A New Tone Detected! And Other Insights about My Writing from Grammarly

What Grammarly tells us about our written communication styles

I received an email this week that caught my eye. In a sea of subject lines like “Shipped”, “Spring-fresh deals”, and “Shop these hot Mother’s Day sales” I read “New-tone detected — way to change up your communication style.” I had to open the email to find out more.

I love a compliment, especially about my communication. I was also intrigued to discover what new tone I’ve employed in my writing.

I’ve been using Grammarly for eight months or so at the suggestion of a Medium publication editor.

At first, I was slightly insulted, having considered myself a solid writer and student of Strunk & White for decades. However, after downloading the tool I became accustomed to the little green circle bouncing around the screen.

It’s been 17 weeks and none of the corrections have blown me away. As a result of help from Big G, I have eliminated many unnecessary commas, tightened up my sentences, and submitted essays with fewer typos. If I second-guess the use of a hyphen, I know Grammarly has my back.

I don’t accept all of the changes, particularly the suggestions for my creative writing. I agree with almost all of the edits for work emails but I do find I dismiss at least 10% of the suggestions for my essays.

What I am about to write is controversial.

Writing is an art form. Good writing can be good and not always be grammatically correct.

i dont always have to use punctuation, like ee cummings

I can Capitalize words in the Middle of a sentence for Emphasis, like Emily Dickinson.

Speaking with Emily, she is my favorite poet and I adore her use of dashes — a pause, a beat, a breath.

I like to start sentences with conjunctions. Because I can. And you can, too.

My essays are not being submitted to scholarly articles to be peer-reviewed by PhDs. I appreciate the use of grammar as a clarity-seeking strategy but I won’t compromise feeling for following all the rules.

I generally delete anything from Grammarly, along with the multitude of retail emails. I knew the tool’s analytics captured my mistakes, categorizing my errors, and my lack of rule-following.

Over 105,000 words were checked last week! I am more accurate than 90% of Grammarly users. I used more unique words than 96% of users.

(Taking a bow here.)

I did miss a comma after a compound sentence 500 times. I missed a comma after an introductory clause 126 times and here I thought I was an overuser.

(My bad.)

My spelling adversary: on-campus. (That’s from my work email, which you’d think after 17 years working in higher education I’d have mastered.)

This is where it gets interesting.

I didn’t realize it was also documenting the way in which I expressed my feelings. A section of the email is dedicated to Tone and highlights seven tones I’ve used the most this week, each accompanied by its own emoji.

I increased my confident, optimistic, and joyful tones by between 7–24% but sadly increased my sad tone by 8%.

But, what about the new tone? For the first time ever, Grammarly detected the use of surprise in my writing.

Who knew?!

Analyzing my tone using Grammarly won’t change the way I write but I found it worth reflecting upon. If a tone increases in use, will I know why or in which context? I was certainly pleased to learn that I use a confident tone as that is how I want to be perceived both at work and in my creative pieces.

It makes me happy to know that my words are full of optimism and joy because that is what I hope to bring to my readers — at least in my creative work.

(Wink.)

We writers of Medium know the importance of AI and the value of understanding how to feed the algorithm to get more reads to then in turn make more money.

Grammarly is helping me improve my writing and in doing so I hope more publishers accept my work, I’m read by more, and in turn, make more money. Yet, my true goal is to use words to make connections, share wisdom, make others laugh, and feel less alone. If analyzing my tone helps me do that, then I will be a lifelong user of Big G.

Copyright Melissa Marietta