Originally published at: Why Grammarly Beats Apple’s Writing Tools for Serious Writers - TidBITS
I have been writing professionally for nearly 35 years, and I like to think that I’ve gotten pretty good at it. Between TidBITS and the TidBITS Content Network articles I create for Apple professionals to republish, I probably write between 20,000 and 25,000 words every month for publication. My posts in TidBITS Talk and the emails I write would significantly increase that number.
For me, the term “professional” implies that I’m not wedded to my words. My writing aims to clarify complex technical topics in accessible ways, so much of my work involves reviewing my text multiple times to enhance clarity and ensure accuracy. Additionally, much of what I write is inherently repetitive—Apple keeps releasing new versions of its operating systems, and there are only so many ways to discuss new features, bug fixes, and patched security vulnerabilities. I’m not writing fiction or poetry, and while I’m occasionally smug about a particular turn of phrase, I don’t obsess over every sentence. When I collaborate with an editor—Tonya edits all our TCN content, for instance—I accept most changes unless they introduce an error or misinterpret my intent. Even when I reject a change, I often recast what I’ve written to address the editor’s concerns.
Keep that background in mind when I say that my $144 annual subscription to Grammarly is one of my most worthwhile tech expenses. While Apple is just now getting into the game with its Writing Tools, Grammarly has been helping my writing since 2016. Its interface and capabilities have improved over time, and for what I need to write and edit in Google Docs, WordPress, Discourse, Mimestream, and now Lex, Grammarly has become an essential tool. For native Mac apps, you need the Grammarly Desktop app; for Web apps, Grammarly provides extensions for Safari, Chrome (and Chromium browsers like Arc), and Firefox.
For a long time, I described my relationship with Grammarly as love/hate. I have always appreciated how it identified mistakes like double words, missing punctuation, and errors introduced by rewriting a sentence during editing. Simultaneously, though, Grammarly suffers from editing tics, such as a hatred of the words actually, both, and own. I understand they’re often unnecessary, but when I use them, I mean to use them. Grammarly and I also often disagree about the use of commas before because, since, and so. Although Grammarly lets you turn off numerous aspects of its checking, my gripes are not among them.
Basic Corrections and Real-Time Editing
However, thanks to the judicious addition of generative AI tools, I’m now happy to accept a few editing tics for the significant improvements that Grammarly makes to my drafts. Let’s look first at Grammarly’s basic corrections features:
- Autocorrect: If you make a simple spelling mistake, Grammarly fixes it and underlines it so you know what it did. You can hover over the underlined word to revert if you intended what you wrote.
- Tab to correct: While you’re actively typing, if Grammarly detects a word or phrase to indicate that it needs correcting and underlines it, you can pause briefly and then press Tab to fix it. You can’t preview the correction, but if you’re a sufficiently experienced writer, you’ll know what it will do. I often rely on this feature in email, where writing quickly can cause me to make small mistakes that I would prefer to fix.
- Inline corrections: For more information about the mistake and what Grammarly proposes to do to fix it, you can hover the insertion point over the underlined text. Click the suggestion to replace the underlined text, or click Dismiss if you disagree with the change. (I have to disagree a fair amount because many Apple product names, like Photos, are plural but take singular verbs, causing Grammarly to flag subject-verb agreement errors.)
- Step-by-step corrections: Inline corrections initially appear only for the most important corrections. When I finish writing a piece, I click the Grammarly button at the bottom of the document to start a step-by-step pass through the document. (You can click Show More to see multiple suggestions at once.) At this point, Grammarly adds more underlines to show all the possible changes. You deal with each one with Accept/Rephrase and Dismiss buttons; when it flags an unusual word as misspelled, you can add it to your personal dictionary. Grammarly’s window is movable, so you can ensure it doesn’t obscure your text.
AI-Powered Paragraph-Level Improvements
While these tools are powerful, Grammarly’s addition of AI-driven enhancements has made it even more essential. While I’m uninterested in having AI write my text (why describe what I want when I can just write it?), I’m always open to worthwhile improvements to what I’ve written. Since late October, I’ve become hooked on a feature that allows you to select text and hover over a blue button to the left of the paragraph to see an improved version with changes clearly highlighted. Grammarly briefly pulled the feature while debugging it—I was sufficiently distraught to lose it that I contacted support to find out what happened—but it has been back for some time now.
Since these suggestions are generated by AI, requesting multiple suggestions for the same text will produce different variations each time, even if the text is already well-written—you need to exercise judgment about when to stop making changes. Occasionally, you’re rewarded with “The text is well-edited.”
Like other features in Grammarly, these paragraph-level suggestions distinguish between the most important recommendations. When Grammarly detects a paragraph that it can significantly enhance, a red button automatically appears on the side. Hover over it to see Grammarly’s “best version.” I always at least look at these suggestions, and they’re often worth accepting.
Grammarly gives you complete control over the suggestions, allowing you to click any suggestion to dismiss it (indicated by the “Undo change” marker two screenshots above) and restrict the suggestions to those you believe improve your text. The suggestions are usually quite good, but I often prefer my original wording or use Grammarly’s ideas as inspiration for rephrasing.
You may have noticed that Grammarly also offers Rephrase and More options (More expands to Shorten, Friendly, and Formal). I very seldom use those, but in each case, you can see precisely what Grammarly would add and remove. There’s also an Enter Your Own button that you can use to create your own prompt, should you have specific needs or want to goof around.
What about Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools?
I’ve focused on Grammarly’s interface partly because it highlights the awkwardness of Apple Intelligence’s Writing Tools. While Grammarly integrates seamlessly into your text and clearly shows what will happen if you accept a change in nearly all situations, Apple’s Writing Tools require constant activation and provide significantly less feedback about their changes.
In fact, there are two distinct interfaces for Writing Tools. One is found only in Notes, Mail, and Messages (and possibly a few other apps, though not Pages), while the other is accessible in any Mac app. Although Apple deserves praise for allowing any app to use Writing Tools without modification, the universal interface is so poor that it’s nearly unusable.
In Notes, Mail, and Messages, a Writing Tools button appears on the left when you select text—it’s also in the toolbar—making it easier to access Writing Tools, though it requires another click to switch to Proofread. The Proofread tool underlines mistakes and allows you to step through them by clicking the arrow buttons or the underlined text, explaining what’s wrong and how it will fix the problem. Clicking Revert returns to your original and dismisses the controls; clicking the small button beside Revert shows your original for reference. Clicking Done accepts all the changes.
This proofreading interface is effective. It processes an entire document at once and encourages Mac developers to support Writing Tools natively.
Unfortunately, the Rewrite tool fails to display any of its suggested changes, so you need to click the button next to Revert to alternate between your original text and the revision.
While not as effective as Grammarly’s, this interface is a significant improvement over the one that all Mac apps get for free. Let’s look at that next.
Say I want to proofread this paragraph while writing in Lex, which is running in Arc. To invoke Writing Tools, I must select the paragraph, Control-click, and choose Writing Tools > Proofread from the contextual menu. Then, Writing Tools proofreads my text and presents a new version in a dialog, which may appear over the text. It doesn’t indicate what changes have been made, and the dialog cannot be moved, making it difficult or impossible to compare my original text with the update manually. The only recourse is to copy the text, paste it underneath the original, and visually compare the two.
It gets worse. Maybe it’s just my M1 MacBook Air, which has issues with Apple Intelligence’s summarization features, but clicking Replace doesn’t actually change the selected text. I have to click Copy and then paste it over my text.
You probably don’t want to proofread just a single paragraph, but the dialog disappears each time you click Replace or Copy. (You can also click outside the dialog to dismiss it without making any changes.) In other words, you must select text, Control-click it, and choose Writing Tools > Proofread for each paragraph individually. You can select multiple paragraphs and proofread them all at once, but without any indication of what will change, reviewing that much text becomes even harder. Additionally, at least in this document, Writing Tools won’t open if I select the entire document before attempting to invoke it.
Looking past the interface issues, Apple’s Writing Tools seem to provide acceptable proofreading corrections and rewriting suggestions. It would be challenging to compare them definitively to Grammarly’s changes, as text produced by AI systems can vary even between invocations, let alone from one AI to another.
However, without a better interface across all apps and more transparency regarding what changes are made, I can’t envision myself using Writing Tools. Perhaps that’s okay; Apple shouldn’t compete with independent developers who have established successful businesses by offering excellent solutions. Nonetheless, Apple could still improve while giving Grammarly ample space to deliver top-notch proofreading and editing tools to those who require them.
Of course, Apple Intelligence is free to anyone with a Mac using Apple silicon, but Grammarly also offers a free version with limited features. If you need assistance with your text and find Apple Intelligence too clumsy, consider trying Grammarly’s free version. It might be adequate for your needs, or it could encourage you to subscribe to the comprehensive feature set that I’ve come to depend on.
