Hi Keith So , I found your article pretty adherent to my personal English writing story. I agree with most of your points.

I am Italian and live in Italy. In the ‘90s , I was a journalist and I wrote every sort of articles, including commercial storytelling, which we called “redazionali" because they brought the real money to the “redazione”, the editorial office of the magazine. After that, I became English as second language Primary teacher, as I studied English and Spanish languages and literatures at the university here. Then, I moved to Texas, where I lived for 4 years and I got a BA in History Major and Spanish minor and an MA in English literature.

However, I only decided to write in English, last year. I started on Upwork to measure my ability to keep on tight deadlines and being curious to know what my clients would think about my writing. Besides, I followed courses about SEO to update my skills. Good for me and my sense of self-esteem, they wrote wonderful reviews with 5 stars.

I found Medium and I thought to measure myself here, too … I think, as you wrote in your article, that even though we write quite well, we have always some insecurities persecuting us. I had to throw myself out, avoiding thinking too much, actually, not thinking at all! I just did it, that’s it.

Only, I don’t use Grammarly at all. It’s not even among my apps. This is why: I studied for years, until my Master, English grammar, along with Italian, Spanish (at university level), Portuguese, German, and Dutch (self-learning in their countries). It always struck me that in literature, even non native writers were great authors that developed, within the language grammar rules, their own personal style. After all, British, American, Australian writers have definite differences and nuances in their English. A great example of non native author is V. S. Naipaul, from Trinidad and Tobago, later naturalized British, was a great literary author, which was awarded the Nobel prize.

Therefore, I decided that I didn’t need Grammarly or Google because I did my studies and I am afraid that those tools could end up standardising my writing style. Plus, I am afraid that it could bug further my insecurities. What I use a lot, though, it’s dictionaries, especially the synonyms, because words are treacherous, they often hide shades of meaning that, for a poet as I am, would mine the entire result of the poem.

You write indeed very well, I think that you don’t need Grammarly, either … I couldn’t recognize that English wasn’t your native language! For misspellings, just read your articles a few hours apart.

Thank you for writing this interesting article!