Turnitin Draft Coach's Grammar Guide

The Grammar Check tool in Turnitin's Draft Coach helps students improve their writing by finding grammatical mistakes using US-English grammar rules. It points out issues like wrong punctuation, verb tense, and sentence structure, and gives suggestions on how to fix them. This tool helps students write better and understand grammar rules more clearly. Students have unlimited Grammar Checks using Draft Coach with the specific Word document in use. Microsoft Word also has its own built-in grammar check tool in Editor under the Home tab, so both tools are available to students to support the writing process.

  1. With your Word document opened in Microsoft 365 online, navigate to the Turnitin tab and select Draft Coach.
    Turnitin option on the Microsoft Word ribbon
  2. A new window on the right side will slide open. At the top of the window are four tabs of the tools within Draft Coach, along with the ability to select further down the window. You can select Grammar Guide in this window or click the Grammar tab at the top of the window.
    Selecting Grammar Guide from side window
  3. Either option will lead you into the Grammar tab, where you will have the option to Run Grammar Check via the button at the bottom of the screen.
    Image of Run Grammar Check button
  4. Once you click Run Grammar Check, Draft Coach will begin, and you may be prompted to not alter any text while the check is still running. Be sure to allow ample time to run the report as needed.
    Image of Grammar Guide loading
  5. When the Grammar Check is completed, you will receive Your Grammar Guide, which provides a summary of identified issues viewable by selecting the Show Details accordion menu. This expands the summary to show the total number of issues under the categories of grammar issues, mechanics issues, structure issues, and usage issues. The images below show a side by side comparison when showing the details found.
    Image of Draft Coach's Grammar Guide highlighting 59 grammar issues in a document, with categories like long sentence, passive voice, and sentence starting with a conjunction.
    Image of Draft Coach's Grammar Guide showing a summary of 59 total writing issues: 8 grammar, 0 mechanics, 49 structure, and 2 usage issues.
  6. Underneath the summary is the Issues section that provides more details on each of the summary issues. Each issue is categorized based on the summary type shown previously: we can see in this image there are 8 instances of Long Sentence from the Structure category, 7 instances of Fragments from the Grammar category, and 2 instances of Confused Words from the Usage category.
    Image showing details of specific category issues with the number of issues within the category
  7. Clicking the specific issue will expand the window to explain that issue. This also shares how many issues are within this category and darkens the highlight within your paper of this specific category, as pointed out in in the body of the paper in this image below. However, please note that this area does not navigate to the specific issue. Grammar Check only shows the issue within the side window, though you can scroll through your paper to find the highlighted section. Use the " < > " arrow keys to navigate through each of the issues within this specific category. Clicking the issue window at the top again will collapse the issue to view others.
    Image showing highlighted text in body of paper with the Grammar Guide window opened showing issues
  8. Grammar Check also provides helpful notes such as "What should I do with this report?" and "How should I use these checks?" that can help guide you as you make revisions based on this specific grammar check before running a new Grammar Check.
    Grammar Guide's helpful hints