Best Proofreading Services vs Grammar Checkers
Writing a great college admissions essay is the result of a long, multi-step process. You must organize your goals, keep track of your progress, research sample essays, and avoid writing mistakes. And you need to do it all by your deadline.
Most students can do the research and the writing on their own. Unfortunately, many students do not proofread and edit their application essays properly. This can be a huge mistake as college admissions counselors are currently refocusing their admissions priorities towards qualitative factors such as application essays as opposed to traditional standardized testing scores.
This has led college applicants to seek out any extra edge to craft a successful admissions essay. For editing and proofreading, the two main options are professional college essay editing companies such as Wordvice, and free online grammar checkers such as Grammarly or Hemingway.
This article defines these two options for college applicants and compares how they help students improve their admissions essays. The truth is that both options are effective, but only if applied to the right situation.
What are Free Online Grammar Checkers?
Free online grammar checkers such as Grammarly and Hemingway act as automatic scanners to correct errors in grammar, spelling, punctuation, formatting, and other issues like word count and comma usage. These apps come in the form of web apps (on-site), browser extensions, and standalone programs.
These apps scan your writing and then highlight and/or offer suggestions to correct mistakes. These tools offer immediate feedback that is “free” of charge, at least on the surface. However, as with any tool or service, you get what you pay for. Many of these grammar checking tools do one thing well but leave much to be desired.
What Can Free Online Grammar Checkers Do?
Auto Suggestions
This software suggests corrections automatically after scanning the text. These suggestions are based on databases of set grammar rules and past user data.
One-click correction
Most grammar and spellcheckers will highlight mistakes and allow you to make the correction automatically with one click. This eliminates chances for error (software bugs notwithstanding).
Online, Microsoft Office, and Mobile Grammar Checking
Grammarly offers browser extensions for Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. It will check your grammar when filling in web forms, doing email, and more. The Chrome extension offers advanced support for Google Docs, but it’s currently in beta.
You can also use online checkers in your desktop word processor or as a standalone program. This means you need Microsoft Office suite for PC or Mac. If you use another word processor and don’t want to use the Grammarly app, you must copy-paste your text.
Grammarly is available as a keyboard on both iOS and Android. This allows you to check your grammar and spelling when writing emails or notes on your phone.
Tone of Voice
Free checkers such as Grammarly come with a surface-level tone measurement, which claims to make your writing appropriate for a certain audience (e.g. formal, informal, etc.). We are not quite sure what “joyful” or “optimistic” means.
This recommendation is mostly done based on two criteria: sentence length and vocabulary. As a result, there are often instances where Grammarly recommends you change your tone of voice when you don’t want to, e.g. you add quotes from other sources/authors or are writing casually about a formal topic, or vice versa.
