There’s nothing more annoying than that distant (yet somehow right in your ear) beep of a dying smoke detector.
Well, except for the taunting red squiggle under the text you just painstakingly crafted—telling you that you’ve misspelled something, forgotten a comma, or committed some other heinous grammatical sin.
I hate that little line. Yet, I am so grateful for it.
As much as I’d love to deny it, anything that can catch a dangling modifier without me lifting a finger is working in my favor—whether I want to admit it or not.
The next subject in PPR’s artificial intelligence (AI) series is Grammarly—the SUPER helpful editing software that catches those pesky spelling and grammar mistakes.
Grammarly’s AI tools are designed to help writers quickly change the tone of their writing, summarize text, gain inspiration, identify gaps, and even add GIFS. PPR’s team tested most of these features and are spotlighting a few with our verdicts on how they perform.
Feature: TL;DR (Too long; didn’t read)
Grammarly’s TL;DR AI function pulls out the highest-level information from your text and summarizes it into short, high-level bullets.
How Can EDOs Use It?: This feature could help EDOs take large documents and summarize them to the highest key points. We can see EDOs using this tool to more easily digest the information or to quickly create talking points for a report they’ve written or a presentation.
Example: Here’s a list pulled from our last blog:
- ChatGPT outputs depend on the quality of the input and can be made more specific with detailed prompts
- Using ChatGPT without review or editing may result in noticeable AI-generated content
- AI like ChatGPT is meant to enhance human efforts, not replace them
- Specific prompt ideas to get started with ChatGPT include meeting prep, data analysis, summarization, and writing support
Verdict: Ok, this was actually helpful. Three out of four correct bullets isn’t bad, but notice how this last bullet needs more context to fully match what is in the original text. A perfect reminder that no matter how smart AI is, it still needs a human touch to fact-check everything!
Feature: Ideate
The ideate features do just what you think they will—help you come up with ideas!
How Can EDOs Use It?: For EDOs, you can use this feature to “generate ideas for a blog post” to help your marketing team find new, creative approaches to relevant topics or “brainstorm some though-provoking questions” to prepare for an interview or brainstorm questions for a speaker/panel that give your audience killer takeaways.
Example: We asked Grammarly to generate ten ideas for blogs that have to do with healthcare and economic development. Here’s what it came up with!
Verdict: Some of these are solid! Though Grammarly doesn’t generate fully flushed-out topics that incorporate the nuances of your community, its results are enough to get those old brain juices flowing.
Feature: “Rewrite for a general audience” OR “rewrite for an expert audience.”
How Can EDOs Use It?: Use this feature to fine-tune your tone and speak directly to each unique audience. Maybe you have a newsletter going out about new grants, but the language is too “blah” or technical to engage the average reader, or you want to ensure an ad has that level of technical language to reach professionals (e.g., site selectors)—this tool can help give you ideas on how to adjust your language.
Example: For example, this is how Grammarly rewrites this pretty technical language on tax-increment financing.
Original text: “An Economic Impact Analysis is a quantitative assessment that measures the effect of a particular project or policy on the local economy, evaluating metrics such as job creation, income generation, and tax revenue.”
Rewritten for a general audience: “An Economic Impact Analysis is a way to measure how a specific project or policy affects the local economy. It looks at things like how many jobs it creates, how much money people make, and how much tax money it brings in.”
Rewritten for an expert audience: “An Economic Impact Analysis involves a rigorous quantitative evaluation to gauge the influence of a specific project or policy on the local economy. This assessment encompasses metrics such as job creation, income generation, and tax revenue to provide a comprehensive understanding of the economic implications.”
Verdict: This tool does a good job of changing the word choice to reflect the desired audience. One word of caution here: you know your audiences best. If you have a gut feeling that words like “encompasses” or “rigorous” are going to come across as too stuffy, it’s good to change them out for more audience-appropriate selections.
Is Grammarly on your most-used app list? Has it helped you overcome a challenge in your writing? Click here to connect with the PPR team and tell us all about it!
