On its 10th Anniversary, Grammarly Looks Way Beyond Grammar (fastcompany.com)

The service that began by checking prose for glaring mistakes increasingly wants to help its nearly 20 million daily users do more than simply avoid errors. From a report: Plenty of technology companies give away stickers of the sort their fans can slap on the back of a laptop. But the ones available for the taking in the reception area at Grammarly's San Francisco office are distinctly its own -- willfully low-key and thoughtful rather than brash and boastful. Being low-key and thoughtful is a logical tone for a company that is in the business of helping people fine-tune their written words, whether they're meant for a business document, school paper, or social media post. That is what Grammarly has been doing for a decade, since its founding on April 1, 2009, under its soon-abandoned original name of Sentenceworks. But it's also how it wants to run its business, which -- rather than moving fast and breaking things -- waited six years before offering a free version and another two before taking on outside funding.

[...] Grammarly is celebrating its 10th birthday by announcing that it's on the cusp of reaching 20 million daily active users, including both users of the free version and those who pay $30 a month (or $140 a year) for Grammarly Premium or $15 per user per month for Grammarly Business. That's up from 15 million last October and just 1 million at the end of 2015, the year it introduced its free version. The company is an uncommonly effective direct marketer; even if you've never tried its service yourself, there's a pretty good chance you've been exposed to it on YouTube. And even if you hit the "Skip Ad" button as fast as you could, enough viewers have paid attention that YouTube rated Grammarly's spot as the most effective "TrueView for Action" ad of 2018, based on reach, clicks, and engagement.

Comments

Grammarly

[fluffernutter]

I see that ads all over the place, but hasn't Word done this pretty much ever since there has been Word?

Re:Grammarly

[phantomfive]

It works better than Word, and also it has a plugin to work anywhere you type (in the browser, in text documents, on your iPhone, on Android). It's really obsessive about commas, and it gets confused by more complex sentences.

The primary target is ESL speakers (including Indian and German and Chinese), who feel unconfident with their grammar. As one user/employee told me, "I feel uncomfortable when I don't use it, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong." This probably results in a better experience for those who read the emails, as well. If you're a native speaker, you'll find the spellcheck UI rather nice, you'll be flattered by the weekly emails telling you how good your English is, and you'll be annoyed when occasionally it corrects your English incorrectly.

Overall its grammar correction is rather good.

Re:Grammarly

[thereddaikon]

I see what you did there.

Re:Grammarly

[Joce640k]

I see that ads all over the place

Me too, they're soooo annoying!

What I want to know is if they guarantee that all those adverts will go away if I actually buy a copy. If not, they can go fuck themselves. Actually owning a copy and still having to sit through that crap will lead to firebombings.

Re:Grammarly

[flargleblarg]

"I feel uncomfortable when I don't use it, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong."

Oh, the irony there. That comma should be either a semicolon, a colon, or a period. The comma is grammatically incorrect there.

Re: Grammarly

[phantomfive]

So which one, a semicolon or a colon? They aren't interchangeable.

Power of Slashdot

[Invisible Now]

Havenâ(TM)t see any Gramarly ads, but this fine fluff piece on Slashdot pried open my mind space. A how many other keyboard drones also got touched worldwide? What was the excuse ? birthday aniversary? Friend of a friend? Hereâ(TM)s hoping Slashdot doesnâ(TM)t get overrun with PR postings, even if becoming aware of a subscription web company of note is mildly interesting....

Re:Power of Slashdot

[ledow]

YouTube is damn near full of them, to the point that I can't understand how they afford to be.

Wouldn't touch it with a bargepole but it "works" because random people ask me about it. I tell them to try the software out before they pay for it. Nobody pays for it.

Rent seeking gone wild

[WaffleMonster]

$30/month for a glorified spell check that steals all of your contacts and stalks your physical location in order to check your spelling.

The tech industry has completely lost its mind. Enjoy your third "happy time" while it lasts.

Re:Rent seeking gone wild

[cascadingstylesheet]

$30/month for a glorified spell check that steals all of your contacts and stalks your physical location in order to check your spelling.

The tech industry has completely lost its mind. Enjoy your third "happy time" while it lasts.

Meh. I wouldn't use it, but if it works, there are people I know who should ...

(They give away all that stuff for every app anyway. They may as well get something useful in return.)

Grammar? don't need no stinkin' grammar

[goombah99]

in the future we will all send google-auto-composed memos to each other for our AI to read and respond. All we need is the George Jetson button.

Re:cheap advertisement

[ledow]

No chance.

I was a subscriber long ago, which give me the "Disable Advertising" button.

Guess what? It doesn't. There are ads over the top of article summaries sometimes, there are ads in the page sometimes, and yet the box stays resolutely ticked all the time.

I may not have given money to this new lot, but they can't even abide by the promises of their predecessors - and it happened day one that they took over.

I already have ...

[PPH]

... a grammar sticker for my laptop.

Lets see

[DarkRookie2]

1. Requires account.
2. Subscription software.
3. UX/UI leaves a lot to be desired.
4. Doesn't even work. Unless an account is needed to turn it on. (Tested it in this box. With some known grammar mistakes.
5. Keeps bugging to create an account. Would be great, except for the above.

Re:Lets see

[phantomfive]

. (Tested it in this box. With some known grammar mistakes.

What kinds of known grammar mistakes?

Grammarly can't fix everything

[DickBreath]

Capitalization is very important. An commas too!

For example. it means the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse...

Miss the point

[Anonymous Coward]

I' duz not veiw.

Obsessed with passive voice?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if it is?

Grammarly = bad grammar

[MobyDisk]

I don't know what Grammarly is, but I do know that "Grammar" cannot be made into an adverb, therefore the word "Grammarly" it is bad grammar. What's next, a web-based spell checker called "spelChekkit?"

Re:Grammarly = bad grammar

[Livius]

You can't trademark ordinary English words, thus, Grammarly the proper noun. They got that one right.

Re:Grammarly = bad grammar

[MobyDisk]

While there are benefits to trademarking "arbitrary" terms, you can indeed trademark ordinary English words. An example of some English words that are trademarked are "Camel" (cigarettes) or Target (store) or Apple and Macintosh (computers). You can even trademark a single letter, like the letter R although that includes a design... here's a boring one: the word "seen".

Well, use it!

[nospam007]

"Grammarly is celebrating its 10th birthday by announcing that it's on the cusp of reaching 20 million daily active users, including both users of the free version and those who pay $30 a month (or $140 a year) for Grammarly Premium or $15 per user per month for Grammarly Business. That's up from 15 million last October and just 1 million at the end of 2015, the year it introduced its free version. The company is an uncommonly effective direct marketer; even if you've never tried its service yourself, there's a pretty good chance you've been exposed to it on YouTube. And even if you hit the "Skip Ad" button as fast as you could, enough viewers have paid attention that YouTube rated Grammarly's spot as the most effective "TrueView for Action" ad of 2018, based on reach, clicks, and engagement."

I just ran the above through Grammarly and it reported 'Passive Voice Misuse'

Re: Well, use it!

[koki22]

Guess what? It doesn't. There are ads over the top of article summaries sometimes, there are ads in the page sometimes, and yet the box stays resolutely ticked all the time. https://audacity.onl/ https://findmyiphone.onl/ https://origin.onl/

It's a quote

[goombah99]

and in dialogue punctuation is there for cadence as much as sentence structure... so commas and ellipsis are allowed to get the colloquial context across. No one speaks in semi-colons ever.

Re: It's a quote

[MikeFM]

I end all my sentences in semicolons;

Vocabulary

[MrKaos]

Grammarly won't help you when you are speaking. Writing is thinking and when you offload that thinking to a machine you are not refining your thinking, you're learning how to use a tool.