Resume Grammar Checker

About the resume grammar checker

A single typo can make a careful candidate look careless, and resumes are full of traps a normal spell checker handles badly. Bullets are sentence fragments by design, tense has to shift between your current and past jobs, and punctuation only has to be consistent, not textbook-correct. A general tool either flags all of that as wrong or misses it entirely.

This resume grammar checker is built around resume conventions. Paste your resume and it flags commonly misspelled resume words, repeated words, passive constructions, mixed verb tenses, inconsistent bullet punctuation, first-person pronouns, overused buzzwords, and very long sentences. It runs in your browser with transparent rules, so you can see exactly why each line was flagged.

How to use it

1. 1

   Paste your resume text

   Copy everything from your name to your last section, or upload your file. Keep the bullets as they are, since the checker reads bullet punctuation and opening verbs line by line.

2. 2

   Run the check

   Findings are grouped into spelling and word choice, voice, tense, and punctuation, with the highest-severity issues first. Each finding shows the words or lines that triggered it.

3. 3

   Fix the high-severity items first

   Misspellings and repeated words are the errors a recruiter is most likely to notice. Fix those, then work through passive voice and tense, which affect how strong your bullets sound.

4. 4

   Proofread once more by hand

   Read the resume aloud or have someone else read it. A rule-based check cannot tell whether a correctly spelled word is the right word, such as "manger" for "manager."

Resume grammar is different from regular grammar

A resume follows its own style. Most bullets are sentence fragments with an implied "I": "Led a team of 6" instead of "I led a team of 6." That is correct for a resume, and it is why general grammar tools tend to produce false alarms. What matters instead is that your choices are consistent and your verbs are strong.

These are the conventions most recruiters expect. You can break one deliberately, but you should break it everywhere, not in one bullet.

• No first-person pronouns. Drop "I," "me," and "my" from bullets and the summary.
• Start bullets with a verb. "Reduced invoice errors 30%" rather than "Invoice errors were reduced by 30%."
• Present tense for current duties, past tense for everything else, including finished projects in your current job.
• Numerals for numbers, such as "7 locations" and "$40K," because they are faster to scan.
• One punctuation style for bullets: either every bullet ends with a period or none do.

What this grammar checker flags and why

Each check targets a mistake that shows up often on resumes and that a reader actually notices. The rules are simple on purpose, so you can judge each flag yourself.

• Likely misspellings: a list of words resumes often get wrong, such as "managment," "recieved," "liason," and "oppurtunity."
• Repeated words: the same word twice in a row, like "to to," which spell checkers often skip.
• Passive constructions: phrases like "was implemented" or "were reduced" that hide who did the work.
• Mixed tenses: bullets that switch between "manage" and "managed" without a reason.
• Bullet punctuation: some bullets ending with periods and others without.
• Pronouns and buzzwords: repeated "I" and "my," plus phrases like "results-driven" that add no information.
• Long sentences and double spaces: sentences over about 35 words, and stray double spaces between words.

Tense, voice, and punctuation: quick rules

Tense: ask whether the work is still happening. "Manage a $1.2M budget" is ongoing, so present tense fits in your current role. "Launched a new vendor portal" is finished, so past tense is right even in your current job. Every earlier role uses past tense throughout.

Voice: active voice puts you at the front of the sentence and is shorter. "Costs were reduced by 12% through renegotiation" becomes "Renegotiated 4 supplier contracts, cutting costs 12%." A few passive phrases are normal and fine, such as "Promoted to shift lead after 8 months" or "Selected for the leadership program," because someone else took the action.

Punctuation: periods at the end of bullets are optional, but mixing styles looks careless. Use the same date format throughout, hyphenate compound modifiers like "cross-functional team," and capitalize job titles the same way in every role.

Mistakes no grammar checker will catch

The most damaging resume errors are often spelled correctly. A rule-based or general-purpose checker has no way to know that you meant "manager," not "manger," or that your phone number is missing a digit. Before you send any version, run through this short manual pass.

• Right spelling, wrong word: "lead" for the past tense "led," "form" for "from," "principle" for "principal," "affect" for "effect."
• Contact details: test your email address and phone number by reading each character, and click every link.
• Names and titles: company names, product names, and your own job titles spelled exactly as the organization writes them.
• Facts and numbers: dates that line up across roles and figures that match what you would say in an interview.
• A fresh pair of eyes: read the resume aloud, then ask someone else to read it. Changing the font size or printing it also helps you see it fresh.

Examples

Frequently asked questions