Top 3 Alternative Grammar Checkers on the Internet

Posted December 9th, 2019 in Content. Tagged: English, grammar, spell check.

What is Grammar?

Grammar refers to a set of rules that govern language and languages are pretty complex to begin with. Ordinarily in spoken languages, the rules of Grammar are somewhat ignored but that is because it is of little concern as long as the other person that is being spoken to, understands what is being said.

However, it dramatically changes in the spectrum of writing and specially the formal literature where grammatical errors are no less than blunders of epic proportions. It simply takes away the very meaning of formalism and writing although not quite but is almost always a formal channel of communication and so the space for grammatical errors is less tolerated.

It usually takes mastery of the language and a lot of training in writing in that language that one becomes somewhat capable of avoiding grammatical errors but not all those communicating in writing in a specific language, are talking about that language. What it means is that language although is a means but is not always an end.

Consider an engineer who writes about engines in English language. He’d most definitely be well versed in the knowledge of engines but not necessarily in the knowledge of English. This is not in anyway, meant as an insult to the ability of an engineer to speak or write in English but it is just that grammatical errors can be too subtle to be noticed by even a good writer sometimes and so proofreading is the classical method to weed out such errors but even with proofreading, one can miss out on the subtle and minor blunders that one has made in his/her writing.

General types of grammatical errors

Although grammatical errors can a have a wide range of spectrum but we have managed to make a very general list that highlights the most common types of grammatical blunders.

Errors with words of similar spellings

This is one of the most common types of grammatical errors and happens when two words with same spellings but different meaning and context are confused for each other. Consider the famous “You’re” and “Your” fallacy. While the “You’re” stands for “you are” and is used in sentences like “You’re Awesome” as in “You are Awesome” and “Your”, a possessive pronoun is used in the context of sentences like, “your problem”
Both words differ radically in meaning and context yet both of these terms are often confused for each other due to similarity of spellings.

Expression of Redundancy

This is also one of those classic grammatical blunders where two words with the same meaning are used next to each other in a sentence that creates and expression of redundancy. Consider the sentence “He is a hopeless pessimist” This is giving the redundant expression because pessimism means hopelessness and vice versa. Apart from being a grammatical error, it also kills the beauty of the sentence.

Tense Errors

This is perhaps the most common of the most common grammatical errors where the use of tenses is not properly executed. Consider the error in the following sentence “He did not went shopping”, now of course it’s a negative sentence that speaks of potential event in the past that could happen but didn’t happen. The classic rule of past tenses in sentences that talk of a negative is that you do not use 2nd form of the Verb because “Did” precedes a past indefinite sentence which talks of a negation and so the correct sentence would be, “He did not go shopping”.

Avoiding grammatical mistakes with Software

As we have discussed earlier how difficult and frustrating it can be to dwell in the tiniest realms of language to sort grammatical errors but all is not lost however.

As always, Tech has your back. In this case, dedicated Software now exist which are expert systems and solely designed for the purpose of correcting grammatical errors from big grammatical blunders to even the minor subtle ones with surgical precision.

These Software now exist in abundance over the cyberspace and can be used by writers, researchers, students, academics, bloggers to error-correct their grammar, pinpoint and root out the errors.

However, due to an abundance of such Software over the Internet, it could be hard to choose the right one and so we have compiled a list of top 3 Grammarly alternatives for this very reason.