Reliable is:
?
By Chris Thomlinson.
As mentioned in ‘the TRUTH about the LIES about PORN!’, I’m the UK’s most prolific author of genuine Erotica. I currently and have been publishing (on average) a new erotic story each week to an internet site.
For the past five plus years, I’ve used a free version of ‘Grammarly’, an on-line grammar and spelling checker app. One that is available to use with Google. During that time, I have come to notice quirks and inaccuracies, balanced with positive suggestions.
Suggested grammar and spelling oversights are underlined with a red squiggle, exactly the same as Microsoft Word, only for typos; grammar being underlined with an olive green squiggle in MS Word. In recent years, though, the Grammarly app has introduced a light blue squiggle for what it deems ‘wordiness’. Generally, it’s an unwanted, by Grammarly’s standards, phrase, add-on, interruption, even a secondary clause.
The most noted example is ‘in fact’, an interruption that, as with most interruptions, requires commas around it within a sentence, otherwise it’s an add-on.
For those unfamiliar with the anatomy of a paragraph, see the end, while it’s far from relevant to this revue of the Grammarly app.
The main reason for that is, despite the user being able to click ‘Tell a story’, on the ‘Goals’ link, the app is set up for documents and not stories. Within stories, there may be context issues; information later on that clears up something seemingly ambiguous at the start, beforehand; emphasis applied by the author, not to mention ‘poetic license’.
On the spelling side, and with the app set to ‘British English’, it doesn’t recognise ‘hamp’, despite it being short for ‘hamper’ and used by the shabby detective in an episode of ‘Columbo’, likewise the word ‘draw’, which the app suggests should be ‘drew’, thereby ignoring ‘draw’ in a chest of draws for example.
16th June 2021, and it failed to realise the correct context of the words ‘on going’ and ‘would be’, suggesting a hyphen be placed in between each pair of words along with the correct use of ‘awhile’ in relation to ‘a brief period’, which is my Collins dictionary’s definition thereof.
Even today, 11th July 2021, it suggested I change ‘myself’ to ‘me’ in the part sentence: ‘Unable to control myself, I pushed back on them…’
Better still, it suggests: ‘I’m still at a loss as to what to wear.’ instead of what it should be: ‘I’m still at a loss as what to wear.’
Commended, a synonym for ‘thanked’, is not recognised, either.
In reading published on paper books, ones purchased from book shops and not the self-published ones on amazon, you will no doubt have noticed that, instead of repeating a word, in the case of ‘commended’, part of the speech verb, authors use synonyms for what would otherwise be a repeated word: ‘Jenny said’ followed by ‘Mark said’.
One important note. In as much as you can download 2 apps, one for Goggle the other for use with Microsoft Word, DON’T! The reason being that the apps slow down your writing. Far better is to do what I do and that is to upload the document via the Grammarly app.
It is further worth pointing out that, because of Grammarly’s questionable reliability, the app was not used to check any of the articles published in the TRUTH. The reason for that was, the articles were proofread and double checked, while standard clauses, rather than the complex ones used in stories and books, were used for simplification and a clear understanding by the reader.
Anatomy of a paragraph
A paragraph encompasses a topic.
Sentences. Excluding speech, they are made up of one or more clauses.
The most common start of a sentence is ‘Subject or Noun + verb’ (note. ‘John’ is a noun as it’s a name while ‘he’ is a subject).
The terminology for a word ending in ‘ing’ at the start of a sentence is ‘Participle’. A comma goes at the end of the clause: ‘Having said goodbye, Sally headed home.’
If something or someone is mentioned in a sentence directly after the noun verb, the term for it is ‘Object’ ‘Clive sat at the table’ (table being the object).
The predicate is everything in a clause except the noun/subject.
In general, a secondary clause is an informative clause that interrupts a clause: ‘Having walked along the hall, head held high, he went upstairs’. A secondary clause is identified by the fact that it can be removed from the clause it sits within, rather like an interruption, and not cause ambiguity.
Add-ons. These go at the start or end of a sentence, otherwise they are an interruption. Generally speaking, and for emphasis, an add-on at the start is displaced from further inside a sentence. The most common add-on at the end is ‘then’. ‘Ready to go, then?’ Then is unnecessary; however, it adds emphasis to what is said.
Interruptions come in many forms. Usually, they are 1 word. ‘They gazed at one another, fondly, neither one saying a word’.
A phrase is a group of two or more words that have the same function in a sentence as a single word. He ran ‘very quickly’.
Footnote:
As you will have come to realise from reading this informative review, although, yes, the Grammarly app is, to some degree, reliable, you need to use either a degree of common sense or check the Grammarly app’s suggestion, either with a well-known or on-line dictionary.
