Checking your grammar

It is important to check your grammar and spelling when submitting work. Some courses allocate marks for good grammar and spelling. For others, marks are not available, but you want to make sure that you are clearly understood in your writing.

It is better to check grammar and spelling as you write rather than waiting until you complete a piece of work. Decide whether you will check after writing a paragraph, a page or after a fixed amount of time. 

Grammar Checking in Microsoft Word 

Microsoft Office 365 now offers a grammar and spell check called the Editor. You can start this either from the Toolbar on the Home Tab or by pressing F7. A toolbar pops up from the right-hand side with key information and suggestions. 

It will give you an overall score for your work, but this is only a rough guide – sometimes you will know better than the software what you want to say. 

It will make suggestions based on spelling, grammar, clarity, conciseness, punctuation, vocabulary choice. It also gives you document statistics (Document Stats) that provide a word count (also shown in the bottom left-hand corner of your screen) and Readability, based on the Flesch Reading Ease score (although this is based on American English). 

Grammarly 

Grammarly is software which will correct and make suggestions as you write. There is a free version available that offers basic functionality. (The paid-for full version is currently £10 per month – some students would be eligible to have this as part of their DSA). 

A word of warning

There are many other free and subscription grammar and spelling checkers. Be careful as some of these may ‘steal’ your work when you send it for checking or ask it to check. Some companies use this as a technique to obtain work that they can then sell to other students. If you are in doubt about whether a tool is safe, you should generally avoid using it. 

Further Resources 

University of Bristol Grammar Resources