How Does Wordvice.ai Proofreader Compare to Grammarly?
One of the most important parts of writing a college admissions essay, dissertation, or research article is ensuring there are no grammatical, writing, or spelling mistakes.
To detect and correct these writing errors, you have several options. Learning all the rules related to spelling, grammar, and writing well takes a considerable amount of time.
There are also essay and manuscript editing services that employ a professional proofreader who reviews your writing, offers in-depth suggestions and feedback, and provides contextual writing improvements.
One of the most popular options is the use of online proofreading apps and grammar checkers such as Wordvice.ai and Grammarly. These free online writing apps are packed with cutting-edge features and are often available at very low cost.
This article compares the new Wordvice.ai research writing checker with the well-known proofreading app Grammarly. Find out how to use both and how they can enhance your writing process.
Wordvice.ai Versus Grammarly: Introduction
What is Wordvice.ai?
Wordvice.ai is the brand new AI-powered research writing checker app from Wordvice, a professional essay and research editing and proofreading service. Wordvice’s primary customer base is college students, graduate students, PhD researchers, academics, and universities. Their focus is on helping these people improve their dissertations, theses, college admissions essays, and science manuscripts. It is not surprising that Wordvice.ai shines when used for these types of documents, as we demonstrate below.
Wordvice.ai is available as a web app – but does not scrape any personal data per its privacy policy.
What is Grammarly?
Grammarly is the most well-known proofreading app in the world and has become ubiquitous among students and writers of all types. It is available as a stand-alone app and browser extension. It also integrates with all sorts of platforms such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Docs.
As the most feature-rich grammar checker on the market, it’s very useful to use Grammarly as a benchmark when discussing any other proofreading tool. However, there are major downsides as you will find out relating to cost and its controversial data collection policy.
Price Comparison
Aspiring researchers and academics are often college or graduate students. While most universities do offer Grammarly as part of their technology package, it is helpful to compare pricing for budget-minded individuals.
Grammarly – The best premium online proofreader
Grammarly’s pricing structure is typical of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. There are three plans with the free tier being a functional albeit limited preview into the full-featured paid version.
With any SaaS app, you need to dive into the pricing details – Most SaaS advertise their long-term plans (annual or multiple years) as the list price.
When it comes to college students writing admissions essays or researchers who are preparing one large dissertation or manuscript, annual pricing is not very efficient, as many will end up canceling after just one month.
Wordvice.ai – Free writing assistant and proofreader
Wordvice.ai is free to use for all users.
There are no plans whatsoever – the only thing required is a login account, which allows you to save and download your written work in the proofreading app.
Who Should Use Grammarly and Wordvice.ai?
With so many free proofreading tools on the market, choosing just one can be confusing. While many more people use Grammarly, does that mean it is the best app for technical, academic, and research writers?
Grammarly – Best for students and bloggers
Grammarly shines when it is used as a general writing tool – and there are two common types of casual writers:
- High school and college students writing assignments and essays
- Bloggers, marketers, and copywriters writing articles, marketing sales copy, and informational pieces.
Access to Grammarly Premium offers a few great options for these groups.
Plagiarism Checker
By far, the most common reason to pay for Grammarly is its plagiarism checker. In fact, it exists as a standalone tool and as a built-in tool whenever it checks your writing.
Many students just learning how to write college essays as well as bloggers who are pressed for time rely on plagiarism checkers such as Grammarly’s to satisfy ethical standards.
Writing Goals
Another useful feature in Grammarly is its ability to set its writing tone – as stated above, this is perfect for the general writer who may need to write a job resume, blog post, marketing email, or creative essay.
One of the key areas of comparison below is testing its “Academic” tone selector with that of Wordvice.ai.
Wordvice.ai – Best for college applicants and researchers
As mentioned above, Wordvice.ai was built using thousands of essays, dissertations, and research manuscripts edited by Wordvice.com.
This is known as machine learning, and it is the exact same method other online proofreading apps like Grammarly use to “learn” and improve. However, Wordvice.ai was created based on its own userbase of graduate students and researchers, meaning it is perfect for everyone from college applicants to science writers.
Comparing Grammarly vs Wordvice.ai – Functional Test
Below is a series of functional examples that demonstrate where both of these grammar checkers shine and where they could be improved. The intention is for readers to determine when and for whom these tools are most useful.
As academic or essay writing in a second language is a huge concern for many students, the area of focus will be science, academic, and research writing in the context of common mistakes that non-native English speakers or ESL speakers make.
The following specific use cases will be explored:
- Email Correspondence
- Verb tense shifts (past/present)
- Plural versus singular verb tense agreement
Email Correspondence
Our first example will be general correspondence between a student and his/her professor. University students and researchers must write emails to research institutions, professors, and professional colleagues all the time, so making sure even casual emails look good is important – and can have professional implications.
This passage with many errors was entered into both tools:
Dear Professor,
Thank you for writ to me.
Im glad you able access account.
Please let me now if you can help in anyway.
Thanks lot, Support
Grammarly edit
Grammarly did not detect the error writ. This is because writ is an actual word in the English language meaning “a formal written document”. However, in this example, writ should NOT be used as a noun and was intended to be writing.
Another issue found is small but relevant – Grammarly made the below correction to the account error. This correction lacks contextual understanding. This is an email written between two people, so it is reasonable to assume that the topic of the email (account access) means that one person owns an account.
Wordvice.ai
Wordvice.ai correctly detected the writ error and made the correct suggestion to writing.
As shown, Wordvice.ai very clearly demarcates the type of error as according to color:
- Blue: Clarity issue
- Yellow: Verb issue
- Red: Verb form issue
Compared to above, Wordvice.ai makes a more nuanced correction to the account error by adding the possessive your. Thus, the full statement reads, “I’m glad you are able to access your account,” which makes a lot more sense.
Verb tense shifts (past/present)
Verb tense in research and academic writing has some specific rules.
Past tense
- Results
- Observations
- Methods (passive voice)
- Specific references to past events (even in the literature)
Present tense
- Literature citations
- General scientific statements
- Future applications
- Scientific claims at the end of a study
These rules can confuse even experienced scientific writers and editors, so it’s good to test these.
The following passage with errors was used:
We observed that the cellular structure was not change, although Kim et. al. established that the lipid membrane is resistant to hydrophilic conditions.
Grammarly
The correct change is simply changed. However, Grammarly relies too heavily upon the input was not change and maintained this grammatical structure in its suggestions.
The problem is that Grammarly does not have sufficient experience with ESL scientific writing. Experienced academic editors know that ESL researchers often misuse past continuous form.
Grammarly views the past continuous input as an intended input – so it maintains it in its suggestion. In reality, it is obvious that the correct way to communicate here is changed, as the sentence is reporting an observation.
Grammarly continues to output a pattern of technically correct but contextually (science, academic writing) incorrect suggestions. This stems from the fact that Grammarly is trained based on volume and not on targeted writing.
In other words, Grammarly’s suggestions will cater to what its algorithm determines is the most common solution among its tens of millions of users. However, research writing will never be as popular as blog or article writing. So this is another case where Grammarly can come up short.
Wordvice.ai
Wordvice.ai correctly makes this straightforward change to was.
Plural versus singular verb tense agreement
Another common writing and grammar issue is singular vs plural verb tense agreement. This is when writers confuse the singular and plural between nouns and verbs.
The following passage with errors was used:
The data shows that rates of obesity have increased, whereas the numbers of cells was reduced by erythromycin.
Grammarly
Grammarly makes two glaring mistakes here.
First, one of the most common singular vs plural mistakes is with the word data. Data is a plural term, and its usage is strict in academic writing. However, it is often used as both singular and plural in conversational writing or speaking.
Again, this is an instance where Grammarly’s overly general learning model results in a missed correction – simply put, it is well accepted by Grammarly that data can be singular, even though this is wrong.
Secondly, Grammarly suggests changing both numbers and was because it assesses these as two separate, disconnected grammar issues. However, you cannot change numbers > number and was > were, as Grammarly suggests, because that would result in “the number of cells were”. And that is also wrong.
The correct suggestion should be to only correct numbers > number while keeping was.
Wordvice.ai
Wordvice.ai correctly recognizes data as a plural noun. It also correctly identifies that only numbers should be changed while leaving was alone.
Wordvice.ai vs Grammarly: Which grammar checker wins?
In the end, there is no best online proofreader for everyone. Even though Grammarly is by far the most used and is based on the widest variety of inputs, it certainly lacks specific usability especially when it comes to research writing.
This is why it is so important to take a holistic, well-rounded approach to editing and proofreading. Use all available tools that are appropriate for each specific type of writing. And follow-up with professional editing in order to take your essay to the next level.