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If you’re considering investing in Grammarly, you may question what it can and can’t do.
The free version of Grammarly improves your writing by finding and fixing grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. Grammarly Premium offers more value by making your writing clear, consistent, and compelling while ensuring the proper tone and the absence of plagiarism.
As a trained proofreader, I can help you discover Grammarly’s capabilities and limitations so you know what to expect from this popular software.
Grammarly is the best proofreading software available, and I use the premium version as a final check for blog posts and the documents I proofread and copyedit for clients. I also have a free Grammarly account for researching articles like this one.
What Grammarly Can and Can’t Do for You
Note: Throughout this FAQ, I’ll refer to Grammarly’s free version as Grammarly and its premium version as Grammarly Premium.
1. Can Grammarly be used for free?
Yes, Grammarly can be used for free.
You’re not required to enter any credit card information to use Grammarly.
However, if you want to use Grammarly Premium, you need to pay a fee.
Grammarly Premium Price Plans
| Annually | Quarterly | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
$12.00 / month (save 60%) – billed as one payment of $144.00 | $20.00 / month (save 33%) -billed as one payment of $60.00 | $30.00 / month |
2. Can Grammarly correct spelling and grammar mistakes?
Yes, Grammarly does an excellent job of correcting spelling mistakes and a good job of fixing grammar goofs.
When I tested both versions of Grammarly, I was impressed by how many spelling slipups and grammar gaffes Grammarly detected. Specifically, I was encouraged by how well Grammarly found and fixed spelling snafus involving homophones.
Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings (and usually different spellings). For example, during the test, Grammarly identified where I had incorrectly used the word piece and suggested using peace instead.
Good going, Grammarly! 😊
3. Can Grammarly correct punctuation errors?
Yes, Grammarly Premium does a respectable job of picking out punctuation pitfalls.
However, when I evaluated both versions of Grammarly, I found that Grammarly (free version) missed a lot of punctuation problems.
If you want software that will help you with proper punctuation, you need the premium version.
4. Can Grammarly check for plagiarism?
Yes, Grammarly Premium can typically detect plagiarism by checking your writing against billions of web pages and ProQuest’s academic databases to ensure its originality. Grammarly does not have this capability.
The screenshot below shows Grammarly Premium’s plagiarism feature.
The ability to detect plagiarism is one of many reasons why Grammarly Premium is a sound investment for college students.
Please be aware that the plagiarism detector doesn’t include all sites on the Internet.
Although it checks writing against billions of web pages, small sites may not be included in the plagiarism check.
5. Can Grammarly check Spanish?
No, Grammarly can’t check a text written in Spanish.
“Currently, Grammarly supports only the English language. With that being said, Grammarly recognizes a number of spelling, grammar, and punctuation differences in American, British, Canadian, Australian, and Indian English.”
– Grammarly
If you’re looking for free online proofreading software for Spanish, you can try SpanishChecker or Language Tool. LanguageTool can also check German, Portuguese, French, Dutch, and many other languages.
If you want your document to be as error-free as possible, you may want to consider hiring a proofreader.
6. Can Grammarly check a PDF?
You can’t use Grammarly to check a PDF directly; however, you can run either version of Grammarly on anything you can copy and paste.
Whenever I want to run Grammarly Premium on a PDF, I copy and paste the PDF’s content into Microsoft Word, run Grammarly Premium, and transfer the corrections to the PDF.
Alternatively, you can copy and paste the text into Grammarly’s free online grammar checker.
7. Can Grammarly check for AP style?
No, Grammarly can’t check that writing adheres to AP style or any other commonly used style guide.
“At this time, Grammarly does not make recommendations about the formatting of your text. This means that we are unable to enforce a specific writing style such as APA, MLA, or Chicago.”
Source: Grammarly
However, it can detect basic formatting errors with citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago Style, but not AP style.
8. Can Grammarly rewrite sentences?
Yes, Grammarly Premium can rewrite sentences.
It rewrites the sentence if it’s unclear, wordy, dull, or ineffective.
It rewords sentences in various ways (e.g., changing the order of words, using more engaging terms, cutting out unnecessary words).
I’ve been impressed with Grammarly Premum’s recent efforts to rewrite sentences.
Here’s a sentence I wrote that Grammarly Premium rewrote.
In case the writing in the screenshot is too small for you to read, here are both versions of the sentence:
My sentence: Likewise, the proofreader is the last person to try to stop any errors from making their way through to the final version of a text.
Grammarly Premium’s rewrite: Likewise, the proofreader is the last person to try to prevent errors from reaching the final version of a text.
I think Grammarly Premium’s version is more effective because it’s more concise. It also replaces the word stop with prevent, making the sentence more engaging since it uses a more descriptive term.
9. Can Grammarly paraphrase?
It can, in a sense.
Paraphrasing involves using different words to express something another person said or wrote. A paraphrase is typically shorter than the original.
You have to go to Grammarly’s website to use the free paraphrasing tool. It takes one sentence at a time and tweaks it by using slightly different words.
However, it doesn’t paraphrase in the sense of summarizing a lengthy passage.
Furthermore, Grammarly’s free paraphrasing tool doesn’t always spit out an accurate version of the original sentence.
Let’s take a sentence from above: “Paraphrasing involves using different words to express something another person said or wrote.”
I put this sentence in Grammarly’s paraphrasing tool, and here’s the result. The arrow points to the original sentence, and the paraphrased version is in the rectangle.
The obvious problem with the paraphrase is that Grammarly changed the word paraphrasing to inphrasing, which isn’t a word.
The paraphrasing tool can be helpful, but you need to ensure it hasn’t changed the meaning of the original sentence or, worse, introduced an error.
10. Can Grammarly help reduce word count?
Grammarly can help reduce word count—but not by much.
It will recommend cutting three- or four-word phrases down to just one or two words.
For example, in the screenshot below, Grammarly alerted me that the phrase takes context into consideration may be too wordy.
It suggests that I use the words considers context to make my writing more concise.
Grammarly also advises cutting out individual words when they’re unnecessary.
Below, you can see how Grammarly thinks I can do without the word definitely. I definitely agree. 😉
Even though Grammarly occasionally removes a word or two to make your text concise, these adjustments won’t significantly reduce the word count.
If you need to reduce your word count considerably (and don’t want to do it yourself), you can hire an editor.
11. Can Grammarly detect passive voice?
Yes, Grammarly Premium can detect the passive voice.
When you write a sentence in the passive voice, Grammarly Premium sometimes asks you to consider rewriting it in the active voice.
The active voice is often preferred over the passive one, which is why Grammarly Premium points this out.
As you probably know, passive voice isn’t wrong—it has its place.
If you’d like to know more about when it’s preferable to use the passive voice, feel free to check out this article.
Although Grammarly—remember I’m referring to the free version here—doesn’t detect passive voice, Grammarly’s website has a free passive voice checker.
12. Can Grammarly read aloud?
No, Grammarly can’t read your text aloud.
However, if you’re using Microsoft Word 2019, you can listen to your writing using the Read Aloud feature (under the Review tab).
Hearing your writing read aloud is a superb proofreading strategy. Our ears often pick up on the mistakes our eyes overlook.
13. Can Grammarly translate?
No, Grammarly can’t translate since it only operates in English.
14. Can Grammarly track changes?
No, Grammarly is not able to track changes.
Track Changes is a feature in Microsoft Word.
Google Docs has a similar function called the Suggesting feature.
I turn on Track Changes when proofreading a client’s document in MS Word.
When I work in Word and accept a suggested edit from Grammarly Premium, it’s shown by Track Changes in the same way as edits I make without the help of Grammarly Premium.
15. Can Grammarly outperform Microsoft Editor?
Yes, Grammarly can outperform Microsoft Editor.
It outperforms MS Editor significantly.
When I tested both versions of Grammarly against MS Editor, Grammarly found several errors that MS Editor overlooked, and Grammarly Premium, not surprisingly, detected many errors that Grammarly missed.
The document I used for the test was 225 words long. Throughout the writing, I included a variety of mistakes pertaining to grammar, punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and more. The text contained a total of 24 errors.
You can go here if you’d like to see the exact breakdown of the mistakes, the errors detected by each software, and a discussion of the test results.
And how many errors (out of 24) did each software detect? Here are the results:
- Microsoft Editor: 8
- Grammarly: 12
- Grammarly Premium: 18
The results are what we would expect to see with this kind of test.
16. Can Grammarly replace a proofreader or editor?
No, Grammarly can’t replace an editor or a proofreader, even though it’s the most advanced software of its kind.
Grammarly analyzes your writing using an AI-powered algorithm. And although AI is continually becoming more sophisticated, it’s far from replacing a human proofreader or editor. Editors and proofreaders are still needed!
Grammarly considers context while reviewing a document, but it’s still prone to missing errors and making erroneous suggestions.
Only human proofreaders and editors can fully understand a writer’s intent and all the nuances and complexities of the English language.
As we saw from the test results above, even Grammarly Premium failed to detect six errors (out of 24) in the test document.
Also, the text I used to assess the software had a 5.1 Flesch-Kincaid grade level—meaning you need to have a fifth-grade reading level or above to read and comprehend the text. Had the document been more complex, Grammarly Premium would have failed to detect even more mistakes.
In my work as a proofreader, I’ve noticed that the higher the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, the more errors Grammarly will likely overlook.
This makes sense because only an immensely sophisticated algorithm or a well-trained proofreader could spot these nonobvious flubs.
If you need to hire a proofreader, I wrote an article about how to find a good one.
17. Can Grammarly be wrong?
Yes, both versions of Grammarly can be wrong.
Let’s see an example of how Grammarly Premium sometimes makes an erroneous suggestion.
Below, Grammarly Premium mistakenly recommends I choose either a capital or lowercase w every time I write word so that my writing is consistent. But this is incorrect.
I need to capitalize the word word in some instances but not others.
For example, in the first sentence above (“The only word it changed”), I’m talking about a word, as in a term. Therefore, word should be lowercase.
In the last sentence above, I’m talking about how I work in Word (the software). Therefore, I need a capital W.
I agree with Grammarly that consistency is important, but not when it results in a boo-boo.
Whoa, Grammarly! You’ve gone too far, my good grammar guardian. 😉
Let’s see another example of when Grammarly Premium got it wrong.
Below, Grammarly Premium suggests that I remove the word this. However, removing that word would result in the following incorrect sentence:
The active voice is often preferred over the passive one, which is why Grammarly Premium points out.
I need a pronoun, like this or it, between the words point and out.
Although Grammarly is the most accurate proofreading software on the market, it’s doubtful that it will catch all the mistakes in your writing.
If you’d like to learn more about Grammarly’s level of precision, I wrote an article called “Is Grammarly Accurate? (a Proofreader Tells All).”
18. Can Grammarly make you a better writer?
Yes, Grammarly can make you a better writer.
The free version will help you improve your grammar and make your writing more concise.
The premium version will do much more to make your writing shine.
With Grammarly Premium’s assistance, you’ll learn to make your writing clear, consistent, and compelling.
If you’d like to delve deeper into how Grammarly makes you a better writer, this article from Forbes explains how Grammarly’s algorithm is trained.
19. Can Grammarly be used on multiple devices?
Yes, Grammarly can be used on any eligible device since it’s free.
And according to Grammarly’s support site, you can use Grammarly Premium on up to five separate devices.
This article from Grammarly’s support site explains how to access Grammarly Premium on a new device.
20. Can Grammarly be used off-line?
No, Grammarly can’t be used off-line.
“Grammarly is an online application, which means your computer must be connected to the internet. Grammarly requires a stable internet connection to analyze your text and provide suggestions.”
– Grammarly
21. Can Grammarly be used in Word?
Yes, Grammarly can be used in Microsoft Word.
That’s where I use it the most. 😊
22. Can Grammarly be used in Google Docs?
Yes, you can use Grammarly in Google Docs.
23. Can Grammarly be used in PowerPoint?
Yes, Grammarly works in MS PowerPoint.
That concludes this article about Grammarly’s capabilities.
I hope it has answered many of your burning questions about what Grammarly can and can’t do!
Since Grammarly is such a helpful tool for me, I wrote an article about reasons to use Grammarly so you can discover the benefits too.
Best wishes to you!
“If you make a mistake and do not correct it, this is called a mistake.”
– Confucius
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