There are numerous writing tools out there that can dramatically improve our writing skills. Of course, not all of these tools are created equal, so knowing the best writing tools for you is essential. There are usually two types of writing tools: free and paid. Freelance writers often find themselves frustrated by the complexities of online publishing platforms, so trying out one or more of these free online content writing tools will give you an amazing head start.
In this article, I will be sharing with you the best tools for writing.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a writing enhancement tool that goes beyond your basic spell checkers. It includes spell, punctuation, grammar, and plagiarism checker. It also has a vocabulary enhancement tool.
This writing tool scans your text for more than 250 types of grammar mistakes in six distinct writing genres. This tool also provides detailed explanations for all your errors and weekly progress reports. It’s available as a browser extension, a Microsoft Office add-in, a desktop app, and a website.
Bit.ai
Our go-to document editor is Bit, a new-age cloud-based document collaboration tool. If you are looking for a new, advanced yet simple editor, look no further!
The core value proposition of Bit’s editor is the ability to work collaboratively with your peers on writing projects. Multiple people can simultaneously collaborate on a Bit document in real-time.
If you are working on a solo project and need suggestions and feedback from fellow writers or friends, you can invite them to the doc. Your friends or team can then highlight changes, add comments, and can even chat with you, without leaving the document.
Bit’s editor stands out when you’re putting together research or need to include various types of digital assets inside of your documents. You can easily add weblinks that automatically transform into visual bookmarks that include an image, title, and description that you can edit making it the best writing tool in the market.
You can also add rich embeds like YouTube videos, Google Spreadsheets, Twitter tweets, and much more directly into your Bit document by simply adding a shareable weblink.
However, what makes a great writing tool is its editor. Bit’s smart, minimal editor is perfect for distraction-free writing. No more word-styled ribbon with confusing and distracting tabs and buttons.
Just start typing on a blank canvas and you’re good to go. If you need to format the text, just highlight the word/sentence/paragraph and you’re presented with a hidden set of formatting tools!
All in all, Bit is a modern-day editor that makes writing fun and distraction-free!
Read more: Best Collaborative Document Editing Software in 2021
Hemingway
Want to make your writing more effective? Use Hemingway editor to write or just copy-paste your doc into the editor. Hemingway will then analyze each word and give you suggestions to improve your sentences.
The writing tool highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors, adverbs, passive voice, and suggest alternatives to improve sentence flow and readability. This is a great app to make your writing more professional!
Read more: 9 Essential Writing Tips Every Writer Must Use!
Coschedule
If you are a blogger, marketer, or copywriter, you very well understand the importance of writing an effective headline. Headlines are your content’s first introduction to the world and are often the primary reason why people decide to consume your content, making them an integral part of the writing experience.
This writing tool claims to be the “#1 Headline Analyzer” on the internet. Coschedule lets you write headlines that drive more revenue, shares, click-through rates, and search results. You can use Coschedule Headline Analyzer for writing headlines for your blog posts, email subject lines, or social media messages.
The tool analyzes the overall structure, grammar, length, keyword density, and readability of your headline, and even provides Google search and email subject line previews.
Yoast
If you write for the public, you want to make your content as discoverable as possible on search engines. This is where SEO comes in. But SEO can be confusing, especially when Google continues changing its SEO technology in hopes of providing its users with better search results.
If you want to improve your content’s visibility through SEO, Yoast is a great writing tool
Yoast SEO boasts of 3+ million users worldwide, making it one of the most trusted SEO plugins out there. Yoast SEO offers a lot of features to help improve your content and make it search engine friendly.
Features like the ability to add focus keywords, meta description, rich snippets, and XML sitemaps help in optimizing your content and increase your chances to appear on the 1st page of Google. We highly recommend this tool!
Read more: How To Write A Blog Post Readers Will Love?
The Most Dangerous Writing App
Here’s a fun writing tool!
Ever procrastinated writing? This is the app for you. The Most Dangerous Writing App is a writing tool that deletes everything you have written if you stopped typing after a pre-determined timer.
If you think you are struggling with writer’s block or are easily distracted by funny tweets and memes, this might just be the tool you need. Did we call this app fun? Oops, we meant scary!!
Daily Page
You know what’s the secret to improving your writing? Writing.
The more you write, the less judgmental you become of your thoughts and the more “in the zone” you get. If you want to get into the habit of routine writing and never have to struggle with writer’s block again, Daily Page is the tool for you.
Daily Page emails you a writing prompt every morning, forcing you to start typing. You then have the entire day to write your response.
This writing tool acts as your close friend who motivates you every morning to get out of bed and start penning down your thoughts. It’s a great app to build a routine and structure to your writing habit.
Read more: Power Words To Make You Stand Out From Competition
Moleskine, Field Notes
I don’t keep a journal, because I don’t have the patience or discipline or interest to write only for myself. But I do use these tools to record minutiae, ephemera, and thoughts and observations I might be able to use somewhere, somehow, someday.
The pages of my Moleskine notebook and pocket-sized Field Notes read like one long, weird shopping list of things I might source from a Content Store, if such a thing as a Content Store existed: blog post ideas, projects, things I read that I think are cool, words I need to look up later.
My last entry: “Bowdlerize—?”
(It’s a verb that means “to remove material that is considered improper or offensive from a text or account, especially with the result that it becomes weaker or less effective.”)
Why take notes? Because I approach content with a mind like water, as I learned as a journalist. The mind-like-water content creator finds stories and allows them to flow into and reside in the crevices of the mind. I’m down with that. But because I also have a mind that ideas easily flow out of, I need someplace to…. well, pool them.
Why not some other online tool, like Evernote? Writing an idea down in my own hand gives that idea more context, weight, and heft.
I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the pen, or the muscle memory of it, but all I know is that when I read it later, I’m better able to recall where I was and what I was thinking when I wrote it down. Also, I have a self-diagnosed allergy* to Evernote, as Bryan Kramer and I discussed earlier this week.
* (WebMD confirmed as much.)
* (I’m kidding.)
* (Kind of.)
Trello
Trello is a kind of project management tool that takes the place of Post-it Notes and highlighters or scraps of paper or my pocket lists. I’ve newly committed to Trello to help me create more consistently, and to keep things on track. I figured if I include it here you’ll hold me accountable, as well.
Blog post or column ideas that move from fuzzy notion to reality get added to a Trello card on a Trello board I titled “Idears.” The title is partially a nod to my Boston roots, partially a reminder to not take things so seriously, and partially a reminder to create content I love.
Google is my primary research tool, and the first place I start rooting around for data to give a story context and credibility. Data before declaration, in other words.
All data is not created equal, of course. So I try and seek out primary and reputable sources. Like what? Like…
- Major media outlets (NY Times, Washington Post)
- Government agencies
- Original research reports
- Well-known experts
- Authoritative nongovernment agencies (Pew Research, for one)
Beware of hidden agendas or what else might be fueling a one person’s (or agency’s) point of view. That doesn’t mean the source is not credible, but you need to be aware of the agenda (and disclose the source as well as potential vested or conflicts of interest).
Two other Google places I sometimes check, depending on the topic:
Google Trends, because it allows me to see what others have been searching for over time, graph how a term has been searched for via Google , and pinpoint where those searchers were located. Trends can help inform the specific words or language I might use in a post.
Think with Google is a research hub that aggregates case studies, articles, infographics, interviews, and other things for 14 industries. The site is updated weekly. I like subscribing to the newsletter, because there’s sometimes a nugget or two in there worth adding to Pocket. (See next tool.)
Pocket is a virtual pocket for collecting treasures. It allows me to collect examples I want to research or reference later, in a post or in a presentation. I used to email myself links, and then promptly lose them in my bloated inbox.
I like the way Pocket allows me to tag items for easy searching; that’s helpful for me if I’m using it to save content for specific presentations or columns I know I’ll be creating. For example, I have a whole bunch of great videos tagged “Wistia” because I’m presenting at WistiaFest later this month.
Microsoft Word
I write in Word, on my laptop, using it to create my Ugly First Draft. Here’s how:
First, I create a list of things I want to include in a piece. It’s like a grocery list—only instead of kale, soy milk, yogurt… it’s a list of the key points I want to make. The list for this post originally looked like this:
Then I go back and flesh out each point into sentences and paragraphs, following my Writing GPS.
Writing is thinking for me—so I never dictate a first draft. That’d be like asking me to drive a car blindfolded: I could do it for a bit, I suppose. But it would quickly get pretty problematic.
I also don’t use any productivity tools that offer clean minimalist writing experiences or manipulate you into a distraction-free zone.
My life is one big distraction for me, so I just deal with it. (That said, I get almost all of my writing done on Saturday and Sunday mornings, when the life part is relatively quiet.)
I use Scrivener writing software for longer projects, because it’s great for composing, structuring, and manipulating long and difficult documents. But it’s totally overkill for most of the shorter content I write.
StayFocus
Imagine- you have a great idea for your blog, you have it all mapped out in your head, and you can’t write fast enough and show it to the world.
A few seconds later, you find yourself watching cat videos on YouTube your best friend emailed you and you forget all about your awesome blog post! Sad, isn’t it?
Distractions play a huge role in hampering our progress in life, and it plays an even bigger role when you are trying to stay focused and write.
This is why we recommend you try out StayFocusd, a Chrome extension that blocks the websites you ask it to and prevents you from getting distracted.
StayFocusd increases your productivity and forces you to focus on your writing by limiting the amount of time that you can spend on time-wasting websites.
It’s highly customizable as you can set it to block entire websites, subdomains, or even specific in-page content (videos, games, images, forms, etc). Once your allotted time has been used up, the sites you have blocked will be inaccessible for the rest of the day.
Conclusion
Writing tools are both important and useful. Such tools can help us to write through a better understanding of the style we wish to adopt. Just as a hammer can drive a nail into a piece of wood, a writing tool can help you to go beyond the mere gesture of putting words together.