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shawnleonhardt
Community Member

Grammarly!!!

So I’ve seen it mentioned that it isn’t the best software, but wow it’s even worse than I thought. I was told my writing was riddled with mistakes, and that I had to use Grammarly.

I put one paragraph in and despite all the “errors” it claimed no plagiarism detected. I change one word, instead of ‘either’ I switched it to ‘both’ and wow! After that simple change it gave me a highly plagiarized alert!

One word! That is ridiculous and scary. I wonder how many have had serious issues due to software like this?
11 REPLIES 11
lysis10
Community Member

Clients that use Grammarly instead of a real editor are**Edited for Community Guidelines**

I evaluate this as a mean response.  There are most surely satisfied client and freelance users of every major editing solution (including Grammarly) who may be many things -- but broke is not among them.

 

I am a big fan of the MS Word 'Read Aloud' function.  Content that is read out loud provides an aural processing check. This function provides an excellent method through which I can catch those bothersome little tactical writing errors Grammarly did not catch.  It is also, then, consistent humbling to see how many mistakes always exist within my first-write, unedited words-work.

I consistently compose my production content in Word, so that this facility can be engaged. When it meets the correct marks for quality, I then transfer the words to whatever venue is at hand.   Other editing software packages exist.  Autocrit has served me well in stylistic structuring, particularly with an eye on Flesh-Kincade grade reading level score.  The point is to have the eyes then dance with intellectual pleasure, not bleed, in this regard.

The attached screen indicates how the [Read Aloud] button appears on my Word screen.

a_lipsey
Community Member

Grammarly is an online tool that runs grammatical rules and doesn't always get it right. I never run full text through it, but I will use it to spot check something. I never use it as the final word on something because there are different schools of belief, if you will, in grammar, and grammatical styles are always in flux. Grammarly won't pick up on many linguistic phrases that are unique to certain fields. 

 

As with anything, it's one tool that must be used with discretion to achieve your desired result. It should not be relied on to proof your writing to perfection. 

 

As to its ability to detect plagiarism, I have never used it as such a tool. 

I use the Canadian Antidote, from Druide. I think it's superior to Grammarly (it doesn't check for plagiarism, though). It's very helpful, but you really need to know what you are doing and how to separate the wheat from the chaff (false positive vs real grammar errors).

 

 

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"Where darkness shines like dazzling light"   —William Ashbless
wescowley
Community Member

My experience has been that, for plagiarism detection, Copyscape Pro (or whatever they call their pay version) is more comprehensive than Grammarly, though you can never be sure what they're not finding. And for both, you can't go blindly on the results. They'll pick up on quotations that are properly cited and common phrases.

 

As I've posted recently, don't rely on Grammarly for grammar checking, or really any grammar checker. The technology just isn't good enough yet, and English is too ambiguous. I can often tell when I've been handed something that's been run through Grammarly first - commas tend to be in weird places.


Wes C wrote:

My experience has been that, for plagiarism detection, Copyscape Pro (or whatever they call their pay version) is more comprehensive than Grammarly, though you can never be sure what they're not finding. And for both, you can't go blindly on the results. They'll pick up on quotations that are properly cited and common phrases.

 

As I've posted recently, don't rely on Grammarly for grammar checking, or really any grammar checker. The technology just isn't good enough yet, and English is too ambiguous. I can often tell when I've been handed something that's been run through Grammarly first - commas tend to be in weird places.


Fun fact: Copyscape is one of the few companies that has permission to scrape Google results. You can skip Copyscape and just copy/paste a sentence in Google. Copyscape seems to filter out results if they are not too similar, but Google will identify synonyms and return plagiarized content from people who just took paragraphs from another source and switched out words (which a lot of writers seem to do on here). That's how I found plagiarism back when I was hiring writers for a client. They would get mad at me and argue that the content was "original" because it passed copyscape. lol So I would show them the source and the paragraphs I could see were copy/pasted and then words switched out.

This is how I find where my work has gone. I open up the doc, copy and paste a couple pieces in Google and voila! (My favorite is when I find it and it is butchered all to hello and back.)

Otherwise I only check for plagiarism for a couple topics. Like one area of expertise that I write in A LOT I want to make sure I’m not repeating myself. As there is only so much to say about said topics. In general I am a pretty weird person with unique interests and my writing reflects that. In fact it’s that creative quirkiness that I sell instead of impeccable grammar.


Shawn L wrote:
This is how I find where my work has gone. I open up the doc, copy and paste a couple pieces in Google and voila! (My favorite is when I find it and it is butchered all to hello and back.)

Otherwise I only check for plagiarism for a couple topics. Like one area of expertise that I write in A LOT I want to make sure I’m not repeating myself. As there is only so much to say about said topics. In general I am a pretty weird person with unique interests and my writing reflects that. In fact it’s that creative quirkiness that I sell instead of impeccable grammar.


Copy/pasting into Google is really the best way. And lots of them will write their own first paragraph and start plagiarizing in the second or third paragraph. You'll notice it because the writing starts out pretty bad and then gets really good. You should always take a sentence from the middle of the document or at least a random location. Lots of them will take paragraphs from different sources and call it "research." A lot of "writers" do this. They're so clueless that they think this is ok because it passes copyscape.

researchediting
Community Member

The word change pushed a passage over some threshold. That’s how mechanical systems like Grammarly work. The question would be what you do with the alert. If you run the flagged passage through Google, you’ll either find a source, and can decide what to do about that, or discover that Grammarly has issued a false positive—as various assessment systems, not excluding medical ones, do.
bizwriterjohn
Community Member

As we are discussing plagiarism, here is an interesting tactic to use, if you wish to check and see if your personal writing may have been plagiarized.

If one were to google the website **Edited for Community Guidelines** - the first row one would read would be this:

KMS technical teams have delivered Data Analytics applications and
Business Intelligence systems that serve more than 10,000 end users.


That happens to be a John-Website and those happen to be John-Words.   Notice what happens in Google search returns, when I cut-and-paste those exact words into the Google Search bar.   The first organic return?  The **Edited for Community Guidelines** site.

Thus, I was able to Google a substantive part of my own words-work - and had those words been used on another website - I would then (probably) have the capability to see who is using my words, and where, and why.  Google clauses of unique nature is the tactic in summary.

It can makes for an interesting afternoon. PIcking out the best parts of our custom writing that is posted within major website pages.  And then take a tour around the Internet to see if anyone has borrowed our words.

 

 

 

Grammarly's mental.  It suggests the most surreal alternatives to any 'unusual' word, is obsessed with commas and really gets its knickers in a twist at the idea of someone having the temerity to write in non-American English.  Fairly useful for spotting typos, homonyms and the like, though. 

 

I like Hemmingway for non-fiction and ProWriting is great for spotting overused words, cliches and the like. 

 

When it comes to plagiarism, my favourite tool is those nice people who email to tell me my work's been stolen.  (Some of my work is *very* specialised so it's obvious even if loads of words have been changed.) A prompt and grateful response often sets them on a mission to do some more internet cleaning. And I just issue a takedown notice.

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