Hacker News Reader

Comment by Supernaut | Hacker News Reader

Until I discovered the magic of uBlock, a visit to YouTube always prompted a blizzard of Grammarly ads. I could never understand the premise of these clips, in which native speakers of English - specifically, university students and young white-collar workers - were shown having to use the software to help them to write emails.

Protip: if you spent nearly two decades in full-time education but somehow remain unable to construct a proper written sentence in your native language... your parents should ask for their money back.

View on HN

Re: Your pro-tip: I suspect their ad is correctly targeted, and you're not fully considering why people might use their service.

Anecdotally, the individuals I work with who use Grammarly are among the most proficient speakers and writers. They can write fine, but they'd prefer to spend time writing rather than editing and Grammarly picks up the slack.

> Protip: if you spent nearly two decades in full-time education but somehow remain unable to construct a proper written sentence in your native language... your parents should ask for their money back.

In principle, I agree with you. But long ago, I worked as a copy editor, and can tell you that time in school has a weak correlation with the ability to construct a proper written sentence.

But no, nothing I've seen from Grammarly suggests that it would be much help.

I appreciate your protip but there are also plenty of disabilities like dyslexia that affect writing. I think you're both right and wrong.

"properly written"

Apologies for posting a completely off-topic comment, but as an ESL person this interests me.

I would have thought that both were different, but grammatically correct, with almost identical meaning.

"A properly written sentence" is a sentence that is properly written, and "a proper written sentence" is a written sentence that is proper.

But now I have achieved semantic saturation, and am not sure anymore.

From [1], "Adjectives modify nouns; adverbs modify verbs, ..." - so though you're right that both sentences are grammatical, I think a lot of styles would have a problem with "a proper written sentence" since what you actually mean to say is "a properly written sentence" (unless you make it clear that you speak of "proper sentences", probably).

[1] https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/how_to_us...

Perhaps.

The way I read it, the choice of "proper written sentence" gives it the flavour of "Proper. Written. Sentence" - as in, with an annoyed emphasis.

As always, you can apply rules to English if you like, but sometimes they are optional.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com