English Grammar and AI

Grammar is one of those bug bears that we have to deal with as we write first draft and as we self-edit our copy. As a newbie and a self publisher then I have no funds to outsource grammar checking to an editor so I have come to rely on AI grammar checkers.

In the dim and distant past, grammar checkers were hard pushed to issue warnings of passive voice and tentatively suggest the addition of a comma. But now their repertoire has expanded somewhat.

I tried out Grammarly briefly but it didn't play well with Scrivener. I'm sure there's a future there but not when I needed it.

On the basis that a lot of author websites recommend the use of Pro Writing Aid (they do a great marketing deal) I gave it a go. It had a way of working with a Scrivener project that was reasonable. I used it for a couple of years and gradually fell out of love with it.

Among the recurring issues I could not forgive was when it wanted to add a comma to a sentence, it seemed reasonable so I did it. Five minutes later it came back to the new comma saying it wasn't required. And so the game of comma ping pong was invented by a grammar checker. I had read about the ability to rewrite sentences and paragraphs. Sadly that never worked for me. The output reminded me of the Radio Ham sketch by Tony Hancock, a foreign radio ham reported "It is are not raining here also." Pro writing aid wrote sentences worse than that for me. I'm sure it's better now but I had had enough at the time.

It's common for people to slag off Microsoft Word for whatever reason. I've used it for about twenty five years for writing technical documents. It's been a solid performer in my world before attempting to be an author. The spellchecker and the grammar checker get slagged off when compared to Grammarly and ProWritingAid but it was a stable known quantity, so I ran it up and tried the grammar checker on my manuscript which was already in .doc format.

By some freak of timing, Copilot had just been added to Microsoft 365 and the grammar checking had just taken a step up from what I remembered. It did a great job of checking the grammar. It worked a lot faster than the ProWritingAid plugin in Word. It didn't play comma ping pong.

I never asked it to rewrite sentences or paragraphs. What I did ask was for a precis that would be suitable for the back cover of the book. It was a bit more brash than my normal style, but it gave me a great starting point. I asked Copilot about the target audience it thought the book was aimed at. It got it right.

In conclusion I find Microsoft 365 a tool that I can live with. Now the bundle contains a decent grammar checker it's even better.

PS: This isn't a paid ad.