Grammarly Alternatives

[Philo Hunter]

Hey all, hoping some other writers might have some recommendations for me.

So my final edit pass has been, for the last several years, to run the Grammarly add on inside word. At least half it's recommendations have always been things that are wrong/stylistically don't fit fiction, but it still catches a TON of stuff I'd never notice editing on my own.

Problem is over the last couple of months, like nearly everything tied to the online world, it's gotten noticeable worse. I've gone from needing to wade through a reasonable number of suggested edits to nearly triple the suggestions, like 60% of which are now commas in nonsense places. My guess is the sudden change/enshitifcation is tied to implication of ai nonsense, or maybe it's tied in to them not really supporting the word add on anymore. Either way I'm finding using it to be more and more of a grating grind and I'm hoping someone has a recommendation for another similar grammar edited with a word add on.

[Void]

I will watch this thread with interest. I've not found anything that offers a satisfying alternative to just self-editing. I tend to habitually read back the last five or six paragraphs I've written, then read through each chapter after completion, then finally read through the book on completion, and those filters get maybe 19 in 20 errors, with the final errors showing up like 6 months later when I read it a final time with fresh eyes, and have to update the file.

More than sifting out errors, this process also ensures things hang together well structurally, and I'm not repeating words or phrases and so on. This side of it is the one where I need to check my work, and I don't know of any automation that would help. If I automated fixing typos and repeated words and all that, I would still need to edit that structural stuff - so I just filter for it all on each read through.

My best tool is to just physically read it back out loud to myself. It's juvenile in many ways, but it's the only way I can check flow and force myself to read it with fresh eyes that don't glaze over mistakes.

[VegaTaxeca]

Personally, I try to re-read my texts many times as well before posting them.

Regarding Word, I haven't noticed any worsening lately, but then I am still using Office 2016.

[Philo Hunter]

Regarding Word, I haven't noticed any worsening lately, but then I am still using Office 2016.

Word is fine, it's specificly the grammarly add-in for word I'm frustrated with.

Edit - although I WAS pissed when they added in the ai assistant without warning and you had to downgrade your subscription to the old model to get rid of it. Besides having no interest in using the kind of ai tool it added in the icons for it were huge and VERY distracting.

[Philo Hunter]

I've not found anything that offers a satisfying alternative to just self-editing.
...and I don't know of any automation that would help.

I'm not entirely sure if I wasn't being clear what I use grammarly for or if you are talking about your editing process in a way that's kind of far from the intended topic. I do a couple edit passes (one in scrivner after turning an outline into a first draft) and one after transferring a story (or more likely a chunk of a story since that's how I normally write\post stuff) in Word.

After those two passes I turn on the grammarly plug in and sort through it's suggestions. I'm not automating anything/blindly accepting suggestions. It's kind of like sorting through someone's notes and picking and choosing suggestions. It's mostly useful for catching those things your brain is not seeing right cause it's seeing what you INTENDED, the kind of things you WOULD notice when going back and re-reading something weeks or months later.

Even before it's quality dived I probably ignored 80% of what it suggested, but that 20% made a huge difference. It's just been frustrating have to go through 600 suggestions vs the like 80 it used to be in the same space to find them.

[Void]

I'm not entirely sure if I wasn't being clear what I use grammarly for or if you are talking about your editing process in a way that's kind of far from the intended topic...

...After those two passes I turn on the grammarly plug in and sort through it's suggestions.

Sorry, I perhaps should have used more specific language. I don't say automation to mean something that writes or changes work, or otherwise replaces you as the author/decisionmaker; I say automation to mean a reader that scans your work and brings your attention to areas that may need adjustment - and I listed pertinent reasons why I wasn't satisfied with anything offering that service. My talk of my editing process very specifically concerned the *reading* of the work to find problems - which is the automated service we are discussing here, unless I really have missed the intended topic.

If I could automate that process to an acceptable level I would snap it off immediately, which is why I am keen to see what is suggested here. Sadly, thus far I have not seen an editing tool that remotely gives me the confidence that I would get from a human proof-reader. I very much feel your pain about struggling to see past what you intended - reading it out loud is the only way I can force myself to be vaguely objective to actually read what is written, rather than what I expect to be written.

Incidentally, all of your work that I've seen is edited very cleanly - so, laborious as it may be, your process works very well! It may just be one of those things where you just have to pay the iron price of sifting through loads of automated suggestions/continuously reading it back/paying for competent proof-reader.

[Philo Hunter]

I say automation to mean a reader that scans your work and brings your attention to areas that may need adjustment - and I listed pertinent reasons why I wasn't satisfied with anything offering that service. My talk of my editing process very specifically concerned the *reading* of the work to find problems - which is the automated service we are discussing here, unless I really have missed the intended topic.

I think from the way you're talking about it here you haven't used Grammarly before? (and I'm specifically talking about the plug in within word, the separate app/web version is I think different from what I use AND I think the add in isn't easily added into word anymore?). Functionally, at the "free" level, it's works a lot like the built in spelling and grammar suggestion with word, it just catches a bit more/different stuff. And like I've said, I end up ignoring a vast majority of its suggestions, but even when it's offering up nonsense there are plenty of times it draws my attention to a specific sentence that DOES have a different issue and allows me to catch it.

Incidentally, all of your work that I've seen is edited very cleanly - so, laborious as it may be, your process works very well! It may just be one of those things where you just have to pay the iron price of sifting through loads of automated suggestions...

Thank you, I appreciate that. I have felt it has worked really well for me, especially with the way I write/post stuff. And it IS still working, it's just become an increasingly worse slog. Like I said, a 4,000 word chunk has gone from like 80 suggestions to between 300-400, at LEAST a third of which is commas in nonsense places. It's very frustrating when a program/website that works perfectly for you suddenly is worse and worse every time you open it for seemingly no good reason.

But it feels like that's fucking everything now a days. Part of why I threw up this post was getting pretty infuriated by trying to google an alternative and only getting page after page of shitty knockoffs offering a third of the functionality, most of which is hidden behind a really expensive pay wall. And all of those hits are clearly coming up thanks to SEO, with the only conversations about stuff showing up are reddit conversations from 4+ years.

My hope is someone here has a suggestion for an equivalent add in that works for them, or at the very least is willing to digitally sit with me and old man shake out hands at what the internet and programs are becoming as we grumble our displeasure at the state of the world.