Yesterday Grammarly, my online grammar checker of choice, released a new version of their iPad app. Historically, the Grammarly app was just this side of garbage. There was no app, per se, but a keyboard that would grammar check your document. In theory, this is good. It saves you the trouble of round-tripping your text to the Grammarly app. In practice, it was rough. While the grammar-checking engine has always been good, the previous version required you to remove your iPad from an attached keyboard to check grammar. It drove me nuts every time.

With this new version, the keyboard is much more useful. Indeed I’m using it right now. Also, there is now a stand-alone version of the Grammarly editor, so opening the app gets you … well … an app, where in the past it was just a fancy wrapper for the Grammarly keyboard.

I’ve subscribed to Grammarly for a few years, and I’ll renew again. I don’t know what exactly is going on over at Grammarly, but they’ve released several new, useful features in the grammar checking engine over the last six months and now the iPad app has gone from dreadful to useful.