Comparing Whitesmoke to Grammarly is like comparing the New York Giants to a real football team.

Whitesmoke was impossible to use. Ads for upgrades and add ons kept popping up all the time.  It seemed everytime I went to use it, it offered me a paid upgrade.  Half the time its suggestions made no sense.

I used Whitesmoke for about 6 months and got fed up. I removed it from all of my systems. I won't even go to the website for fear of them pushing something.

I found Essayrater (now Grammarly) about a year later. The difference is day and night. I love the synonyms even though some are not in the context I am using. On the other hand, it can also show when I am using a word out of context.

I am a lawyer and I run every major letter and document I prepare through Grammarly. It has actually gotten me to be more precise when I write.

Grammarly is heads above White Smoke. Yes, some synonyms are out of context, but having worked as a programmer, I appreciate the difficulty the software must present without using artificial intelligence. I do have a suggestion for an improvement. I think Grammarly should catch more passive language. I am checking a novel I had written. While the software identifies much passive speech, it misses some, and I must search for and correct it myself. However, Grammarly teaches me to be a better writer. The other day, I took a random novel off my bookshelf, and I spotted errors I had not seen before.

Don't know enough about Grammarly yet, but Whitesmoke lost important paragraphs and sentences from my work. Whitesmoke was also full of bugs, and I could only use it for a few minutes before it would get quirky, and LOSE MY WORK! Homie don't play dat, so i gave Whitesmoke the boot.

I could say some things about White Smoke, but I'll pass. I like Grammarly because it works, and it is objective, whereas human editors are subjective. Just pick up a novel from your bookshelf and plug a few paragraphs in to Grammarly, even from an old novel (from the days when writers could write). You might be surprised.

I forgot to mention that I don't make corrections in Grammarly, I switch back and forth between the original document and Grammarly. I do it that way because Grammarly reformats my MS Word text, losing separation between many paragraphs, which is tedious to fix and prone to error. I am editing a 400-page novel one chapter at a time.

I am looking for a grammar program (didn't know they even existed) and narrowed it down to white smoke and grammarly. I tried the free trial with white smoke but it wasn't catching run on sentances, fragmented sentances etc. That may be because it is only the free trial, I am not sure. Can anyone here tell me if grammarly will pick out those kinds of errors. I do medical transcription work and need something that will find those types of errors as well as spelling, punctuation etc. Any information would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks

The free trial of WhiteSmoke is the full program. You will be happy with Garammarly.

Hi i just started to use gammarly and I write on my own blog as well as other blogs. I also have a tendency to write in  a passive voice and tend to be wordy in my writing. So my question is which review setting would I use for my blog post?

I tried the creative and casual review styles, just to get a feel for them. I settled on the casual style, since it seemed a better fit for my novel. I figured that I wasn't writing an article for the Wall Street Journal (business), nor was I writing a text book or a term paper (academic). I guess it was a process of elimination.

I received an email with a user comment about Grammerly reformatting text pasted to and from MS Word, but I cannot find that comment on this forum. Was it deleted? Anyway, I too experience that problem. To circumvent Grammerly's reformatting of text pasted from Word, I paste the text into Grammerly, then search for the corrections one-by-one in the Word document. I make the corrections in Word, not in Garammerly. I clear the Grammerly text and again paste the document into Grammerly. I sometimes do this 5 or 6 times until the error count is near zero. I don't always agree on Grammerly's suggested changes. When I don't, I leave feedback by clicking on "No". Later, I have noticed changes in how Grammerly corrects the same text, which I attribute to my feedback. On the minus side, I have noticed a new conflict on how Grammerly checks quoted text, which I will explain in a separate comment.

There is conflict on how Grammerly checks quoted text. For instance {"Hello, Bob.", said Tom.} is analyzed twice by Grammerly. If I leave out the comma after the second quote, Grammerly will say that a comma is required. When I put it in, Grammerly will say two things: First, it reports that {"Hello",Bob."} doesn't have an ending punctuation. It also will report that {said Tom.} is a sentence that requires capitalization, in otherwords, {Said Tom}. So, the problem here is one rule (one set of computer code} conflicting with another rule. Now, I'm editing a novel. In it, I format this type of phrase as {"Hello, Bob" said Tom."}. I can pick any novel off my bookshelf and every author uses this convention. However, I do agree that a comma is required after the second quote. In Grammerly's defense, I must say that after using Grammerly, I have noticed that every novel and every academic book on my shelves are rife with gramatical errors. (This comment has a few, I am sure.)

I am a fiction writer and I signed up with online Grammerly about two weeks ago. I would like my writing checked for passive voice but I don't see that happening. Could you tell me if Grammerly points out passive sentences? Also, sometimes I receive a suggestion and other times I do not. Is there a setting I need to change so I receive more suggestions?

Thanks,
Jen 

I too am a fiction writer. I've learned through experience that Grammarly finds more passive language in the General, Academic, Business, and Technical styles. I eventually settled on the Creative style because I concluded that a certain amount of passive voice is needed in order for the characters to talk naturally. I don't want my writing to sound Victorian. I settled on minimizing the passive voice in my narratives and allowing the characters to talk as most people do. If you don't know how to switch Grammarly's styles, hold your cursor of the blue Start Review button. A pull-down menu appears. Click on the style that suits your writing. On another note, I don't agree on everything Grammarly finds (Grammarly programmers need to get busy), but it seems to me that Grammarly will find more errors than any human reader.

Have anyone used the office Add-in, any thoughts?

I tried the office add-in once and only once. It doesn't offer any advantages for me. Grammarly loses the Word formatting, and I have to undo it. That's very tedious. I would love to see a grammar checker that works inside Word and stays there, In other words, written in VBA. Grammarly programmers will know what I am talking about.

My professiobal opinion is that a good grammar checker one can load into Word would spur sales for MS Word like never before, a winning proposition for the developer and Microsoft.

I've been waiting about an hour and a half now for Grammarly to scan one paragraph.

Dear Mr. Dobet,

Please make sure you are using one of the following Internet browsers: Internet Explorer 7.0 or 8.0, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari.

The usual report turn-around time is 2-5 minutes. If the review process is taking longer than that, try repeating the steps.  If this doesn’t work, please send a copy of the text to us at support@grammarly.com so we can identify and correct the problem.

Once in a while Grammarly takes too long to check text. It seems to go into a never-ending loop. I think it is the Javascript code running on the browser, but I am not sure. So, after 5 minutes of staring at the screen, I refresh the browser (F5), and it works okay after that.

Dear Joe,

Thank you for letting us know. May I suggest making sure you are checking up to 20 pages per one check. The amount of checks you can perform is limitless.

Grammarly is a superior program than whitesmoke

Can I remove the pink highlighting. I'd like to just paste the corrected copy back into word. Thanks

Dear Abdulaziz,

Thank you very much for your note! 

Dear Cherley,

In order to eliminate the correction cover please highlight all text in Word and press Clear Formatting. It will remove the highlighting.

I found one annoying problem in Grammarly: Once I click 'start review,' the scroll bar doesn't allow me to scroll all the way to the left or right to view the entire body of my text. If I have an error on the nonviewable part of the screen, I can't see what is highlighted. I was ready to stop using the software when I noticed a 'pdf' button in the upper right-hand side of the screen. Clicking this button displays all my text, along with highlighted edits and explanations, in a fully viewable (and downloadable) pdf file. That's the workaround I'm using. What's up with the scroll bar?  

Dear Kathryn,

Please check your e-mail. We have sent you information on which steps you should perform. Thank you.

Just want to warn folks thinking about buying Whitesmoke.  I have a Mac. There was no trial program version for Mac but I got persuaded to buy it and try it with a 30 day money back guarantee if I don't like it. I tried it. I found it no better than the spell check program in word, hard to use and when I asked for my money back, they first tried to give me a new version, then wanted to "tutor" me on how to use the program but after six letters asking simply for my money back, I haven't received a refund, only a run around. Bad company and a bad product. A real rip off all the way around.

I also had an experience with WhiteSmoke. I had the program for all of one afternoon. I sent WhitSmoke a list of obviously incorrect sentences that the program had graded as correct. WhiteSmoke's technical folks checked them and said that the sentences were correct in that the problems I pointed out were " not mandatory" in English grammar. I argued that an elementary school student wouldn't write them that way. I finally got my money back the same day. Also, I recall a comment from an individual who had used both Grammarly and WhiteSmoke. He said that he preferred WhiteSmoke because Grammarly graded his writing in the 60 percentile range, and he could not possibly write that badly. I laughed because I know that Grammarly was not programmed to spare the user's feelings. The notion still causes me to chuckle.

Dear users,

The score is compiled using a throughout outline of the grammatical algorithms which are applied during the analysis. Please be acknowledged that the score provided by Grammarly is generated for your consideration only. It should not be compared to any human opinion regarding the text. 

There have been many comments, since I originally started this thread. I still like Whitesmoke for the original reasons, it is not perfect, but it improves every few months. For example, Whitesmoke now works great with both 32bit and 64bit programs.

Suggestions for Grammarlly:

•     Blink speed checking

•     Annotations, so one can quickly visually go after the suggestions/problems that he/she cares about the most.
•     A real windows interface.

To sum up, I want the WhiteSmoke's interface, with Grammarly's engine. That will be the ultimate tool: ultra fast, and ultra-accurate.

I have white smoke it do not do a admirable job of checking grammar or period or commas, run on sentence adverbs, simmons, adjective, grammar etc. on my laptop it works slow it freezes due to is all ways running on the back ground wheather I''m using it or not. I finally removed it off . Since I got the trial free I''ve been using Grammarly day and night checking past papers, so far I cannot complained. Still putting to the Test. I also used it on our campus college Discussion Board to display a large paragraph on the topic. After all done check spelling and grammar there was no matching with other students post.

There another software I tried called right writer, do not bother wasting the time I'm sending back as soon it arrives I also put it to the test. First night i was all disapointed. Since then I haven't stop using grammarly I think I all ready used all the free trial Im all ready getting a alert on the account. I still have 3 days left of free trial.

I do not get paid to market Grammarly product, I give it 10 stars on my book that's how I feel about Grammar

Dear Jesse,

Thank you so much for  your feedback! We are delighted to hear that you find the service useful! 

In using a 7 day free trial of Grammarly and then trying out Whitesmoke, I find pros and cons in both. As another user mentioned above - I really wish Grammerly had Whitesmoke's Windows PC interface.

In doing a comparison of the two:

Whitesmoke pros:

2. When using it within MS Word  where it checks one paragraph at a time - it's fast.

3. In my opinion, it does a decent job of grammar checking - and when it does find an error it provides a brief, to the point, explaination - and, corrective options.

4. It will save the corrected document directly into MS Word - while keeping your formating.

Whitesmoke Cons:

1. It seems Whitesmoke's tech support answer for 99.9% of all problems is reinstall the program. They will ask you to do this with full knowledge that many times uninstalling and reinstalling their program will not fix the problem you are experiencing.

2. If you try to copy text directly into the Whitesmoke program - it cannot handle more than 3000 characters. - more or less - 1 page of data.

3. The program has both minor and serious software bugs in it that affects it's operation in both 32 and 64 bit Windows. Some could cause someone to potentially lose data if they are not careful. I could literally write an extended paper on my experience with this.

4. If their tech support ever tells you they are escalating your problem to a manager and the manager will contact you in 24 hours - forget it. Their manager will not contact you. 

Grammarly Pros:

1. It can grammar check a full fiction novel chapter at a time.

2. It appears to do a good job of grammar checking.

*However, this is also a Con. As a fiction novelist, most of my writing is very informal, split infinities

1 You lose your data formatting (ie Italic

If you want to use software that does a good job, is bug free, and the majority of your writing is academic or business related - grammarly is the best choice.

If you want something :

1. You can run on your PC - despite the bugs

2.  You can save your corrections directly into MS Word without losing your formating.

3. You don't want a long explanation for errors or  do not want to see tons of flagged errors because you write in an informal writing style

Then you may want to consider Whitesmoke.

If only someone could combine the two - that would be a writer's paradise.

Please note - the website elminated a good portion what I wrote - above

Let's try this again:

In using a 7 day free trial of Grammarly and then trying out Whitesmoke, I find pros and cons in both. LIke another user mentioned above - I really wish Grammerly had Whitesmoke's Windows PC interface.

In doing a comparison of the two:

Whitesmoke Pros:

1. It does all grammar checking at the PC Level.
2. When using it within MS Word,  where it checks one paragraph at a time - it's fast.
3. In my opinion, it does a decent job of grammar checking. It is better than the grammar checker in MS Word, or Language Tools in Open Office or LibreOffice  - and when it does find an error it provides a brief, to the point, explanation - and, corrective options.
4. It will save the corrected document directly into MS Word - while keeping your formatting.
 

Whitesmoke Cons:

1. It seems Whitesmoke's tech support answer for 99.9% of all problems is reinstall the program. They will ask you to do this with full knowledge that many times uninstalling and reinstalling their program will not fix the problem you are experiencing.
2. If you try to copy text directly into the Whitesmoke program - it cannot handle more than 3000 characters. - more or less - 1 page of data.
3. The program has both minor and serious software bugs that affects it's operation in both 32 and 64 bit Windows. Some of the bugs could cause someone to potentially lose data if they are not careful. I could literally write an extended paper on my experience with this.
4. If their tech support ever tells you they are escalating your problem to a manager and the manager will contact you in 24 hours - forget it. Their manager will not contact you.
 

Grammarly Pros:

1. It can grammar check a full fiction novel chapter at a time.
2. It appears to do a good job of grammar checking.

*However, this is also a Con. As a fiction novelist, most of my writing is very informal, split infinities, etc  are used correctly on a regular basis - therefore, having numerous items flagged that are not really errors considering my style of writing is a real pain.

3. It is simple to use.
4. The software appears to be bug free.


Grammarly Cons:

1 You lose your data formatting (ie Italics, etc) in the process of copying data to and from the Internet. Grammarly badly needs a PC interface to prevent this problem.
2. The explanation of each error is way too long. Please - give me a brief, to the point explanation - with maybe an option to select for a long one.
3. You cannot turn off certain types of error-checking  and/or choose a very informal writing option like what a fiction novelist would use - thus preventing 90% of the flagged errors being totally useless.
4. In grammar-checking a chapter at a time - I was being hit with an option to individually go through and choose 50 - 85 (or more) synonyms. And to make it worse, a lot of them were not related to the sentence.   Please let me individually choose what words I may want a synonym for.
5.  It has a problem checking character dialogue. IE - “That’s a good idea,” John remarked before picking up the phone. Grammarly would mark the comma as an error and would want to insert a period there.


 IN CONCLUSION:

If you want to use software that does a good job, is bug free, and the majority of your writing is academic or business related -  Grammarly is the best choice.

However, if you want something :

1. You can grammar-check on your PC - despite the bugs.
2.  You can save your corrections directly into MS Word without losing your formatting.
3. You don't want a long explanation for errors or  do not want to see tons of flagged errors because you write in an informal writing style
Then you may want to consider Whitesmoke.

 

If only someone could combine the two - that would be a writer's paradise.

I'm using both Grammarly and white smoke right now. I may have it configured wrong but I can't believe that Whitesmoke only takes 3000 characters at a time. The 20 pages of Grammarly is by far the winner if you're writing a book. Whitesmoke may be good for letters and e-mail only.

I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW A WEBSITE THAT READ YOUR PAPER AND MAKE THE NECCESARY CORRECTIONS.

Dear Gloria,

Unfortunately, Grammarly does not provide proofreading or writing services. Grammarly performs three main functions:

1. Text proofreading (grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure): all potential errors are highlighted for you to review. The user has full control over the correction process; you can choose a correction option from the list provided.

2. Full plagiarism assessment: your text is compared to the complete Internet web index. This way you can be sure that your work is original.

3. Text enhancement feature: suggestions for improved vocabulary use (including synonyms) will be made.

I have read all the comments posted since I am testing Grammarly. I write fiction, and even if I agree that the service is not perfect, I consider it the best tool any writer can find in the market.

In my humble opinion, the only setback is its dependency of an internet connection, but, hey, you can't have everything in life.

Yes, they are things annoying (like the synonymous), and the popup window, but over all, I strongly believe that the help you get is worth those minor details.

I am planning to change from a month to yearly subscription as soon as the trial period expires.

Thanks to all the LCC people.

Dear Rafael,

Thank you very much for for the suggestions and your feedback! We are continuously working on improving the service! 

WhiteSmoke is a scam,  and I don't think it makes any sense to compare a this with reputed  Grammerly.  I bought WhiteSmoke and in a day I returned it back.

Dear Gloria, what you are looking for is a copyeditor.   There websites where you can purchase these services (done by people not software).  Be prepared to pay 50-75.00/hour for  a good copyeditor.  Hope this helps.

how to purchase grammarly for individual system ?

What are the schemes available with the best discount?

I think that this particular forum is an extension of the pros of this product!  I don't know how many of you keep up to date with this conversation but I would like your permission to quote some of you for my assignment - reviewing grammar and 'anti-plagiarism' tools.  You have shown such professionalism in this conversation!  Thanks, Maria

you can quote me just make sure to use an APA6 citation for everything i say is transcribed, copywrited, and published even when i talk to myself alone.

I have just started to use the Grammarly, and I am quite new to this software, I would like know whether there is any way the the grammarly can correct the exact sentence that we use. becuase Grammarly give example on passive voice and configuring modifier, is there any way that Grammarly corrects our content.

This is unbelievable. I have just finished reading all these back and forth comments about how good Grammarly is, and White Smoke, etc. Doesn’t anyone use Grammarly on his or her questions and comments? Most of these questions and answers sound like a four-year old wrote them, or an immigrant with one two-hour English class behind him.

Is this for real? Read the below comment . . . A person cannot read more than four or five words in this “response” without finding something screwed up and screwed up badly. Whoever manages this part of your Grammarly website should start using a little more discretion whether to post these comments or not! It’s obvious this writer used Spell Check, but even that  he did not correct all that Spell Check marked as being screwed up.  Spell Check cannot fix the rest of this mess. I ran the below comment through Grammarly, but this is so screwed up Grammarly has no idea how to correct it, except to make small changes. It did find some spelling errors but could only pick up on a few of the other problems.

Not one sentence below is written correctly.

I wonder what he means when he writes:

After all done check spelling and grammar there was no matching with other students post.

JR

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have white smoke it do not do a admirable job of checking grammar or period or commas, run on sentence adverbs, simmons, adjective, grammar etc. on my laptop it works slow it freezes due to is all ways running on the back ground wheather I''m using it or not. I finally removed it off . Since I got the trial free I''ve been using Grammarly day and night checking past papers, so far I cannot complained. Still putting to the Test. I also used it on our campus college Discussion Board to display a large paragraph on the topic. After all done check spelling and grammar there was no matching with other students post.

There another software I tried called right writer, do not bother wasting the time I'm sending back as soon it arrives I also put it to the test. First night i was all disapointed. Since then I haven't stop using grammarly I think I all ready used all the free trial Im all ready getting a alert on the account. I still have 3 days left of free trial.

I do not get paid to market Grammarly product, I give it 10 stars on my book that's how I feel about Grammar

It has been more than one week that I bought whites-moke academic version to check my conference papers. At the beginning, it was working good. However, few days later, when I start to use it regularly, it start delete paragraphs unexpectedly. I have been shocked. when I contacted with technicians, only one answer I got: reinstall reinstall......, maybe 50 times I did it. But, still it deletes paragraphs and words. I have requested to be refund. . Can anyone suggest me better proofreading software? Grammarly ???? are you sure???? , 

So true what someone posted..

To sum up, I want the WhiteSmoke's interface, with Grammarly's engine. That will be the ultimate tool: ultra fast, and ultra-accurate.

Hey guys,

Just my two cents. I started with Grammarly and loved it. It was harsh on me and I liked that. I worked at an SEO firm that had a former editor of a magazine as the head. She hammered the heck out of my writing, so it wasn't new for me. Grammarly is not for the faint of heart, but it will make a person write much better than they could before using the system (I would not have written that sentence that way before Grammarly). However, I lost my job and I stopped using the system.

I switched over to Whitesmoke because I only had to pay once. I've somewhat regretted it since then because Whtiesmoke is very slow. For example, when I try to check my writing it freezes my computer until it's done (a total turn off). Grammarly did not do that to me. 

Also, I made errors in my writing that I could see from my time with Grammarly. Therefore, I've found Whitesmoke to be less accurate.

To be honest, I was running all my text through Grammarly because it was easy to use (tip, though, the Word add in is not as accurate as the website. I kept trying the add in, but it would never catch everything. I had to take the same text and run it through the website to make sure I was getting all my mistakes. Also, I've found that I had to restart the add in several times because it got stuck if I changed anything by hand. It would keep reading that I had errors even though I had just corrected them).

Anyway, suffice to say, if I have my druthers I'm using Grammarly all the time. Plus, the plagiarism check is nice too. I'd rather give them money than put .05 cents up every time I need a plagiarism check (I sometimes buy articles for my business).

Neither one of these programs is perfect IMO but I like the idea that with Whitesmoke I can accept the suggested changes and they are automatically transferred to the document I am using.  That, to me, is what I liked best

. What I liked about Grammarly was the ability to connect to a group of real people that would offer help and suggestions and I liked the plagiarism check. I found thinks I posted on the net and to me that was nothing short of amazing!

If i were a professional writer I would  would use them both plus a program called Rightwriter..but the botttom line is that you really have to learn grammar on your own and look to these programs as helpers and not absolutely foolproof.

Hi,

I am using fully paid versions of both Grammarly and White smoke. I thought; my experience with these products may be useful for some people.

In my experience, Grammarly is far better than Whitesmoke.

Whitesmoke is easier and quicker to use, but it doesn't correct the language to even 20% of what I can achieve through Grammarly.

Regards.