Elevate Your Writing: Save Time & Money with 5 of Our Favorite Free Editing Tools
Long gone are the days when writing was reserved for the upper echelon of society. They never should have been here to begin with. Sayonara! Thanks to the internet, the days of needing a formal education in literature or journalism in order to write effectively are gone as well. Today, you can write like an experienced writer whether you feel like one or not. We’re happy to introduce five tools that will undoubtedly lift your writing into a more magnificent and energetic version of itself. Let’s get started.
Hemingway Editor
Number one on our list is Hemingway Editor. You can have an amazing idea or story, but if you can’t explain it to the reader like they’re 12, it will greatly decrease the effectiveness and readability of your writing. A rule of thumb is to write at a sixth-grade reading level. But who remembers how to communicate with a 12-year-old unless they have one at home? Hemingway Editor eliminates the need for you to interact with a pre-teen, for writing purposes anyway. Simply copy and paste your writing into their site and it reveals the grade-level of your writing within seconds, but that’s not all. It highlights the number of adverbs and instances where you could have used simpler phrasing. It points out passive voice usage, and even shows you sentences that are “hard” and “very hard” to read so that you can simplify them.
Depending on the purpose or genre of your writing, it may be helpful to know how long it takes to read what you’ve written, or the number of words, sentences, and paragraphs you have. This free tool equips you with all of this valuable information. Don’t submit your draft without first putting it through Hemingway Editor. It will save you time, energy, and probably money.
2. Grammarly
For your convenience, Grammarly functions in two ways. You can copy and paste your writing into its web browser feature, or you can download the Chrome extension which will provide corrections to all the writing you do within Google Chrome. Prepare to be either pleasantly surprised or utterly horrified at how many writing miscues you make on a regular basis.
Grammarly is a tool that will scrub your writing of misspellings, grammatical errors, and faulty punctuation. If you tend to forget the Oxford comma or forget when to ignore the i-before-e rule, Grammarly has it covered. It will also highlight wordy sentences and redundancy within your writing.
As miraculous as it seems, Grammarly can’t completely replace a human editor, but it can help reduce the level of editing you need. If you spell the wrong word correctly, Grammarly won’t pick up on it. For example, if you were to accidentally write about how you found gum stuck to the soul of your shoe, Grammarly would not draw attention to the location of your soul or sole. Your readers, on the other hand, will probably notice.
As an added bonus, Grammarly has integrated AI into it’s functionality, giving you the option to call upon it to give you ideas to improve your writing. You can identify the voice and tone you want to use (witty, engaging, formal, competent, empathetic, direct) and ask your friendly Grammarly bot to give you ideas on how to communicate in that manner. Yup, it’s pretty amazing!
3. Cliché Finder
If you’ve read our 5-step self-editing guide, you’re aware that clichés are a no-no. Cliché Finder is another copy-and-paste tool that scours your writing for stale and overused words and phrases, bringing them to your attention. Don’t let the lackluster design fool you, the algorithm makes it a reliable tool that can be trusted to catch your boring blunders.
It can be tempting to include a commonly used adage in your writing, especially when it’s a phrase you often use or hear in conversation, but to the reader, it’s boring. It communicates a lack of originality and laziness, and you’re anything but that. You’re reading a blog about writing tools in your spare time.
Even if you don’t think you use clichés, it’s always a good idea to double-check with this tool. You’d be surprised how many clichés have snuck their way into your vernacular.
4. Power Thesaurus
Okay, you’ve identified the wordiness and trite phrasing in your writing, now all that’s left for you to do is fix it. There are several approaches to rewording your writing to make it more effective. One is to swap out a dull verb or adjective for one that evokes emotion.
Don’t get stuck searching your vocabulary for the perfect word, or Googling “superb synonyms” until you find the right word. Power Thesaurus lives up to its name in that it provides you with powerful alternatives that help you engage your audience.
Power Thesaurus is a helpful tool to use sparingly.
Don’t start replacing every verb in your writing
or inserting adjectives before every noun just because you can.
Clarity and brevity are your friends. Fight the urge to use two words when one will do, but when selecting one word, make it sensational.
5. CoSchedule Headline Studio
This tool is especially helpful for non-fiction writers. Its primary purpose is to assist bloggers in writing headlines that will boost website traffic, but it’s a fantastic way to write engaging headings that will entice your audience to keep reading.
Type your heading into the analyzer and receive a score of 1-100. Shoot for a score of 80 or better. The tool will dissect your heading word by word, categorizing your words into common, uncommon, emotional, and power. It will also provide you with a reading grade level, and rate it for clarity and skimability.
There are several other features available in the paid version, but if you’re not looking to use it to write blogs, although as an author you should be, the free version works just fine.
It should be clear how these tools can enhance your writing and save you time, but how can it save you money? Even with these wonderful tools, there will still be opportunities to turn your elevated writing into a truly remarkable work. That’s where the work of a professional copy editor is useful. If you were to submit your writing to a copy editor without first utilizing these tools, it would require a much deeper level of editing to transform your writing. It could add as much as an entire digit onto the quotes you receive from editors. If you’ve used all the above tools and you’re ready to have an expert copy editor perform advanced surgery on your writing, upload a writing sample and receive a quote within 24 hours or less.
Using these tools also helps you understand what aspects of the writing process leave the most room for improvement. Don’t shy away from this information, it makes you a better writer. After all, in the words of Pastor Adalis Shuttlesworth, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”
