Google Has A Hidden AI Grammar Checker: Here's How To Use It

The English language, even for a native English speaker, is not an exact science. Despite our best efforts to learn how to speak and type in grade school, English is just sort of one of those things you have to feel out, and even then, you might be wrong half the time. This is why it's helpful to have external assistance in the form of grammar-checking tools, which can keep a watchful eye over your PC writings and chime in with corrections and suggestions. Some of these tools can be a little overbearing, though – what if you only want to know about a single phrase or sentence, for instance? As it turns out, there's a simple solution for that found in Google.

Without publicly announcing it, Google added an AI-powered grammar checker tool to its search engine, one that's both simple to use and fairly accurate. If you don't want the software equivalent of a language arts teacher breathing down your neck while you type, the Google grammar checker is a much simpler alternative.

The Google grammar checker isn't a standalone program or function like Google Docs or Gmail. Instead, it's a feature of the standard Google search, designed to automatically kick in when it detects relevant search terms, like the Translate or Weather features. In this case, the relevant search terms are "grammar check."

To perform a grammar check, just write a sentence in a Google search field, either on Google proper or through a browser search bar, and then follow it with "grammar check." The resulting Google search page will present the grammar check feature at the top of the results and any recommended fixes.

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For example, if you wrote "Hello, how are you? Grammar check" into the search, the grammar check would display the sentence with a green checkmark, indicating correct grammar. If you wrote "Hello, how is you? Grammar check" instead, the grammar check would replace "is" with "are" in the results.

As the Google grammar check is AI-based, there are some things that it can't do and things it won't do for safety and security purposes. For limitations, the grammar checker is currently English-only. It can still catch your grammar if you're just peppering words from other languages into a majority-English sentence, but it can't parse sentences that aren't English at all. Additionally, while AI can catch most grammar mistakes, it's not infallible. Things like slang, for instance, may trip it up.

As for restrictions, the grammar checker is programmed to ignore check requests for prompts that violate Google's overall content policies. Generally speaking, the grammar checker won't acknowledge requests for prompts including dangerous content, harassment, hate speech, medical advice, explicit content, terrorism, violence and gore, and profanity.

If you're not satisfied with your grammar check results, you can click the little Feedback button on the bottom-right of the results to submit a suggestion about the feature to Google.