Are you thinking of using Grammarly with Google Docs? As a writer, even if you are a grammar expert, it is understandable that you may require quick grammar assistance from time to time.
Using a Grammar checking tool is especially useful now that we live in a time when communication is critical for starting a business or even having a simple conversation. Grammarly makes it simple for people to write effectively, regardless of their level of English proficiency.
If you’re reading this, you probably use or intend to use Google Docs with Grammarly. This grammar checker tool specializes in detecting grammar errors in places like Google Docs, Microsoft Word, WordPress, Gmail, and other applications. It can identify fields wherever text can be created and edited.
The important part is that, unlike many other tools, you don’t have to pay for the premium version because it is always free.
So you’re probably wondering how this tool can work with Google Docs, one of the most used online word processing documents. The following is a step-by-step guide to help you install and use Grammarly with Google docs.
Why should you use Google Docs with Grammarly?
You probably don’t want to make grammar errors in your documents or emails, but they do happen. Your standard spell-checking tool will miss the majority of them unless you use an extension like Grammarly.
Grammarly now faces competition from Google’s new machine learning-based grammar checker, which is also available in Google Docs. Google claims to be able to detect everything from incorrectly used articles (“an” instead of “a”) to more complex issues like incorrect use of subordinate clauses.
Regardless of the competition, Grammarly remains one of the best tools for checking grammar in applications like Google Docs.
So, how do you set up Grammarly with Google Docs? Before we get into how this tool can help you improve your writing, let’s start with the guide.
How to add Grammarly to Google Docs (Via the Browser)?
Grammarly can be used with Google Docs after you install it in your preferred browser, which includes Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. This application provides browser extensions for the aforementioned browsers. As soon as you add the Grammarly extension to your browser, it will be available to check errors in your Google Docs.
Let’s take a look at how you can add the Grammarly extension to the browsers mentioned above so that you can use it in Google Docs.
NOTE: Adding the Grammarly extension to your browser is all you need to do for Grammarly to automatically start catching errors in your Google Docs. Let’s see below how to add the extension in Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge.
Adding Grammarly to Chrome browser
To easily add the Grammarly extension to the Google Chrome browser:
- Do a Google search for chrome web store and click on the first result. It’ll lead you to the extensions store where you can install Grammarly.
- Once the Chrome web store opens up, search for Grammarly using the provided search box on the upper left area of the browser.
- You’ll see all the search results including the Grammarly extension. It’s most likely to be the first result. Click on it to open.
- It’ll open to the extension page. Click on the Add to Chrome button on the right to begin the installation.
- You’ll be prompted to cofirm the installation as seen in the screeshot below. Just confirm it to proceed.
After the confirmation, you should get a message confirming that the extension has been installed successfully.
And that’s all the steps you need to install the Grammarly extension into Google Chrome. Once the extension is installed, you can open up your Google Docs document and Grammarly will start to detect your grammar and spelling errors automatically.
The process is pretty much the same on the other web browsers.
How to use Grammarly in Google Docs?
Before you can use Grammarly in Google Docs, you must first set it up in your web browser, as we discussed in the previous section. After you’ve added the extension to your browser, you won’t need to do anything else in Google Docs. Grammarly will start working automatically.
When it comes to compatibility, neither Grammarly nor Google Docs have any restrictions.
Grammarly, unlike Google Docs, requires you to download either the browser extension or the desktop editor for Windows and Mac. This will apply to both the free and paid versions of Grammarly.
When you finally install the grammarly extension, you can view the total number of suggested edits on your document by clicking the icon in the bottom-right corner.
Suggested changes are indicated by red underlined text. You can see the suggested edit by hovering your cursor over the text.
Grammarly encourages users to go over edits point by point, which is also a valuable feature for practice as nuanced and open to interpretation as grammar. Also, you now have the Grammarly google docs beta version too.
Simply hover over a selection and click its suggestion to accept an edit. To reject it, hover your mouse over the suggestion and click the “Ignore” button.
However, we will also guide you about this in detail.
More Tips for Using Grammarly with Google Docs?
- After you activate Grammarly on your browser, it’ll automatically be available in all your Google Docs documents. you can use it to check existing documents or create new ones by going to ‘File > New > Document.’
- Begin typing or importing content from your desktop as soon as the new document opens, and Grammarly will begin working in the background.
- And, because Grammarly has yet to release the full version of the browser extension, it currently only highlights the most critical grammar errors that must be corrected right away. It includes spelling errors, incorrect punctuation, incorrect verb forms, missing articles, and so on.
- I enjoy correcting these errors before moving on to more difficult problems. So, click on the word highlighted in red and select the correct option displayed just beneath it.
- Select the entire document and copy it once you’ve corrected all of the marked errors in Google Docs.
- It’s time to go deeper into the rabbit hole by visiting the Grammarly website.
- Log in to your account and select “Upload” from the drop-down menu.
- When you press ‘CTRL + V’ to paste your content, Grammarly scans the entire document in a matter of seconds.
- Once the analysis is complete; you’ll be presented with a page full of mark-ups, with a navigation bar aka Grammarly assistant on the right-hand side that displays the overall score of your content as well as a list of all the grammatical errors it contains.
- By clicking on the score, you can see the average length of your sentences and words, as well as your readability score and the number of unique words you use in your writing.
- The overall score is useful for getting a sense of how your writing ranks and how you can improve it further, but the most important part right now is to address the advanced grammar issues Grammarly highlights.
- Contextual errors are highlighted with yellow lines and typically include incorrect punctuation, sentence fragments, overused words, passive voice, improper sentence structure, and so on.
- When you click on an incorrect word or phrase, Grammarly will show you why it was flagged as incorrect, as well as the correct alternative to using.
- Grammarly is the first-choice grammar tool over other grammar checkers because of its level of detailed reporting.
- It also has a plagiarism checker in the bottom right corner that scans over 16 billion pages for phrases and sentences that are identical to those on other pages.
- It’s the most accurate plagiarism checker I’ve ever used, and I always use it after double-checking that my content is free of grammatical and spelling errors.
- After you’ve checked for plagiarism, select and copy the entire document to return to Google Docs for some final touches.
Using the Grammarly Sidebar.
This is another exciting part of Grammarly. When you’re working on a large document with many Grammarly flags, the Grammarly sidebar is the most convenient way to work through them.
To see the sidebar, go to the bottom right corner of the document and click the Grammarly icon (either green if there are no errors or red if there are errors).
The sidebar will be visible on the right side of the page. You can check the Grammar items you’ve marked, or you can click on one of the sidebars to see a specific problem category, such as correctness, clarity, commitment, or delivery.
Setting your content goals with Grammarly
The ability of Grammarly to set objectives for the content you are creating is another good feature in Google Docs.
Open the grammar sidebar and click on the target icon to access this function. This opens the Set Target dialogue to adjust the Public, Formality, Domain, and Tone options.
One of the most common questions asked by Grammarly users is, is the premium of Grammarly worth it?
Imagine what Premium can do if you’re enjoying Grammarly’s free version and using it for your business.
Investing in something entails putting some skin in the game–paying fees, as with most things.
This is for you if your writing is your business’s bread and butter, and no mistaken grammar should ever make it into your documents.
In addition to the basic features, Premium can assist you in improving your writing from a variety of perspectives by providing suggestions for improving your writing style and analyzing where your errors are coming from to provide deep context.
Conclusion
Instead of relying on automated grammar and spelling checks, we still believe that you might want a human editor to look over important documents.
Computers can’t catch everything, and they frequently miss misunderstood words or phrases that could be confusing.
An expert who discovers a grammatical error can also correct the sentence and answer any questions you might have about why the error was made, so you don’t make the same mistake again.
However, still, Grammarly is worth a shot, maybe just as a tangential competitor.
It works well for casual writing and even better when done in bulk.
This allows you to focus on the important things while the extension reduces your workload by correcting the most common errors.