I uninstalled the Grammarly Brave extension yesterday. I found something better.
It was more than just finding something better, Grammarly was causing problems for me and that is something that I don’t have to accept. In the last month Grammarly logged me out and asked me sign back in 3 times. There was no reason for that. I didn’t change browsers, it didn’t do an update, there was no amazing functionality added. It also kept insisting on logging in wouldn’t take no for an answer, so it gets deleted.
I had used Grammarly for years and generally liked it, but in the last few months it had issues. It slowed down its checking. It tried to upsell by highlighting phrases and suggesting I buy the premium edition, and it would increasingly say words were wrong that were obviously proper names of places. When something is more hassle than it is worth, I look for something else.
So I searched for alternative and tried a few. I choose to use WProofreader which is free and instantly is loaded when I go to a post. Its funny when I typed its own name it said it was a misspelling. Now why would I prefer this over Grammarly? Several reasons.
It is always loaded and doesn’t require me to have to install and maintain an extension on the browser. Extensions slow down a browser, and they can also be used to spy. Now I only have the 1Password extension.
It doesn’t try to upsell me on a better product that I may not need. It just does its job. The interface is intuitive and at a glance I can look at an older article and see if it needs to be edited. With Grammarly I had to click inside the text post space and then it can take up to 30 seconds for it to scan the post to see if it needs corrections. This can check the grammar/spelling and you can change its options as well or even delete it.
Now I understand that many of you might say “Well I don’t trust it. It is different and Grammarly is better.” Sure it may be better for your use case. The simple fact is that you can use both Grammarly and this and it isn’t confusing. I used them both for a week and I found that this suggested and found things that Grammarly did not. I wrote in an earlier article that Grammarly grammar suggestions were not always correct. No I am not wrong. I had two college aunts who were English teachers and although I make mistakes in writing, when I review a mistake I know if it is correct.
Since Word has its own grammar/spelling check and that is the only other word processor I use I don’t use Grammarly for anything else. If I didn’t have access to word, I would write a post as a draft and then copy and paste it into another document if I needed spelling/grammar checking. I am done with Grammarly. I don’t need the grief.