Bad Advice from Grammarly
After clicking "Skip Video" about a dozen times on YouTube, I finally watched the Grammarly ad and tried the product. In a 15-page document, the tool identified nine "critical issues," only two of which were errors, and I would hardly call them "critical": a missing serial comma (from a CNN quote) and an unnecessarily hyphenated word.
The other seven were not mistakes; if I make the recommended corrections, I will have far more grammatical problems than when I started.
The original document is a case study, "SeaWorld Responds to the Movie Blackfish."
Here are the items marked as errors:
| My Original Version | Grammarly's Correction | My Comment |
| SeaWorld, a theme-park operator | Possibly confused word. Did you mean theme park? | No, I meant to hyphenate the compound adjective. |
| several other groups cancelled performances | Cancelled is British spelling. | Technically correct, but either spelling is acceptable in the United States. |
| debate over orcas continues | Change to the plural form, continue. | No, continues follows debate, not orcas, which is part of a prepositional phrase. |
| The November 6, 2013, article | Article usage (The) is incorrect. | No, it's not: "The...article..." |
| Nowhere does the article mention SeaWorld's response. | Consider replacing the period with a question mark. | No, it's a statement, not a question. |
| The revenue up-tick may have been | Did you mean uptick? | OK! You got me. Uptick is acceptable without the hyphen. |
| Dawn Brancheau's family, friends and colleagues | Insert a comma. | This is a quotation from CNN, and yes, I should add the serial comma after friends. |
| literally millions of safe interactions | Change to million because it's modifying a noun. | No, this is a tweet quotation, and it is correct as is. |
| Also in February, SeaWorld sponsored ads on Facebook | Add a hyphen: SeaWorld-sponsored ads. | No, sponsor is a verb here, not a noun modified by SeaWorld-sponsored. |
In addition to these markings, Grammarly says I have 38 "advanced issues" that I can see if I pay for an upgrade. The upgrade also gives me access to the plagiarism checker, which sounds like a teacher's nightmare: if students change a few words, will they circumvent tools like Turnitin?
Discussion Starters:
- After reading this, would you use or recommend Grammarly? It could be useful for international students, but I worry that it gives bad advice.
- Try the product on one of your own documents. How does it work for you?