Man sits at desk editing. Title: "3 Tools for Editing Content"

Originally published February 27, 2022

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A writer is only as good as their editing tools. 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, relying on my raw abilities in the spelling and grammar arena wouldn't fly. I could research an article for months, but my credibility would go out the window with one dumb typo.

Lucky for me and everyone else, online content editing tools for grammar checking take the guesswork out. Since I've already written about my favorite content-writing tools, I wanted to share PFC's editing tool recommendations!

In This Article:

Our Recommendations

To clarify. These programs don't just remind you to cross your t's and dot your i's. Any word processor worth its salt will tell you to do that. Instead, these content editing tools are here to help you with everything from paragraph length to pacing.

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

We'll go through the programs' features, pricing, and integrations. All these tools have free online grammar and punctuation checkers; one offers a free rewriting tool.

#1: Grammarly

You've probably already heard of Grammarly. It's one of the most popular grammar and structure editing tools for a reason.

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

Pricing and Features

Grammarly highlights its suggestions in your writing and allows you to one-click-fix some of the most blatant issues. 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 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 a dedicated web application exists, many other ways exist to use the program.

Grammarly is available as a download for Windows and Mac, giving 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.

Downsides

There are only a couple of issues with Grammarly.

First, there is no one-time purchase option, making it impractical for those who only want to use it occasionally.

Second, while the integrations are nice, they can offer a false sense of security. For instance, I've often noticed that the Grammarly integration in Google Docs will catch fewer issues than the dedicated Grammarly app.

As for the quality of the edits, overall, they are excellent, with a few consistent issues. Sometimes, Grammarly will advise you to cut out so many words your sentence loses meaning. It also prioritizes brevity over natural writing. For example, it consistently recommends saying "much" instead of "a lot of," even when that's not grammatically correct.

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 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 writing to your favorite author! For example, see how often Faulkner opened a sentence with a subordinate clause vs. you.

ProWritingAid 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. It also allows you to 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 is only a free and premium version of ProWritingAid, but the cost varies depending on whether you pay monthly 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 termbase, style guide, centralized user management, and team analytics.

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