If Lincoln Had Used Grammarly

5-minute read]

If Abraham Lincoln had used Grammarly when he wrote the Gettysburg Address, he might have doubted himself. Running his text through the grammar checker, he would have received suggestions like:

• Rewrite the sentence
• Choose a different word
• Rephrase sentence
• Choose a synonym

Would Grammarly’s ideas have yielded a tighter, more concise document? Probably. Would that document still be remembered 150 years later? Probably not. Because the things that Grammarly edited out would have been the very elements that made Lincoln’s speech timeless.

 And that’s the problem with grammar checkers. As Wordsworth wrote, “They murder to dissect.” Grammar checkers’ suggestions might tighten your document yet steal the flavor of your message.

 What Grammar Checkers Do Well

Nevertheless, grammar checkers are a boon to writers who seek to write correctly. The programs are powerful spotters of punctuation problems, wordiness, awkward sentence structure, and the passive voice. They correct preposition usage, fix spelling blunders, and remedy a host of other mistakes that, if left uncorrected, would rob you of credibility and correctness.

Grammarly is widely considered to be the best grammar and spelling checker. The program tightens and corrects text admirably. It works for documents, emails, and Google docs, working as the angel on your shoulder that keeps you from making dumb mistakes.

Confession: I use Grammarly daily. I pay for their premium service and consider it a worthwhile investment. This Writamin has gone through Grammarly and benefited from it. I have looked at other grammar checkers, and I believe that Grammarly is the most seamless among them.

 What Grammar Checkers Don’t Do Well

As valuable as they are, grammar checkers fail at judging culture and context.

 For example, in a recent webinar for a utility, we had a spirited discussion about the benefits of using passive voice. Every grammar checker considers using the passive voice to be a no-no. The staff at this utility felt, however, that the passive voice was often their best choice. What these people love about the passive voice is what grammar checkers hate about it: It is indirect and avoids focusing on individuals. They preferred “Your application has been received and is being taken up for consideration.” to “We have received your application and are considering it.”

 And you know what? I’m not prepared to say that the utility employees were wrong. In my decades as a writing trainer, I have observed that indirect language is the norm in institutional cultures such as governments, school districts, and utilities. Using the active voice might set hearts aflutter in a government setting.

 Grammar checkers lack the cultural awareness to differentiate between the indirectness of institutional writing and the swift minimalism of writing at a tech startup. The weakness is that everyone who uses the software gets the same messages.

 Use Your Own Judgment

Moreover, a grammar checker cannot intuit the flow and style of your whole document and determine if the stylistic problems it sees are essential to the message you are trying to convey.

Imagine a sales rep named Emily, who works for a national executive search firm. Sometimes she writes to New York executives with high-status MBAs and sometimes she writes to rural Human Resources managers who don’t have the same background. Would she write the same message to both of them? Not likely.

For the global executive, she might write, As a global leader in your field, you know that having the right talent for the job makes the difference between profit and loss.

For the rural manager, she might write, You might wonder how an executive-search firm could help your company. The fact is that XYZ Company’s need for leadership is just as great as that of a larger firm.

Grammarly does not want Emily to write larger firm. It recommends more prominent firm. But Emily does not want to seem disrespectful of the manager of the smaller business. She wants to say “larger”. If she slavishly follows Grammarly, she may inadvertently insult her reader.

 Let the Language Sing

Going back to the Gettysburg Address, Grammarly choked on many of Lincoln’s passages, repeatedly asking the writer to rewrite the sentence. But how? We could remove words, shorten sentences, and eliminate the few uses of the passive voice, but we would no longer have a document that brings tears to our eyes.

 So yes, use Grammarly or its cousins. They will save you from many mortifying errors. But never forget that you are the author of your words, not a software program. You are responsible for all errors, and you get credit for the power of your language to move your reader, whether you are writing an email, a report, or a speech that will be remembered for a hundred years.

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Resources

Ten Grammar Checkers and Editing Tools that Will Make Your Writing Super Clean

The Best Grammar Check Software of 2021

Best Grammar Checkers for Bloggers

 Bonus: The Gettysburg Address

In case you missed it, here is the text of the Gettysburg Address (not edited by Grammarly!)

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that their nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

 ©2021 Elizabeth Danziger All rights reserved

Take me to your leader! Communication woes drain the lifeblood from an organization. Connect me with your decision-makers and see how Worktalk can transform communication in your world. Contact me at lizd@worktalk.com or 310.396.8303. You can also book through www.calendly.com/worktalk.