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What Is the Best Word Editing Software — and Why Is It Important to Use?
Updated: Nov 12, 2020
A writer with no editor (or editing software) is like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich without the peanut butter. It’s just incomplete.
No matter how talented of a writer someone is, editing is part of the creation process. Without editing, thoughts can come across jumbled, unclear and clunky—which does not create a pleasurable reading experience.
Editors improve my writing. It is a luxury to have someone to talk through your sentences with and to test out sentence structure and flow. But, like I said, editors are a luxury.
Can't afford an in-house editor? I have found, and diligently use, two word editing software tools that help me step up my writing.
ProWriting Aid
One of the best features of ProWriting Aid is that is both an extensive grammar and spelling checker and a teacher. It sounds like 2020, but the software is a writing mentor. The software’s easy-to-use interface makes it easy, and painless to edit your words. From passive verbs to style inconsistencies, ProWriting Aid’s extensive checker intuitively improves your writing.
The platform is a combination of a grammar checker and style editor that generates 20 in-depth reports that analyze your writing. The 20 in-depth reports include repetitiveness, vague wording, sentence length variation, over-dependence on adverbs, passive voice, over-complicated sentence constructions and more.
The Sticky Sentence report is my favorite. Sticky sentences contain too many common words and slow readers down, according to ProWriting Aid. This feature is fantastic when writing quick, catchy content for my small business clients. After a glaring grammar mistake, a concerning writing faux pas is writing that is too complex and difficult to read.
ProWriting Aid has another feature focused on readability. One of the first reports generated is your writing’s readability measures, which are calculated using a combination of syllables per word and words per sentence.
ProWriting Aid is an excellent resource for copywriters and freelance writers writing for businesses. The software acts as a sturdy editor who will not let you punish something that is too difficult to read.
ProWriting Aid integrates with Microsoft Office, Google Docs, Scrivener, Open Office, and Final Draft. Users can also pick from browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari.
ProWriting Aid offers three levels of subscriptions: monthly, annual and lifetime. To learn more, visit.
Grammarly
Grammarly can be your go-to writing assistant. The artificial intelligence (AI)-powered product
Compose clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly’s AI-powered writing assistant alerts you to spelling and grammar mistakes in real-time.
One of the coolest aspects of Grammarly is how it works. The software uses different approaches, such as advanced machine learning and deep learning, to pick up on your writing errors. The software flags potential issues and offers context-specific suggestions for grammar, wordiness, punctuation, spelling and usage, style and more.
Grammarly’s tone detector is one of my favorite features. The tone detection feature shows you how your writing is sounding. Is your article sounding too formal when you want to sound casual? Or is your blog article coming off a little too perky when you are trying to strike a more informational tone? This premium feature sets your writing up to meet and exceed reader expectations and needs.
Grammarly supports multiple browser extensions, and users can take advantage of the software in Microsoft Word and Outlook and Google Docs.
The software comes with three payment options: free, premium and business. For more information, visit.
Why Do I Need to Use One of These Tools?
Regardless of which software that takes your writing to the next level, taking the time to edit your writing is just as important as writing. Your writing conveys your knowledge and expertise to build your credibility and authority. If your blog article or social media post is plagued with grammar issues, potential clients/readers are less likely to trust what you are saying.
Writing is hard enough. These tools can make it easier, so why not test them out?