Unpopular opinion: I stopped using grammar checkers and my AI writing got better
Six months ago I ran every draft through a grammar tool before posting, and my writing felt stiff and samey. Last month I turned it off for a week just to see what happened, and my blog posts got shorter and clearer. The tool kept flagging my sentence fragments as errors, but those fragments were doing real work. I checked my stats: average read time went from 1 minute 40 to 2 minutes 15. A friend said my last post sounded like a person instead of a manual. Has anyone else tried ditching the checker and just reading their stuff out loud?
The read time jump probably has less to do with the grammar tool and more to do with you cutting words. Shorter posts usually get read longer because people actually finish them instead of bailing halfway. That friend saying it sounds like a person now is the real signal though, that part tracks. Reading out loud is solid, but the checker isn't the villain here, blindly trusting it is.