Tips for Using Grammarly® as a Tool for Proofreading your Manuscripts

Manuscript editing has been identified as a major cause of delay in completing undergraduate
thesis. To address this concern (temporarily?), the Research and Publication Center (RPC), the
University-level research office, offers a presumably faster strategy for editing/proofreading
the manuscript as an alternative/accompaniment to Editor/Grammarian’s manual editing job,
which is often tedious and time-consuming. This alternative strategy is to use the commercial
web-based grammar-checker, called Grammarly®. This document aims to provide CTE
student-researchers with practical tips to do for them to be able to use Grammarly® efficiently
and effectively in self-proofreading their thesis manuscript. It has two sections. Section 1
details the general steps in using Grammarly® to proofread the manuscript, while Section 2
visualizes the specific features of Grammarly® to begin using it immediately.

Section 1: Using Grammarly® to help you proofread your manuscript

If you intend to use Grammarly®, then follow the steps below:

1. Ensure that your manuscript has undergone the Turnitin® checking and obtained a
Similarity Index not exceeding 25% for you to get a “go signal” from the Research
Coordinator to proceed to Step 2 here. Otherwise, your Grammarly® effort shall not be
officially recognized. As a consequence, the researcher has to go back to the step at
which he/she is supposed to be, thereby causing much delay in the process. Avoid this!

2. Sign up independently for a free trial version of Grammarly® at www.grammarly.com

or visit UM LIC computer section/other Computer Lab (e.g., CTE ICT Lab) and then
ask the staff for free Grammarly® access possibly at https://app.grammarly.com/

3. Proofread/edit/grammar-check your manuscript through Grammarly®. (To learn how to

use Grammarly®, see separate section below for specific instructions.)
At the minimum, with the help of Grammarly®, you should have fixed common
grammar errors, observed subject-verb agreements, used proper tenses, observed proper
capitalization, checked the spellings, chose appropriate words or phrases, among others.
By so doing, you may be able to minimize if not to cut all the days the
Editor/Grammarian could have spent on your manuscript. So, be able to convince your
Grammarian/Editor with confidence that you have done the proofreading thoroughly.

But here is a caution: Grammarly® is just an “automated grammarian” which only

suggests options for you to consider. You do not need to follow all suggestions from
Grammarly®. There are many factors to consider, such as the reporting style/convention
according to whether the study is quantitative or qualitative (e.g., quantitative studies
tend to use passive voice, while qualitative tend to use active voice), appropriateness of
local language or terms, and even paraphrasing issues, among others. Be aware that
sometimes, there are Grammarly® suggestions that do not make sense at all in context.

Note: This writeup was aided by Grammarly®. Last updated: May 14, 2018
 For example, asking you to replace “thesis” with “this”!) But apart from these,
Grammarly® functions well in helping you check for spelling errors, overused words,
inappropriate word usages, and dangling phrases/sentences, among many others. So the
quality of editing still relies heavily on your English language ability. You might find
Grammarly® effective as a grammar-checker help tool if you use it with intelligent
judgment.

4. Download the detailed report from Grammarly® to your laptop computer. See specific
instruction on this at No. 8 in Section 2. The successfully downloaded document has a
running head (located at the upper margin of the document) that looks like this (as an
illustrative example):
Grammarly Report generated on Monday, May 14, 2018, 3:30 PM Page 1 of 36

5. Let your Editor/Grammarian view the soft copy of your downloaded report for
verification. The Editor/Grammarian is no longer required to edit/proofread your
manuscript thoroughly, on the assumption that, with great confidence, you already have
proofread your manuscript adequately.
6. Secure “Certificate from Editor.”

7. Go to the next step according to our 16-page guidelines document with filename What
to do immediately after oultine defense jan 24 2017.pdf that I posted on our FB page
on April 21, 2018.

Section 2: How to immediately use Grammarly®

To immediately get started with Grammarly®, explore the following screenshots of web pages
as illustrated here. Do this by actually logging-in on the website of Grammarly® stated in Step
2 in Section 1 and then by clicking on the functionalities featured here.

(1) This is the first webpage that may

appear on screen for the first time
you successfully logged-in.

Note: This writeup was aided by Grammarly®. Last updated: May 14, 2018
 (2) Click on “Upload” to upload
document to be processed in
Grammarly. (This is simply similar to
attaching a file to an email.)

(3) This is an example of

the webpage that
displays on screen if
your file was
successfully uploaded.

Note: This writeup was aided by Grammarly®. Last updated: May 14, 2018
 (4) Make sure all the options from these
three icons are turned on (i.e., enabled)
as indicated by the round buttons being
located to the right. If not yet enabled,
then click on the icons to enable them.
The three icons are:

Pen tip: Document type – choose

“General academic”

Magnifying lens: Plagiarism

Book: Vocabulary enhancement

(5) Scroll down the document as you browse

and act on the suggestions located at the
right side. Example here: “Click to add an
article.” Act on the suggestions intelligently.
Remember Step 3 in Section 1?

Note: This writeup was aided by Grammarly®. Last updated: May 14, 2018
 (6) To learn about a suggestion, click
on this icon “Expand card” so as
to arrive at a better judgment on
your action.

(8) To download the report (In principle, (7) To get a glimpse

similar to Turnitin’s), click on “Download on the areas for
detailed report” button. improvement
IMPORTANT! THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD (as the one
PRESENT TO THE EDITOR/GRAMMARIAN displayed here),
for verification and for securing click on “Score”
“Certificate from Editor.” See related Step
4 in Section 1.

Note: This writeup was aided by Grammarly®. Last updated: May 14, 2018
 (9) You may go to “My Grammarly”
where you see all the
documents you have uploaded
or worked on. Here you may
download a file by clicking on
“Download” icon or resume
working on the file by clicking
on the number as “Alerts
remaining” (e.g., 305 here)
which indicates the number of
language/grammar issues that
you need to act upon.

(10)To learn more about

Grammarly in detail,
click on “Tutorial” and
explore the sections on
this webpage.

More language power, young educational researchers!

Cheers,

Alben P. Sagpang
CTE, RC

Note: This writeup was aided by Grammarly®. Last updated: May 14, 2018