Grammarly and Ginger have long been battling for the grammar checking space. You can find many posts comparing the two, pros cons and costs. Both tools have free and paid levels, each offering their own special flair to the grammar world. I have used both as Chrome extensions, and do agree, they both hold a place for usage consideration.

In typing the paragraph above, I used the Grammarly keyboard for iOS. I then took the same paragraph and pasted it into Ginger:

Grammarly and Ginger have been long battling for the grammar checking space. You can find many posts comparing the two, pros, cons and costs. Both tools have free and paid levels, each offering their own special flair to the grammatical world. I have used both as Chrome extensions, and do agree, they both hold a place for usage consideration.

Ginger found two errors that, Grammarly didn’t find: the comma that I had omitted after pro and recommended changing grammar to grammatical.

This summer I moved to a 10.5″ iPad Pro as my main device. I have used Ginger on my iPad ($3.99) for a while, but haven’t always loved it. For me to use Ginger on an iOS device, I must either create in Ginger and then move my text to the necessary word processing app or here to WordPress, or type in the word processor and paste into Ginger for checking. When typing first in Ginger I had occasional issues with losing work, so I mainly type elsewhere and then past in Ginger once finished. (Note: I purposely typed past instead of paste and Grammarly didn’t find it but copying and pasting in Ginger did) Also, Ginger highlights the word it provides a suggested change for making it easier to assess the suggested change. Ginger also allows for upgrades for its services within the app, such as unlimited checking and sentence rephrasing.

Whereas Grammarly functions as a third-party keyboard in iOS (Free) so can be used right within the word processing tool of your choice. I am not sure how much it’s corrections vary compared to the built-in iOS ones, yet I would hope given the robustness of Grammarly in its Chrome extension, it is stronger than what is native to iOS software. One challenge is that using the Grammarly keyboard takes away the built-in word prediction in iOS along with the quick access to dictation. There also does not seem to be a way to pay for more upgraded features, you get what you pay for. However, it’s new so maybe upgrades will come through updates. Ginger app started out as free too, and is no longer. Some people also point out that Grammarly lacks a built-in text reader that Ginger has, while true and useful, this can be easily solved with the built-in text to speech features of the iPad.

So for now, I not sure which I prefer. I found both tools missed the same errors, while Ginger found some errors Grammarly did not. For my students, the ones that struggle to manage the back and forth switch between Google Docs and Ginger, I will have them use the Grammarly third-party keyboard, and being free is an added bonus. Yet for those who are doing just fine with Ginger, I will leave them to it. Paying for the unlimited checking in Ginger might help those students, as might the sentence rephrasing, yet the later only works if they comprehend the suggestions.

Both tools are beneficial, and should be introduced for students who need them. I would love to hear your thoughts on these tools in the iOS realm.

Stay tuned for my thoughts on these tools as they compare as Chrome extensions…..