You probably can’t tell, but I’m a huge grammar Nazi. I mean, I don’t know all the rules in the book, but common mistakes irk me. That’s why I’d never become a teacher. I’d be the worst grader in the world.

You didn’t put a comma to separate two independent clauses? Not reading the rest.

You used “whom” in place of who and you really didn’t need to? We need to talk.

And you DARE use a semicolon—THE semicolon—INCORRECTLY? Just plain old F.

If I see one more comma splice or run-on on Facebook, I’m going to hurl.

And I’m just a little 19-year-old. Imagine if some of your professors revered the English language as much as I do…

Oh, wait.

THEY DO.

Unfortunately, not everyone had meticulous eighth-grade English teachers like I did. But you don’t need them. What you need is Grammarly.

  First of all, what is Grammarly?

The best thing since sliced bread, I’ll tell you that. Grammarly is a free, downloadable extension that underlines misspellings and grammatical errors both online and offline. You can use it for Facebook statuses (which I HIGHLY recommend), e-mails (not AOL though), and college essays. Especially college essays.

Even if you’re not in college, you need to take advantage of this goodness. If you’re a high school student, a job seeker, a hermit with a computer, you NEED Grammarly. Why?

2        Grammarly helps you make fewer mistakes.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but Microsoft isn’t enough! If you use the wrong word but spell it correctly, Microsoft will just be like, cool. Your interviewers and professors sure won’t just shrug it off, though.

You can use Grammarly both online and offline (Microsoft Word and Outlook). Once you open Word and enable Grammarly, you can see that it grades you based on spelling, grammar, punctuation, style, and sentence structure. In other words, when you’re writing your college essays or scholarships, Grammarly has got your back.

Same for online as well. Ever shrivel in fear when you write emails to your professors because your grammar is butt? Now you don’t have to!

[Tweet theme=”tweet-box-normal-blue”]Ever shrivel in fear when you write emails to your professors because your grammar is butt? Now you don’t have to![/Tweet]

There’s also a premium option that judges you on additional categories such as vocabulary enhancement.And I know I’m not the only person that likes to fluff the life out of my vocabulary when I’m writing scholarship essays (but not too much though).

 

3. Grammarly makes you more likeable.

Look, friends, there are two types of professors in the world: those that put you before themselves, and those that put themselves before you.

Lots of professors won’t even give you a chance if they see an error on your hot-off-the-printer-just-did-this-this-morning-nine-page essay. And they’re not going to care because you should know better.

You’ll sometimes meet art professors that don’t like you and take off 10 points because of your comma splice. Art professors, y’all.

 

4. ­Grammarly is FREE!

You get all this (minus the premium features) for free! It’s like a little angel on your shoulder hovering over every letter you type.

It’s not a full-on application, so it doesn’t require that much space. And you can use it on the web and in Microsoft. (However, you DO need internet access).

And if you’re interested in Premium, it  starts at $11.66 a month.

So what are you waiting for? You have absolutely nothing to lose—except maybe a few bytes of memory, but so what (I actually typed in “bites” and Grammarly underlined it in disappointment). Start your semester and your life off on the right foot and get the grade you deserve! Simply click the banner below.

What is a common grammatical error that you’ve witnessed on social media??