Trying out Grammarly Authorship Beta
How I ask students to generate and share writing process reports
Grammarly Authorship is a new free feature in Grammarly that allows the owner of a Google Doc to view a report on the writing process and share that report via a link. I’ve shared my reasons for using this as a college writing teacher, in Writing process tracking is coming to Grammarly - and students and teachers need it. Since I wrote that, Grammarly Authorship has gone public. It now distinguishes between text typed by a user and edited with Grammarly suggestions and text wholly generated through Grammarly’s AI chat. It also labels text copied from Claude as AI as well as text copied from ChatGPT. It still wrongly marks voice-typed text as copied and pasted from another source.
Here’s a little sample report (on a frivolous document) where the first and last sentences were typed and edited with Grammarly, and the middle paragraphs were AI-generated. The screenshot below shows the overview and the beginning of the marked-up text.
I’m starting to ask students to share the link to their Grammarly Authorship report under their name at the top of any Google Doc they turn in. However, I acknowledge that some may prefer alternate writing processes or apps, and some may prefer to arrange another way to share information about their process, such as a conference. I invite students to check in with me if that’s the case.
Here are the steps to try it out:
First, make sure you have the Chrome browser installed.
Make sure you have the Grammarly extension for Google Chrome turned on. Go to the puzzle piece icon in the Chrome toolbar to see extension options
Consider whether you want to ask Grammarly not to use your data to train AI language models (like the ones used by Grammarly and ChatGPT).
Open a new Google Doc.
Locate the thumbprint logo in the bottom left corner of the screen and click it.
(If you don't see the thumbprint, try refreshing. If that doesn’t work, open the Grammarly sidebar by clicking the Grammarly button on the lower right and scroll down to the option to turn on Grammarly Authorship.)
Select "Track Writing Activity"
You may want to click the settings icon and turn on the option to start tracking writing activity automatically every time you create a new document.
Work on the document.
Click the thumbprint again and select "See report."
Read through the report and reflect on what it might reveal about your writing process, use of copied and pasted text, and use of AI. If you see anything odd, you may want to reach out to Grammarly support. This is a beta version of the software, and there may be glitches.
Select "Share" at the top right.
Make the report visible to anyone with the link.
De-select “Include Writing Replay.” (I don’t require a full movie version of your writing process because that doesn’t seem necessary and might make some student writers more self-conscious about rough drafts.)
Copy the link and share it.
Is anyone else using Grammarly Authorship with students? I’d love to know how you are presenting it and how it’s going, if so.
This document is shared under a CC BY NC 4.0 license.
Thanks, Anna. Nice overview. I am wrestling with whether and how to use this in my own practice....I much prefer the approach of a surveillance tool that leaves it to a student to share over one that is imposed, but I don't think I can bring myself to require it. It does seem useful for anyone who is using an LLM and wants to track how.