Grammarly is an essential app for everyone who writes regularly, from experienced writers to those new to academic writing, and from learners of English to proficient native speakers. Install it on your computer now!
You have arrived at College, so you can write in English. You studied at least high school, and most of you have gone beyond that. If you worked in the real world before College, then you probably had to communicate for your supper at times. So you can write, and perhaps you even write well.
But you can write better.
Grammarly is an essential tool for clear writing, regardless of your experience or skill with English. It is a tool for all.
First and foremost, Grammarly is not merely a spelling and grammar checker. Oh no! It is much more than that. I find I use it best to check the clarity of my writing. (It also picks up my typos and grammar errors, but MS Word already does a decent job of that.)
Grammarly also helps you with:
Clarity
Grammarly gives you a score of how clearly you have written – vital for any communication, and all the more so in gospel ministry. After all, God has given us a clear word, and it is incumbent on us to make that word as clear as we can, too.
(Besides, clear writing forces clear thinking, and it gets the attention of those marking your work. As someone who has marked thousands of business reports, I assure you that well-written work always stands out, and almost always earns a better grade. But no one would use Grammarly just to earn better grades on their assignments…)
Engagement
Grammarly tells you if you are interesting or boring, and how to improve. Ignore this at your peril, and write drivel, bore your markers, and put your congregations to sleep.
Delivery
Grammarly gives feedback on your tone, assertiveness, confidence, empathy, and much more – and tells you if you are writing well for your selected goals.
Correctness
Although I am a competent and educated native writer, I rely on this one as well. But even if I were always perfectly correct (and I’ve never been 100% once), Grammarly would still be worth it for the clarity, engagement, and delivery advice.
Setting your goals
With Grammarly, you can adjust your goals for each document:
- Audience: General, knowledgeable or expert
- Register: Informal, neutral or formal
- Domain: Academic, business, general, and others
Thus I would adjust my goals (all of 30 seconds) for an essay to a knowledgeable audience, a formal register, and an academic domain. But for a sermon, I’d set them to a general audience, a neutral register, and a general domain. (And Grammarly just helped me clarify those two sentences.) It would work very differently on the two pieces of writing.
I did well at uni, so why do I need Grammarly?:
You can become a better writer, a clearer communicator, a less tiring preacher or teacher. The best writers are constantly learning and improving. So are the best students and preachers. As John Chapman used to say of preaching, ‘The first 50 years are the hardest.’ So are the first fifty years of writing well.
Our Lord communicated clearly, and so should his ministers. This is no place for complacency. Effective preachers, teachers, and writers are forever improving.
English is not my first language:
If English is not your first language, then you can turn on Grammarly Fluency Assistance. It will help your English come out more native-like. (And no, there is no fluency assistance yet for Koine Greek or Biblical Hebrew.)
So, how do I install Grammarly?
If you are a Moore College student, then College pays for Grammarly Premium, which does Oh so much more than the free Grammarly Basic. Go to the INF02 on our LSS. Instructions on installing Grammarly Premium are at the bottom of the page, along with the Tyndale fonts.
And if you are not an MTC student, then try out Grammarly Basic for free, and see if it’s not worth your money. Or submit a couple documents to their online checker. Or encourage your institution or employer to provide Grammarly Premium. It’s not as full of useful bells and whistles, but it is still great, and it’s free. And it also installs as an extension for MS Word. And apparently, there are now versions for Google Docs, as well as Android and Apple mobile devices.
Now go see how often you can score very clear, very engaging, and ‘just right’ delivery on all your writing. (As well as ‘looking good’ for correctness.)
