Are These Detrimental Errors?
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Grammar checkers are very helpful for catching spelling mistakes and sentence structure errors, but they are not always correct in what they suggest, whether this be contextually or a breach of a writer’s stylistic preferences. In my WRIT 211 class, Advanced Composition, we had to write a paper analyzing our writing voice, called a voice self-study. Since my voice self-study was nine pages long, I thought it would be a good pick to run through a grammar checker and yield corrections that would foster good discussion. I put this paper into Grammarly and received forty-one errors in total. Using Patricia T. O’Conner’s Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English and William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style, I analyzed the suggestions that Grammarly gave me against proper grammar rules, as well as my style preferences. I believe that grammar checkers are helpful and should be used to double-check one’s writing, but also that their suggestions are not always right and shouldn’t be blindly accepted by the writer without checking if the suggestion makes sense in the overall context of the writing.
Image 1
My use of the word “own” was one of the main errors that Grammarly found in my writing. There are two instances of it within the same paragraph (Image 1). I understand why I should remove “own,” as it is redundant like Grammarly pointed out. I’m already saying the word “my” which is possessive and shows that what I’m about to say is coming from me. There is no need to clarify that my judgment is my own, or that my lack of confidence is my own because the word my does that for me. This relates to Strunk and White’s reminders: “Do not overstate” (Strunk and White 72) and “Be clear” (Strunk and White 79). While this error doesn’t directly align with what Strunk and White say about not overstating and being clear, it still relates because I’m overstating by saying “my own” and taking out own would make the sentence read smoother, improving its clarity.
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Another common error I had was the overuse of adverbs. I tend to use words like “absolutely,” “actually,” and “really” a lot in my writing, and a lot of the time they are redundant (Image 2). I thought that Strunk and White would have more to say on adverbs, but one of the only pieces of information I could find was the rule, “Do not construct awkward adverbs” (Strunk and White 75). Strunk and White claimed that “You’re probably better off without it” (Strunk and White 75), in reference to adverbs, which is what Grammarly is saying as well. However, this rule is about not using uncommon adverbs such as “tiredly” (Strunk and White 75) or not creating weird adverbs like “muchly” (Strunk and White 75). When analyzing these corrections, I was looking for more information on reasons not to use “really” or “actually” as I feel like they are commonly overused adverbs. The closest thing I could find to what I wanted was Strunk and White’s explanation of the misuse of literally/literal (Strunk and White 52). They state that these words are “often incorrectly used in support of exaggeration or violent metaphor” (Strunk and White 52), with one of the examples being “literally dead with fatigue” (Strunk and White 52). I suppose the same argument could be made for the modern use of actually, as I have often said to my friends, “I am actually going to scream” in times of frustration, even though I rarely do end up screaming. However, I want to argue that my use of actually in my voice-self study is actually fine. I think it works to clarify what I’m talking about because even though I was talking about doubting my ability to have a career in writing, I was actually referring to the larger issue of doubting my writing capabilities overall. When actually is taken out, “…it is me doubting my writing capabilities overall” still sounds fine, maybe some would even argue that it sounds better, but I think that there are larger errors to be worried about. While I should probably restrict my adverb usage, one or two that make sense contextually and show my writing voice do not hurt. I would also like to highlight that since the first part of that sentence is in the past tense (mentioned), maybe the next part should read, “It was me doubting my writing capabilities overall.” This seems to be a verb tense agreement issue, but Grammarly didn’t pick it up. This is why we can’t rely on spell checkers for everything.
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I think it’s also worth mentioning that in my self-study I was quoting my previous works of writing, as well as some of the texts we were reading in class. When Grammarly told me to delete the word “absolutely,” it was telling me to alter a quote, which you’re not supposed to do (Image 3). This shows what O’Conner was talking about in the “Spellbound” section of her book when she explained that grammar checkers cannot process the context of the writing that they are checking (O’Conner 150). Even though there were quotes around my writing, Grammarly still suggested that I correct it. It also gave me this correction for the titles of different works I was referencing. For example, Grammarly suggested that I capitalize multiple words in the title of this work when in the actual title they are lowercase. If I had listened to Grammarly, I would’ve been incorrectly referencing the work.
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There were also a lot of points where Grammarly told me to remove or add commas to my writing. One of the corrections that stood out the most was the one in Image 4. I think that removing the comma in this context makes the sentence not make sense. I am using the commas surrounding “the readers” in this sentence in the same way as a nonrestrictive clause that offers more information that “is not essential” (O’Conner 3). If I were to take out “the readers” completely, the sentence would read fine. However, the removal of the second comma is not correct in my opinion, though Grammarly claims that it is. Without the second comma, the sentence reads: “I am someone who is very aware of my audience, the readers when I am writing.” “The readers” needs to be sectioned off. Maybe parentheses or double em dashes could’ve worked better in this example, but both commas need to be there or the whole phrase has to be removed. Grammarly is not analyzing the rest of the sentence and is treating “the readers when I am writing” as the whole audience that is being referred to when I only meant “the readers.”
While I agree with some of the changes that Grammarly made to my writing, I do not agree with all of them. I received a good grade on this paper, so I know that none of these errors were detrimental to my professor’s understanding of my writing, and some of them weren’t really “errors” at all, but I think this analysis helped me recognize writing patterns that I have. I think if I had accepted all of Grammarly’s suggestions, my writing would have been more concise, but some of them would’ve made it sound off, or simply incorrect. I think it’s important for my voice to still come through in my writing, like when I chose to keep in adverbs like “actually,” but I also think careful attention to the changes I make to my writing is something that I will continue to practice, even more so now.
References
O’Conner, Patricia T. Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Riverhead Books, 2019.
Strunk, WIlliam, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 3rd ed., Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1979.