Great Writing Tools for Any Writer
Some Add-ins and Websites I use for Writing
I am new to Medium as a reader and as a writer, but I have been writing my entire life. I went to a creative writing magnet high school to argue for overly baroque writing in the face of my Hemingway loving teacher. I just knew I was a literary genius, and she was full of it. I wasn’t, and she wasn’t. Still, I wouldn’t say I like Hemingway. I went to college as a history major, and those professors love two things: students reading and students writing. Sporadic was the habit after that as fatherhood, career, and marriage(s) re-wired my priorities. COVID-19, for me as for so many others, gave me substantial time to pick up old habits. Writing won.
I confess I am an OK editor. I have an odd flare. I’ve tried to step out of my comfort zone of twelve semi-colons and paragraph-long sentences. I dig 18th-century writing flourishes. Even this article is a self-challenge to write something helpful and clear.
Since I am just an OK editor, I came to rely on the helpful tools for proofreading, editing, and grammar shaming. Using these tools freed me up to worry about the message and style — some, if not all, these tools you may have heard of or used. I have grown to rely heavily on each as my second set of eyes. Still, my articles aren’t perfect, and I occasionally edit post-publication. Still, the rough draft polishing turnaround is reduced substantially with these tools.
What are my tools? In no order of importance, I use Grammarly, Ginger, Writefull, and Wordrake as Microsoft Word add-ins. I use websites less often, but I always use Grammark, Hemingway Editor, and less often After the Deadline. Let’s look at each.
Grammarly
I have yet to read an article about writing aids that don’t mention Grammarly. Grammarly’s reputation is well deserved. I have used it for years, both the free and premium versions. I recommend the premium or paid version of any app I use but use what you can afford. Grammarly at full horsepower eats alive grammar errors, passive voice, out of place words, style inconsistency. The list goes on — dozens of features. The feature I enjoy the most is the “Adjust Goals” feature, new since I last used Grammarly for college two years ago. It has multiple levels of audience and technical complexity you can set the goals to; for Medium, this is great. I publish from light-this-to in-depth, lengthy pieces about history, education, or current affairs, and tuning what Grammarly writer shames me for has helped find not just errors but put me in the “write” headspace. Last pun, I promise. Grammarly is robust if you want to use it in a web browser, email, or on your iPad or phone. It’s a one-stop-shop.
Ginger
Ginger is recent, and I’m not sold yet. I like the premise of the Word add-in. When you click the Ginger add-in, the tool does a line by line scan of your document and finds recommended grammatical and tone replacements. Ginger wants the user to conduct the writing inside its desktop app, but I am more at home using Office 365 and don’t want to venture outside that space. Ginger also opens an unobtrusive top of the screen-oriented menu of some of its other features, such as speak aloud and writing trainer, which keep your Word Ribbon clutter-free. Although read-aloud functionality is an easy to find resource, Word has it, accessing it on the fly is nice. I recommend Ginger as a double checker for Grammarly. I have seen its main strength is running the tool before doing any editing and letting it help with tone and wording before committing to surgical editing with these other tools and sites. I have the one-year premium to Ginger, and the jury will deliberate on its quality.
Writefull
I wanted to give this one quick mention. Writefull is a useful tool. Mostly. I am not convinced yet that it is the right tool for an article writer like me. Still, its actual functionality seems more suited to the academic world, specifically hard sciences. I run Writefull at the end of editing for one reason: it analyzes your document and picks up words with multiple spellings or uses and feeds a “percentage of use” from its vast database of material from other authors. I recommend giving it a try and use it if you like it.
Wordrake
Oh, Wordrake. How I love you so. Wordrake is a phrasing tool and a godsend for me. Wordrake “rakes” your document and suggests re-arranging and strikes of odd phrasing and superfluous words. It’s a simple tool that does a powerful job. Although I have not yet tried it, Wordrake does have a complexity checker. I also like it integrates the grammar settings from Word Editor, which allows it to closely align with the native checking rules of the software I use to write. Wordrake is awkward to install and a bear to transfer to a new PC or Mac, but it is 100% worth your effort.
Websites
I will not give dedicated space to the websites I shared above, because while they are helpful, they are not integrated tools. This isn’t a bad thing, but it adds the extra steps of copy/paste and some web browsing to utilize them.
Grammark is an open-source writing aide with a plain interface and easy to understand suggestions. You paste a document, and it looks for about a dozen issues. These issues are not low-level grammar issues and more to do with clarity and style.
Hemingway Editor is the internet’s meanest editor. As with Grammark, Hemingway Editor is looking at the complexity and clarity of writing and is best used as a style and flow tool more so than a grammar tool. I don’t use this one often unless I’m not confident in the way something is flowing and think some harsh reality can help me clear it up.
Last, After the Deadline checks for spelling, grammar, and style. I like this one because it is color-coded and can quickly tell me how my work is looking. I run through websites after I use my add-in tools, and this one is my favorite of these three. After the Deadline is, like the others, a clean, basic webpage that is copy/paste.
There are hundreds of tools and sites out there for a writer. Plus, apps aplenty of you are using an iPad or Mac. I find I’m always coming back to Microsoft Office just because of long term familiarity but use the writing software you are comfortable with. While websites will work for anyone, the tools I use are used as Word add-ins, so I can’t speak to their use with other interfaces.
Keep writing!
