In times of distrust, misinformation, and skepticism, you may be wondering how to present your sources in a Google Doc. Did you type it yourself, copy and paste from a browser-based source, copy and paste from an unknown source, or is it from generative AI?

You may not think this is an important clarification, but if writing is a crucial part of your livelihood or life, you definitely want to cite your sources.

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This is where the new Grammarly feature comes into play.

Authorship proactively follows the writing process

The new feature is called “Authorship” and according to Grammarly “Grammarly Authorship” is a set of features that help users demonstrate their text sources in a Google Doc. When you enable Authorship in Google Docs, it proactively tracks the writing process as you write.”

I tested Grammarly Authorship and was impressed with the accuracy. For example, I used it for this document, which contains text inserted directly from the Grammarly website. Authorship recognized all of the text I originally entered, but marked a sentence I copied from the Grammarly website as added from Grammarly’s PR release about Authorship. Needless to say, I was impressed. Even in the beta version the function was correct.

The feature is currently in beta and works in Google Docs via Grammarly for Chrome or Microsoft Edge. In other words, for this to work, you must be using a Chromium-based browser. Grammarly Authorship is available on all plans (Free, Premium, Pro and Education) and is very easy to activate.

How to enable and use authorship in Grammarly

You need to enable the feature in Google Docs by clicking the little fingerprint icon at the bottom right of a new Google Doc (you must have the Grammarly plugin installed first) and then clicking “Track Writing Activity.” You will then need to give Grammarly access to your clipboard so that the add-on can record the sources used in your document.

Once you click the button, Authorship will start tracking your document. At any time, you can click the same fingerprint icon and then click View Report to view the statistics for your current document.

The report tells you the percentage of what you entered, what was copied from a known source, and what was copied from an unknown source. I was able to defeat authorship by pasting content from Opera’s Aria AI that was marked as unknown source. However, given that this is still in beta, that shouldn’t be a surprise.

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For anyone interested in credentialing sources used in Google Docs, Grammarly Authorship should be considered a must-have.

Other than installing the Grammarly browser extension, you don’t need to install anything else to use Authorship in Google Docs.