ProWritingAid: The Complete Editing Tool For Writing Better Content

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ProWritingAid
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One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a writer is to think your work does not need editing.

Whether you’ve been writing for 20 years or 2 years, the fact is your work can still be improved. Even best-selling authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling rely on editors before publishing their work to the masses.

For the rest of us who can’t afford professional editors, there are free editing tools like Grammarly, Hemingway, Ginger, or the built-in grammar checker in Microsoft Word.

These tools are great for catching major grammar and spelling errors.

But what if you want to really learn the rules of writing and not just blindly accept corrections from an app? Is it possible that such a basic editing tool could help correct your mistakes and help you understand where the mistakes lie?

For this, look no further than ProWritingAid.

ProWritingAid – Powerful Editor For Writers

This robust tool is more than just your average grammar checker. It not only scans your work for typos but also tells you about other things such as overused words and paragraphs that are hard to read.

ProWritingAid has both free and paid features. The free web-based version has a limit of 500 words per document. An upgrade to the premium version is required for unlimited word counts and a licensed add-on for Microsoft Word.

If you want to experience all premium features, you can request a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).

So how is ProWritingAid different from other grammar tools like Grammarly? Let’s look at its features:

The Editing Interface

You can open ProWritingAid’s web-based editing tool in your browser or install its add-on for Microsoft Word or Google Docs (premium account sign-up needed).

Once this is done, you can either start typing your text, upload a file, or copy and paste from another source.

The Editing Interface
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Once you’re done writing or putting in your content, you can run a series of reports by clicking on the Summary button on the top-left corner of the screen.

You’ll get something like the photo below:

prowritingaid_summary
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If you have low scores on Grammar and Style, then it makes sense to run both Grammar and Style checks (separate buttons on the upper toolbar).

Understanding The Reports

Each button on the toolbar will run a report on your text. These reports will tell you what you need to change or improve in the content.

All reports will give you a summary on the left side of the screen. You can expand each section to see a list under it. Hovering your mouse over an item on the list will show a toolbar to either view, hide, or point to the word(s) in the document.

Understanding The Reports
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There is also a brief explanation of what each report is about on this same panel, and you can see it at the very bottom. There is a link to learn more about the report, which will lead you to a longer article on ProWritingAid’s blog page.

Read: 6 Best Grammar Checker Tools

Grammar

Grammar and style are probably the two most basic aspects of proofreading, so I think any kind of content needs to go through both these checks.

As you can see in the example below, ProWritingAid provides a clear definition of each rule as shown on the left side of the editor. The suggested changes are underlined, and if you click on the word, you’ll see what changes need to be made to correct an error.

prowritingaid_grammar-check
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Clicking on the correction will implement the change, a familiar feature with other editing tools like Grammarly.

The grammar report checks for spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, and tense usage.

Writing Style Checker

The style checker highlights sections of the writing that can be improved. Anything not covered under the grammar check will be covered here.

This report runs more than one set of checks, and they include:

• Words used repeatedly
• Passive and hidden verbs
• Adverbs
• Long subordinate clauses
• Repeated sentence starts

ProWritingAid Style
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Overused Words

This report checks for individual words and how often they are used within the entire document. As you can see below, my report says that the word “very” was used 10 times.

prowritingaid_overused-word-tool
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From this report, it’s clear that you’d want to replace or delete these overused words.

Now you can use the Thesaurus.

Click on one of the overused words and then click Thesaurus on the bottom left of the pop-up box. You should see a list of suggestions to replace the word.

prowritingaid_thesaurus_overused
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Readability

This is one of my favorite reports from this tool. It tells you whether a paragraph is easy or hard to read. The tool uses the Flesch Reading Ease formula and returns a score of one to 100. A high score indicates that a written work is easy to read.

Flesch Reading Ease formula
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ProWritingAid categorizes this report into three categories:

  1. Easy to read
  2. Slightly difficult to read
  3. Very difficult to read

They are all indicated by different colors used to underline each paragraph.

prowritingaid_readability
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A low readability score may actually be okay if you’re writing academic documents, but not if you’re writing for the general public or for a blog.

Sticky Sentences

Another notable feature of this editing tool is the detecting of “sticky sentences”. These sentences contain “glue words” that delay the reader from getting to a sentence’s point or thought. Glue words can be taken off of a sentence without taking away its meaning.

prowritingaid_sticky
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This feature isn’t something I’ve seen in other editing apps.

Consistency

The Consistency check is the tool’s way of making sure that you use the same rules all throughout the content. This includes spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, and punctuation.

So if you used italics to indicate a book title in the first part of the text but then used quote marks the second time, it will show on this report. This is important if you’re following a specific style such as AP or Chicago Manual.

prowritingaid_consistency
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I’ve seen Grammarly correct punctuation use and I’m always guilty of not using the serial comma. In this tool, however, you’re given a breakdown of your inconsistencies.

Sentence Length

One writing technique I’ve come across is to vary sentence length.

A series of short sentences will sound ridiculous, while a series of long ones will be difficult to follow. It makes sense to alternate short and long sentences for a more natural writing flow.

When writing, you may lose track of your sentences and how long they are. This tool in ProWritingAid will help you track down which sentences are obnoxiously long.

You can check the average sentence length on the left panel. A breakdown of sentences by word count will also be shown. From here, you can make some changes as you see fit.

prowritingaid_sentence-length
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Conclusion – Is ProWritingAid Worth It?

ProWritingAid is a powerful tool which can help you improve your writing. While Grammarly has a simpler approach, ProWritingAid goes in-depth in analyzing content beyond the basics. It’s not just for casual writers; it’s also for those who are not afraid to learn the complex rules of writing.

While the tool can give you a very thorough editing process, it’s obviously not for content that’s not uploaded or copied on its web editing interface. This means it won’t edit your social media posts or emails. For this, it’s best to go with Grammarly or Ginger.

But for final edits of long documents like books and reports, ProWritingAid is a much better tool for the job.

Check out ProWritingAid now and claim your free 14-day trial.

Have you used ProwritingAid before? Share your review and experience with us in the comment section below.

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

26 thoughts on “ProWritingAid: The Complete Editing Tool For Writing Better Content”

  1. bolo

    Nice and Helpful tool for people having difficulties in grammar and who overused words …..

  2. Sarada Das

    Hello kim,
    Is this is similar to grammarly.com ?

  3. Alex

    Thanks for this tool, I expect the spanish version of this because we need this!

  4. Rajeev

    I am new blogger for Photography. This will definitely help me to write better content on my blog. I will see the trials.

    Thanks Kim for Sharing this information.

  5. RAJAT

    Thank you kim for this post and I know this will help me a lot to improve my writing skills.The free web-based version has a limit of 500 words per document. thank you for provide such good information.

  6. Aman Yadav

    Thank you kim for this post and this will help me a lot to improve my writing skills.

  7. Expro Academy

    Hey KIM BARLOSO,
    I love reading your blogs. They are very informative and easy to understand. Writing content without getting it through a proper editor is a blunder. I was using Grammarly for my writing, but, ProWritingaAid provides a much detailed analysis on your work, which is what I needed.
    Your posts are highly appreciated. Thank you.

  8. Suresh Dubey

    As of now, I am using only Grammarly. It is a great tool. However will definitely try out prowritingaid. Thank you for this article.

  9. Susan Velez

    Hi Kim,

    Pro Writing Aid looks really cool and I loved the tutorial with screenshots and everything. It’s nice to know how it differs from Grammarly.

    This looks like a really cool tool to use when someone wants to write an ebook or doesn’t like writing content inside of the WordPress text editor.

    Thanks for sharing this tool with us. I have no doubt that it will help some bloggers improve their writing.

    Have a great day 🙂

    Susan

  10. saeed ahmed

    “ProWritingAid has both free and paid features. The free web-based version has a limit of 500 words per document.” Could not find any free version. How to get it after joining?
    thanx for sharing good article

  11. Pieter

    Does anyone know a similar tool that works in Portuguese?

    1. Kim Barloso

      Sorry, it seems this tool is only offered in English.

  12. Bhat Muzamil

    I need help , Where i have to Download this Tool?????

    1. Kim Barloso

      Kindly go to prowritingaid.com to use the tool.

  13. kartmantra

    hy, Could not find any free version. How to get it after joining?

    1. Kim Barloso

      Go to the website: prowritingaid.com. There should be a button that says “Try Free” or “Start Web Editor”. Clicking on that will bring you to sign up, then you’ll have access to the free version of the editing tool.

  14. Ryan Biddulph

    This looks like a super in depth editor Kim, and Pro Writing Aid seems to be worth it. If those iconic writers have editors, any blogger or author can use some editing to get their writing game in order.

    Ryan

    1. Kim Barloso

      Absolutely. Not everyone can afford editors, so this is a great alternative.

  15. Ravi Dixit

    Thank you kim for this post and I know this will help me a lot to improve my writing skills.
    I am going to claim trial for myself.

    1. Kim Barloso

      Great! Happy to share this tool with fellow bloggers.

  16. aliakbor

    My writing quality is not well i used to check grammarly but today you suggested good tools for writing ProWritingAid now few time ago i have signed up. Just i checked few article columns. its good from any other tools. i should to buy premium version after some more test . thank you for provide such good information.

  17. mann

    Whenever I write an article, I have occurs a lot of problems in Grammar but now I will be able to fix it now.Thanks for sharing this useful article.

  18. Lisa Lepki

    Hi Kim,

    Thank you so much for this! We love it when our users share their editing process with other writers.

    If anyone has any questions about ProWritingAid, just let me know.

    All the best,

    Lisa Lepki
    Editor of the ProWritingAid Blog
    https://prowritingaid.com/blog

    1. Kim Barloso

      Hi Lisa! Thanks for commenting. Nice to have someone from ProWritingAid here!

  19. Mathukutty P. V.

    “ProWritingAid has both free and paid features. The free web-based version has a limit of 500 words per document.” Could not find any free version. How to get it after joining?

    1. Kim Barloso

      Go to the website: prowritingaid.com. There should be a button that says “Try Free” or “Start Web Editor”. Clicking on that will bring you to sign up, then you’ll have access to the free version of the editing tool.

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