How Great Is Grammarly?

Grammarly has always been one of my favorite programs. I believe I've been a subscriber for at least ten years, maybe more. For those who are unfamiliar, I would like to begin by stating that I have no affiliation with the company. I don't work for them, and I don't receive any compensation for promoting their program. Believe me, that would be nice, but it's not the case. Second, Grammarly is a type of software program. It is not AI, but rather a system similar to the grammar and spell check in Word, albeit infinitely more sophisticated.

I'm an editor, and I would never deliver a project without running it through Grammarly at least once, and sometimes twice, depending on its length. I have many people who write projects exceeding 100,000 words, so I'll use Grammarly once, carefully. It will point out all kinds of typos, missing words, grammatically incorrect structures, and errors in punctuation, and it will stylize your text according to the Chicago Manual of Style if you so choose. I edit a lot of fiction, and since Chicago is the gold standard for fiction, I usually accept most, if not all, of Grammarly's suggestions for punctuation.

It will also tell you if you are using straight quotes in some parts of your manuscript and curly quotes in others, and with one click, you can make them all conform. It will let you know if you have two spaces in front of 250 sentences and one space in front of 700 sentences. It will establish conformity with your numbers, i.e., did you spell out numbers as words from 1 to 100, but then you inserted digits such as 27, 72, and 84? Grammarly can also find missing words; it's very good at finding missing prepositions. Then, just click, click, click, and Grammarly fixes everything for you. It's truly amazing.

You can use the simplified version of the program to check for correctness, or you can expand it to look for clarity, engagement, formality,  delivery, and style guide recommendations. It's up to you.

Don't get me wrong. Grammarly can make incorrect suggestions. It's not perfect all the time, but if you are new to writing and want to catch ten times more spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors than you would with Word, I would give Grammarly a try. They have a free trial, but it's worth subscribing to the annual program. You can also reject their recommendations and tell them to stop looking for something if you want to format it or spell it differently. Again, I don't work for the company! I could never survive without this tool.

 

We Had Went

I think most of my regular subscribers know that I am hooked on the TV show “Judge Judy.” I am always astonished by how many family members sue each other, how many pit bulls end up hurting smaller dogs at dog parks, and how some people take each other to court and go hundreds of miles away to be on TV to sue for $280. But I think what surprises me the most is the language. So many people cannot conjugate sentences. I don’t know who their English teachers were. How many teachers must have had the students year after year and just passed them when they couldn’t possibly have been passing their quizzes, tests, or essays?

Here’s my latest pet peeve: had went. No, no, no, this is never going to work as any kind of a construction anywhere. If you want to use the past tense of go, with a helping verb like have, the proper way to say that you went someplace is to say, “I had gone. We had gone. She had gone. Mario had gone.” Now if you want to use the word went, that’s just fine. Then you don’t use an auxiliary term like have. You just go directly to went. “I went, he went, she went, they went.” Simple! The Macdonalds went to the Bahamas and had a fabulous time. Why not? The only way to ruin the sentence would be "The Macdonalds had went to the Bahamas."  Wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s very easy to remember, though, if you think that went stands on its own, and every time you want to use the word had, you want to use gone instead of went.

You can always make a cheat sheet for yourself if you find it hard to memorize these. Put into like this in your phone. I do that all the time with a wide variety of things. Just add a contact and you can call it “The past Tense of Go.” Or if you want to remember this writing tip, call it “I Had Went!”