WRITING TOOLS
Grammarly Is Trying To Turn Us All Into AI Bots
Overreliance on the tool can ruin your writing as much as bad grammar
“The word calvary doesn’t seem to fit this context. Consider replacing it with a different one.”
“What?” I replied to Grammarly in an annoyed voice. “It looks fine to me. Horses… Cavalry. Ohhhhh.”
I had originally written:
He arrived with a heavily armored calvary
Grammarly nailed it. The way I originally wrote it, I was saying that he arrived with a heavily armed place of crucifixion. Oops.
So I’ll begin by saying that Grammarly started life as a useful tool. I had made a simple spelling mistake. But it was a sneaky bad one. It would have eluded my old eyes for eternity. It may have eluded a good editor’s eyes, too.
As a software developer, I have been impressed with this software since its release several years ago. As a writer, same.
But something has changed. Somebody got hold of the AI tradewinds and decided to wreak havoc on a good thing (when I worked in the software biz, we called these people product managers, and they never got invited to the good parties).
