You’ll Never Catch Me Using Grammarly
How online writing assistants are doing students a disservice
I’m not a snob. I won’t stop talking to someone because they misuse “their,” “there,” and “they’re” in texts and emails. I’m always down to help someone proofread. I spent a year being an associate editor on my university’s literary magazine: I love to edit. I know I’m likely alone in that boat. But hey, I spent eight semesters studying the ins-and-outs of the English language. I’ve been a freelance writer and content creator for nearly three years and I have never once used an online writing assistant.
I want to stress that I am not against other people using services like Grammarly or Hemingway. I think for students and professionals alike it can be beneficial to double check yourself. I’m not perfect either: I use the spell checker built into Google Docs and OpenOffice.
My problem lies with the fundamentals of the systems: Why in the world is something like Grammarly necessary? Has the American education system failed us so badly that we don’t just use spell check, we rely on it?
What the heck is Grammarly?
Founded in 2009, Grammarly is a grammar and spell checker that you can download to your browser that reads your emails and documents. In the “About Us” page on the website, the company claims to “strive to help all people feel heard and understood, whenever and wherever they communicate,” and that their “writing assistant supports clean, mistake-free writing while offering suggestions that go way beyond grammar.” For example, the AI system can read the tone of your writing to determine if your writing is formal or friendly, which boggles my mind. How can a computer system determine someone’s tone by the words they choose? According to their site, Grammarly can determine if your writing is accusatory, angry, concerned, egocentric, and more.
I’m pretty regularly recommended Grammarly in YouTube ads (which confuses me further because before I started writing this article I had never gone on the website) and the commercials are a little over the top. Customers claim to be professional writers and write press releases and emails every day, but don’t know their basic grammar and phonics? Sure, you’ve got me fooled.
English is hard, but the American education system is making it unnecessarily harder
When I was in elementary school, our main subjects were language arts, writing, math, science, and social studies. We had special areas too — like art and gym class — but for most of the day my classmates and I studied phonics, cursive writing, and multiplication.
I’ve spent a big chunk of my professional career working with children, especially kids aged six to thirteen. And a huge part of that time working with kids was spent helping them with their second grade homework assignments. I hardly ever saw any reading or writing work. I’m not saying math and science aren’t important — because they absolutely are: Communications and language arts are equally as important.
English is one of the most complex languages in the world. Riddled with homonyms, homophones, and broken rules, it’s very challenging to pick up later in life. In English, each letter makes a sound. But some letters make more than one sound, and some sounds in words require two or three letters to achieve (like “ch” and “dge”). It’s hard enough for a five year old and certainly hard for an adult who has been speaking a relatively logical language their entire life.
So why aren’t kids learning the basics anymore? Children learn in preschool or kindergarten that words are made up of letters and those letters make sounds, right? Sounds simple. But according to Pamela Snow of Monash University, the way English speaking children (specifically in America) learn to read is setting them up for failure. The way children learn to read is with memorization.
We teach kids to read “real books” and “sound it out” when they don’t know a word. Well, “real books” have long and complicated words with spellings that disregard the many rules of the English language (we all know the “i” before “e” except after “c” rule, but how often is that broken?). When a kid takes a spelling test and they “sound out” a word and subsequently spell it incorrectly, what does the teacher do? They write it on the board or on card stock and hangs it up for the class to “learn.”
I think teachers have one of the hardest jobs in the world and should be paid a million dollars an hour. And believe you me, this is not their fault. The fundamentals of the US education system is the problem. But we’re getting off topic. The problem I have is that my colleagues — writers and editors alike — rely on Grammarly rather than their own expertise to make sure they did something right. If you are a professional writer, shouldn’t you have the skill set and expertise to edit your own work?
Grammarly has its place, but not on my laptop
I think Grammarly can be superfluous, yes. I believe it is making people worse writers by and large. Everyone from a sixth grader to a CEO rely heavily on Grammarly and basic spell check to correct their work and modify their tone. Instead of actively editing and proofreading their work, students are able to bypass this crucial step in the writing process and end up with perfectly fine papers. Is that teaching them anything?
Grammarly can be a great tool for freelancers and professional writers just as a quick extra set of metaphorical eyes to ensure there aren’t any glaringly obvious issues. But you’ll never see me using it or even recommending it to people. We as writers and readers should have been taught the proper way to review our writing.
Grammarly shouldn’t have to exist. We shouldn’t need such services. The public school curriculum should be teaching kids how to read, spell, and write properly, and people shouldn’t depend on their computer AI to tell them if their email is too demanding. Say what you mean and mean what you say.
