Grammarly editing my effects, should I keep them or listen to Grammarly?

Question

I am a non-native English speaker. Grammarly is an online writing assistant.

This is a line in my draft

I liked the office, and I liked the environment-- the minimalist furniture, the Macs and Xerox machines, the coffee room, and the lounge.

I have written it like that, with the phrase, 'I liked' twice. There's nothing to convey, I just feel like my character will say it like that.

Grammarly has suggested writing it like this;

I liked the office, and the environment-- the minimalist furniture, the Macs and Xerox machines, the coffee room, and the lounge.

Sorry if it seems pedantic, but there are many similar suggestions. The setting of the scene is in London. What should I do?

Answer 1

You are writing in first person. Under the circumstances, ignore Grammarly and write conversationally, like you feel the person would actually talk. If Grammarly shows you something that makes you say "oops", fine, change it.

If you are writing in third person, a disembodied narrator with no apparent feelings about what they are describing, then give Grammarly more credit. But still do not choose proper grammar over "smooth reading". Reject anything you feel might jar the reader out of their immersion in the story, trying to parse your sentence.

So for a neutral 3rd person narrator, I would take Grammarly's advice here. But you are the artist. It is okay to understand the pedantic Grammarly, and make a choice to ignore it for the sake of realism. Especially in dialogue, or with a non-neutral narrator with personality (as you have in 1st person).

Answer 2

I fed Grammarly this random sample from Hemingway.

"A Farewell To Arms"

She won't die [in childbirth]. She's just having a bad time. The initial labor is usually protracted. She's only having a bad time. Afterward we'd say what a bad time and Catherine would say it wasn't really so bad. But what if she should die? She can't die. Yes, but what if she should die? She can't, I tell you. Don't be a fool. It's just a bad time. It's just nature giving her hell. It's only the first labor, which is almost always protracted. Yes, but what if she should die? She can't die. Why would she die? What reason is there for her to die? There's a just a child that has to be born, the by-product of good nights in Milan. It makes trouble and is born and then you look after it and get fond of it maybe. But what if she should die? She won't. She's all right. But what if she should die? Hey, what about that? What if she should die? [. . .] A doctor came in followed by a nurse. He held something in his two hands that looked like a freshly skinned rabbit and hurried across the corridor with it and in through another door. I went down to the door he had gone into and found them in the room doing things to a new-born child. The doctor held him up for me to see. He held him by the heels and slapped him.

"Is he all right?"

"He's magnificent. He'll weigh five kilos."

I had no feeling for him. He did not seem to have anything to do with me. I >felt no feeling of fatherhood.

"Aren't you proud of your son?" the nurse asked. They were washing him and >wrapping him in something. I saw the little dark face and dark hand, but I did >not see him move or hear him cry. The doctor was doing something to him again. >He looked upset.

"No," I said. "He nearly killed his mother."

And Grammarly gave it a low score for Clarity and a very bad score on Engagement.

So while tools like Grammarly are effective for business writing and school reports, it has very poor sense of what makes for emotional and engaging writing. This text by Hemingway uses scansion and repetition to expose the narrator's true reactions to what he has witnessed. If Ernest-Baby listened to Grammarly, we'd never have ever heard of him.

Answer 3

Never blindly follow a grammar checker.

Never even blindly follow a spelling checker, but grammar checkers are worse. There has never yet been a grammar checker that would not choke on unusual but grammatical constructions, and there are situations where an ungrammatical construction may serve legitimate purposes.

Answer 4

As a professional writer, I've never been convinced that Grammarly is capable of handling poetic elements and timing well. I would definitely go with your version and, for anything less than a technical report, would likely turn Grammarly off.

You can always flip it on at the end to double-check your work, but your version conveys more meaning, through timing and emotion, than Grammarly's does and is therefore ideal.

Answer 5

I like your sentence very much. Your first person narrator has a confident, distinctive voice. If you maintain that voice, you are better than many of the students in my classes who are native speakers.

I write fiction, and I use Grammarly, which constantly calls me out for repeating phrases as you did. I continue to use Grammarly because it is a second set of eyes.

It often catches typos ("to" when I should have written "too," for example). However, when it calls out what it thinks is an awkward sentence or the wrong word, I do not blindly accept its suggestion. I do consider whether I might find a better way to write it. I like having an always-available editor who doesn't get bored, tired, or cross. And who doesn't get annoyed when I ignore its suggestions.

Tools like Grammarly let me look at my work-in-progress in different ways. They improve my work by forcing me to reconsider what I've just written.

Answer 6

Grammerly is not a writing checker. It's a set of business-writing algorithms. In writing fiction, or creative non-fiction, I'd be VERY careful about taking its advice. If it says you messed up subject-verb agreement, consider its suggestion.

By the way, here's how I would word and punctuate your sentence.

I liked the office environment: The minimalist furniture, the Macs and copy machines, the coffee room and the lounge.