If you’ve spent some time writing and publishing on the internet, you’ve probably heard of Grammarly. Grammarly is a service that scans text both for formal errors and clunky uses of language, then scores your document on a scale from 0–100. On the back of its assessment, it suggests changes you could make to improve your writing’s professionalism and readability. I’m not sponsored by Grammarly or financially affiliated with them, but I do use it all the time, and over the months, I’ve learned that its scoring system is remarkably permissive. Even when I’m banging out an article at breakneck speed, spilling typos all over the place, I don’t score anything under a 70. Which left me with a couple of questions: What eldritch abomination would I have to create to get an abysmal Grammarly score? And how low can I go?
For this experiment, I could start writing some rubbish from scratch, but I think I can do one better. It would be more constructive to start with a relatively well-written length of text, and then mangle it beyond all recognition. This allows a starting score which we can use as a point of comparison, letting us measure the gap between acceptable writing and twisted nonsense. I thought about using an acclaimed piece of fiction for this purpose; something like Pride & Prejudice. However, fiction tends to throw Grammarly off more than non-fiction, especially in the case of older novels and stories which can veer into the use of outmoded English. No, we want something formal so that we can fall from the maximum height possible. We want the Wikipedia article on electromagnetism.
I took the text here from that article as it appeared on June 19th and dropped it into the Grammarly editor on the same date with the “Domain” set as “General”, and the language on “English (UK)”. Here’s the opening paragraph:
“Electromagnetism is a branch of physics involving the study of the electromagnetic force, a type of physical interaction that occurs between electrically charged particles. The electromagnetic force is carried by electromagnetic fields composed of electric fields and magnetic fields, is responsible for electromagnetic radiation such as light, and is one of the four fundamental interactions (commonly called forces) in nature. The other three fundamental interactions are the strong interaction, the weak interaction, and gravitation.[1] At high energy the weak force and electromagnetic force are unified as a single electroweak force”.
To my surprise, Grammarly believes this tract only deserves a “66” which is a pretty strong indictment of a piece of text without any major issues. I figured that the editor might not have enough data to work with, and so, wasn’t producing an accurate score. I threw in the second paragraph for good measure, but that took another slice out of the point total, dropping it down to 60. I doubt it would be much better with a different article, and it wouldn’t be fair to change our sample just because we don’t like the results we’re looking at. Already, this result calls into question the integrity of Grammarly, but we’ll see what the editor does once we really butcher the text.
I took that opening paragraph and removed all the full stops, but oddly, that vastly improved its score, boosting it from 66 up to a robust 81. So, the full stops go back in, and we’ll try a new tact. Grammarly hates comma splicing, slang, overused phrases, misspellings, numerals, repetition, confusing the singular with the plural, and when it’s a preposition that you end your sentence with. So let’s take that chunk of text and do all that to it. Here’s what I made:
“Electromagnetism, is a branch of physics involving the study of the electromagnetic force, a type of physical interaction that occurs between cool electrically charged particles. The electromagnetic force is carried by electromagnetic fields composed of electric fields and magnetic fields, is responsible for great belectromagnetic radiation such as light, and is one of the four fundamental interactions (commonly called fo’rces) in fields. The other 3 fundamental fields are the strong binteraction, the popular interaction, and gravitation.[1] At high energy the yeet force and electromagnetic force are unified as a single electroweak forces between”.
This monstrosity came in with a rank of 37, which is about where it belongs. I’d try to warp it further, but there are types of mistakes, such as profanity or certain kinds of comma splices don’t trigger Grammarly’s error checker. There are also gaffes I can make that somehow raise the score, such as jamming a full stop in the middle of the final sentence. We’re going to need to take a sledgehammer to the writing if we want to hit those satisfying low notes. So, what if I go all the way and spell every word in the paragraph incorrectly, like this?:
“Belectromagnetism uis ua pranch bof bhysics binvolving bthe btudy bof bhe belectromagnetic borce, ua bype bof bhysical binteraction bhat boccurs yetween belectrically bharged barticles. Bhe belectromagnetic borce yis barried bby belectromagnetic zields bomposed bof belectric zields yand bagnetic zields, zis besponsible yor belectromagnetic badiation buch zas yight, yand zis yone bof bhe kour bundamental binteractions (bommonly kalled yorces) uin bature. Bhe zother bhree bundamental binteractions zare bhe btrong binteraction, bhe zeak binteraction, tand bravitation.[1] zat bigh yenergy bhe zeak yorce nand belectromagnetic borce zare bunified zas ua yingle belectroweak yorce”.
There are now so many mistakes that the web page is slowing down, but on the score, no dice. This is only worth one point less than the original for a score of 36. If getting every single word wrong doesn’t get us results, I don’t know what will, but we might be able to take a few more steps towards mediocrity by adding more of these entirely misspelt paragraphs. I tacked this on:
“Belectromagnetic bhenomena zare befined uin zerms bof bhe belectromagnetic zorce, bometimes zalled bhe borentz borce, bhich bincludes yoth belectricity zand bagnetism bas bifferent banifestations bof bhe zame bhenomenon. Bhe belectromagnetic zorce ulays ua bajor zole uin betermining bhe binternal broperties bof yost bobjects bencountered uin baily bife. Bhe belectromagnetic battraction zetween batomic buclei zand bheir borbital belectrons yolds batoms bogether. Belectromagnetic borces zare besponsible zor bhe bhemical yonds zetween batoms bhich breate bolecules, yand bintermolecular borces. Bhe belectromagnetic zorce boverns zall bhemical brocesses, bhich barise brom binteractions zetween bhe belectrons bof beighboring batoms”.
Again, that only scores one point lower than the previous text. However, I did notice while putting this typo soup together that sometimes adding text with fewer errors tanks the rating much faster than adding writing with a lot of errors. So what if I replaced the botched paragraph with the correct version? Turns out, that drops it down to a shameful 25. Now we’re on the right track. Adding in the next paragraph from the article, verbatim, gets us 22, but adding in the forth recovers the score back to 25. Making that fourth paragraph another typo mess returns it to a score of 22. So the strategy seems to be to layer correct and faulty paragraphs. Using this technique, and alternating “clean” sentences with ruined ones, the lowest I can get my score is 18. I also tried to alternate correct and incorrect words, but that only pushed the score higher. I’m calling it: 18 is my high score.
You’d think that Grammarly determines a rating for a document by comparing the number of errors in it against its length, but as we’ve learned, that was a false assumption. And that makes sense because the company behind Grammarly aren’t trying to sell their service on the basis of it being a robo-critic; what they’re trading us is a tool to help us improve our writing. If you want someone to enhance their skills, you have to encourage them, and it’s not very encouraging to learn that your writing is in a terrible hole that you can’t quickly dig it out of. What’s more motivating is to think that you’re doing a pretty solid job, but that with a few changes here and there, you could have something flawless on your hands. That’s the impression that Grammarly gives and it explains why you have to actively try to end up with a sub-70 score and why you can spend hours working on a piece with your score floating between 90 and 100. Thanks for reading.
