Ever since getting my first “school computer” in middle school, I remember the little Grammarly logo at the corner of my screen. It was pretty simple to use- sign up for a free account and get useful tips on sentence clarity and…grammar. However, recently this format has changed, arguably for the worse.
So, What Happened?
Free academic software is a godsend for students. Using Grammarly’s free program used to be more than plenty, as it used to give unlimited suggestions on writing improvement. Recently, this drastically changed. Free users are now forced to adhere to only three free improvement samples per day.Â
In addition, Grammarly permeates a sense of trickery. If you’re like me, you would save these samples for more important papers later in the day. If you’re unfamiliar with how Grammarly works, the software underlines (a set of) words with different colors to symbolize what it is working on. Yellow is the tone of the paper, blue is phrase improvement, and red is usually a grammar error. Red improvements are free, so I try to carefully hover my mouse over to the reds. But one of two things would happen: My mouse would be too slow, and it would automatically give me the sample for whichever improvement I passed, or I would successfully move to the reds only to find out (like a cruel joke) that Grammarly’s red underline was one of their improvement samples of the day.Â
The AI Issue
Another problem the company has been facing is its new AI software. Because Grammarly started incorporating AI into its suggestions, students have been falsely flagged for AI plagiarism and are subsequently facing repercussions. This problem has been arising so frequently that some students have to notify their professor of their Grammarly use, or they stop using it at all.
These problems have risen to the extent that Grammarly usage is now deemed academically controversial, and more and more people are uninstalling the extension, including me.
Why the change?
Unfortunately, my only theory for these changes is corporate greed. Grammarly nearly cornered the writing improvement software market, and they know millions of students are still reliant. It’s the same principle as to why subscription services are becoming substandard- where are dependent customers really supposed to go? It’s additionally devastating to see this spread to something that used to help students with their academics. The limitations Grammarly sets are extreme, as the average college student writes nearly daily. Forcing people to purchase something they were already receiving for free is the top way to drive away customers; to implement that on software that broke students frequent feels extra slimy. Hopefully, students like me can find better software in the future.