Content writing isn’t easy. You have to balance creativity with research, communication with grammar, and so much more. Sometimes it feels like you need to be a master of everything. So where do you start? What content writing tool should you use? There are literally hundreds of options out there. With this post, I hope you can get the best out of them all.
Below are tools that I’ve used myself which I believe will dramatically improve your content writing (no matter what kind of content you write). They’ll also make your process easier too.
After the Deadline
After the Deadline is an online editor that checks for grammar, spelling, and style errors.
The site uses contextual spell checking, so you’re less likely to miss words that are technically spelled correctly, but are used in the wrong context.
The software is free for personal use and easily integrates with WordPress, so frequent bloggers and business owners can use it automatically in their blogging processes.
Ginger
Ginger offers an innovative program that integrates with your browser to make sure you never make grammatical or spelling errors.
The software follows you everywhere you want/need it to online, so even if you’re writing a Facebook post, you’ll get notified of mistakes as you make them so you can correct them.
It’s useful for content writers who need to produce a large amount of content on a variety of online platforms.
Webspellchecker
Webspellchecker offers two different content editing options to writers.
First, it there’s a feature that corrects your writing as you type.
This program integrates with your browser and underlines mistakes as you go. You can hover over the mistake to see what needs to be corrected.
The second option checks your work in a separate window, so your original writing isn’t changed.
This is great for protecting your draft from “robot mistakes.” The new window offers corrections that you can either accept or ignore.
Ninja Essays
Ninja Essays is an online content writing and editing services company.
The site only hires writers with Masters degrees and PhDs, so they offer top quality editing to their customers.
If you have content that really needs to be accurate (even more than an average piece), you need to ensure you have real professionals edit it.
They’ll edit your content for big mistakes like missing concepts, wordiness, and confusing sentences, as well as small (but important) details like typos, spacing errors, and spelling errors.
SlickWrite
SlickWrite is an online spellchecker.
You just type your content directly into the checker (or copy and paste it in) and the site will point out errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, structure, tense, and more.
What sets SlickWrite apart from other checkers is that it lets you customize the settings for things you either don’t want corrected or to isolate your corrections as you go.
For instance, you could do one round of editing where you only care about structure and grammar and a final round of editing where you correct the spelling and other small details.
ProWritingAid
What It Does: ProWritingAid is a web editor and plugin that will clean up your writing by detecting grammar and spelling mistakes, plagiarism and contextual errors. It also analyzes your writing and produces reports on writing style, sentence length, grammar, and repeated words and phrases.
Price: There’s a limited free version. If you upgrade to the premium membership, you can edit in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, access a desktop app and Chrome add-ins, and — best of all — lose the word-count cap.
A monthly membership is $20, a year’s membership is $79, or go the whole hog and buy a lifetime membership for $240.
Who It’s For: Anyone, including students, authors, freelancers or ESL writers.
How It Works: Click on “Try the editing tool,” create a free account, then paste in your text.
The Best Part: ProWritingAid has a premium option, but most of the areas you’ll want checked are available for free.
What Would Make It Better: Though ProWritingAid checks grammar, I slipped in a your/you’re mistake without getting flagged. I wasn’t overly fond of the tool’s inability to work offline, but its overall functionality is hard to argue with.
Our Recommendation: Use ProWritingAid in the self-editing stage to guide your edits.
More Details: For an in-depth explainer of ProwritingAid’s free and premium versions, check out our full ProwritingAid review.
AutoCrit
What It Does: AutoCrit analyzes your manuscript to identify areas for improvement, including pacing and momentum, dialogue, strong writing, word choice and repetition. Depending on what plan you choose, you can also compare your writing to that of popular authors like Danielle Steel or James Patterson.
Price: Three different plans are available: the “Free Forever” plan, which is free; the “Professional” for $30, or the “Annual Professional” for $297 per year. The latter offers a built-in discount of two months free every year.
Who It’s For: Fiction and non-fiction writers.
How It Works: Paste your text into the online dashboard or upload a document and click on AutoCrit’s tabs to see its analysis. This tool uses data from various genres and more than a million books to provide a word-by-word level analysis of your writing and shows easy ways to improve the readability of your work.
The Best Part: I spent the most time in the “Compare to Fiction” tab, which provides a comprehensive look at common issues. It highlighted my tendency to start sentences with “and” and “but,” and identified my most repeated words. I felt like I learned something about my writing, and that’s something I don’t think I could say about some other tools.
What Would Make It Better: A more accurate definition of passive voice. It highlights any use of the “be” and “had” verbs, neither of which fully capture passive voice (you need a past participle in addition to a “be” verb), and many active voice constructions were falsely labeled as passive.
Our Recommendation: AutoCrit is great to guide your edits in the self-editing stage. It’s best used for developmental edits, rewrites and avoiding common writing no-nos.
More Details: For an in-depth explainer of Autocrit’s Free Forever and paid versions, check out our full Autocrit review.
Grammarly
What It Does: Grammarly is a grammar checker and proofreader.
Price: A limited version is available for free, and Grammarly also offers a number of other free services such as a wordiness checker and tone detection. The full-featured premium service starts at $11.66 per month, and the business plan starts at $12.50 per member per month.
Who It’s For: Anyone, including writers, business people and academics.
How It Works: Copy and paste or upload your text into the online dashboard and let Grammarly work its magic. It flags potential errors, gives suggestions and provides an explanation so you can learn why it suggests the change. There’s also a free Grammarly Add-in available for Microsoft Word and a Grammarly for Chrome extension that’s also compatible with Google Docs.
The Best Part: Grammarly is easy to use and pointed out a vocabulary issue or two that none of the other tools did. It’s superior to Microsoft Word’s grammar checker. Its synonym suggestion feature is pretty nifty, too.
What Would Make It Better: As an editor, I work with many styles of writing, so it’d be helpful if Grammarly provided the option to switch between a few to ensure writers receive fitting suggestions to improve their work. For example, if you don’t use the Oxford comma, the editor will prompt you to do so, which isn’t right for all writing styles.
Our Recommendation: Grammarly is best for the final proofreading stage, or for people who want to learn more about the technical aspects of grammar. If you’re an editor or strong writer, you might find yourself ignoring more flagged items than you fix.
More Details: For an in-depth explainer of Grammarly’s free and premium versions, check out our full Grammarly review.
Hemingway Editor
What It Does: Hemingway Editor is like a spellchecker, but for style. It provides a readability score — the lowest grade level someone would need to understand your text — and analyzes your writing to identify areas for improvement. Because it doesn’t require an internet connection, you can use it anywhere.
Price: Free online, and a one-time payment of $19.99 for the desktop version, which is available for both Mac and PC.
Who It’s For: Anyone
How It Works: Paste your text into the dashboard and scan for highlighted sections of text. The highlighted text is color coded depending on your area of improvement, whether it’s hard-to-read sentences, the presence of adverbs, or passive voice.
The Best Part: In addition to providing examples on how to fix passive voice or complex phrases, Hemingway Editor also identifies how many “-ly” adverbs and passive voice constructions you’ve used and suggests a maximum number based on your word count.
In my prologue, for example, I had one use of passive voice, and Hemingway Editor suggested aiming for six uses or fewer — which I nailed. These recommendations reinforce the idea that not all adverbs or passive voice constructions are bad, and that’s something other tools miss.
What Would Make It Better: Hemingway Editor was the cleanest and easiest to use of the free editing tools, but it’s not a true grammar checker or proofreader. Even though it’s not meant to catch grammar and spelling mistakes, any editing application that catches those mistakes is instantly more attractive.
Our Recommendation: Use Hemingway Editor to increase the readability of your writing and identify problem sentences during the copyediting stage, but supplement your efforts with a grammar and spell checker.
WordRake
What It Does: WordRake cuts out the unnecessary words or phrases that creep into your writing. It works with Microsoft Word and Outlook, depending on which license you purchase. I tested the Microsoft Word version.
Price: The Microsoft Word version is available for Mac or Windows, and you’ll pay $129 for a year or $259 for three years. The Microsoft Word and Outlook package version is only available for Windows, and it costs $199 for a year or $399 for three.
Who It’s For: Bloggers, authors and editors using Microsoft Word or Outlook.
How It Works: WordRake is an add-in for Microsoft products and requires you to install the program before using it, though it’s as easy as following the instructions. Select the text you want to edit, then use the WordRake add-in. It uses Track Changes to suggest edits, which you can accept or reject.
The Best Part: WordRake is as close as you can get to an automatic editor. It appealed to me more as an editor than a writer, but it’s great at eliminating unnecessary phrases and words that bog down your writing.
What Would Make It Better: I threw a your/you’re mistake in to see if WordRake would catch it. It didn’t, even though Microsoft Word flagged it. If WordRake could catch common writing mistakes like your/you’re or their/they’re/there in addition to unnecessary words, it’d be a hard tool to beat.
Our Recommendation: WordRake is a great tool for the copyediting stage. Verbose writers, authors wanting to cut down on editing costs or editors looking to speed up their editing process will most benefit from WordRake. Watch out if you’re running Word on a slow computer: WordRake could increase your load time.
PapersGear
PapersGear is an essay writing company that can also assist you as a business owner.
Hire them to either help with content editing, formatting, and proofreading, or help actually writing your content.
They’re especially helpful if you produce large quantities of content on a regular basis, as they can get to know your style and deliver the on-brand writing you need when you need it.
1Checker
1Checker is a free site that checks your grammar and spelling. It offers a basic online checker as well as plugins for Word, Outlook, and your browser.
1Checker also provides document templates.
However, in order to access the features of the site, you need to sign up. No credit card or payment is required, but you won’t be able to just Google and go.
GrammarBase
GrammarBase is a free online grammar checker. Unlike some other websites, it doesn’t require you to sign up for anything or provide any contact information. You just type in your content and it underlines all the mistakes.
It’s more complex than some other checkers. Instead of just checking for grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., it also checks for more obscure mistakes, like dangling modifiers, unclear antecedents, quantifiers, and more.
GrammarBase is free and doesn’t require you to download any software to use it. However, because no software is downloaded, you won’t be able to see corrections as you write in your browser or Word Processor.
Essays Capital
Essays Capital is a custom writing and editing service. They can proofread your marketing materials, website, blog content, and anything else you have.
They also offer comprehensive edits for grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and structure.
They give formatting assistance for most projects as well.
Plus, they can help you write your content if you need some extra help, or your writing workload is too much to handle.
ProofreadBot
ProofreadBot offers a unique opportunity for users. You can submit an error to the site to gain 2500 free words (Otherwise, the site charges you to have your writing checked).
The site is constantly expanding, and new mistakes are added every day.
Mistakes are underlined, and you have the option of choosing between potential corrections or getting a detailed explanation of the mistake and why it needs to be corrected.
This extra feature is very helpful for people who are actively interested in improving their writing, and not just having it corrected.
It may not be free, but it’s very affordable. Proofreading packages start at $5 for 50,000 words and increase up to $35 for 500,000 words.
Conclusion
Content writing is the important aspect for any website. The content of your website can make or break your business. Where are you going to find the time to write all of the articles for your website? That’s where content writing tools can help.