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Grammarly Ads Break My Heart A Bit

Jeff Fox
11 min readJul 24, 2022

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Our ability to effectively use language is not something to try and automate.

Hands, against a black background, holding a smart phone selecting an app.
Photo by Gilles Lambert on Unsplash

Technology has entered into just about every aspect of our lives and automation has generated incredible levels of efficiency and convenience. However, our capacity to effectively use language is a far more critical skill than remembering phone numbers or doing our times tables. The clarity and comprehensiveness of our thinking and communicating depends entirely on the level of our capabilities with language.

No offense to Grammarly, specifically. I’m sure it is a lovely program. I’m not opposed to spell-checkers or auto-correct, especially since it can lead to some rather hilarious exchanges. There are a great many skills and tasks which are no longer as critical or necessary for us to master, many functions of life we can safely abdicate over to our mechanical devices.

Mentally storing phone numbers, day-to-day schedules, and mathematical calculations are not things we have had to handle without technological assistance for quite some time now. Our devices store all our contact information, map out and remind us of our schedules and commitments, and take care of mathematical computations with a few clicks or taps. Thus those intellectual muscles have atrophied in most of us.

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Jeff Fox
Jeff Fox

Written by Jeff Fox

A professional dancer, choreographer, theatre creator, and featured TEDx speaker with an honours degree in psychology, two black belts, and a lap-top.

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