When you open Grammarly you’ll be able to select various Types from this Type menu.

Note that for Walden coursework, we recommend "General Academic" as the Type. This category will mark all personal pronouns, which are not strictly incorrect for APA. For example, although the use of “I” is fine in APA if it is an action you are completing (for more about when to use pronouns like “you” and “I” in APA appropriately, check out this blog post, or this page on point of view), Grammarly will note it as an error—so be sure to check through and decide what to keep on a case by case basis. See more notes on best practices when using Grammarly on our pages here.

Grammarly’s main focus is on spelling, grammar, and punctuation checks. Hence, these checks are present almost in all document Types, and the main difference is between each Type is stylistic. Below you’ll notice a list of Types, like General and Academic, these are the larger category Types, and you can choose sub-Types for each larger category. This can be a little complex, so below there are descriptions of each larger Type. For example, the default and recommended Type for Walden is General Academic—which is a choice under the Academic Type.

This is the default and lies in the middle of formality-informality line. It should be used when the type of writing does not fall under any group described below. General includes almost all Grammarly’s checks, except for the checks that are rather contradictory: the who-vs-whom dilemma, conjunctions at the beginning of the sentence (e.g., starting a sentence with "And") and some others. This setting also will not flag any colloquialisms (e.g. "a lot of," "a great amount of") or contractions (e.g. "wasn’t," "can’t").

The additional Types below are ordered from most to least formal.

This setting is technically the strictest among Grammarly Types. It is suitable for different essays, theses, dissertations, and legal documents. On top of finding grammar and punctuation mistakes, it detects usage of passive voice and contractions (e.g. "I’m," "don’t"), subjective pronouns (e.g. "I," "you"), and the pronoun "who" confused with "whom"; it also locates cases that should use the subjunctive mood and takes care of casual punctuation (changes !!! to ! and puts periods in some abbreviations). This setting is the Type the Walden Writing Center recommends for Walden students working on academic papers.

The Business Type is developed for business communication (emails, presentations). It also checks the text against formal writing criteria. However, it allows the use of some informal expressions: subjective pronouns, numbers instead of word representations of numerals, and some colloquialisms (e.g. "in spite of").

These two settings work almost similarly in terms of checks allowed or restricted. Since these are used in technical and scientific writing (manuals, instructions, research results, etc.), the checks here are aimed at removing various ambiguities. These detect subjunctive mood and expressions like "etc." and "and/or." The settings also allow the usage of numerals. Also, the Technical setting will flag any future tense usage.

The Casual Type is designed for personal communication (chatting, informal emails). It ignores most style issues. It does not catch contractions, double negatives, passive voice, subjective pronouns, and split infinitives (e.g. "to really like").

Creative in many checks is aligned with Casual. It is the most laidback Type suitable for writing novels or short stories. Like all other Types, it catches grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. However, it provides a more creative setting for those who are experts in the English grammar and want to bend the rules in order to use a stylistic device or narrative technique. The Creative Type does not detect sentence fragments (missing subject or verb), wordy sentences, lonely gerunds, colloquialisms, slang (e.g. "wanna," "gotta"), squinting modifiers, and incomplete comparisons.