Upgrade Your Content with Grammarly
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When I started to think about this website, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into.
Don’t get me wrong; I immediately liked the idea of collecting and organizing all the information about side gigs, but writing content was a different story. Grammarly was a lifesaver. Let me tell you about it so you can upgrade your content with Grammarly too.
Why Grammarly is Important to Me
As a Dutch developer in an online team of a major company, the idea of creating and maintaining a website didn’t scare me. I have worked with great professionals long enough to have a basic understanding of SEO and online marketing.
Being somewhat of an introvert, the social media aspect is a bit of a challenge, but I love to engage.
My Pinterest boards are growing daily, as do the number of views and followers. That seems to work out nicely.
But that is not why I wrote this post.
My most important challenge was writing. Apparently, websites need content…
I knew upfront that content writing is a skill that takes a lot of practice to master, but boy o boy… It is even harder than I thought.
Like many Dutch people and as a developer, I am used to reading in and listening to English a lot. I was very confident in my English skills.
Using Grammarly, I can only conclude that I severely overestimated my English spelling and grammar skills.
How Grammarly Helped Me
Given the above challenges, I could use all the help that there is.
Using some of the proofreading services posted on this blog could help, but for now, that seems a bit over the top. Besides, I would like to try to improve my writing skills, and what better way to do so than practice, practice, practice
So I need two things:
- A tool to keep my punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors to a minimum.
- A way to learn something about the style and tone I write in.
Grammarly definitely helps me with the first.
I am sloppy with my spelling and punctuation, and sometimes I don’t even know the correct spelling of a word.
As an example, I had 4 versions of the word ‘probably’ in my personal lexicon.
Grammarly keeps telling me that there is only one.
For the second challenge, I rely a lot on both Grammarly and Yoast.
Yoast is an SEO plugin for WordPress, and it warns me when I use too much of a passive voice or make my sentences too long. It also informs me if my sentences have enough variation and if they are easy to read.
Grammarly’s Tone Detector tells me if the tone of my text is friendly, confident, optimistic, formal, etcetera.
Grammarly is Free
Yes! What is even more awesome is that it is free! It won’t cost you a penny to upgrade your content with Grammarly!
You can add the Grammarly extension to Chrome, download their native (Windows and macOS) App, add it to your smartphone, download an add-on for MS-Word and Outlook, and it also supports Google Docs.
The free version comes with basic suggestions about your Tone, Conciseness, Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation.
Premium Subscription
I already enjoyed the free features, but recently I have treated myself with the Premium subscription. And I love it!
Grammarly is my new writing BFF!
I got all of the features that were in the free version, although I have a feeling that the premium subscription takes it to the next level. Upgrading all my old posts after researching another topic (How Long Does it Take to Increase Domain Authority), I noticed many new suggestions by Grammarly.
What is even better is the feature that rephrases sentences and picks synonyms for words I frequently use. Especially the words that feel natural to me given my Dutch background and lack of writing experience.
Often, there are better and more effective (e.g., useful, powerful, practical) English words that I don’t think about myself.
Grammarly (Premium) also helps me to keep my text concise and makes suggestions about the clarity. I just tend to use a lot more words than necessary, without function in a sentence.
There is one thing that bothers me. In WordPress, I am used to the block editor. Blocks with a sentence that are so short that the only take one line don’t seem to get checked. I need to figure out if I can do something about that.
As an experiment, I’m now starting to work out the basic posts in the Grammarly app. What is also nice about it is that it lets me set goals for my content:
Conclusion
I believe that Grammarly offers a valuable tool for bloggers, even with the free version. I can sincerely recommend the Premium subscription. You won’t regret it!
I Tried It
Obviously, and it has become an important tool in my writing workflow.
It helps me spot a lot of the spelling errors and correct some of the grammar mistakes that I make as a non-native English speaker.
The Tone Detector feature gives me a lot of information about the way my writing may be perceived.
I also like that I can now add a bit more color to my posts by rephrasing sentences and creating more variety in the words I choose.
No Surprise: I Like It
I went for the Premium subscription after a couple of months. What more can I say?
What Is Your Experience?
Have you used Grammarly? Do you agree that with me that you can proofread and upgrade your content with Grammarly? Do you know alternatives?
Leave a comment and share this post if you like it.
And… Thank you for reading! You are awesome!
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