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I tried using Quillbot and Grammarly, but they sometimes give inappropriate edits, or not enough information to justify edits so I am often left confused. Any suggestion would be helpful.

P.S: If such a question already exists on this forum, please guide me towards it.

BCLC
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harsh garg
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4 Answers4

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To the best of my knowledge, no grammar checker yet developed is "reliable" enough to never or rarely give incorrect suggestions. This includes commercial as well as free ones. The best that such software can do at present is make suggestions that a human must evaluate.

This is, at least in significant part, because the "rules" of English grammar do not form a logical algorithmic system. There are many exceptions and special cases that must be learned individually, and things that are "correct" in one context are not in another. And "incorrect" grammar is perfectly proper is some cases, such as when writing dialog.

David Siegel
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    This. As you say, even if "free to use" was removed from the question, the answer would be the same. – DM_with_secrets Sep 12 '21 at 07:39
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    partly because there's quite a difference between "correct" and "unambiguous"/"easy to understand" – somebody Sep 12 '21 at 16:25
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    @somebody Quite true, but also because the "rules" of English grammar do not form a logical algorithmic system. There are many exceptions and special cases that must be learned individually, and things that are "correct" in one context are not in another. And "incorrect" grammar is perfectly proper is some cases, such as when writing dialog. – David Siegel Sep 12 '21 at 16:38
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    @DavidSiegel an unfortunate consequence of english being essentially a pidgin language :/ - however i also do believe for the most part english grammar does indeed follow a logical algorithmic system (such as the one taught in schools) – somebody Sep 13 '21 at 05:38
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    do note that i believe grammarly/quillbot wouldn't suggest incorrect edits - since they likely cannot. however they are made to detect certain indicators that may be a red flag which may be frowned upon in certain styles of writing, which may not seem to have a clear purpose (or be useful at all) for many of its users (offtopic, i wonder how much of grammarly's users actually agree with all of its suggestions...) – somebody Sep 13 '21 at 05:49
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    @somebody The complexity of grammar is not something unique to English, but extremely prevalent in all natural languages. The languages with the most simple and regular grammars tend to actually be pidgins, of which English is not one by any stretch. – Sriotchilism O'Zaic Sep 13 '21 at 09:06
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    @somebody What makes you think that a grammar checker couldn't produce a suggestion which was completely wrong? They are programmed by humans, who are fallible; and by necessity they make generalisations, which are not always applicable. See for instance this question, where Grammarly incorrectly suggested an article before "thou", presumably because it analysed it as a noun. – IMSoP Sep 13 '21 at 14:24
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    @somebody "Pidgin" has a clear technical meaning. Wikipedia says: "A pidgin"... is a grammatically simplified means of communication that develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from several languages." That in no way describes English, although Eng;ish does use lots of vocabulary and some structure taken from other languages, which tends to increase its complexity. – David Siegel Sep 13 '21 at 16:51
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    @Sriotchilism While it is true that complex grammar is a property of most natural languages, I believe that English is generally considered to be among the more complex, because of its history of incorporation of both vocab and structure from elsewhere. I am confident that its grammar is more complex than that of most of the Romance languages. I don't know enough to solidly compare with other language families. – David Siegel Sep 13 '21 at 16:55
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    @Somebody I have not used grammarly or quillbot; I have used other grammar checkers which did suggest changes that were, in context, absolutely wrong, and which i think almost any fluent speaker/writer of English would agree were incorrect. – David Siegel Sep 13 '21 at 17:07
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    Honestly I would like to see a citation for that. Anecdotally this is not congruent with my experience with Romance languages (Spanish and Latin). Subjunctive use in Spanish is notoriously hard for second language learners. I expect it to still be very difficult for computer systems. The big issue for these checkers is that natural languages don't have a hard boundary between semantics and grammar. This is something that is universal. But I'm not an expert perhaps there is something uniquely complex in English making it difficult for checkers, and for that I would be happy to see evidence. – Sriotchilism O'Zaic Sep 13 '21 at 17:51
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    @Sriotchilism this was based on my personal experience learning French in college in the early 1980s, on comments made by various people who speak french, Spanish and Italian as well as as English, and on general reading. It is also based on my experiences on the ELL.SE site and the kinds of expectations that ESL students seem to have of the lawfulness of English grammar. I have not done detailed research on the point, and I could be mistaken. – David Siegel Sep 13 '21 at 17:59
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    I'd add that a grammar checker will give you some false positives to evaluate, but you'll have to use good ol' human brainpower to find false negatives. – AmiralPatate Sep 14 '21 at 07:53
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English grammar is a bit of a mess. Even smart humans can disagree about the correctness of a particular grammatical construction. You ask a great deal of an application, free or otherwise, to be "reliable."

I use several of these programs. I even pay for a few. Their value to me is in focusing my attention on particular passages that may or may not need correction. Almost all of these programs have a "ignore" function, either for a particular instance or for a whole class of grammatical tests. I use these functions and so should you.

Even if they worked perfectly (whatever that means), fictional works may have, for good and proper reasons, material that is decidedly non-grammatical. "And that ain't none of their business, buster!"

In the end, the author owns the writing. Spelling, grammar, and even style checks are only tools in the employ of the author.

JonStonecash
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Checking grammar using a computer program has indeed turned out to be much harder than computer scientists thought when the computer was a new concept. Some even thought natural language, logic, and all the rest would be something the computer would be able to deal with in a jiffy.

I think computer science has contributed to language studies the fact that language is way more complex than a simple algorithm.

That being said, Grammarly is a tool that will grammar check English and it has a free edition. (ProWritingAid is another tool, but I haven't looked into it much—it does seem to have a free edition though).

Is Grammarly any good? It does help me find small problems when I write, however, more importantly, it will do this by forcing my text into their cookie-cutter idea of a grammatically correct text.

And yes, Grammarly does sometimes get the grammar wrong and suggests things that don't seem right...

I would never, ever, use Grammarly (or any other tool) for anything but blog posts, texts on places like Writing.SE, and work-related texts in English.

For fiction (even if I wrote in English) I'd rely on beta readers, editors, and so on... Never a program... mainly because, as I mentioned, you might lose your style and voice if your English will be forced into their idea of good language.

Erk
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    The free edition of ProWritingAid is limited to 500 words at a time. – GammaGames Sep 13 '21 at 14:10
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    I'd go further with your first sentence, and say that analysing grammar at all has turned out to be much harder than linguists thought. Some of the more dubious grammar "rules" come from misguided attempts to squeeze English into unnatural shapes for the convenience of scholars, rather than reflecting how it has been naturally and successfully used for centuries. – IMSoP Sep 13 '21 at 14:21
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Gmail

Open a new email on Gmail, don't fill the To: field, paste the text you want to check on body and wait for the online grammar (and idiomatic!) checker points out any mistakes or suggestions.

Actual use: English is not my first language and I checked this text as above. Gmail suggested: "point" to "points out".

André LFS Bacci
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