Grammarly Is Now on iOS and Android

Hey Android users! Since launching the Grammarly Keyboard for iOS, we’ve heard from lots of you wondering when the app would be available on Android. Well, first, we want to thank you for your patience. And second, we’re pleased to tell you that today’s the day! The Grammarly Keyboard is now available on both iOS and Android.

Life happens on the go. By 2018, 50 percent of workplace communication and collaboration will happen through mobile apps. But typing on your phone is awkward and imprecise—we’ve all fallen victim to the dreaded textfail at one time or another.

That’s why we built the Grammarly Keyboard, a personal editor that integrates seamlessly with all your mobile apps and your mobile browser. Whether you’re responding to an important client’s email, posting a Facebook message for the world to see, or texting your boss, you’ll always look polished and professional, even on your phone.

Want to know more? Read on. We’ve rounded up the most helpful information about the keyboard and put it all in one place for you.

What does the Grammarly Keyboard do?

Whenever you type with the keyboard, Grammarly will check your writing and make sure your message is clear, effective, and mistake-free. For Grammarly Premium users, the keyboard will also suggest style improvements and vocabulary enhancements. You’ll see the suggestions along the top of the keyboard, and you can accept a change just by tapping it. If you want to know why Grammarly made a particular suggestion, you can open the correction to see an explanation.

You can also specify whether Grammarly should use American or British English rules to check your writing, and you can add words to your personal dictionary to prevent Grammarly from flagging them as misspellings on any device.

Why a mobile keyboard?

As you’ve probably noticed, the world has gone mobile. In fact, Internet usage on mobile devices and tablets is now higher than Internet usage on desktop computers. It’s clear that communicating fast and accurately through your phone is more important than ever, but when that involves composing a message, it’s still slow and inconvenient. We designed the Grammarly Keyboard to be a personal editor that works anywhere you write, no copying or pasting required.

How do I get it?

If you’re on an Android device, head over to the Google Play Store and download the keyboard. If you’re on iOS, download it from the App Store. Next, open the app on your phone and you’ll be guided through the set-up process. Need more detailed instructions? We have you covered for both Android and iOS devices.

Can you see what I write on my phone?

The Grammarly Keyboard needs access to what you write in order to provide corrections and suggestions. We know that what you write on your phone is private, so we have encryption and several other measures in place to make sure it stays that way. Additionally, the keyboard is blocked from accessing anything you type in fields marked sensitive, such as credit card forms and passwords.

Does the keyboard support glide input?

Not yet—we wanted to give our Android users access to the app as soon as it was ready. But we do know that glide input is an essential feature for many Android users, so it’s something we will be tackling in the future. Keep an eye out for updates!

I’m using the keyboard and I want to tell you what I think!

Awesome! We love user feedback—it helps us focus on building features that are valuable to you. Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Happy typing!

“Do You Write Like an Introvert?” Quiz

Have you ever wondered how introverted or extroverted your work style is? This short quiz will help you understand whether your writing personality tends toward introversion or extroversion.

What kind of writing personality do you have? What parts of writing are easy or challenging for you? Share your stories in the comments.

When to Use a Comma Before “Or”

Should you use a comma before or? The answer depends on how you are using or. Always place a comma before or when it begins an independent clause, but if it begins a dependent clause, don’t. In a series (or list) of three or more items, you can use a comma before or, but this is a preference, not a rule.

People often get muddled about whether to place a comma before conjunctions like and, so, because, and or. Or is a coordinating conjunction, which means that it coordinates two elements of equal syntactic importance (i.e., two things of identical grammatical weight).

Commas before “Or” in Lists

When just two short grammatical elements are coordinated with or, do not separate them with a comma.

Would you like that martini shaken, or stirred?

Would you like that martini shaken or stirred?

Do you prefer coffee, or tea?

Do you prefer coffee or tea?

You may want to use a comma in a series of three or more things. This is the much-debated Oxford comma (or serial comma). Although the Oxford University Press uses it (hence the name), American English writers use it more often than British English writers. Whether or not you should use it is a stylistic choice. For example, both of these examples can be considered correct:

We can invest our savings in stocks, bonds or real estate.

We can invest our savings in stocks, bonds, or real estate.

When each element separated by or is just one or two words, the reader will have little trouble mentally sorting things out with whichever style you choose.

That said, advocates of the Oxford comma do have a strong argument when it comes to the clarity. Consider the longer series of coordinating items in this sentence; within the series itself, there is a phrase with a necessary or.

Notify your doctor if you experience dizziness, fainting spells, nausea, vomiting, weak or rapid pulse or difficulty breathing.

Notify your doctor if you experience dizziness, fainting spells, nausea, vomiting, weak or rapid pulse, or difficulty breathing.

Including the final comma in this sentence makes it much more readable. It eliminates a mental “hoop” for the reader to jump through. What’s more, it has a much cleaner typographical appearance.

Here’s a tip: The most important thing to remember about using or not using the Oxford comma is this: make a choice and be consistent with it. Don’t switch back and forth between one approach and the other in the same piece of writing.

Commas before “Or” When Beginning an Independent Clause

It is considered good style to place a comma before or when it begins an independent clause. An independent clause is a clause which could stand alone as its own sentence, because it has its own subject and verb.

Didi may want to spend her roulette winnings on that Ferrari she always wanted, or she may go on a luxury vacation.

Each of the two clauses here can stand independently. This is why there should be a comma before or.

Didi may want to spend her roulette winnings on that Ferrari she always wanted.

She may go on a luxury vacation.

If the clause beginning with or were rewritten to eliminate the subject and verb, it would not be able to stand on its own, and there would be no comma.

Didi may want to spend her roulette winnings on that Ferrari she always wanted, or a luxury vacation.

Didi may want to spend her roulette winnings on that Ferrari she always wanted or a luxury vacation.

Want to learn more about commas? Check out our guide to comma use.

How Do You Spell the Color Gray?

As a noun, gray usually refers to the color. It can be used as an adjective when we want to say that the color of something is a shade of gray. It can also be used as a verb, for when something turns gray. But regardless of its use, you’ll sometimes find that gray is not spelled the way you think it should be. Or, you might be reading this and thinking “those people at Grammarly really don’t know their spelling—it’s grey.” So, what’s behind the grey/gray dilemma, and is there any difference between them, besides the obvious?

Grey and gray are two different spellings of the same word. Gray is more common in the U.S., while grey is more common in other English-speaking countries. In proper names—like Earl Grey tea and the unit Gray, among others—the spelling stays the same, and they need to be memorized.

Gray vs. Grey—Where Does the Difference Come From?

Does your vowel choice really make a lot of difference in the case of the color gray? It doesn’t.

Here’s a tip: The spelling doesn’t affect the meanings, and both spellings are perfectly fine. However, be sure to use the style appropriate for your geography.

The pronunciation remains the same regardless of the spelling you’re using. In fact, both spellings have the exact same origin.

Both gray and grey come from the Old English word grǽg. Over time, many different spellings of the word developed. The Middle English poem “The Owl and the Nightingale,” which was written in the twelfth or thirteenth century, uses the spelling “greie.” The fourteenth-century translation of the French poem “Roman de la Rose” uses the spelling “greye.” “Graye” can be found in the poem “Piers Plowman” written by William Langland in the second half of the fourteenth century. Examples of the spellings we use today can also be found in Middle English literature.

By the eighteenth century, “grey” had become the more common spelling, even though the legendary lexicographer Samuel Johnson thought that “gray” was a better version. In the nineteenth century, English dictionaries followed Johnson’s cue and prescribed “gray” as the correct version, but to no avail. By the twentieth century, “grey” had become the accepted spelling everywhere except in the United States.

Here’s a tip: Gray is more common in the United States, and grey is more common in the rest of the English-speaking world.

So, you can write:

The thing that stuck with me from the time I spent in London was the gray sky.

But you can also write:

The thing that stuck with me from the time I spent in London was the grey sky.

We use gray/grey as a verb when we want to say that something is becoming gray/grey. Because gray/grey hair is usually associated with aging, we sometimes mention it as a way to show that someone is getting older:

John’s hair started to gray/grey long before he retired.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re using the word “gray” as a noun, adjective, or a verb. You can say that someone’s hair has grayed over a couple of months, but you can also say that it greyed. Things can be greyish, but they can also be grayish.

Grey and Gray—Are They Always Interchangeable?

In common usage, there’s no difference between the words grey and gray. Some people might believe each spelling refers to a different shade of gray, and it’s quite possible you’ll see this in practice when looking at color swatches.

But there are a couple of cases where you really should mind the vowels. One of those cases is greyhound, the dog breed. It should always be spelled with an e, not an a. It’s the other way around for the grayling, a species of fish with a name that’s always spelled with an a.

If Grey is someone’s last name, you obviously shouldn’t change it to Gray to match the way you think it should be spelled. Proper nouns are off limits—the vowels in them cannot be changed. And neither can the vowel in Gray, the unit for food irradiation—it’s always spelled with an a.

What’s the Problem with Passive Voice?

If you’re a grammar nerd, chances are you have an opinion about the passive voice. Whether you think it’s acceptable or should be completely avoided, it’s important to understand what passive voice is and how it’s used.

Passive voice occurs when the object of the action in the sentence becomes the subject of the sentence. The opposite of passive voice is active voice, in which the subject simply performs the action. Here are some examples:

Layla threw the ball. (Active voice) The ball was thrown by Layla. (Passive voice)

We corrected the errors. (Active voice) The errors have been corrected. (Passive voice)

Someone took the last piece of cake. (Active voice) The last piece of cake was taken. (Passive voice)

Active voice tends to give writing more clarity, which is why many people prefer it. Writing in passive voice can be confusing, vague, and wordy; however, there are instances in which it’s a better option than active voice. For example:

Incidents of inappropriate behavior were reported. (Passive voice)

In this case, the focus of the sentence should be on the incidents, not on the people who reported them. In fact, there are situations in which the subject of the sentence might be unknown or unimportant. In those cases, sometimes using passive voice is preferable to using “someone” as the subject. Another example:

The test results were delivered late in the afternoon. (Passive voice)

As in the sentence above, the focus of the sentence is on the test results rather than the person who delivered them.

Do you have an opinion about passive voice? Share it in the comments!

Into or In To—How Do I Use Them?

A common error is to confuse into, spelled as one word, with the two words in to. When deciding which is right for your sentence, remember that into is a preposition that shows what something is within or inside. As separate words, in and to sometimes simply wind up next to each other.

A preposition is a word that shows a relationship, usually in terms of space or time, between words in a clause or phrase. Put simply, a preposition is a positioning word. Prepositions such as before, after, and since position elements in time; one thing happens before another, after another, etc. Some prepositions that position elements in space are over, under, around, through, on, off, in, and of course, into.

Generally speaking, into places something physically inside something else. The thing that does the containing may be concrete or it may be abstract.

Please put the cat into his carrier so we can go see the vet.

She placed her letter into a pink envelope and sealed it with a kiss.

Fred touched the amulet and was whisked off into another dimension.

Felicia neatly sorted all her files into separately labeled folders.

Confusion regarding into vs. in to really only arises because in our mind’s ear, the two sound exactly the same. But the decision about which one to use is usually a simple one to make. Does something wind up within something else by the end of your sentence, whether it be within something concrete, like a box, or something abstract, like a timeframe? If the answer is yes, you need to write into as one word.

Feeling more confident? Naturally, there is an exception to this rule, just to mess you up.

When “Into” Denotes Transformation

The only time when into does not involve a sense of within is when some kind of change or transformation has taken place.

The caterpillar changed into a butterfly and left its cocoon behind.

In developing countries, ceramic filters are often used to transform dirty water into clean, drinkable water.

Predictably, Cinderella’s coach turned into a pumpkin at midnight.

”In” and “To” as Neighboring Words

In and to are both prepositions or adverbs in their own right (and in may sometimes be an adjective). When they fall logically next to each other in a sentence, you may find yourself having to resist the temptation to squish them together typographically.

One pitfall appears when you use in as part of a phrasal verb. Many verbs join forces with in to form a completely new meaning. For example, to drop and to drop in are radically different actions. When an inhat is part of a phrasal verb falls next to a to, accidents happen.

I dropped into say hello.

I dropped in to say hello.

Is say hello a place you can drop into and land inside of? No, it isn’t. So in and to should be written as two words. Dropped in is a phrasal verb in this case, and to is part of the infinitive to say.

Phrasal verbs used as prepositions in combination with to also cause frequent problems.

Ethan turned into the driveway and shut off the car’s engine.

Did Ethan magically transform into a driveway, and in the throes of his flatness, turn off his car’s engine? No, he didn’t. He simply maneuvered his car in to the driveway.

Ethan turned in to the driveway.

In the early days of radio, a common error was to write about tuning into a favorite station. Today, in cyberspace, the most common misstep is to write about logging into a program, operating system, app, or website.

I like to tune into the classical radio station on Sunday mornings.

I like to tune in to the classical radio station on Sunday mornings.

Please log into our website by clicking on the red icon.

Please log in to our website by clicking on the red icon.