Why Grammarly Isn't Enough for Academic Papers
Grammarly is excellent for grammar, but it doesn't check the things that actually cause desk rejection. Here's what it misses and what to use alongside it.
Grammarly is the most popular writing tool in the world, and for good reason, it's excellent at catching grammar errors, improving clarity, and suggesting style improvements. Many researchers use it for their manuscripts. But if Grammarly is your only pre-submission check, you're missing the majority of issues that cause desk rejection. Grammar errors account for less than 15% of desk rejections. The rest are structural, compliance, and metadata issues that Grammarly simply doesn't check.
What Grammarly does well
Credit where it's due, Grammarly is genuinely useful for academic writing in these areas:
- Grammar and spelling
- Catches typos, subject-verb agreement errors, and punctuation issues
- Clarity suggestions
- Identifies wordy sentences and suggests more concise alternatives
- Tone detection
- Flags overly casual language that doesn't fit academic register
- Real-time feedback
- Works in your browser or Word as you write, catching issues immediately
What Grammarly doesn't check (and why it matters)
These are the submission requirements that Grammarly cannot validate, and that commonly cause desk rejection:
- Manuscript structure (IMRaD)
- Grammarly doesn't verify that your paper has all required sections in the correct order
- Abstract completeness
- It won't check whether your abstract contains all five required elements (background, objective, methods, results, conclusion)
- Citation-reference consistency
- Grammarly can't match in-text citations to bibliography entries or find orphaned references
- Required declarations
- Missing ethics statements, conflict of interest declarations, data availability statements, and author contributions are invisible to Grammarly
- Journal-specific formatting
- Reference style (APA, Vancouver, IEEE), word limits, figure formatting requirements
- Metadata validation
- Author affiliations, ORCID iDs, keywords, corresponding author designation
- Figure and table references
- Whether every figure/table is referenced in the text and numbered sequentially
- Reporting guideline compliance
- CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA compliance for medical papers
The real causes of desk rejection
Research into desk rejection reasons consistently shows that grammar is a minor factor compared to structural and compliance issues. A study of 500 desk-rejected manuscripts found: scope mismatch (30%), incomplete methodology (20%), missing required declarations (15%), formatting violations (12%), language quality (10%), citation problems (8%), and other issues (5%). Grammar alone, Grammarly's strength, accounts for only a fraction of the language quality category.
The recommended workflow
The most effective pre-submission workflow uses multiple tools at different stages:
- While writing
- Use Grammarly (or Writefull) for real-time grammar and style feedback
- After completing your draft
- Use CheckMyManuscript for comprehensive pre-submission validation (structure, citations, declarations, compliance, metadata)
- Before submission
- Review the CheckMyManuscript report, fix identified issues, and run a final check
- This combination catches both language issues (Grammarly's strength) and compliance issues (CheckMyManuscript's strength)
Frequently asked questions
No. Grammarly is valuable for grammar and style improvements during writing. The point is that it's not sufficient as your only pre-submission tool. Use it alongside a compliance checker like CheckMyManuscript.