Whether we are writing a novel, a blog, an essay, an email, a report, or anything else,
words are the tools we use to get the ideas out of our heads and into someone else's.
So, in this process of passively communicating with other minds, it takes a great deal of
cognitive power to correct and edit our own writings
Clearly, a software can help us in mitigating at least majority of this pain. ProWritingAid
is one such software.
In this video we will see a complete demo of this software that is also a popular alternative
to the Grammarly software. I have used both these tools, you would have even seen my Grammary
review video here - and, towards the end of this video you'll also see WHY I have let go
of my Grammarly premium account to expire due to some very important differences between
Grammarly and ProWritingAid. This could even help YOU on deciding which software
to use going forward, so make sure you watch this entire video, till the end.
If you are in a hurry, simply use the Table of contents GIVEN in the comments section below with timestamps
to quickly jump to those parts in the video.
Let's begin
From a high-level perspective, we have two ways to use prowritingaid : either we can
use it within writing apps as an assisting tool, OR, use its web editor online to directly
upload your text.
We'll see how to edit online using the web editor now.
Let's go ahead and create the account first - at the time of signing up, simply provide
your best email address, choose a strong password, and select what type of writer you are, from
this drop-down button. And click the 'Sign Up for free' button. Alternatively, you can
also use these Social logins. Now, since I have already created an account, I am going
to click on this login button directly.
This takes me to the web editor. ProwritingAid has improved a lot in the recent past - its
editor was a simple one with robust features like this one, which were mostly reserved
for the premium users but they now have an updated and new editor which we can view from
here.
As soon as we land on the new web editor, we see a lot of icons and a couple of options
to choose how we want to start our editing process. Either upload your document in word
processor format or plain text format. You could also simply copy and paste your text
into the web tool.
From the horizontal action bar on the header, we have the menu, writing style selection,
and language options. You could also upload your document to edit from this menu option.
Additionally, there is also a "Word Explorer" which is an excellent tool to spark some creativity
with any word's definition, synonym, examples, and more. This is quite useful for finding
the right words and sometimes even breaking through our writers' block. It contains a
thesaurus, contextually related words, rhymes and examples from books and much more. This
is available from the menu drop-down.
Here's a sample text with some errors.
Now, we can see that there are a plenty of reports available to run on our write-up.
Note that hitting on the alt key also gives us with a set of keyboard shortcuts to access
these different reports.
let's now quickly go over what these different reports can offer us - remember we can run
these reports for free except for the plagiarism check, which needs credits to be purchased.
These reports are free only for the first 500 words at a time, so if you have a 1000
word write-up, you need to break your checks into two - with 500 words each - this limit
is removed if you choose to upgrade your license to premium version which is just 50$ per annum
- quite cheaper compared to similar tools like Grammarly which costs close to approximately $130 per annum
You can even get a lifetime premium version of ProWritingAid for just $175 - I recommend
grabbing this lower price before ProWritingAid changes its pricing model because at this price, it
offers a great deal of editing assistance for any kind of writers.
As soon as you have your text in ProWritingAid, you would first want to check this 'Summary
report'.
so, let's now click on that.
it takes a few seconds to generate a summary dashboard with scores, action items, and statistics.
you could also use this button to open the report in a new tab so you could keep editing
while keeping the stats open separately. or even send it to your email, or print it for
future reference.
Imagine, you're under a tight deadline and don't have the time to run through each
of the variety of reports individually. You can then run the Summary Report and check
to see what needs your attention and correction before publishing your work.
This report gives us with a comprehensive overview of our writing and the suggested
key actions that can improve our text. These summaries are especially useful for writers
who want to track their writing statistics and focus their time effectively. if you notice,
there are a plenty of suggestions to make the writing better, so choose the ones that
best suit your needs as not all might be helpful for everyone at all times - which is to say
in other words that they team at ProWritingAid has exceeded our expectations.
The summary report not only analyzes our vocabulary, but also shows us how many unique words we've
used, how many unusual words we've used, our writing style, grammar and spelling, the diction,
if there are any corporate jargons and much much more.
Style report: The writing styles check is done quite comprehensively
here. It checks on passive voice, adverbs, repeated sentence starts (which are more useful
for bloggers and fiction-writers), readability improvement suggestions, among several other
areas of our writing that could be revised.
Then comes the grammar check report. This
is like any word processing software's grammar check but with some extra bells and whistles
that are great to have. It also looks at the construction of the sentence to make sure
that the structure, punctuation and tense are correct. and yes, of course, it also comes
with the spell check which goes in here with this report. This is not a catch-all, perhaps,
for the time-being, but this particular section is ever-improving as the prowritingaid's editors
have created 1000s of these checks and the list continues to grow each week.
Overused Words Report: Words that are overused in your write-up gets
highlighted here. As simple as that. ProWritingAid categorizes this into 5 types: words that
are too wishy-washy, the telling words rather than 'showing words', depending on intensifiers
like 'very', 'so', 'really' instead of using stronger words to convey deep meanings, non-specific
words, and other awkward sentence constructions. You can use ProWritingAid's overused words
report to highlight all of those words and sentence constructs that you don't want to
overuse in your write-up. Of course, the tool doesn't suggest that you need to cut or replace
all of them; rather they just require a little extra re-examination to make sure that they
are your best options.
Readability Scores The readability report provides an overall
readability score for your document. It also gives you a readability score for each paragraph
so that you can easily zero in on those passages that could benefit from some corrections.
Cliches and Redundancies report Writers often use clichés when they are working
on their first draft because thinking up original wording takes time and can interrupt
creative flow. That's fine. But, when you go back to edit, this report will pick
out instances of unoriginal phrasing so that you can replace them with fresh ideas.
Redundant wording creeps into the texts of even the most experienced writers. It adds
quantity to your writing, but not quality. So, every word in your writing should be there
for a reason. That's where this report comes in to help us in eliminating the clutter.
Sticky sentences report Any sentence that beats around the bush, is
a sticky sentence. These sentences often lack clarity, and hence hard to follow. Here's an example
from the ProWritingAid's blog.
As you can see, the first example has a sentence length of 27 words
whereas the redraft has a sentence length of 14 words
and the glue index, as you can see, has decreased from 60.7% to 42.8%
Thus, making the redrafted sentence a more precise and concise one, with the same meaning conveyed.
Diction report This report provides a list of possible diction
problems, highlights vague and abstract words in our writing and provides suggestions on
how we can revise them, because when it comes to writing, less is more. And this report
helps us in avoiding unnecessarily complicated write-up by analyzing our word selection and
sentence construction.
Repeats and Echoes check report It's difficult for writers to check their
own work to identify words or terminologies that repeat in their own sentences. This report
highlights repeated words or phrases in the document so we can correct them. The Echoes
report is also quite similar, with identifying and highlighting any words or phrases that
we have repeated within a short space of writing.
Sentence Length Check This shows a visual representation of the
sentences' lengths of your writing. ProWritingAid will create a bar graph of your sentence lengths
so that you can pick out areas where you should add more variety. Writing that uses varying
sentence lengths helps in engaging the reader and this report could make that job easier.
It even provides the average sentence length, a sentence variety - with the target and actual score.
Thesaurus report The Thesaurus check report shows possible
replacements for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. These suggestions, as you can
see, are often contextually provided, which can allow us to explore a wider vocabulary.
Last in the list before the more option is the Acronym check
Acronym Check The Acronym Report highlights all of the acronyms
in your text, and creates a list of all the acronyms you have used. It shows where they
haven't been defined, or have been defined after the first occurrence, or have been defined
multiple times. So these are the 3 checks that the Acronym check report will primarily address.
One point to note here
depending on the screen size, the monitor size, the resolution
the icons on the top gets adjusted between the ribbon that we see here
and within the 'more' options.
so if i move this window across, you can see that the icons get clubbed inside this 'more' option.
You may not see everything as you are directly seeing on my screen right now.
Some of these icons/options/reports could be hidden under the more option.
Dialogue Tags Check This highlights the dialogue tags in the text
so that you can find a better way to demonstrate emotion. Common examples are "said" and
"asked". Minimal dialogue tags are preferred for better readability, because they help
the reader follow the conversation. Wherever possible, use description and action to point
out your speaker and build your scene.
Consistency Check Report
It highlights inconsistencies in the usage of single and double quotation marks,
special words, capitalizing certain word or place names, spellings, hyphenations, and
punctuation among others. It makes the work appear professional. These inconsistencies are often missed while
editing, and it takes a trained set of eyes to find them. But this report makes it easier
for us.
Pacing Check Report ProWritingAid's Pacing Check finds those
areas in your writing that are paced more slowly so that you can spread them out. Pacing
refers to the speed at which a story is told and how quickly the reader is moved through
events. Good writing contains faster-paced sections, such as dialogue and character action,
as well as slower-paced sections, such as introspection and backstory. Differently paced
sections should complement each other, allowing the reader to move with the writer through the narrative.
Then there are these more reports that we can use. Please note that the Plagiarism check
requires us to have enough credits - which could be bought from their website.
That's all about these various reports from PWA. If you choose to purchase the premium
licence, you could also get a FREE copy of their ebook which otherwise costs around $5
or $6.
Once again, all these links are just a click away for you conveniently provided in the
description section below. Just to note that these are affiliate links, which AT NO EXTRA
COST TO YOU, CAN give me a small kickback if you choose to use PWA.
Finally, there is also something for software developers - the PWA offers Web APIs that
are available if you are looking to tinker and integrate ProWritingAid's features within
your own apps and tools.
Let's now see a comparison of grammarly and prowritingaid tools:
both offer editing anywhere we write - offline, or online - but only grammarly offers their
tool offline even in the free version whereas prowritingaid's free version is available
only for the web - if we need it within word or use it as a desktop tool, we need to upgrade to the premium version.
I thought that at least a minimum integration could be given for free users by PWA, but only web editor is available.
If i am not wrong, the Chrome extension is free, so that's where we can write online without getting into the premium version.
but only Grammarly offers their tool offline, even in the free version, whereas
ProWritingAid's free version is available only for the web.
If you need it for the Word or use it as a Desktop tool, be it on Windows or Mac
we need to upgrade to the premium version.
I thought that at least a minimum integration could be given
for free users by PWA, but only web editor is available, for free.
If the limited 500-word check in the free version was also made
available as an add-in within Word - then that would have clearly won over other similar
tools like Grammarly which offers a free office add-in, desktop standalone software, and also
a browser extension.
overall, the threshold cap for the free version is kept on the number of words that we can
edit at a time within prowritingaid - only on the first 500 words at a time - otherwise
almost all the checks and features that we saw earlier, are available
on the online tool for free - on the other hand, grammarly
doesn't limit on the words we check but blocks out majority of the features on the free version
- like these.
cost-wise, the PWA is certainly cheaper compared to grammarly at its current pricing model
- clearly setting it apart from its competition - with no reason not to buy it.
The downside with PWA, in my humble opinion, is that their paid version gives
only 50 plagiarism checks per year. Which is really less, if you ask me, whereas no
such limits exist with the paid version of Grammarly. Although, not everyone would want
to check on Plagiarism, it doesn't make sense to limit its check, is what I feel. At least
for the paid users, this check must be made unlimited.
Next let's talk about content privacy.
grammarly collects user content as you can clearly see from their terms of use, the privacy policy here, whereas
prowritingaid doesn't collect any of our work as mentioned from their FAQ section as seen on
the screen.
Finally, the contextual spelling errors that are not exactly errors but correct words misspelled
in the sentence - which of course, these mistakes are beyond ANY tool's scope to catch, and thus only a
human editing can solve.
It doesn't matter what type of user you are - be it student, blogger, author; ProWritingAid
will have you covered by helping you improve your writing and getting your ideas across
more clearly.
I will see you again in my next video, until then you take care.
thanks for watching
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