Grammarly, ProWritingAid etc.

For writers whose second language is English, which software would help with the grammar and spelling?

I used to rely on MS Word than installed trial Grammarly and found lot's of mistakes.

Installed ProWritingAid and found different errors that Grammarly didn't catch but it didn't find what Grammarly pointed out as mistakes.

Grammarly is on a monthly subscription payment scheme which I dislike.

www.hemigway.app is also another one for some other quirks of English different than the above 2.

At some point, I would pay a professional to edit my writings but that's far away in the future. I want to get my writings up to a standard first.

What would you recommend or used?

I'm a native born English speaker, but extremely dyslexic.  It's very difficult for me to write without an electronic aid.  The problem is, most spell checking programs don't understand what I am trying to write.  They look at my writing and decide that since I am not writing in English, they can shut down and go on holiday for the rest of the week.  

It's frustrating that I love writing but cannot express myself in a way that is easy for others to understand.

Then I discovered Grammarly.  I love it!  I used the free version for about a year, then signed up for their yearly subscription.  Doing so has changed my life.  It's improved my spelling - and my ability to spell.  I'm very pleased with it and am in my second year of paid subscription.  I've used their help desk once and they had a quick resolution to my issue that was very satisfactory.

I also like the plagiarism checker which I use to see if I'm saying something too cliche.  

I've tried Hemmingway but can't get the hang of it.  I didn't understand why they were suggesting things and how to change them.  There were too many suggestions which caused me to panic a little bit.

I've decided to buy Grammarly for its easy to use features and plug-ins. The only thing I don't like is the subscription scheme but there is no other option. Pretty much all the other providers are also selling their products with a subscription.

Does Grammarly give you the options of different dialects?  Australian English is probably pretty similar to British, likely closer than Canadian English as you don't have a large neighbour that influences the language, so if it doesn't give you that option, it may create errors.  

edit:  Thanks to the Almost-a-Post feature.  Sorry if the original wording was offensive; it wasn't meant to be at all.  

Timothy Markus wrote:Does Grammarly give you the options of different dialects?  

Yes, Grammarly has some adjustment for different dialects.  I think this was available in the free version as well.  In the paid version, I can adjust for different context - business, technical, persuasive, informative, high emotion, low emotion, and a whole bunch of other options.  I think that's where they excel - contextual grammar and spelling. It also likes consistency in spelling - so for example, if we use a spelling like 'neighbour' then it suggests that any words ending in -ize are changed to -ise.

I have my Grammarly set to British English because I want to use a spelling that is easily understood internationally.  Canadian spelling is too fluid for me right now.  A lot of government and even schools are now using a variation of American Spelling in their official documents.  So it's a bit difficult to use Canadian spelling these days because Canada isn't certain what that is anymore.  

However, internationally, I noticed there's a preference for British Spelling.

Thanks for the info, Raven.  I didn't realise that the spelling was in flux.  I was a bit surprised I didn't notice it, then I remembered that I sent my daughter to a French school, so aging's great.  

I've always quickly dismissed Grammarly ads as I'm not changing my ways much at this point, but I hadn't though of it as an aide for ESL.  I think that it would be great for that.  I think I would have learned to conjugate much better with software like this.

I taught English in Germany and British spelling was all they wanted to learn, though I did teach Americanisms to them as most business dealings were with the US.