title: “Discover The Ultimate Writing Tool: Grammarly VS Microsoft Editor - Find Out Which One Wins The Battle!” date: 2022-09-28T14:30:00Z draft: false
As a professional writer or even a student, having the right writing tools can make a significant difference in the quality of your work. Two of the most popular writing tools in the market are Grammarly and Microsoft Editor. But, which one is the better writing tool? Let’s find out!
Grammarly Overview
Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps users improve their writing skills. It offers features such as grammar and spelling checks, sentence structure suggestions, tone detection, and plagiarism detection. Grammarly is available as a browser extension or as a standalone application, and it can be used on a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Word.
Microsoft Editor Overview
Microsoft Editor is a writing tool developed by Microsoft that offers users suggestions on how to improve their writing. It offers basic grammar and spelling checks, as well as advanced features such as style advice and clarity suggestions. It can also be used on a variety of platforms, including Microsoft Word, Outlook, and the Edge browser.
Features
When it comes to features, both Grammarly and Microsoft Editor have their advantages and disadvantages. Grammarly offers more advanced features such as tone detection, which can help users adjust the tone of their writing to fit a particular audience. It also provides a more in-depth analysis of the text, highlighting more complex errors and providing detailed explanations.
On the other hand, Microsoft Editor’s AI-powered suggestions provide a more comprehensive overview of the text, examining various aspects of the text such as clarity, conciseness, and formality. It also allows users to customize their suggestions based on their writing style and preferences.
User Interface
A writing tool’s user interface can have a significant impact on how easy it is to use, and both Grammarly and Microsoft Editor have intuitive and user-friendly interfaces. Grammarly’s interface is simple and easy to use, with suggestions appearing as you type. It also offers a wide range of customization options, allowing users to set their goals and preferences for writing before starting.
Microsoft Editor’s interface is also easy to use, with suggestions appearing in a sidebar while working on your document. It also allows users to turn off specific suggestions they do not want to see.
Pricing
Grammarly offers both a free and a paid version. The free version includes grammar and spelling checks, while the paid version offers more advanced features such as tone detection and plagiarism detection. The pricing for the paid version of Grammarly starts at $11.66 per month.
Microsoft Editor, on the other hand, is available to Microsoft 365 subscribers. It is available in different packages, with the personal subscription costing $6.99 per month and the family subscription costing $9.99 per month.
Verdict
Both Grammarly and Microsoft Editor are excellent writing tools, but when it comes to the ultimate writing tool, Grammarly edges out Microsoft Editor. Grammarly offers more advanced features and options, including tone detection and plagiarism detection, making it ideal for more advanced writing tasks. However, if you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber, Microsoft Editor is still an excellent option, providing a comprehensive overview of your writing and its advanced features.
In conclusion, the choice between Grammarly and Microsoft Editor comes down to your specific needs and preferences. Both tools offer unique features, making them essential tools for professional writers and students alike. Ultimately, experimenting with either Grammarly or Microsoft Editor will help you discover which one suits your style and needs better.
Typos, misplaced commas, mismatched pronouns, and other grammatical sins can slip into even the most experienced grammarian’s prose. While simple spellcheckers are better than nothing, they let a lot slip through the cracks. That’s why Grammarly, with its helpful AI-based spelling, grammar, and style advice, has become popular enough to inspire competition from one of the original spellcheckers: Microsoft. Microsoft Editor is now available in browsers as well as in Microsoft Office, and while it has some catching up to do if it wants to rival Grammarly, it’s worth a look if you’re already an Office user.
Platforms
Grammarly has the clear edge here. It’s available as:
- Chrome and Firefox browser extensionsWeb appDesktop appMicrosoft Word add-iniOS and Android keyboards
Microsoft Word is limited to:
- Chrome extension (also works in Edge, Brave, and other Chromium browsers)Microsoft Word (both the online and desktop versions)Microsoft Outlook
This makes Microsoft Editor primarily useful for users who are already using Word and/or Outlook. Its Chrome extension isn’t quite where it should be yet, either, as it doesn’t support certain sites, including ones where you’d expect it to, like Google Docs. And while you can open an online Word document and use Microsoft Editor, it’s definitely clunkier than opening up Grammarly.com and copy-pasting your text.
Grammarly’s browser extensions work pretty much everywhere, and their other platforms are all easy to use and nicely integrated.
Winner: Grammarly. Microsoft Editor is very new, so it may catch up, but Grammarly is just easier to get to right now.
Features
Microsoft Editor and Grammarly both have some core features available for free:
- SpellcheckingGrammar/punctuation checking
These aren’t exactly identical (more on that later) but they both fulfill the basic conditions for a good grammar-checking program: they catch most of your mistakes and help you improve in a few areas. They both use AI to improve results and take context into account when making suggestions.
Grammarly offers more for free than Editor does, though. This ncludes clarity and conciseness checks, as well as the ability to set how formal you want your text to be and what level of knowledge your audience has.
Even the free version of Microsoft Editor provides suggestions in more than 20 languages, though, while Grammarly only supports English.
If you upgrade to premium, both Grammarly and Editor give you:
- Advanced grammar and style checksReadability checksVocabulary suggestionsPlagiarism detection (coming soon in Microsoft Editor)Tone/formality checkerInclusive/sensitive language check
Grammarly also adds the ability to tailor your writing to a certain genre (academic, business, creative, etc.). It even gives you the option to hire a human proofreader for an extra charge. The basic features all also get upgrades, with more thorough checking of your delivery and advice on how to make your sentences more engaging.
Microsoft Editor’s premium offering is definitely behind Grammarly in terms of writing correction features, but it is worth noting that you get Editor by subscribing to Microsoft 365. That means you get full access to a suite of high-quality office software (Word, Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint, Teams, and a terabyte of cloud storage) along with Microsoft Editor. The subscription price is actually cheaper than what you pay for Grammarly alone.
Winner: Grammarly. It does more stuff, and as the next section will show, most of its features are better than the Microsoft Editor equivalent.
Accuracy/Comprehensiveness
While the quality of the feedback is probably the most important metric for a grammar-checker, it’s also one of the most difficult to measure. The algorithms behind the AI are constantly updating and even adjusting to different writing styles.
In side-by-side tests, Grammarly usually catches more mistakes, and its explanations are much more comprehensive, so it’s definitely the more thorough option. In my experience, it also turns up more false positives than Microsoft Editor, though. You have to be able to identify which of its suggestions you want to keep.
Editor flags fewer things, and its suggestions are more basic, but it tends to be right about the things it catches. That makes it a bit faster since there’s less to weed through, and in terms of catching medium-to-large grammar and punctuation errors, it’s about on par with Grammarly. It’s also much more tweakable, with a detailed menu allowing you to select exactly which grammar and vocabulary you want it to keep an eye on.
Neither Grammarly nor Microsoft Editor can catch everything, though. They don’t make bad writing good so much as they make good writing better.
Winner: Grammarly and Microsoft Editor are both quite good at the basic level, but Grammarly outmatches Editor for more complex corrections and style tips, especially when you compare the premium versions.
Why not both?
The free version of Grammarly has a slight edge over the free version of Microsoft Editor, and the premium version of Grammarly is more powerful than its Microsoft equivalent in almost every way. If you want to maximize your writing feedback, then, Grammarly is the clear choice. Microsoft Editor’s main advantage is that it’s a bit simpler and faster. But it also gets you all that office software, so that may be a deciding factor if you’re on the lookout for value.
Microsoft Editor can’t really go toe-to-toe with Grammarly as an AI writing coach right now, but it is still very new and will likely improve a lot with time. Both programs have free versions, though, so there’s nothing to stop you from paying for one and also using the free version of the other. I usually run Editor first, then use Grammarly for polish.
Apart from Grammarly and Microsoft Editor, Ginger is yet another spellchecker you can check out.
Image credit: Person’s Hand Marking Error During Spellchecking by DepositPhotos
Andrew Braun is a lifelong tech enthusiast with a wide range of interests, including travel, economics, math, data analysis, fitness, and more. He is an advocate of cryptocurrencies and other decentralized technologies, and hopes to see new generations of innovation continue to outdo each other.
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