A lot of misunderstandings have come out of people just reading messages and “guessing” at the tone of the sender. Even if you didn’t mean to be rude, it might come across like that to the receiver because of you word, punctuation, or emoji choice. If you’re using the Grammarly Keyboard on your mobile device, you’ll now have a little help letting you know what your message will sound like to the receiver. Tone Detector is the new feature that you can turn on within the virtual keyboard.
If you’re not familiar with Grammarly, you probably have an idea based on its name. It’s a service that lets you know if you have misspelled words or gives you advice on the correct grammar for that paragraph that you’re typing out. The Grammarly Keyboard works with any app and gives you real-time feedback on things like grammar, clarity, vocabulary, and other things that should help you craft a better message.
The newest thing it can help you with is your tone or what the receiver may think of your message. When you turn it on, it will analyze signals in your message like capitalization, punctuation, word choice, and other elements of your message. It will then give you different tones or how it may sound to your reader. You’ll get things like Confident, Admiring, Formal, but also it might detect things like Angry, Irritated, etc. Getting that feedback may get you to consider revising your message if that’s not what you really mean.
You have to turn it on in your app settings and after typing out your message, tap the G icon on the virtual keyboard. The message will need to be at least 150 characters for the Tone Detector to work so it can have enough signals to work with. This can be used in casual messages, for work or for school, or for any formal and informal conversation you’re having with someone on your mobile device.
If you’re not using Grammarly yet, you can download the virtual keyboard from the Google Play Store. It’s free to use but if you want to have the more advanced features, you can upgrade to Grammarly Premium.