No matter you talk about blogs, articles, college assignments, or even a leave application, Grammar is always a matter of concern. A few words here and there, and your writeup may look very ugly.

Mistakes in Grammar mean that your English skills will be doubted, and the worst thing is that even the most experienced people can't avoid grammatical errors in their writeup.

A few of us may be confident enough with the grammar skills, but when the content lands on Grammarly's error-detecting page, believe me, the confidence gets shaken!

Perfection in Grammar is a bigger pie than one thinks!

We should say 'thanks" to Grammarly for developing such an agile and perfect Grammar checking tool.

But how did they build it? What was the ideology? Shouldn't we try to know?

Rich History of Grammarly

Naturally, linguists were part of the development of Grammarly. However, the most important persons, such as Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko, and Dmytro Liger, are always included. The organization was founded in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Grammarly was started by a three-man squad by studying written material & researching databases. 

Among the most intriguing parts of Grammarly's evolution is the fact that the creators of Grammarly were neither native English native speakers nor are they, linguistics-trained experts. The creators recognized an urgent need to have a program that's similar to Grammarly and built it. Today, millions of people are able to write appealing and error-free content freely with the help of Grammarly. Plus, multilingual readers can effortlessly sound fluent that too without the requirement of considering the content.

A word about Mydropbox

Did you have the knowledge that Grammarly wasn't the only attempt to develop an application that included the ability to check plagiarism?

It's true that co-founders of Grammarly started over with designing an online plagiarism checker in the late 90s. The full application was launched in 2002. In the timeline of 5 years, the application reached impressive outcomes. In fact, Mydropbox was used by 800 universities which approximately equals 2 million students, including teachers and professors. The popularity of the application was evident; however, considering its potential, the software was limited to many things, which it could accomplish.

Also, Mydropbox was only able to function as a plagiarism checker without having any communications and language features. The primary concern was the university students. The people who founded Mydropbox discovered that the application could not be restricted to use for academic purposes only. At this time, Mydropbox got purchased, and a brand new software named Grammarly was built. Not just that, Grammarly also arrives with the plagiarism checker in-built software, but the main thing is it isn't limited to it.

Today, the application is an individual editor for millions of individuals, aiding them inefficient language & communication. Naturally, the broader capabilities enabled Grammarly to develop new segments of customers.

What’s The Technology Behind Grammarly Was Used and In What Way Grammarly Was Developed?

Let's start by using the engine of backend grammar, shall we?

Some people can observe that Grammarly uses Common Lisp. Most importantly, you must know that Common Lisp is not a basic separate programming language on its own. In other words, Grammarly is an extension, which you can say is a part of the programming language that's known as Lisp. Common Lisp is popular and is renowned due to its:

1. Flexibility
2. Robust macro system
3. Quick prototyping abilities

Improving the Lisp dialect called Macslip is the main purpose behind Common Lisp. Common Lisp was intended to serve as an alternative specification that could fix the flaws when Macslip was not standardized if we talk about the features.

Today, this program is famous for its multi-paradigm programming language, which enables a seamless combination and efficiency of procedural, object-oriented, and fully functional programming. Also, the dialect allows optional type annotation and casting that allows faster arithmetic, which is more efficient than huge integers or random precision types.

Machine Learning

Machine Learning is basically what it's called. It's computers that can do learning without any sort of programming effort. It means that the algorithms that Grammarly has are capable of understanding and interpreting statistics. In the working system, specific data patterns are identified and allow it to understand and predict changes.

Also, machine learning can be unsupervised learning as well as supervised. In the case of Grammarly, this basically means that when it's used to deal with massive amounts of content in relation to spelling, punctuation, Grammar, or even examining published content, the software is able to gather crucial data to help its users.

Grammarly does this by analyzing the written text and databases for research. When you go through these data, Grammarly teaches itself about all the things we should learn.

Deep Learning

As we discussed Machine Learning, Deep Learning is also a technique that is used regularly by Grammarly. One more thing to know as a similarity between Machine Learning & Deep Learning as a common working system is that both are controllable and unrevivable. However, Deep Learning can be a bit more complex to understand in comparison to Machine Learning.

Deep Learning is built to get an in-depth analysis of data with the help of a logical structure from which a normal human draws conclusions from. To accomplish this, Deep Learning applications also use a structured, layered algorithm that is known as ANN (Artificial Neural Network). However, what was the reason for which ANN was constructed in this manner?

It was not a different thing than humans' brains. Not surprisingly, Deep Learning works pretty well. It was created for humans, which is why it makes sense to think as one, but more quickly and precisely. The best part about it is just a little bit of human effort is needed to get the most effective outcomes it could achieve.

Let's Cherish Grammarly's timeline.

Now having a piece of greater knowledge about Grammarly along with its technical aspects to back it up, let's try time travel to know about it!

The Introduction of Grammarly Editor in 2010

In 2010, eleven years later and one year after this platform got established, Grammarly launched the Grammarly Editor. In the past, Grammarly was not available as a keyboard for phones or as a Microsoft Word add-in. Let's just think about the time when Grammarly Editor was the only product available. There was no browser extension at all. It was in existence and was the same until 2013, but we'll get to this later.

The Microsoft Office from Grammarly as an add-in was Introduced in 2013

Remember when we said that, up to 2013, Grammarly only offered its editor with no flexibility choices? No browser extensions, the phone keyboard isn't there, nor is there a Microsoft Office add-in... Ooops, the Microsoft Office add-in is best taken out of the list right now!

2013 was the year when Grammarly made the first move towards gaining the trust of the market by the ease of use for Grammarly. This basically meant that Grammarly's users would be allowed to use the plagiarism and grammar checker within Word or Outlook.

Browser extensions and Freemium model in 2015

The situation became very interesting for us as users in 2015. It's been two years since Grammarly released its Microsoft Office add-in, which clearly was a wise move. But, Grammarly is the type of program that leaves lots of opportunities for further improvement, and it wasn't long for the developers behind to make that happen.

In reality, Grammarly made all the correct and groundbreaking decisions this year. Not only did it introduce browser extensions, but it also widened its reach via its Free Plan Model.

Desktop App by Grammarly was Introduced in 2016

It seems that the success of Grammarly hasn't stopped the company from pursuing further innovations, which is why the Desktop App was introduced in the year 2016. The desktop application functions much like Grammarly Editor, except you can access it directly from your desktop instead of via your browser.

Mobile Keyboards was Implemented by Grammarly in 2017

The use of mobile devices and their popularity has been growing for a while since the beginning of time, and although 2017 might seem like an eternity ago, it wasn't any different back then. It's clear that Grammarly recognized the trend and didn't want to stay behind. That's why the company launched Mobile Keyboards.

The Business Grammarly Took Place in 2018

We welcome you to 2018 - the year of more expansion. In particular, this was the year in which Grammarly created an approach that was more business-friendly through the introduction of Grammarly Business, which is the Grammarly Business package. Obviously, this does not mean that the students, bloggers, journalists, and others were left out since Grammarly Freemium and Grammarly Premium were available. It was the right time to develop a targeted product for the business.

Final words and summary

As you've seen, the process of creating Grammarly was more than simply making an idea for a product. The process began with Mydropbox, a plagiarism checker that was a tool for students as its primary customers. It was a success. However, it was not as powerful despite its amazing potential.

Fortunately, the co-founders formed solid relationships with the schools and then shifted them to users of the brand new software called Grammarly. If there's one thing we can take from the experience of Grammarly is that having the tool itself is just half the job. To be successful, businesses must be in the same place as their customers and offer them solutions that solve their issues.