How to Use Grammarly for Academic Writing in 2026

Academic writing demands precision, clarity, and adherence to specific conventions. Grammarly helps researchers, students, and academics polish their papers while maintaining scholarly standards.

Configuring Grammarly for Academic Work

1. Open Grammarly and go to Goals (Set Goals icon)
2. Set Audience to Expert
3. Set Formality to Formal
4. Set Domain to Academic
5. Set Tone to Neutral or Analytical
6. Set Intent to Inform

Key Features for Academics

Clarity Suggestions

Academic writing often suffers from unnecessarily complex sentences. Grammarly identifies wordy passages, passive voice overuse, and unclear pronoun references.

Tone Detection

The tone detector ensures your writing maintains a consistent formal, analytical tone throughout your paper. It flags casual language that may not be appropriate for academic contexts.

Plagiarism Detection

Grammarly Premium checks your text against billions of web pages and academic databases. Run this check before every submission to catch unintentional similarities.

Using Grammarly at Each Stage

Common Academic Writing Issues Grammarly Catches

• Passive voice overuse: “The experiment was conducted” vs “We conducted the experiment”
• Hedging language: Excessive use of “might,” “could,” “perhaps”
• Run-on sentences: Complex ideas need clear sentence boundaries
• Subject-verb agreement: Especially in complex sentences
• Comma splices: Common in academic writing

Tips for Best Results

• Do not accept every suggestion blindly. Some technical terms may be flagged incorrectly.
• Add discipline-specific terminology to your personal dictionary
• Use the Grammarly Editor for long documents rather than the browser extension
• Review suggestions in context, not just the highlighted words

Learn more about AI writing assistants in our Grammarly features guide and best AI writing tools.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Grammarly good for academic papers?

Yes. Grammarly has specific goals for academic writing that adjust suggestions for formal tone, citation style, and clarity. The Premium version includes plagiarism detection which is essential for academic work.

Does Grammarly work with LaTeX?

Grammarly does not directly support LaTeX files. However, you can use the Grammarly web editor to check your text content, or use the Grammarly desktop app with Overleaf in a browser.

Will Grammarly change my academic voice?

Grammarly suggests changes but you accept or reject each one. Set the goals to Academic and Formal to ensure suggestions match scholarly writing conventions. It preserves your voice while improving clarity.