I know some of you have tried grammar software. So did you find it useful? If so which one?
did you find it useful?
Not really. I simply let Word flag what it believes to be a grammar error and then analyze it. Sometimes I agree with Word and make the change. More often I don't agree with Word. Sometimes Word is probably right, but I choose to keep it "wrong" because of the flow or other creative reason.
So did you find it useful?
Only in description, not dialogue.
Why? Simple. People don't use grammatically correct language in their everyday conversations.
Worst crap ever!
I have heard many good things about Grammarly, so I tried it out. And I can't believe how poorly designed it was.
I mainly write in Google Docs, so, first I tried the Grammarly AddOn for Firefox. But the thing performed so poorly my browser crashed and I had to kill the process.
I thought it may work better with the Grammarly extension for Chrome, so, I tried that one next. Sadly, while I didn't have to kill the process again, the performance was still so bad that Chrome froze up most of the time, and there was no way to actually get any writing done.
Then I thought I try the actual Windows software. So, I copied everything I had written up so far into MS word and started Grammarly.
It did perform well, and nothing crashed this time. But the damn thing kept losing its connection to the Grammarly services every minute or so. And every time this happened, it had to re-scan the entire document and wouldn't give me any suggestions until it was done listing the 1k+ "premium suggestions" as well (by that time, the book was little over 700 pages long).
Even when it did work as intended, it was more of a hassle than useful. Everything it suggested was marked in the document... with one character off.
Example:
I had "fulltime job" in my document. Grammarly wanted me to change it into "full-time job", but what it actually marked in the document was "ulltime " (including the space at the end instead of the "f" at the beginning). So, when I allowed it to apply the change automatically, I got "ffull-timejob". And guess what happened when I applied that change manually? It started re-scanning the whole damn document again, not letting me continue to work until it had listed off all the 1k+ "premium suggestions"...
EDIT
Before someone asks:
My PC has a Ryzen7 7700X, 32GB DDR4 RAM, and the OS runs on an M.2 NVMe. So, I refuse to believe that it's my machine's fault. I also checked my net traffic, and it was never interrupted.
I've been happy with ProWriting Aid, but only in some circumstances. The Word plugin (which I accidentally enabled) is just plain bad - or at least it is for me. It changed Word from taking a few seconds to open a 500,000-word document to taking a few minutes to open a 15,000-word document. The long one took an hour. Disabled!
The browser plugin is fine. I've got it on right now and it's complaining about a few things as I write. That said, I don't really follow its suggestions that often when writing short things in my browser.
The place where it pays off is the standalone Windows app. It'll read and edit Scrivener projects (and a host of other formats, but I write in Scrivener), makes good style suggestions (singlemindedly - it would remove every adverb if it let it), and so forth. If I turned it loose I would hate the result, but it's great at focusing my attention on places where I should focus.
The standalone editor is quick and functional and never bogs down. If they could get it to display and edit italics, I'd be thrilled, but aside from that I'm happy.
Prowritingaid
It has it's own serious problems. It's halfway decent at catching obvious errors, but loves to give erroneous corrections (suggesting then when 'than' is correct, and vice versa) and completely changing the meaning of sentences by 'correcting' what it considers a 'wrong' word. Not to mention being flat-out stupid about IT, medical, and legal terms/language.
I can actually forgive the medical and legal terms, but how in Loki's name can it not understand basic IT terminology and its correct usage?
I agree 100%, which is why I have let my subscription expire. But of all the programs I've tried, it's in the top 3 for me.
I almost always use 'Style' mode, which may be why I don't see those corrections. I can't remember it ever saying anything about 'then'/'than', and its word substitution 'corrections' are rare. I've seen some lacking definitions; since I rarely write IT, medical, or legal language, I imagine it's much worse since you do.
I incorporate every change manually (and more often by typing than by clicking its suggestion and using it). It works for what I need it to do, which is mostly to poke me about things I can use a nudge on (repeated sentence starts, overused adverbs, etc).
Someone who really needs grammar help might or might not be well-served. It's hard for me to tell.
I got the lifetime subscription at a pretty solid discount (thanks, NaNoWriMo!), so I'll stick with it.
The main thing I hate about Grammarly are all the ad's for it. Their as bad as leaf filter.