Grammarly has Top Linguists. Top. Linguists.

Maybe you’ve heard of Grammarly. It’s software for checking your spelling and grammar. It’s getting a lot of promotion around the internet recently, probably because it’s free and everyone is afraid of bad grammar, so I checked out their website.

The world’s leading linguists? Sounds impressive. I have complained before about grammar products created by non-linguists, so this is refreshing. Let’s have a look at the blog.

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Spelling is not grammar, take 2

I’ve written before about how spelling mistakes are not grammar mistakes, and gave an example of how you could test this. In the case of your/you’re confusion, no one ever tries to extract an auxiliary out of your. So even people who write “You’re parents are home” would never attempt to make a question like “Are you parents are home?”. People fundamentally know the difference between the possessive and the contraction, and it’s really just a simple spelling mistake.

Anyway, I think it’s time to revisit this issue, after reading a quiz on the Telegraph: How much of a grammar pedant are you?. (edit: this link now seems to be dead. Sorry!) I’m not a grammar pedant, but I am a picky linguist, and I don’t like this quiz. It’s supposed to be about grammar, but not all the questions are actually on that topic. They are mostly about spelling, punctuation, or writing style. First, I’ll give a quick overview of grammar vs. writing, and then I’ll tackle the quiz specifically.

Spelling is not grammar

One of the things that really bugs me about the “grammar police” type is their inability to distinguish grammar from spelling. I am sick of reading “grammar” posts on your vs. you’re. It is not a grammar mistake – it’s just a spelling mistake. Native English speakers absolutely know the difference. I am 100% sure that the mental grammar of an English speaker, the only grammar that really matters, distinguishes the lexical items your and you’re, even if the speaker doesn’t always know how to spell them.