how it goes
I'm
in
almost there
okay 75 issues for
the score 81 to 100 again here's this
review for use of articles
the line is I was like I said she was grateful for the attention
from a real man I suppose she was grateful for attention
from a real man would work sure so we'll
let that one stand not gonna correct
it takes the attention corrects it to
attention it's actually I'm a big fan of being concise
I actually like that
it wants me to put an article
in front of *** on that one we have to ignore
and it doesn't like the
end which we're also going to ignore
review the sentence for pronoun and verb agreement
they're concerned that the verb she does not agree with the verb
thew well that's because that actually should be threw
so that's
so she threw
pronoun and verb those agree that's a typo there
pronoun usage
once again
I knew it was only a matter of time before one of those bullets
and there were a lot of bullets ended up dropping down to me like asphalt
it seems like perhaps the use of
phrases within phrases might confuse
the program so we're
going to ignore that ah the old who whom problem
problem now thing is this is in dialogue
and not everybody says uses who
whom properly
what happened to my
did we lose it look at that that's
that's confusing to me
that's not it
confusing to me that I just lost
okay okay
that's a little confusing
even even here saying that whom should still be used in very formal
writing this is not
so we're going to ignore that I'm
distracted and troubled by how I we lost
this hintbox and it was not very clear
how to get it back so that's kind of a ding review this sentence for adjective and adverb
use
Women grateful for the attention and then it gets
all turned around and they start thinking they can make demands yeah I guess that
could be a little confusing
so that's they don't offer any specific suggestion on how to fix this
but in more formal writing I can see how that sentence would be
would be screwy adverb
placement yeah sure really is not necessary
this sentence that's really the first time I started paying attention to all
you guys
you could certainly get away with saying that's the first time I started paying
attention
but again this is this is a piece of fiction
most ofthe story is from the point of view of
one of the characters in his voice so that's something we would
ignore same here
I get near a car it stops working pretty quick
its it's the the the the dialogue style of
this character here's those squinting modifiers again
and I can ignore that double negatives well
I run into him it'll be the first time since we didn't go to know lecture
so guess what that's again because this is how this character speaks
so ignore that she didn't want no beer
again that's how the character speaks ain't no sovereign
that's how the character speaks
quantifier usage thumb thumbs
the thing here is these are thumb tacks maybe that should be one word
I don't know see if they think it should be later on I'm gonna
ignored that
we're back to the threw the paper bag at me she actually threw the paper bag at
me
and it still thinks its thew so we ignore that
haha a and you know
what I'm seeing here is
it just doesn't get and I wouldn't expect it to honestly it doesn't do
well
with the way human beings
talk which is messy and and
imperfect and full of colloquialisms
and slang and incorrect
grammar so I don't think grammarly is your best choice
for doing a run-through on a piece fiction
yeah it's it's just not
doing well it's just not finding
or I should say it is finding things
that maybe imperfect in the strict sense
are wrong but in the context of a story
you don't wanna fix these things
so all right we're going to just keep clicking through yeah
yeah
I'm afraid grammarly does rather fail
when it comes to fiction
especially fiction written in the voice
of a specific character
let's just move through here
yeah boy yeah grammarly gave me score of 81 out of 100
on this story I have to give grammarly a
fail well not a fail when it comes to fiction but I just don't think
its its well-designed and how could it be
you have to have a heck of an artificial intelligence
for it to work with fiction
alright so let's be done with that let's be done
it sure goes through to find a lot of stuff but you know it's just
it's just not good for that
alright
so overall
the casual setting rather the creative sending
to the blog post seemed to work pretty darn well
and just to be thorough very quickly
I'm going to go through and try this
on might very latest blog post just done
not an hour and a half ago
and just gonna do a
plain copy/paste
and stop this
OK there we are review changes
creaive
just gonna blast through give it one more chance
on doing a blog post
checking that out
21 issues found
it doesn't like my use of ellipsis
sure doesn't like that here's a good suggestion I actually could
the sentence reads interestingly the month I was
away from social media a study from researchers at the Universities
of Michigan and Leuven made the news by concluding
that and then is a quote I don't need that
so I will remove it I'm that's good advice
same here even doesn't need to be in there how
ever in this case leaving it because it's
the way I write it's my voice
and again
here's a situation where using ellipsis and parentheses
kinda confusing things
here this is a typo I'm actually gonna fix this as soon as I'm done with this
I find them during the mostly the same thing that's a plain old typo that extra
the doesn't need to be there
and again thats something that a traditional grammar spell checker
probably wouldn't catch so that's good
but
I'm gonna say looking at what I've seen here
that first of all obviously grammarly would not replace
a human editor or human eye
I'm not sure if its worth
paying for to be honest
if you are blogger
fiction writer where you do any kind of
casual writing
I have very very few opportunities to write anything formal
business and academic technical style
it may be
that grammarly is excellent for those forms
of writing
but otherwise
I don't know see it as being
worth it frankly I just logged out because I want us to go back to the
main page and we're going to go down here
and talk about brass tacks
all the way at the bottom you find
pricing I think this should be a little more up front
30 days
for thirty dollars basically $29.95
or you can pay every three months for sixty dollars
brings the price down to twenty dollars a month or
140 bucks brings it down to just short of twelve dollars
a month for my purposes I'm going to advise you if you're
a blogger, casual writer fiction writer
for your purposes too this probably is not worth it
if you are a technical writer if English is your
is not your native language
maybe it's worth it but as neat as it is
and as clean as the is the site is and frankly as
as cool as the people are at grammarly who I've interacted with by email
for my purposes this tool is
simply not worth the price even at the price it just doesn't replace
a human editor who frankly is going to be
much more expensive but you get what you pay for
you need a human
to do your editing you
grammarly just doesn't seem like you can replace that
alright well there it is thanks for hanging out for
all this time to come to that conclusion
I hope this was useful for you out once again we've reviewed
grammarly calling itself the world's best grammar checker
I have to say that the world's best grammar checker is a human being
and this needs
a lot more work before it can replace a
human being now to be fair
they don't claim to replace the human being
their claim is that they correct up to ten times more mistakes than
popular word processors
and sure that seems to be absolutely true
but is it worth the money they want you to spend
per month probably not
you'll have to decide if you do you think
it's worth it for you then I hope you'll
repay me for this in depth grammarly review and walkthrough
and use the link http://bit.ly/mwsgram
that is an affiliate link I'll earn
a little Commission if you decide to
to pay for grammarly that's it
my name is Matthew Wayne Selznick I'm an author and creator and you can find
me at http://www.mattselznick.com
or of course you can simply subscribe to this YouTube channel
thanks for hanging out bye bye