I am not a native speaker but I write pretty well for someone in my situation. Grammarly is extremely useful for me and greatly improved my English. I use it everytime I'm writing English at the...
I am not a native speaker but I write pretty well for someone in my situation. Grammarly is extremely useful for me and greatly improved my English. I use it everytime I'm writing English at the computer.
One could even say the fault lie in the improper writing skills rather with a tool that is only supposed to give a nudge in the right direction instead of replacing an education.
One could even say the fault lie in the improper writing skills rather with a tool that is only supposed to give a nudge in the right direction instead of replacing an education.
My boss is a non-native English speaker and she uses grammarly with great success. I wish my native English coworkers would use it sometimes too. We have messages riddled with grammar, that looks...
My boss is a non-native English speaker and she uses grammarly with great success. I wish my native English coworkers would use it sometimes too. We have messages riddled with grammar, that looks like this, because of too many commas, in the sentence. It serves exactly the point you're making here. Useful tool, but no substitute for education.
However, as said in the video, that's not how Grammarly has tried to advertise itself. I agree it's a useful tool for some cases, but they advertise themselves as more than just a slight nudge in...
However, as said in the video, that's not how Grammarly has tried to advertise itself. I agree it's a useful tool for some cases, but they advertise themselves as more than just a slight nudge in the right direction — and many don't know better when Grammarly gives awful advice.
If you don't know better then, arguably, you shouldn't be ignoring Grammarly's advice. Most of what it's going to catch at things like subject verb agreement, conjugation issues, run-on sentences,...
If you don't know better then, arguably, you shouldn't be ignoring Grammarly's advice. Most of what it's going to catch at things like subject verb agreement, conjugation issues, run-on sentences, and passive voice. The first two there isn't much space to argue over and the last two you need to be a very strong writer with a firm grasp on exactly what the consequences of the stylistic choices you're making are to even begin to argue. You wouldn't be using Grammarly in the first place if you're in that camp.
Most of the points in the video seem to derive from the point of view that people use grammarly as a hard rule. As a non-native speaker, I can tell you that when I use grammarly, I use it mostly...
Most of the points in the video seem to derive from the point of view that people use grammarly as a hard rule. As a non-native speaker, I can tell you that when I use grammarly, I use it mostly as
A context-sensitive spell/grammar checker - grammarly is really good at this. Your usual dictionary doesn't cut it.
As a tool to suggest style improvements. Sometimes I write ill-styled english, sometimes I know what I'm doing, sometimes both at the same time. I want grammarly to alert me of scenario one, but it will inevitably alert me of scenario three too - it can't know what I am thinking. But that's ok, because I do. In other words: The fact that grammarly wants to remove rethorical choices along with bad style doesn't matter, because I know those were choices and can ignore grammarly. Perhaps what grammarly lacks is a button that tells the AI and UI "I know what I'm doing, shut up on this one", just so people don't get coaxed into mutilating their writing in pursuit of that perfect score.
The cases where grammarly makes choices about your style, they are usually a good default. Unless you know why you worded it just that way, you should probably consider e.g. using the active voice.
Additionally, grammarly marks the "mistakes" as different categories - spelling, grammar, style... and also gives annotations such as "consider using the active voice" - iirc.
Now, I'm no teacher, but I think grammarly does no harm here. If you know better, then you know better. If you don't know better, then grammarly's suggestions generally point you towards a possible problem, often where you weren't even aware there were issues.
I suppose that's the english teacher lens - she knows when she knows what she's doing, but she doesn't know when students don't know what they're doing. Students will know when they intentionally put a non-conventional construction into their writing. They can skip those hints. I think Zoe is selling those people short here. I certainly believe that people with mediocre written english will still profit from this: The people who can not tell when advice is bad are damn near illegible.
Now, if the title had been "Grammarly is not perfect, don't blindly follow it", I'd agree. But the title is "Grammarly is garbage", and for one that's an issue of having to find a clickable title. (If only there was a profession that focused on getting a point across in brevity and accuracy and styling language and titles to specific criteria, like, I dunno, english teachers.. </snark>) But it's also an issue of misplaced distrust in students' skills.
The same issue of distrust in students' skills is again at work when she talks about learning by using grammarly. I can tell you I have learned to pay attention to a few things in my writing, even though I have only used grammarly for a few hours.
I'll not even bother with discussing the point of objective correctness of language. My native language comes with a semi-prescriptivist institution that is the authority of correctness. There is one proper dictionary, one set of grammar rules, everything else is non-canon. And I kind of like it. Yes, the dictionary gets updated with new words that popped up. Those words weren't wrong before they appeared, but they were definitely non-standard. This slows the drift of language, and that's ok. "But language must evolve", I hear you say. Yes, and there's two components to that evolution. Chaotic drift as a result of non-standard, "wrong" spelling or grammar that doesn't actually add anything. And less chaotic addition of new words for legitimately new concepts, or less cumbersome grammar. Our canon is a lot quicker to adopt the latter. That way, we get the best of both: A language that tries to stay static where change is not needed and adopts change where that change is useful. I wonder what kind of an effect this kind of an institution has on the mutual legibility of current-german vs 2500 AD german, as opposed to e.g. english.
First of all, yes, I know people who use it for a good deal of their writing. But the problem is the very assumption that professional writing ought to be a rigid form of standard English, as the...
First of all, yes, I know people who use it for a good deal of their writing.
But the problem is the very assumption that professional writing ought to be a rigid form of standard English, as the status of standard English itself has centuries and centuries of conflict and domination baked into it, and Grammarly supports this with the (imagined) objectivity of AI. As they say in the video, it can be a useful tool, but there's some huge issues there.
This is fundamentally incorrect and ignores everything that makes language and its history complex. There is NO neutral form of writing. When we culturally enforce standard English, we are...
Exemplary
There's little culture in a business email to a stranger.
This is fundamentally incorrect and ignores everything that makes language and its history complex. There is NO neutral form of writing. When we culturally enforce standard English, we are upholding the dominance of that form of English and the social groups it's associated with. In other words, we're choosing to continue with white supremacy and the supremacy of the rich.
One could make the argument that Grammarly tries to democratize the process by making standard English more easily available to those who use it natively, and there's something to that. It can be a powerful tool if you know how to use it. It's a symptom of massive social issues, not the problem itself (though it does help reproduce that problem). That said, it does serious damage even on a personal level, just like that teacher that marks the habitual "be" in red ink.
Fundamentally speaking, this is the same argument that was used against Ebonics and other minority forms of vernacular English that have repeatedly caused systematic damage to those of minority...
Fundamentally speaking, this is the same argument that was used against Ebonics and other minority forms of vernacular English that have repeatedly caused systematic damage to those of minority status.
You're absolutely correct that understanding your coworkers is important to do a job, but how many of us here haven't interacted with someone for whom English was a second language? Bad grammar never stopped anything from being done, or being clarified with a few extra words and a tool which enforces grammar might actually 'correct' language of an ESL speaker incorrectly. It will also reinforce norms which were established, as @Whom pointed out, a certain flavor of supremacy.
Extremely loose grammatical corrections or suggestions I think would be a much better starting place as it would allow flexibility of language, but even then there are likely many individuals for which this is simply not necessary. We have plenty of news articles, podcasts, and other forms of media which include people speaking or text using grammar rules which are not formally accepted as 'correct' (one could make the argument in some cases that vernacular grammar books might be more correct in some circumstances) and anyone sitting in the comments talking about grammar is largely ignored for good reason.
I'd also like to take a step back for a second and recognize that I can't tell you how many emails I've received from native speakers that are neither clear nor concise in the least, but contain absolutely splendid and superb grammar. Just words upon words, with no obvious direction or point to them. Hundreds to thousands of words in an email which leave me wondering what the blazes they even want from me. I'd argue the time I waste reading this verbose nonsense is much more than the time I spend with some ESL colleagues for which I need a simply follow-up question or a few extra words of clarification.
I would challenge you to rethink how important it is for grammar to be enforced in this way. You've had a lot of important people in your life tell you that grammar is important. If you grew up during a certain age on the internet, like I suspect many of us have, you saw grammar superiority rear its ugly head in perhaps its worst showing in centuries. Maybe it's time to sit down and critically evaluate the conversations you have experienced and the conversations of others to see how important grammar actually is, when it comes to conveying a message. I'm not a scholar, but my own ponderings on the matter over the last several years have opened my eyes significantly.
Anecdotally, as a second language learner (not English), I find it much easier to read simple, standardized writing in the languages I'm learning. It's often difficult to understand complex...
Anecdotally, as a second language learner (not English), I find it much easier to read simple, standardized writing in the languages I'm learning. It's often difficult to understand complex writing, or other dialects. I think you might be underestimating how much more accessible written content can become to second language learners when it's written in a simple and standardized manner. In fact, saying that 'grammar isn't important' comes from a place of privilege, at least in my opinion.
To be clear, not all speech is equal and the purpose of the speech and it's intended audience should always be considered. A broader audience should more strictly adhere to rules which are...
To be clear, not all speech is equal and the purpose of the speech and it's intended audience should always be considered. A broader audience should more strictly adhere to rules which are accepted by a broader audience, while still respecting the cultural wishes of the speaker. An audience which is specifically not very versed in a language whether due to age or simply inexperience also needs a specific kind of speech which is not limited to simply rules of grammar and has a heavy emphasis on simple sentences and word choice.
If you've ever had to manage work between countries with polyglot teams, bad grammar actually does cause significant friction. There's a reason that, even in the anarchic times before...
Bad grammar never stopped anything from being done, or being clarified with a few extra words and a tool which enforces grammar might actually 'correct' language of an ESL speaker incorrectly.
If you've ever had to manage work between countries with polyglot teams, bad grammar actually does cause significant friction. There's a reason that, even in the anarchic times before nation-states and standardized linguistic rules and dictionaries, politics and business and academic discourse still occurred in an accepted lingua franca. Guides on stylistic conventions and standards are almost as old as writing.
As I stated I believe it is a friction that will not be solved by an automated tool. It's solved by people who speak multiple languages, it's solved by translators, it's solved by providing...
As I stated I believe it is a friction that will not be solved by an automated tool. It's solved by people who speak multiple languages, it's solved by translators, it's solved by providing classes for people to learn additional languages or refine their own understanding of these languages, it's solved by longer conversations using more words and by technical documentation teams.
But all of that misses the point that is brought up in this thread - many of these are inherently biased and uphold cultural hierarchies and standards and norms which demean the legitimacy of vernacular forms of speech and alternative grammar. You're welcome to think that this is the appropriate venue to solve all of these communication problems, but I personally think that's short-sighted given my own experiences with communication and the experiences of educators and academics I respect.
Perhaps moreso I'm perplexed by the strong pushback and redirection from the points that are being brought up. It's one thing to say 'I think that the cultural damage done by having bad grammar is outweighed by the damage done by unclear communication' but it's another to jump in here and dismiss the cultural damage altogether. It's unfair to the very valid points being brought up in this thread.
All the automated tool does is provides a guide for proofreading for people whose skill in the language isn't that strong. It's still being done by the people themselves. Nobody is grading anybody...
All the automated tool does is provides a guide for proofreading for people whose skill in the language isn't that strong. It's still being done by the people themselves. Nobody is grading anybody with it, it just raises flags to say "something here needs your attention."
many of these are inherently biased and uphold cultural hierarchies and standards and norms which demean the legitimacy of vernacular forms of speech and alternative grammar.
Official business communication is its own form of speech and grammar. It's not a place for vernacular forms or self-expression. Official communications aren't creative writing classes.
Yes. And the question is who decided what these standards are, what is their historical roots, and to what extent to they benefit us. Its the same argument with "business professional". Why does...
Official business communication is its own form of speech and grammar. It's not a place for vernacular forms or self-expression. Official communications aren't creative writing classes.
Yes. And the question is who decided what these standards are, what is their historical roots, and to what extent to they benefit us. Its the same argument with "business professional".
Why does is just so happen that "business professional" clothing for men are suits, a type of clothing that costs more money than casual clothing and serves a more limited purpose, and just so happen to be a barrier for the poor to get into "professional" settings that pay better? What benefit does someone wearing a suit give us other than tell us they have the money to buy a suit and get it tailored? Why do we judge people's ability to do a job based on that? Why does it just so happen that natural black hairstyles are considered unprofessional? Why does it just so happen that defining business professional for women is so much more complicated than it is for men? Why do all of the rules for what is "professional" conveniently act as additional hurdles for people trying to get into industries. Why do all the norms require us to conform to white (and traditionally male) standards.
The same questions can and should be asked of "official business communication". Who decided what was proper business writing? Why does it just so happen that non-white vernacular is not business professional? Why is it the necessary method of communication to not get looked down upon is one that requires advanced education and you are immediately negatively viewed if you stray outside the norms? If we've decided we "need" this structure of writing and we come up with reasons for why those rules are important, what are we doing to address the historic failures of the US education system for not giving the poor the tools they need to be successful in professional settings? What is the origin of these rules, and what do be benefit and lose by adhearing to them.
Why though? And more importantly, who cares? I say this as an immigrant from a non-English speaking country. It's not clear to me what the actual point or merit of this is aside from giving people...
The same questions can and should be asked of "official business communication". Who decided what was proper business writing?
Why though? And more importantly, who cares? I say this as an immigrant from a non-English speaking country. It's not clear to me what the actual point or merit of this is aside from giving people with an ax to grind about the status quo to grind their ax. Does it materially improve any outcomes to replace the contemporary standards with a different set of arbitrary standards?
If anything, atrophying what counts as an acceptable level of standard proficiency seems like it would make life even harder for people for whom English isn't a native language. The language is highly irregular and riddled with weird exception cases as it is. Who in their right minds would want this to get even worse? The current set of hierarchies will still be reinforced because the people in privileged positions who write for a living or pursue advanced degrees to learn about accepted standards will have little trouble adapting to whatever ever-shifting norms are this week. Regular people aren't going to be able to keep up with whatever is in fashion among the literati. They have work to do.
Standards around hair and gender constructs are completely separate from the issue of grammar. Neither does the dismal state of our education system. All of this is way overgeneralizing a particular case into every other evil in society. It doesn't serve anyone to conflate putting a red underline to highlight areas where subject-verb agreement are misaligned or passive voice is being used with all that.
I agree. I think there are two way different lenses on the issue of normative rules in language: Those of a ESL speaker: Clear and comprehensible rules are good, I don't care much where they come...
I agree. I think there are two way different lenses on the issue of normative rules in language: Those of a ESL speaker: Clear and comprehensible rules are good, I don't care much where they come from. My interest in speaking english is communicating effectively to other ESL'ers. I want as much standardization in the language as I can get, because it all helps me and others like me to produce mutually intelligible english. And yes, grammar is important here. Grammatical mistakes can be lifted if the rest of the sentence works, e.g. in terms of correct vocabulary. That's because natural language tends to be quite redundant, why you can often times reconstruct single _____ from a sentence even if someone talked over me. But removing correct grammar hurts that redundancy and gets you a little closer to communication failure. Which is why people object against things like singular they (I think that one is very easily adopted because it basically already is) or other irregular constructs. If everything else is clear - good acoustics, no other people interrupting, no words I don't know - I can understand people with irregular grammar, or vernacular english. But if conditions are less than ideal, grammar is what could save the conversation.
The other lense is that of EFL speakers. For them, the issue is more one of inclusivity going the other way round: "We can understand AAV, so why not allow it in professional contexts?"
And both of those can have merit at the same time. I don't think anyone is suggesting that language norms can not have an exclusive effect. But that doesn't therefore imply that
When we culturally enforce standard English, we are upholding the dominance of that form of English and the social groups it's associated with. In other words, we're choosing to continue with white supremacy and the supremacy of the rich.
I mean, I'm the last person to ask a black guy "don't you speak the language of the queen", but damn am I thankful for every mail by foreign students that was made intelligible by normative tools like grammarly. And in my context at least, I don't think I'm upholding white supremacist norms, because we're all ESL speakers here.
I think to best answer I should make a clear distinction: (1) My personal opinion: "Professionalism" is dumb. I'd prefer if we killed the concept as a whole. That's my personal opinion. I...
I think to best answer I should make a clear distinction:
(1) My personal opinion: "Professionalism" is dumb. I'd prefer if we killed the concept as a whole. That's my personal opinion. I definitely intermingled points 1 and 2 too much in my previous comments so lets just take this aspect of my feelings on professionalism and set them to the side.
(2) The more general point: It is worthwhile for us to think about why language norms are the way they are, if they benefit us, and what is lost. In this point, I would argue that the specific implementation of the rules we have today are rooted in white supremacy. I can see how grammar rules help. What I don't agree with is the idea that these specific rules that define our current professional grammar are the ideal. The established status quo of professional grammar rules doesn't need to be the end-all be-all. We can maintain frameworks that help ESL speakers and make those rules more inclusive. Like you said, these aren't mutually exclusive.
I guess the larger point of what I'm missing here is what does "professional" grammar bring to context and understanding that other, more inclusive grammar rules do not. What is it about this set of rules that makes it superior/more helpful?
I don't think I'm upholding white supremacist norms
I feel like I'm losing track of my original points but I do want to quickly touch on this one. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Because personally I would argue that we are upholding white supremacy and supremacy of the rich by doing this. But I don't think that makes any individual bad. I don't think it is a negative, or a conscious decision, or a moral failing or anything. There are lots of things that people do every day that uphold white supremacy/the patriarchy/<insert third bad value here> because they are attempting to exist and be a member of a society that was built on <bad value> by <group that holds bad value>. There are ways that I, despite my best efforts, still uphold the patriarchy based on my thoughts and actions without realizing they are rooted in sexism. I don't think I should be condemned for them, but I do think it is good to reflect and be aware of the history of institutions and structures, recognize when they've been built upon or based on oppressive ideas, and work to address and change those things.
Your quote is borked btw. Probably missing a blank line. My point here, and I tried to hint at that in the comment you replied to, is that I, ESL, am in whichever way I am enforcing language...
Your quote is borked btw. Probably missing a blank line.
Because personally I would argue that we are upholding white supremacy and supremacy of the rich by doing this.
My point here, and I tried to hint at that in the comment you replied to, is that I, ESL, am in whichever way I am enforcing language rules, am forcing those rules upon other ESL people. I rarely deal with EFL people these days, and even more rarely EFL people who speak distinctly non-standard english. I am not benefitting any rich and white elite here, unless that elite is far away and removed from the situation. The elite where I am speak atrocious english, for the most part. They're white and rich, sure, but they have no stake in the language I or my peers speak. The queen or Elon Musk or whoever, they don't care and I'm not doing it on their behalf. I enforce "their" rules because it's the best thing I have to make my peers intelligible.
Am I harming any one group here in particular? Maybe. German grammar is similar to English grammar and I do have a few German blind spots, but overall, the people in my environment who generally produce the soundest english are colored people - south asians, in particular. Beyond that, this is the second language for everyone here, so no one's at an advantage.
This perhaps ties into democratization again, but I also think that if we assume that white supremacists are going to use language to gate resources, then me helping people acquire that language subverts white supremacist efforts. Granted, the better way would be to move to a new standard of the English language that is more inclusive and better incorporates minority vernacular. But that often comes at the price of having to learn weird rules, which is a price of entry for every ESL speaker then, and would additionally mean that a lot of existing ESL speakers would have to re-learn aspects of the language, with no one around to teach them those aspects. Though I guess that depends on which additional standards you're talking about, I'd like to see examples.
This is a Wendy's. . . Which is to say, not everything can be about everything. Most people just want to do the thing and get on with their lives instead of making their every email a (purely...
There is NO neutral form of writing. When we culturally enforce standard English, we are upholding the dominance of that form of English and the social groups it's associated with. In other words, we're choosing to continue with white supremacy and the supremacy of the rich.
This is a Wendy's. . .
Which is to say, not everything can be about everything. Most people just want to do the thing and get on with their lives instead of making their every email a (purely symbolic) blow against the world's injustices.
Which is why I'm not saying someone is evil for using Grammarly, but that the tool is dripping in many of the nasty elements of the dominant ideology in the world it exists within.
Which is why I'm not saying someone is evil for using Grammarly, but that the tool is dripping in many of the nasty elements of the dominant ideology in the world it exists within.
So what would you do? Embrace the chaos by just not standardizing? Or would you rather standardize on some other dialect of english? Which one? In my opinion, language is first and foremost a tool...
So what would you do? Embrace the chaos by just not standardizing? Or would you rather standardize on some other dialect of english? Which one?
In my opinion, language is first and foremost a tool for communication. Everything else is subservient to that role. In the interest of effortless communication, I would therefore prefer to standardize on the most common form of english. Communication in natural languages is hard enough as it is without ambiguity about the rules.
The real answer comes from the sources of the problem: racism, class inequality, etc. It's a hell of a lot bigger than Grammarly or the ways we individually choose to approach language. Language...
The real answer comes from the sources of the problem: racism, class inequality, etc. It's a hell of a lot bigger than Grammarly or the ways we individually choose to approach language.
Language has this push and pull of change vs standardization on its own, it's a feature of every natural language and happens as long as it's in use (hence why the artificial conservatism that comes with linguistic prescriptivism is unnecessary). Standardization is not inherently oppressive, but it is in this case because a long history of domination and forced assimiliation lies at the heart of how that standardization has happened and is happening.
This seems like a drastic conclusion — could perhaps use some more explanation.
When we culturally enforce standard English, we are upholding the dominance of that form of English and the social groups it's associated with. In other words, we're choosing to continue with white supremacy and the supremacy of the rich.
This seems like a drastic conclusion — could perhaps use some more explanation.
You touch on a lot of things that in a different world I would love to dig into and talk about and I know this video does talk about. Examples: what does "professional" english mean? What makes it...
You touch on a lot of things that in a different world I would love to dig into and talk about and I know this video does talk about. Examples: what does "professional" english mean? What makes it "more professional"? Has American grammar ever had to deal with the historical racism in education that puts marginalized groups at a disadvantage because learning "proper" english wasn't an opportunity for a large part of American history (you could argue it is still a problem to this day), why do things like AAV that dominate pop culture and the common lexicon never make it into "proper" grammar? Those are all things we could talk about for days.
I want to take a slightly different approach and ask "honestly, what has good grammar really ever done for me?" I spend a lot of time speaking with non-native english speakers running the spectrum of "only knows a handful of words" to "completely fluent". The longer I reflect on it, their grammar issues have never been the source of miscommunication. The way they speak or write has rarely been the point of miscommunication. The issues I've had have always surrounded common vocabulary. For the most part, as long as the other party and myself are operating using the same vocabulary, we understand each other just fine. They might use the wrong tenses, or structure a sentence in grammatically incorrect ways, but that rarely-to-never stops me from being able to parse the message and get the meaning. If they don't know the english term for what they are trying to say, or use the wrong word, that's when things get difficult and confusing.
Idk. This is my ramblings and my personal experiences, but I just find the concept of "proper grammar" to fall in the same bucket as "professionalism", which is shit that has historically been used for elitism and gatekeeping against the poor.
At least hypothetically a more rigid adherence to traditional English grammar rules allows readers a more common basis of understanding for sentences, and in a business setting where being clear...
At least hypothetically a more rigid adherence to traditional English grammar rules allows readers a more common basis of understanding for sentences, and in a business setting where being clear is priority number 1 and you may have partners from across the world for whom they have English as as second language, it's easier for them to learn and process "proper" English, rather than deal with the intricacies of a local dialect.
In practice, "proper" English can also be very flowery, but I do think there is merit in discarding some local euphemisms in correspondences when you are optimizing for information clarity.
This isn't a great example, since you're probably saying neither "professionally" and it's pretty trivial, but it's the best I can think up right now. As a native English speaker, you know that "I couldn't care less" and "I could care less" actually mean the same thing, despite one being the negation of the other.
But if you were ESL, and actually processing the words themselves rather than intuiting the meaning, "I could care less" makes no sense, if not implying the opposite of what the person is trying to say.
replace "traditional" with "universal" and that works just as well. It doesn't matter what the standard is, as long as everyone agrees. Of course, choosing a standard that is commonly spoken...
a more rigid adherence to traditional English grammar rules
replace "traditional" with "universal" and that works just as well. It doesn't matter what the standard is, as long as everyone agrees. Of course, choosing a standard that is commonly spoken already means that getting people to agree is easier; but there's no reason not to do away with stupid old rules.
Right, and the standard that we have now is the traditional English. Of course, that is on the basis that one group has been economically dominant in the Anglosphere, so I can certainly see...
Right, and the standard that we have now is the traditional English. Of course, that is on the basis that one group has been economically dominant in the Anglosphere, so I can certainly see complaints that it's just another manifestation of ages of conscious and unconscious bias against minorities.
At the same time, it is very useful to have a standard, and we have a standard. It's really hard to get everyone to agree to a standard, since you need the simultaneous compliance of hundreds of millions of people. You see the same issue without the discriminatory baggage in technical specifications, and in situations where there is no governing body that force change, the sucky old standard tends to overwhelm any newer standards.
I read a lot of free serial web fiction written by people from all over the world with varying levels of English proficiency, and Grammarly is definitely used by some of them to maintain something...
I read a lot of free serial web fiction written by people from all over the world with varying levels of English proficiency, and Grammarly is definitely used by some of them to maintain something resembling grammatical coherency when they're writing 20k words of content a week.
I broadly agree, but not with this specific comment: I frequently apply a spellchecker to my own writing, in the revision process. Not because I trust the spellchecker to be the arbiter of which...
I broadly agree, but not with this specific comment:
By far, my biggest issue with grammarly, though, is the fact that it even exists. Its existence is predicated on the assumption that there are right and wrong answers to language questions.
I frequently apply a spellchecker to my own writing, in the revision process. Not because I trust the spellchecker to be the arbiter of which strings are permissible in text, or because I'm unwilling to write down anything which isn't in some word list, but simply because I make mistakes and a spellchecker is a heuristic tool I can use to find some of them.
I do not, and likely would not use a tool like grammarly, for a number of reasons (some of which the linked video mentions). But the problem here is not that a program makes binary value judgements, but that humans react positivistically to them.
I have a student who is constantly harassed by his grammarly extension. He could configure it to be less obtrusive but I think he is afraid that he's making errors he doesn't know about. To be...
I have a student who is constantly harassed by his grammarly extension. He could configure it to be less obtrusive but I think he is afraid that he's making errors he doesn't know about. To be blunt, it is a plague. I urge him to let himself off the hook for typos so he can think about what he's writing, because as soon as a little red line comes up his train of thought is totally interrupted.
Who are the hard-assed teachers downstream from you? I'll kick their asses. Grading down for grammatical errors is barbaric. There's this bucket brigade, "someone down the line is gonna care about...
Who are the hard-assed teachers downstream from you? I'll kick their asses. Grading down for grammatical errors is barbaric. There's this bucket brigade, "someone down the line is gonna care about this!!" and I think that's a cover.
That's a good gripe, in a way. I agree that the squiggly red can be quite intrusive. It's also an easy enough fix - for grammarly anyway. Just only annotate sentences that have a proper end. Don't...
That's a good gripe, in a way. I agree that the squiggly red can be quite intrusive. It's also an easy enough fix - for grammarly anyway. Just only annotate sentences that have a proper end. Don't interrupt while the user is still typing.
At some point it becomes a workflow issue for the student too. If your last paragraph has a few squigglies, you should have the presence of mind to keep going and fix it once you've written down your thoughts.
Maybe you could suggest writing an entire message with it temporarily turned off, then going back to correct it? Or switching back and forth between writing and editing.
Maybe you could suggest writing an entire message with it temporarily turned off, then going back to correct it? Or switching back and forth between writing and editing.
That's actually how I usually use it: Predominantly in high-stakes situations where I produce drafts upon drafts anyway. At one point, I put the draft through the grammarly blender. Keeps my mind...
That's actually how I usually use it: Predominantly in high-stakes situations where I produce drafts upon drafts anyway. At one point, I put the draft through the grammarly blender. Keeps my mind clear of that kinda stuff most of the time.
I am not a native speaker but I write pretty well for someone in my situation. Grammarly is extremely useful for me and greatly improved my English. I use it everytime I'm writing English at the computer.
One could even say the fault lie in the improper writing skills rather with a tool that is only supposed to give a nudge in the right direction instead of replacing an education.
My boss is a non-native English speaker and she uses grammarly with great success. I wish my native English coworkers would use it sometimes too. We have messages riddled with grammar, that looks like this, because of too many commas, in the sentence. It serves exactly the point you're making here. Useful tool, but no substitute for education.
However, as said in the video, that's not how Grammarly has tried to advertise itself. I agree it's a useful tool for some cases, but they advertise themselves as more than just a slight nudge in the right direction — and many don't know better when Grammarly gives awful advice.
If you don't know better then, arguably, you shouldn't be ignoring Grammarly's advice. Most of what it's going to catch at things like subject verb agreement, conjugation issues, run-on sentences, and passive voice. The first two there isn't much space to argue over and the last two you need to be a very strong writer with a firm grasp on exactly what the consequences of the stylistic choices you're making are to even begin to argue. You wouldn't be using Grammarly in the first place if you're in that camp.
Most of the points in the video seem to derive from the point of view that people use grammarly as a hard rule. As a non-native speaker, I can tell you that when I use grammarly, I use it mostly as
A context-sensitive spell/grammar checker - grammarly is really good at this. Your usual dictionary doesn't cut it.
As a tool to suggest style improvements. Sometimes I write ill-styled english, sometimes I know what I'm doing, sometimes both at the same time. I want grammarly to alert me of scenario one, but it will inevitably alert me of scenario three too - it can't know what I am thinking. But that's ok, because I do. In other words: The fact that grammarly wants to remove rethorical choices along with bad style doesn't matter, because I know those were choices and can ignore grammarly. Perhaps what grammarly lacks is a button that tells the AI and UI "I know what I'm doing, shut up on this one", just so people don't get coaxed into mutilating their writing in pursuit of that perfect score.
The cases where grammarly makes choices about your style, they are usually a good default. Unless you know why you worded it just that way, you should probably consider e.g. using the active voice.
Additionally, grammarly marks the "mistakes" as different categories - spelling, grammar, style... and also gives annotations such as "consider using the active voice" - iirc.
Now, I'm no teacher, but I think grammarly does no harm here. If you know better, then you know better. If you don't know better, then grammarly's suggestions generally point you towards a possible problem, often where you weren't even aware there were issues.
I suppose that's the english teacher lens - she knows when she knows what she's doing, but she doesn't know when students don't know what they're doing. Students will know when they intentionally put a non-conventional construction into their writing. They can skip those hints. I think Zoe is selling those people short here. I certainly believe that people with mediocre written english will still profit from this: The people who can not tell when advice is bad are damn near illegible.
Now, if the title had been "Grammarly is not perfect, don't blindly follow it", I'd agree. But the title is "Grammarly is garbage", and for one that's an issue of having to find a clickable title. (If only there was a profession that focused on getting a point across in brevity and accuracy and styling language and titles to specific criteria, like, I dunno, english teachers.. </snark>) But it's also an issue of misplaced distrust in students' skills.
The same issue of distrust in students' skills is again at work when she talks about learning by using grammarly. I can tell you I have learned to pay attention to a few things in my writing, even though I have only used grammarly for a few hours.
I'll not even bother with discussing the point of objective correctness of language. My native language comes with a semi-prescriptivist institution that is the authority of correctness. There is one proper dictionary, one set of grammar rules, everything else is non-canon. And I kind of like it. Yes, the dictionary gets updated with new words that popped up. Those words weren't wrong before they appeared, but they were definitely non-standard. This slows the drift of language, and that's ok. "But language must evolve", I hear you say. Yes, and there's two components to that evolution. Chaotic drift as a result of non-standard, "wrong" spelling or grammar that doesn't actually add anything. And less chaotic addition of new words for legitimately new concepts, or less cumbersome grammar. Our canon is a lot quicker to adopt the latter. That way, we get the best of both: A language that tries to stay static where change is not needed and adopts change where that change is useful. I wonder what kind of an effect this kind of an institution has on the mutual legibility of current-german vs 2500 AD german, as opposed to e.g. english.
First of all, yes, I know people who use it for a good deal of their writing.
But the problem is the very assumption that professional writing ought to be a rigid form of standard English, as the status of standard English itself has centuries and centuries of conflict and domination baked into it, and Grammarly supports this with the (imagined) objectivity of AI. As they say in the video, it can be a useful tool, but there's some huge issues there.
This is fundamentally incorrect and ignores everything that makes language and its history complex. There is NO neutral form of writing. When we culturally enforce standard English, we are upholding the dominance of that form of English and the social groups it's associated with. In other words, we're choosing to continue with white supremacy and the supremacy of the rich.
One could make the argument that Grammarly tries to democratize the process by making standard English more easily available to those who use it natively, and there's something to that. It can be a powerful tool if you know how to use it. It's a symptom of massive social issues, not the problem itself (though it does help reproduce that problem). That said, it does serious damage even on a personal level, just like that teacher that marks the habitual "be" in red ink.
Fundamentally speaking, this is the same argument that was used against Ebonics and other minority forms of vernacular English that have repeatedly caused systematic damage to those of minority status.
You're absolutely correct that understanding your coworkers is important to do a job, but how many of us here haven't interacted with someone for whom English was a second language? Bad grammar never stopped anything from being done, or being clarified with a few extra words and a tool which enforces grammar might actually 'correct' language of an ESL speaker incorrectly. It will also reinforce norms which were established, as @Whom pointed out, a certain flavor of supremacy.
Extremely loose grammatical corrections or suggestions I think would be a much better starting place as it would allow flexibility of language, but even then there are likely many individuals for which this is simply not necessary. We have plenty of news articles, podcasts, and other forms of media which include people speaking or text using grammar rules which are not formally accepted as 'correct' (one could make the argument in some cases that vernacular grammar books might be more correct in some circumstances) and anyone sitting in the comments talking about grammar is largely ignored for good reason.
I'd also like to take a step back for a second and recognize that I can't tell you how many emails I've received from native speakers that are neither clear nor concise in the least, but contain absolutely splendid and superb grammar. Just words upon words, with no obvious direction or point to them. Hundreds to thousands of words in an email which leave me wondering what the blazes they even want from me. I'd argue the time I waste reading this verbose nonsense is much more than the time I spend with some ESL colleagues for which I need a simply follow-up question or a few extra words of clarification.
I would challenge you to rethink how important it is for grammar to be enforced in this way. You've had a lot of important people in your life tell you that grammar is important. If you grew up during a certain age on the internet, like I suspect many of us have, you saw grammar superiority rear its ugly head in perhaps its worst showing in centuries. Maybe it's time to sit down and critically evaluate the conversations you have experienced and the conversations of others to see how important grammar actually is, when it comes to conveying a message. I'm not a scholar, but my own ponderings on the matter over the last several years have opened my eyes significantly.
Anecdotally, as a second language learner (not English), I find it much easier to read simple, standardized writing in the languages I'm learning. It's often difficult to understand complex writing, or other dialects. I think you might be underestimating how much more accessible written content can become to second language learners when it's written in a simple and standardized manner. In fact, saying that 'grammar isn't important' comes from a place of privilege, at least in my opinion.
To be clear, not all speech is equal and the purpose of the speech and it's intended audience should always be considered. A broader audience should more strictly adhere to rules which are accepted by a broader audience, while still respecting the cultural wishes of the speaker. An audience which is specifically not very versed in a language whether due to age or simply inexperience also needs a specific kind of speech which is not limited to simply rules of grammar and has a heavy emphasis on simple sentences and word choice.
If you've ever had to manage work between countries with polyglot teams, bad grammar actually does cause significant friction. There's a reason that, even in the anarchic times before nation-states and standardized linguistic rules and dictionaries, politics and business and academic discourse still occurred in an accepted lingua franca. Guides on stylistic conventions and standards are almost as old as writing.
As I stated I believe it is a friction that will not be solved by an automated tool. It's solved by people who speak multiple languages, it's solved by translators, it's solved by providing classes for people to learn additional languages or refine their own understanding of these languages, it's solved by longer conversations using more words and by technical documentation teams.
But all of that misses the point that is brought up in this thread - many of these are inherently biased and uphold cultural hierarchies and standards and norms which demean the legitimacy of vernacular forms of speech and alternative grammar. You're welcome to think that this is the appropriate venue to solve all of these communication problems, but I personally think that's short-sighted given my own experiences with communication and the experiences of educators and academics I respect.
Perhaps moreso I'm perplexed by the strong pushback and redirection from the points that are being brought up. It's one thing to say 'I think that the cultural damage done by having bad grammar is outweighed by the damage done by unclear communication' but it's another to jump in here and dismiss the cultural damage altogether. It's unfair to the very valid points being brought up in this thread.
All the automated tool does is provides a guide for proofreading for people whose skill in the language isn't that strong. It's still being done by the people themselves. Nobody is grading anybody with it, it just raises flags to say "something here needs your attention."
Official business communication is its own form of speech and grammar. It's not a place for vernacular forms or self-expression. Official communications aren't creative writing classes.
Yes. And the question is who decided what these standards are, what is their historical roots, and to what extent to they benefit us. Its the same argument with "business professional".
Why does is just so happen that "business professional" clothing for men are suits, a type of clothing that costs more money than casual clothing and serves a more limited purpose, and just so happen to be a barrier for the poor to get into "professional" settings that pay better? What benefit does someone wearing a suit give us other than tell us they have the money to buy a suit and get it tailored? Why do we judge people's ability to do a job based on that? Why does it just so happen that natural black hairstyles are considered unprofessional? Why does it just so happen that defining business professional for women is so much more complicated than it is for men? Why do all of the rules for what is "professional" conveniently act as additional hurdles for people trying to get into industries. Why do all the norms require us to conform to white (and traditionally male) standards.
The same questions can and should be asked of "official business communication". Who decided what was proper business writing? Why does it just so happen that non-white vernacular is not business professional? Why is it the necessary method of communication to not get looked down upon is one that requires advanced education and you are immediately negatively viewed if you stray outside the norms? If we've decided we "need" this structure of writing and we come up with reasons for why those rules are important, what are we doing to address the historic failures of the US education system for not giving the poor the tools they need to be successful in professional settings? What is the origin of these rules, and what do be benefit and lose by adhearing to them.
An article I like that gets more into the thoughts: https://tulanehullabaloo.com/51652/intersections/business-professionalism-is-racist/
Why though? And more importantly, who cares? I say this as an immigrant from a non-English speaking country. It's not clear to me what the actual point or merit of this is aside from giving people with an ax to grind about the status quo to grind their ax. Does it materially improve any outcomes to replace the contemporary standards with a different set of arbitrary standards?
If anything, atrophying what counts as an acceptable level of standard proficiency seems like it would make life even harder for people for whom English isn't a native language. The language is highly irregular and riddled with weird exception cases as it is. Who in their right minds would want this to get even worse? The current set of hierarchies will still be reinforced because the people in privileged positions who write for a living or pursue advanced degrees to learn about accepted standards will have little trouble adapting to whatever ever-shifting norms are this week. Regular people aren't going to be able to keep up with whatever is in fashion among the literati. They have work to do.
Standards around hair and gender constructs are completely separate from the issue of grammar. Neither does the dismal state of our education system. All of this is way overgeneralizing a particular case into every other evil in society. It doesn't serve anyone to conflate putting a red underline to highlight areas where subject-verb agreement are misaligned or passive voice is being used with all that.
I agree. I think there are two way different lenses on the issue of normative rules in language: Those of a ESL speaker: Clear and comprehensible rules are good, I don't care much where they come from. My interest in speaking english is communicating effectively to other ESL'ers. I want as much standardization in the language as I can get, because it all helps me and others like me to produce mutually intelligible english. And yes, grammar is important here. Grammatical mistakes can be lifted if the rest of the sentence works, e.g. in terms of correct vocabulary. That's because natural language tends to be quite redundant, why you can often times reconstruct single _____ from a sentence even if someone talked over me. But removing correct grammar hurts that redundancy and gets you a little closer to communication failure. Which is why people object against things like singular they (I think that one is very easily adopted because it basically already is) or other irregular constructs. If everything else is clear - good acoustics, no other people interrupting, no words I don't know - I can understand people with irregular grammar, or vernacular english. But if conditions are less than ideal, grammar is what could save the conversation.
The other lense is that of EFL speakers. For them, the issue is more one of inclusivity going the other way round: "We can understand AAV, so why not allow it in professional contexts?"
And both of those can have merit at the same time. I don't think anyone is suggesting that language norms can not have an exclusive effect. But that doesn't therefore imply that
I mean, I'm the last person to ask a black guy "don't you speak the language of the queen", but damn am I thankful for every mail by foreign students that was made intelligible by normative tools like grammarly. And in my context at least, I don't think I'm upholding white supremacist norms, because we're all ESL speakers here.
I think to best answer I should make a clear distinction:
(1) My personal opinion: "Professionalism" is dumb. I'd prefer if we killed the concept as a whole. That's my personal opinion. I definitely intermingled points 1 and 2 too much in my previous comments so lets just take this aspect of my feelings on professionalism and set them to the side.
(2) The more general point: It is worthwhile for us to think about why language norms are the way they are, if they benefit us, and what is lost. In this point, I would argue that the specific implementation of the rules we have today are rooted in white supremacy. I can see how grammar rules help. What I don't agree with is the idea that these specific rules that define our current professional grammar are the ideal. The established status quo of professional grammar rules doesn't need to be the end-all be-all. We can maintain frameworks that help ESL speakers and make those rules more inclusive. Like you said, these aren't mutually exclusive.
I guess the larger point of what I'm missing here is what does "professional" grammar bring to context and understanding that other, more inclusive grammar rules do not. What is it about this set of rules that makes it superior/more helpful?
Your quote is borked btw. Probably missing a blank line.
My point here, and I tried to hint at that in the comment you replied to, is that I, ESL, am in whichever way I am enforcing language rules, am forcing those rules upon other ESL people. I rarely deal with EFL people these days, and even more rarely EFL people who speak distinctly non-standard english. I am not benefitting any rich and white elite here, unless that elite is far away and removed from the situation. The elite where I am speak atrocious english, for the most part. They're white and rich, sure, but they have no stake in the language I or my peers speak. The queen or Elon Musk or whoever, they don't care and I'm not doing it on their behalf. I enforce "their" rules because it's the best thing I have to make my peers intelligible.
Am I harming any one group here in particular? Maybe. German grammar is similar to English grammar and I do have a few German blind spots, but overall, the people in my environment who generally produce the soundest english are colored people - south asians, in particular. Beyond that, this is the second language for everyone here, so no one's at an advantage.
This perhaps ties into democratization again, but I also think that if we assume that white supremacists are going to use language to gate resources, then me helping people acquire that language subverts white supremacist efforts. Granted, the better way would be to move to a new standard of the English language that is more inclusive and better incorporates minority vernacular. But that often comes at the price of having to learn weird rules, which is a price of entry for every ESL speaker then, and would additionally mean that a lot of existing ESL speakers would have to re-learn aspects of the language, with no one around to teach them those aspects. Though I guess that depends on which additional standards you're talking about, I'd like to see examples.
This is a Wendy's. . .
Which is to say, not everything can be about everything. Most people just want to do the thing and get on with their lives instead of making their every email a (purely symbolic) blow against the world's injustices.
Which is why I'm not saying someone is evil for using Grammarly, but that the tool is dripping in many of the nasty elements of the dominant ideology in the world it exists within.
So what would you do? Embrace the chaos by just not standardizing? Or would you rather standardize on some other dialect of english? Which one?
In my opinion, language is first and foremost a tool for communication. Everything else is subservient to that role. In the interest of effortless communication, I would therefore prefer to standardize on the most common form of english. Communication in natural languages is hard enough as it is without ambiguity about the rules.
The real answer comes from the sources of the problem: racism, class inequality, etc. It's a hell of a lot bigger than Grammarly or the ways we individually choose to approach language.
Language has this push and pull of change vs standardization on its own, it's a feature of every natural language and happens as long as it's in use (hence why the artificial conservatism that comes with linguistic prescriptivism is unnecessary). Standardization is not inherently oppressive, but it is in this case because a long history of domination and forced assimiliation lies at the heart of how that standardization has happened and is happening.
This seems like a drastic conclusion — could perhaps use some more explanation.
You touch on a lot of things that in a different world I would love to dig into and talk about and I know this video does talk about. Examples: what does "professional" english mean? What makes it "more professional"? Has American grammar ever had to deal with the historical racism in education that puts marginalized groups at a disadvantage because learning "proper" english wasn't an opportunity for a large part of American history (you could argue it is still a problem to this day), why do things like AAV that dominate pop culture and the common lexicon never make it into "proper" grammar? Those are all things we could talk about for days.
I want to take a slightly different approach and ask "honestly, what has good grammar really ever done for me?" I spend a lot of time speaking with non-native english speakers running the spectrum of "only knows a handful of words" to "completely fluent". The longer I reflect on it, their grammar issues have never been the source of miscommunication. The way they speak or write has rarely been the point of miscommunication. The issues I've had have always surrounded common vocabulary. For the most part, as long as the other party and myself are operating using the same vocabulary, we understand each other just fine. They might use the wrong tenses, or structure a sentence in grammatically incorrect ways, but that rarely-to-never stops me from being able to parse the message and get the meaning. If they don't know the english term for what they are trying to say, or use the wrong word, that's when things get difficult and confusing.
Idk. This is my ramblings and my personal experiences, but I just find the concept of "proper grammar" to fall in the same bucket as "professionalism", which is shit that has historically been used for elitism and gatekeeping against the poor.
At least hypothetically a more rigid adherence to traditional English grammar rules allows readers a more common basis of understanding for sentences, and in a business setting where being clear is priority number 1 and you may have partners from across the world for whom they have English as as second language, it's easier for them to learn and process "proper" English, rather than deal with the intricacies of a local dialect.
In practice, "proper" English can also be very flowery, but I do think there is merit in discarding some local euphemisms in correspondences when you are optimizing for information clarity.
This isn't a great example, since you're probably saying neither "professionally" and it's pretty trivial, but it's the best I can think up right now. As a native English speaker, you know that "I couldn't care less" and "I could care less" actually mean the same thing, despite one being the negation of the other.
But if you were ESL, and actually processing the words themselves rather than intuiting the meaning, "I could care less" makes no sense, if not implying the opposite of what the person is trying to say.
replace "traditional" with "universal" and that works just as well. It doesn't matter what the standard is, as long as everyone agrees. Of course, choosing a standard that is commonly spoken already means that getting people to agree is easier; but there's no reason not to do away with stupid old rules.
Right, and the standard that we have now is the traditional English. Of course, that is on the basis that one group has been economically dominant in the Anglosphere, so I can certainly see complaints that it's just another manifestation of ages of conscious and unconscious bias against minorities.
At the same time, it is very useful to have a standard, and we have a standard. It's really hard to get everyone to agree to a standard, since you need the simultaneous compliance of hundreds of millions of people. You see the same issue without the discriminatory baggage in technical specifications, and in situations where there is no governing body that force change, the sucky old standard tends to overwhelm any newer standards.
I read a lot of free serial web fiction written by people from all over the world with varying levels of English proficiency, and Grammarly is definitely used by some of them to maintain something resembling grammatical coherency when they're writing 20k words of content a week.
I use it in code reviews to make sure I'm not coming across too angry sounding.
I broadly agree, but not with this specific comment:
I frequently apply a spellchecker to my own writing, in the revision process. Not because I trust the spellchecker to be the arbiter of which strings are permissible in text, or because I'm unwilling to write down anything which isn't in some word list, but simply because I make mistakes and a spellchecker is a heuristic tool I can use to find some of them.
I do not, and likely would not use a tool like grammarly, for a number of reasons (some of which the linked video mentions). But the problem here is not that a program makes binary value judgements, but that humans react positivistically to them.
I have a student who is constantly harassed by his grammarly extension. He could configure it to be less obtrusive but I think he is afraid that he's making errors he doesn't know about. To be blunt, it is a plague. I urge him to let himself off the hook for typos so he can think about what he's writing, because as soon as a little red line comes up his train of thought is totally interrupted.
Who are the hard-assed teachers downstream from you? I'll kick their asses. Grading down for grammatical errors is barbaric. There's this bucket brigade, "someone down the line is gonna care about this!!" and I think that's a cover.
That's a good gripe, in a way. I agree that the squiggly red can be quite intrusive. It's also an easy enough fix - for grammarly anyway. Just only annotate sentences that have a proper end. Don't interrupt while the user is still typing.
At some point it becomes a workflow issue for the student too. If your last paragraph has a few squigglies, you should have the presence of mind to keep going and fix it once you've written down your thoughts.
Maybe you could suggest writing an entire message with it temporarily turned off, then going back to correct it? Or switching back and forth between writing and editing.
That's actually how I usually use it: Predominantly in high-stakes situations where I produce drafts upon drafts anyway. At one point, I put the draft through the grammarly blender. Keeps my mind clear of that kinda stuff most of the time.