Grammar Focus Mode: targeted corrections without losing flow
Narraya's Grammar Focus analyses grammar and style on demand, with suggestions you can accept or ignore. No automatic corrections.
Anyone who has written a long novel with a spell-checker always on knows the small daily trauma: a red underline appears beneath the invented name of your protagonist, a green one beneath a deliberately elliptical sentence, a blue one beneath a passive you chose to keep. Every underline is an interruption. And interruptions, when they multiply, erode the flow — that fragile and precious thing that lets prose be born all in one breath.
Narraya's Grammar Focus Mode was born from exactly that observation: correction is useful, but not while you write.
Assist-only, not auto-correct
The philosophy is simple: Narraya never corrects automatically. When you activate Grammar Focus, the editor analyses your text and shows observations as highlights you can read, accept, or ignore. Nothing in your prose changes unless you decide. No silent corrections, no red asterisks calling out to you.
And above all: it activates on request. While you're writing in flow, it stays off. When you're in revision — or when you feel you've closed a paragraph and want to check it — you turn it on. It's a sharp distinction: one thing is the time for writing, another is the time for correction.
What it looks for
Grammar Focus is not a plain spell-checker. It doesn't stop at typos. It watches for stylistic phenomena that a generic spell-checker ignores and that a human editor, by contrast, would flag right away.
Repetitions
Identical words within a few lines in contexts where the repetition isn't deliberate. It also flags repetitions of syntactic structure — more subtle.
Ambiguities
Sentences where a pronoun could refer to two different antecedents, or constructions where the subject gets lost. A classic issue in novels with many characters on stage.
Inconsistent tenses
Passages where you mix past simple and past continuous without narrative reason, or time slippages inside the same scene.
Overuse of the passive
Sequences where the passive voice piles up and flattens the rhythm. In fiction, often, the active voice breathes better.
Broken syntax
Sentences that change construction mid-stream, not always intentionally. Reported speech has them, third-person narration almost never.
Clichés
Worn-out expressions: "a deafening silence", "a sigh of relief", "her heart in her throat". It flags them so you can decide whether they're functional or lazy.
How to activate it
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Open the chapter to be revised.
Best to use Grammar Focus on a chapter you consider closed or semi-closed. On a raw first draft, the flags tend to be too many.
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Turn on Grammar Focus from the toolbar.
A dedicated icon in the editor. The text is analysed and the flags appear as colored highlights, grouped by type.
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Scroll through the flags.
Click each highlight to see the reason and the suggested alternative. Accept, reject, or ignore.
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Turn it off when you're done.
One click and you're back to clean writing. Nothing stays active, nothing disturbs you in the next session.
Use Grammar Focus after closing a chapter, not during. Revision is a different activity from writing and deserves its own moment. A useful cycle: write in the morning, revise in the afternoon, Grammar Focus in the evening.
What it does NOT do
It doesn't correct for you. It doesn't apply automatic changes even to flags you ignore. It doesn't turn your prose into "average" prose. If you keep a long sentence for rhythm, it stays long. If you use broken syntax to mimic speech, Narraya flags it but doesn't touch it.
Grammar correction, done well, is an act of care — like polishing a piece of furniture before it leaves the workshop. But the workshop isn't an automatic factory, and the furniture isn't mass-produced goods. Grammar Focus is a tool in your hands, not a master who corrects silently while you try to write.
Curious to see it in action? The live demo includes a chapter with Grammar Focus ready to activate, so you can see what to expect.