3 Tools for Editing Content — People First Content

Webster ended the golden days of writing words however you wanted. And — confession time — if you put a gun to my head and told me to spell “conscientious,” I wouldn’t even try.

As a professional content writer, my natural skills just wouldn’t fly. There is nothing like coming across a misspelled word in an article to make you doubt if that person actually knows what they’re talking about.

Luckily, there is a massive selection of tools for grammar checking online. Since I’ve already written about my favorite tools for writing content, I thought I’d bring it home and share PFC’s recommendations for rewriting tools!

Our Recommendations

To clarify. These tools don’t just remind you to cross your t’s and dot your i’s. Instead, these are here to help you with everything from paragraph length to pacing.

Rewriting isn’t just about fixing the squiggly lines; it’s about creating cohesive, easy-to-read sentences and paragraphs (while also correcting all the times you wrote ‘the’ twice and didn’t notice).

We’ll go through the programs’ features, pricing, and integrations. These all have free online grammar and punctuation checkers, and one offers a free rewriting tool.

And a quick note: none of these are sponsored picks! We’re just fans.

#1: Grammarly

You’ve probably already heard of Grammarly, and for a good reason. It’s one of the most popular grammar and structure writing tools for a reason.

Editing your writing is a very streamlined and intuitive process. You can either write in the web application or import your document to Grammarly’s web app.

Pricing and Features

They highlight their suggestions and offer a box of instant fixes. You then hop from suggestion to suggestion, accepting or ignoring. Finally, they give you an overall score on the side that updates as you fix errors. This grades you on correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery.

There are three tiers with Grammarly.

They offer a free tier, where you can check:

• Grammar, spelling, and punctuation (you really would be surprised at what your word processor will miss)
• Concision by suggesting shorter ways to say the same thing
• And tone by telling you what your text sounds like (formal, informal, and so on)

The premium tier includes those features while checking for consistency, fluency, formatting, sentence variety, politeness/formality, and inclusiveness.

They also offer suggestions for increasing clarity, improving vocabulary, and varying your sentences.

This tier also checks to see if you’ve accidentally plagiarized, which happens way more often than you’d think.

The business tier adds a style guide, brand tone, analytics, and support features for teams 3–149.

Integrations

Grammarly shines in this area. While there is a dedicated web application, there are many other ways to use the program.

Grammarly is available as a download for Windows and Mac, where it’ll give you suggestions in different programs. In addition, there are browser extensions for all the major browsers. And there are also keyboards available for your Apple or Android device.

Thoughts

Grammarly is an excellent option for those looking for speed, simplicity, and cross-platform support! The plagiarism checker is handy, and I use it for practically every article I write.

#2: ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid is a powerful tool for every kind of writer, whether you are a student, blogger, or professional. It provides feedback on your writing and helps you improve your writing skills by giving feedback and examples of mistakes.

While Grammarly is more streamlined, ProWritingAid has a lot of customization options for different use cases.

One fun feature is comparing your own writing to your favorite author! For example, see how many times Faulkner opened a sentence with a subordinate clause vs. you.

Features

https://prowritingaid.com/en/App/Features

The editing experience is similar to Grammarly (highlighted with suggestions when you hover), but they provide a lot of different ways to check your document. There’s real-time scanning that works as you do and features that check sentence length, pacing, and other structural issues.

There’s an option for you to compile your favorite editing features in the House tab, so you can check just for what you care about.

Reading Reports provides a lot of data, which is fantastic for longer pieces.

Price

ProWritingAid has a fully-featured free web version. But it has a 500-word limit and no desktop option.

There’s only the free and the premium version of ProWritingAid, but the cost varies depending on whether you pay months or yearly.

They also have a lifetime payment option, which I love in a world of subscription models!

The Team version has all the individual features plus a term base, style guide, centralized user management, and team analytics.

All the purchases include a 14-day money-back guarantee and a student discount of 20% off.

Integrations

ProWritingAid’s premium tier gives you access to a lot of different integrations. There are options for browsers, Google Docs, and Word.

The desktop application allows you to edit documents from various sources (including Scrivener). When you save the document in ProWritingAid, it modifies the source, saving you the hassle of importing.

The Word plugin is particularly well done, essentially recreating the desktop application within Word.

Thoughts

While I use Grammarly more when I want a quick once over, I use ProWritingAid to do a comprehensive edit. I also love the extent to which you can customize the editing style.

#3: Ginger

Ginger is an AI writing assistant that focuses on machine learning to stay current with the way language evolves. It has a strong focus on ESL writers and supports those with writing struggles.

Features

Ginger has the basic error correction level as the other two features, but it has some other elements that set it apart!

As an AI-powered program, Ginger gives you the ability to rephrase your sentences. This can be a huge benefit when you’re facing writer’s block or if you have too many similar sentences in a row.

This is similar to the Grammarly feature that points out wordy sentences, but Ginger takes it a step further, actively rephrasing your work.

Ginger also offers translation features! This makes it a unique one-stop-shop if you need that feature because it translates and corrects grammar all in one go. They support over 40 languages.

They offer a “personal trainer” that tracks your common mistakes to create quizzes and tests based on them.

Price

There is a free version, but it only provides limited versions of all Ginger’s features and doesn’t include translation services.

The premium service only has monthly pricing but unlocks unlimited versions of everything.

The business plan requires a minimum of three users. The main benefit is more centralized admin control.

There is a substantial discount for students and teachers with 70% off the price!

Integrations

Ginger is available for almost anything you could want.

It’s is available for Windows, Office, Mac, all major browsers, and iOS/Android.

Thoughts

While it’s not my preferred program, the translation and rephrasing features are fantastic, especially for those writing in their second language!

Final Thoughts

Any of these programs will be better than your run-of-the-mill word processor since the focus is just different. With all the content that’s out there nowadays, it’s the polished writing that sets you apart from the crowd, and these programs take the guesswork out.

If you have a business and don’t want to have to take the time to refine your content, we can help! At PFC, we care about producing high-quality content that fits your brand. So contact us and get better content today!

Originally published at https://www.peoplefirstcontent.com on February 27, 2022.