# Grammarly: a long-term review

By [Doug Lane](https://paragraph.com/@axalane) · 2022-03-30

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​[Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/) is the AI copywriting tool with which I have the most first-hand experience. I’ve been using it since late 2017. Since then, it has analyzed over 4 million of my written words.

When I first tried Grammarly, I immediately found it far superior to the built-in grammar checkers in applications like Word and Google Docs. But for the first several years I used it, user experience issues would often get in the way.

To Grammarly’s credit, they tried a bunch of things to provide ubiquitous access. Browser extensions. A Microsoft Word add-in. A wacky iOS keyboard. But it always felt like whenever I would try to engage it for something I was writing, I would spend twenty minutes trying to get it to work. I would be logged out. Or, it wouldn’t be playing nicely with Google Docs or Word for some unknown reason. I’d often just end up skipping it.

Whenever the time came up to renew my annual subscription, my feeling was usually, “yeah, I guess so.”

But then Grammarly made an improvement in late 2021 that changed everything. They [introduced new Mac and Windows apps](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/introducing-grammarly-for-mac-windows/) that operate at the system level. I was a little bit skeptical about this at first since you’re basically signing up to have a little Grammarly widget on your screen 100 percent of the time.

But here’s the payoff: it just works everywhere. No more playing around with browser extensions and plug-ins. It doesn’t matter if I’m working in a word processing app, an “artisanal” writing app like [Ulysses](https://ulysses.app/), PowerPoint, or even emails and Slack messages. Grammarly is just there coaching me.

I also feel like the quality of Grammarly’s recommendations is improving over time. One thing that is a constant battle for me is being less verbose in my writing. In addition to catching basic copy errors, Grammarly frequently serves up good suggestions for tightening up my sentences that I can just click to accept.

Grammarly’s new ubiquity at the system level creates a virtuous circle for me. I now use it nearly all of the time when I’m writing to tighten up copy as I go. I also feel like this is genuinely coaching me to improve my writing since I’m starting to anticipate the things it will ding me on and proactively avoid them.

The areas where Grammarly helps me are still pretty basic. But it’s starting to scratch the surface of the [bionic copywriting](https://mirror.xyz/axalane.eth/rzGiDk8zMW-fYu-kseguzC4HlDmZTq3lUaHWQfSHimg) concept I described over the weekend.

\-Doug

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*Originally published on [Doug Lane](https://paragraph.com/@axalane/grammarly-a-long-term-review)*