Otherwise, everything -- from Word's style tips, to these online tools are the death of authorial voice.
I mean to write precisely what I say. Not "to write what I say" because that's "more concise and easier for the reader". Precisely what I say, because that's more evocative of my frustration.
Even if you are a native speaker, these style and grammar tools can be educational and and improve your writing confidence (and catch small mistakes we all make).
Of course, accepting all the suggestions isn’t the right way to use language tools. The rules are applied mechanically, without taking intent into account.
And I would say even for native speaker, not only a tool like this is for educational and improve one's own confident, but also demonstrated you care about your reader. I have lost counts on how many typo/grammartical mistakes I noticed when I read company internal wiki written by native speakers.
grammarly:
> And I would say even for a native speaker, not only a tool like this is for education and to improve one's confidence, but also demonstrated you care about your reader.
languagetool (didn't recommend any changes)
> And I would say even for native speaker, not only a tool like this is for educational and improve one's own confident, but also demonstrated you care about your reader.
quillbot:
> And I would say even for native speakers, a tool like this is for educational and improving one's own confidence, but it also demonstrates you care about your reader.
gramara (an app I made):
> And I would say even for a native speaker, a tool like this is not only meant to educate and improve one's own confidence, but also demonstrate that you care about your readers.
The target market for these tools is professionals writing english as a second language.
A tool that can spot and let you fix minor 'it sounds wrong' issues ("big orange cat" vs "orange big cat") can be a confidence-booster if you're e.g. working at Google's Poland office, but doing all your professional work in english.
I don’t just want my voice to be communicated, I want it to be understood. Sometimes that means automated grammar checkers.
A large audience for these types of tools is people for whome English is not their first language (this includes me, so please forgive any spelling/grammar mistakes you may find). This audience may be very eloquent and stylistic in their native language, but learning languages (especially when you have passed your teens) is hard, and sounding professional and sleek requires a lot more effort than you might think.
Here's where Grammarly comes in. It reformats your sentences to be more consistent with your projected attitude, removing a ton of work for some people.
If it's used to fix whatever ESL word salad one writes, without using the corrections as a hint to improve one's command of the language, then I agree with you.
I know plenty of people for whom the tool is really useful -- my foreign-born wife for example. But were she to limit her native expression with the same kind of "simplifying" that the tool offers, I am sure she would not be perceived as having any kind of personality at all.
For me, when I write -- and I like to write -- I choose to break convention often. The tool frustrates me and wastes my time. Sure there is an audience for this, but I don't want to sound like everybody else. That's MY attitude.
...and reading the comments does make it sound like a key-logger ... so no, I can't say I trust the extension.
I haven't used Grammarly but this strikes me as class HN "I don't make mistakes" hubris. Have you never used a thesaurus?
> I mean to write precisely what I say.
I assume you were making up that suggestion but "I mean to write what I say." is would be a good improvement, and it's only a suggestion anyway.
I'm not sure exactly what you're implying with this rhetorical question but, for the record, I wouldn't expect a well-educated native speaker to use a thesaurus.
And yet I do use a thesaurus from time to time, as well as a dictionary of antonyms.
And a simple dictionary as well.
Maybe your language is simpler, or you have a better memory/education.
I see it all the time on here about IDE features like autocompletion. "Why would I need that? I'm smart. I just memorise the entire codebase, don't you? Your intellect is laughable."
In British middle class society, where people have attended "good" universities, you don't use a thesaurus. It would be looked-down upon.
Incidentally, what do you use a thesaurus for? Is it when you've forgotten a word, or when you want to discover new words that might be apt?
I write what I mean to say
I mean to write what I say
As I said, it's something of a nit I'm picking, but the meanings are pretty different IMHO, even if most folks would assume that both mean the same thing.
> I mean to write what I say
is an improvement over,
> I mean to write precisely what I say
Then you haven't understood everything I meant to say. The mood in which I write is part of what I write. To remove it is to communicate less.
Grammer checking is just extended spell checking. You could have great style, but gaffe something; use some combination of words because you were tired or distracted, or you made some bad edit, half of which was scrolled off the screen or whatever.
You could ignore most of the tips, but once in a while it could be that the suggestion you get from the software is exactly the words you wanted to write, but somehow fumbled. That's clearly valuable, and in a way that isn't dictating style to you.
Sometimes spelling errors cause grammar errors. So unless you're a perfect speller and typist, a grammar checking tool might be the one which actually catches your typo. This is because a typo can produce a dictionary word, or words.