If you need to rephrase writing or AI-generated text, the Grammarly paraphrase feature is a top contender.
While Grammarly has a built-in tone detector, the platform’s real rewriting power comes from its newer AI features.
And Grammarly is not the only app with a robust text paraphraser.
In this post, I will show you how to use the Grammarly paraphrase capability and suggest some more specialized alternative text rewriters like QuillBot.
Grammarly Paraphrase Feature
The Grammarly paraphrase feature is a tool that helps you rewrite sentences with new words or phrases while keeping the same meaning.
It can help you avoid plagiarism, improve word choice, and make your writing smoother and more consistent.
Grammarly includes a feature called Delivery that rewrites portions of text to achieve various tones like confident, friendly, sincere, or formal.
But this feature is limited in its ability to paraphrase large portions of text.
Grammarly has a new AI feature called Grammarly Go.
Grammarly Go is capable of rephrasing about 5,000 characters, or roughly 800 words, at a time.
However, the outputs are limited to about a third of the maximum limit. This comes out to 1,600 characters, which is about 260 words.
Given this limitation, you will need to paraphrase your source material one or two paragraphs at a time.
Free Paraphrase Tool
The full paraphrase feature is only available for paid Grammarly Premium users.
But you can also use Grammarly’s free paraphrasing tool online.
The free tool is limited to 500 characters, which is about 80 words or 5 sentences.
Also, you must rephrase the source text one sentence at a time.
Why Use Grammarly Rephrasing?
If you’re reading this post, you probably have a good reason already to paraphrase some writing.
But in case you need some inspiration, here are some ways you might use Grammarly’s paraphrase feature.
- Improve writing style by choosing better words and sentences
- Change the subject matter of the original text to suit their needs
- Avoid plagiarism by rewording someone else’s ideas or research
- Save time and effort by rewriting sentences quickly and easily
Grammarly Go Rephrasing Examples
Below I have included a couple of examples to give you an idea of what Grammarly is capable of.
You can see above that Grammarly does a pretty good job rewriting my original text.
There are a couple of transition words like ‘thus’ and ‘moreover’ that I would probably remove.
But overall, this tool can save you maybe 15 to 30 minutes of time spent manually reworking a section of writing.
The most common way of paraphrasing text in Grammarly is by using the Improve it button, which I will go into more detail in the next section.
I find these results are best for rephrasing AI-generated text and spicing up dry sections of writing, like definitions or descriptions.
How Does Grammarly Paraphrase Work?
To use Grammarly’s rephrasing feature, simply highlight the text you wish to rewrite.
Then, click on the Grammarly Go icon which appears below.
A small dialogue box will pop up near your text with an AI-generated alternative suggestion.
Each time you use this feature it consumes a credit.
Free Grammarly accounts come with 100 credits, while paid accounts start with 500, depending on which plan you are on.
Grammarly Paraphrase Alternatives
Grammarly Go’s AI-driven text rephrasing is one of the most effective tools on the market.
But there are a couple of other options if you need to save money or paraphrase large amounts of text.
QuillBot
QuillBot is the industry gold standard for paraphrasing human or AI-generated writing.
The app provides a high degree of control over how much you want to change the wording and synonyms of the original text.
Also, there are seven different paraphrasing modes that allow you to finetune your text outputs.
- Standard: Most basic paraphrase option that adjusts text while retaining meaning
- Fluency: Rewrites the text to improve the flow
- Formal: Adds a more professional tone to your writing
- Simple: Breaks down your text into a more basic structure
- Creative: Uses less common synonyms and sentence structure
- Expands: Lengthens your text with additional descriptions, adjectives, and adverbs
- Shorten: Cuts down on the wordiness of your original input text
If you want to get the most out of QuillBot, you will need to invest in their paid subscription.
However, the paid plans come with powerful features like the plagiarism checker, which is a must to protect yourself when using AI-generated content.
You can try out QuillBot’s limited version for free.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is fully capable of rewriting or paraphrasing any text with the right prompt.
The prompt can be as simple as something like:
Please rewrite the below text in a unique style while still retaining the original meaning: [your text]This tends to work quite well.
However, you may run into the probably of AI detectors flagging the resulting text.
Therefore, if you want to rely on ChatGPT to paraphrase some writing for you, it may be smart to manually edit portions of the generated text yourself.
Keep in mind that this method works best with GPT-4.
If you use GPT-3.5, the paraphrased text may come across as very repetitive compared to GPT-4.
Check out our full ChatGPT rewriter deep dive.
FAQ
Can Grammarly rephrase?
Yes, the best way to rephrase text is by using Grammarly Go.
This AI feature allows you to create variations of the original writing with the option of adjusting the tone of voice to sound more confident, friendly, or detailed.
How do you use reword in Grammarly?
Using the Grammarly web app or extension, highlight the text you want to reword.
Then click on either the green pencil or lightbulb icon that appears below.
This will open up a dialogue box that shows your reworded text and allows you to make any additional changes.
Should I use QuillBot or Grammarly?
Both apps have the ability to rewrite or paraphrase text.
However, QuillBot is able to rephrase up to 6,000 words at once, while Grammarly Go appears limited to one or two paragraphs.
