The well-known grammar and spellcheck tool Grammarly has announced several major updates. Grammarly will now go even further to help users write clearly and in an engaging manner. The company announced the new updates in a blog post.
The platform is changing the way its writing suggestions are organized. All the feedback will be organized into four categories to help users understand why the suggestions are being offered. Grammarly has also assigned colors to each of the four categories so users can see which categories they need to work on more than others.
Red designates errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling, while blue highlights possible problems with clarity and conciseness. Green designates suggestions which aim to make writing more engaging, while purple aims to help the user “strike the right balance of politeness, formality and friendliness.”
Users can also enter details about their goals for the document they are working on. For example, documents for work must be professional and polished, while blog posts might bend grammar rules slightly for style purposes. Users can also tell Grammarly how formal they are trying to write and identify their audience.
Grammarly is pushing beyond the basic mechanics of writing by trying to help users make their writing easy to understand. The company notes that just because a sentence is grammatically correct doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to understand. The tool will now identify sentences that are difficult to follow. It will also offer suggestions to streamline difficult sentences by dumping words that aren’t needed and inserting more efficient phrases to replace wordy ones.
Improving engagement simply means making a document more fun to read with more interesting words, less repetition and greater variety. Grammarly will offer synonyms for words that repeat or seem bland. The tool will also identify any sections which seem monotonous.
The company also said that while all users will be able to see “extensive suggestions” about the basic mechanics of correctness and clarity, “suggestions related to engagement and delivery are available only to Grammarly Premium subscribers.”
