Do you struggle with spelling and grammar?

The Best Apps To Help You Focus On Writing Macbook Pro
The Best Apps To Help You Focus On Writing Machines
The Best Apps To Help You Focus On Writing Machine
The Best Apps To Help You Focus On Writing Machine Learning

With the right journal app, you can make a journal or diary entry truly yours by adding images, tagging locations, setting reminders to write, enabling password protection, and so much more. Here are the best journal and diary apps you can use both online and offline, either from a web browser or on a mobile device. The concept is simple: Whenever you want to focus for a chunk of time, you “plant a tree.” Over the next 30 minutes, the tree will grow while you are working. But, if you leave the app, the tree dies. By the end of the week, you’ll have a visual “forest,” showing you how much focused time you had.

Even if you’re a native English speaker, there might well be grammatical rules that confuse you – and you may find that you spend a lot of time poring over your draft text, trying to figure out what needs to be edited.

This is where grammar checker apps can really help. They go far beyond the simple spell checkers of the past: they’ll spot cases where you’ve used a real word but in the wrong context.

Many of the more advanced ones will point out instances where your style could be revised, too (such as where you’ve used a more complex word than you need to, or where you’ve included cliches in your writing).

There are so many grammar checker apps out there, though, you might be wondering which one to use. We’re going to run through seven of the best in a moment, but first, let’s look at why it’s important to test out grammar checkers before using them.

Testing the Grammar Checker Apps

A key consideration, when you’re choosing a grammar checker app, is whether or not it actually works! After all, you don’t want to use an app that ignores half your mistakes.

To help you compare each of the different apps, I tested the free versions using a standardised piece of error-ridden text:

Lastly I went to London. I visited the Tower of london and Buckingham Palace. I would of bought some soovenirs too, but I ran out of money.

The text should read as follows (I’ve indicated the corrections in bold):

Lastly, I went to London. I visited the Tower of London and Buckingham Palace. I would have bought some souvenirs too, but I ran out of money.

As you can see, there are four mistakes in the original text:

There should be a comma after the introductory phrase “Lastly”.
“London” should be capitalised in the second sentence.
“Would of” should be “would have” (or “would’ve”).
“Soovenirs” should be spelt “souvenirs”.

How did the different grammar checker apps do? Let’s find out. Note that with most of these apps, you’ll need to create a (free) account in order to login and use them.

You might want to create your own piece of error-ridden sample text to use, too, so you can see whether the grammar checkers spot your mistakes.

#1: Google Docs

Google Docs is a free online word-processor provided by Google. You might well have used it to collaborate on documents with others, whether at work or school, as it’s an easy way to have one document that multiple people can comment on and edit.

Google Docs has a robust built-in spelling and grammar checker, highlighting spelling mistakes with a red wiggly underline and grammatical mistakes with a blue wiggly underline.

Test:

Google Docs correctly identified that “London” should have a capital in the second sentence and that “soovenirs” was misspelt. It didn’t flag up the incorrect phrase “would of”, however, despite this being a common grammatical mistake. It also didn’t suggest adding a comma after “lastly”.

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If you use Google Docs already, it’s certainly worth checking any words or phrases that it flags up as potentially wrong. It’s not a dedicated grammar checker app, though, so it won’t catch everything.

#2: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is so ubiquitous that you’ve almost certainly used it at some point in your life. Although you might think of it as a piece of software installed on your computer (it ships pre-installed on Windows PCs), you can also use the free online version Office Online from Office.com.

Microsoft Word indicates grammatical errors using a double blue underline and spelling errors using a wiggly red underline. You can right-click to see potential corrections and (for grammar errors) a brief explanation.

Test:

I was impressed to see that the free version of Word online flagged up all four of the errors (and indicated the right corrections). Interestingly, it counted the lack of capitalisation on “London” as a spelling error rather than a grammatical one.

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If you’re already using Word, you may find that the in-built spelling and grammar checkers are sufficient for you. It’s still well worth considering using one or more of the other apps as a back-up, though, especially if you’re working on a particularly important document (such as an essay or your resume).

The Best Apps To Help You Focus On Writing Macbook Pro

#3: Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the best-known grammar checker apps, and you may well have seen ads for it. But does it deserve its great reputation?

While you’ll need to pay for the premium version of Grammarly if you want more advanced features (like the ability to detect the misuse of the passive voice), the free version offers an impressive range of features. You can try it out through the Grammarly website by simply copying and pasting your text, but for long-term use, you’ll probably want to install it as a Chrome plugin or Microsoft Office download.

Test:

Grammarly underlines all errors, whether of grammar or spelling, in red. As you can see, it spotted all four of the issues with my sample text. One great feature is that Grammarly provides a detailed explanation of errors, so you can learn where you’ve gone wrong.

For instance, if I click on the underlined “london”, I get a short explanation which I can expand to see further examples:

https://everteacher.amebaownd.com/posts/19025537. Best for:

Grammarly is a great option not only for checking your grammar and spelling thoroughly, but also for learning why something has been flagged as incorrect. It integrates with lots of other software (such as Google Chrome, Microsoft Office, Outlook, and more) so you can use it while composing emails and messages, as well as for checking documents.

#4: ProWritingAid

I reviewed the premium version of ProWritingAid in detail in this post (which also includes a discount code) … but how does the free version measure up? The good news is that it’s richly featured, with lots of reports that you can run, picking up on things like overused words, cliches, and much more.

You can also see how your work measures up to that of other people who’re using ProWritingAid, with statistics like “Your sentence variety was higher than 56% of ProWritingAid users”.

Test:

ProWritingAid picked up all four of the mistakes in my sample text, and provided brief explanations where appropriate (though it didn’t offer more detail for these, like Grammarly does):

Best for:

ProWritingAid offers a huge range of reports – these can help give a better sense of how your writing is working overall. (For instance, you might find that your average sentence length is too long.) It’s a great app for anyone who’s working on a long piece of writing, like a whole book, though you can certainly use it for shorter pieces too.

#5: Hemingway Editor

Hemingway Editor take