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Grammarly is not a writing God

Posted: December 28th, 2020, 12:19 pm
by SARubin
I've seen a lot of people put their faith in tools like grammarly because they think it's the authority for writing perfect content.

And sure, it can help spot a few glaring errors in our grammar. But at the end of the day Grammarly is a tool... nothing more!

The fact is, your content could be rated nearly perfect on Grammarly but still be garbage.

Why? Because proper grammar is not the same thing as engaging content.

Unless you're writing for English professors or grammarians, it's far more important to write the way your audience talks.

To quote Mark Twain, "If we were taught to speak the same way we were taught to write, we'd all stutter".

On top of that, Grammarly often makes suggestions that don't fit the context of what we're writing.

And when we're selling something to normal humans, nobody gives a crap if you left a dangling participle at the end of a sentence, or used an improper verb. All we care about is if you're offering something we want, at a fair price, and if we can trust you to deliver as promised.

So don’t be blinded by the bright shiny lights of a perfect score on Grammarly. Our goal is to make compelling content that's easy to read and understand by our target audience. And in "direct response copy" our aim is to get our market to take a positive action.

And it doesn't matter if we say "they take a positive action"... or "a positive action is taken"... or "action is positively taken"...

What matters is that our writing connects with the people we're writing for.

Re: Grammarly is not a writing God

Posted: January 2nd, 2021, 11:32 am
by WordyWordpecker
I use Grammarly so I don't have to think about it when I'm writing. I can type out my thoughts then go back and clean it up after.

By the way, love the new forum Steve. It will take some getting used to because it's different, but it's much more professional looking :D

Re: Grammarly is not a writing God

Posted: January 2nd, 2021, 12:23 pm
by SARubin
WordyWordpecker wrote: January 2nd, 2021, 11:32 am I use Grammarly so I don't have to think about it when I'm writing. I can type out my thoughts then go back and clean it up after.
Absolutely Wordy. You and me understand it's a useful tool and it does have a purpose. It's just not a writing God. (Hmmm, maybe that should be "you and I" ? I guess I'll it run through grammarly and find out :lol: )
WordyWordpecker wrote: January 2nd, 2021, 11:32 amBy the way, love the new forum Steve. It will take some getting used to because it's different, but it's much more professional looking :D
Thanks man. Yeah, that wordpress platform was OK, and I liked it just fine at first. But every time wordpress updated their core half my plugins stopped working, and it took days to get the site working again. This platform seems much more stable.

Re: Grammarly is not a writing God

Posted: January 2nd, 2021, 3:33 pm
by Franklin
WordyWordpecker wrote: January 2nd, 2021, 11:32 am I use Grammarly so I don't have to think about it when I'm writing. I can type out my thoughts then go back and clean it up after.
Yup, I use spellchecker for the same reason

P.S. I like the new forum better too. Especially the part where I can now preview my post before I submit it