My mom was really strict when it came to spelling. If I needed help spelling something she would never tell me how to spell it. My dad would help me, but not my mom. Mom would tell me to look it up in the dictionary. As a child and later on as a teen it was pure torture to do that. I understand now that I am a mom myself that she was just trying to teach me to learn how to spell it on my own (and also to learn the meaning), but back then I hated having to get the dictionary out.
I have always loved to write, even at a very young age. Even so, my grasp of proper grammar is not good. Once in 11th grade I had to write a paper on Jane Eyre. I actually got a split grade! B for content, F for grammar. Ugh!!! In my defense the teacher didn’t like me much either. I used to cut her class a lot. But that is another story…
I use Spell Checker on every thing I write, whether it’s e-mail or blog posts. Sadly my e-mail or blogging platform doesn’t check grammar.
I try to self check my own grammar by re-reading my posts and saying them out loud to see if it sounds correct. Many times I can catch errors. Other times they slip by.
LOL!
Grammar and perfect spelling are not something that only bloggers need to concern themselves with. EVERYONE has a need to learn to spell correctly and which “than/then” to use in a sentence. Writers of all kind – reporters, authors, business professionals – need to have perfect spelling and grammar. So do students. It doesn’t matter if you are in elementary school or college, spelling and grammar DO count.
So how can you double check your work to make sure everything is spelled correctly and it’s grammatically correct? That is easy – use Grammarly.
Grammarly is a grammar checker that anyone can use. Simply copy and paste your blog post, book report or whatever it is that you need checked into their checker section and Grammarly will search through your document and look for comma use, verbs, context and so much more. After Grammarly goes over the text it will provide you with a detailed error report as well as advice on how to correct them. It will also provide you with vocabulary enhancement tools so you don’t end up using the same words over and over again. Grammarly also does a spell check too.
Another interesting feature is that Grammarly will look for plagiarism too. That makes this a valuable resource for both educators and parents to make sure that students are not simply copying and pasting information they found on the Internet into their reports.
The only “downside” to using Grammarly is that it gives you A LOT of detail as to why it feels like something you wrote is grammatically incorrect. It gives you examples and more. Personally I would just rather know what I need to do to fix the issue rather then re-educate me as to why it’s incorrect. I understand it only does it to teach me so that I don’t make the same mistakes in the future, but I often do not have time for a lesson. I simply need to have my post checked so I can move on to the next thing.
If you would like to learn more about Grammarly visit www.Grammarly.com.
*This is a compensated post. I received a free gift in exchange for my post. Any opinions expressed are my own and not influenced in any way.
