Effective communication breathes clarity and unless you are able to articulate your ideas in clear and comprehensible language, your communication will always hamper your progress. One important way to enhance the clarity of your writing is to make sure it is error-free.
Let's be honest, nobody likes to read a piece of text with glaring grammatical errors. It turns you off. I get tons of emails on a daily basis and those with too many spelling and grammatical errors are the first to be crossed off my reading list.
In an age where grammar and spell checkers are just a click away, sending an email riddled with grammar and spelling errors is a clear sign of disengagement and, in certain contexts, an indicator of lack of respect. We all make grammar and spelling errors.
For instance, the first draft of this post contained many errors and some of them I spotted only in my third round of editing. Still, chances are there are still errors buried deep in the text which you might probably be able to discern.
Certainly, nobody is perfect, but as teachers and educators we can instantly tell whether the writer of a piece of text has put some effort into editing their text or not. The point I want to make here is that to err while writing is human but to refrain from proofreading is foolish, to say the least.
Writing is not only about communicating ideas but is also about building rapport with readers, ones you have never met and probably would never meet. The clearer your writing is the better chances you stand of enhancing the overall comprehensibility and outreach of your message.
There is a wide variety of tools to help you with your writing. The purpose of this post is to share with you some of my favorite writing tools that offer the following features: grammar check, spell check, and paraphrasing.
Certainly, nobody is perfect, but as teachers and educators we can instantly tell whether the writer of a piece of text has put some effort into editing their text or not. The point I want to make here is that to err while writing is human but to refrain from proofreading is foolish, to say the least.
Writing is not only about communicating ideas but is also about building rapport with readers, ones you have never met and probably would never meet. The clearer your writing is the better chances you stand of enhancing the overall comprehensibility and outreach of your message.
There is a wide variety of tools to help you with your writing. The purpose of this post is to share with you some of my favorite writing tools that offer the following features: grammar check, spell check, and paraphrasing.
Yes, every current word editor or email provider provides these basic editing features but these tools are different. Most of them are powered by artificial technology and use the power of deep learning to understand the context of your writing and help you detect errors that might easily escape standard grammar and writing assistants.
In other words, it is not only about spotting (standard) grammatical and spelling errors that we are after but, more importantly, contextual errors that create semantic confusion and impair the comprehensibility of our message (e.g., confused words, punctuation errors, dangling modifiers, incorrect tense, redundancies, and more). These forms of errors are best captured using the AI-powered tools below.
Most of these grammar and spell checkers are also available as Chrome extensions. I invite you to check them out and share with us (on our social media platforms) if you have other suggestions to add to this list.
In other words, it is not only about spotting (standard) grammatical and spelling errors that we are after but, more importantly, contextual errors that create semantic confusion and impair the comprehensibility of our message (e.g., confused words, punctuation errors, dangling modifiers, incorrect tense, redundancies, and more). These forms of errors are best captured using the AI-powered tools below.
Most of these grammar and spell checkers are also available as Chrome extensions. I invite you to check them out and share with us (on our social media platforms) if you have other suggestions to add to this list.
1. QuillBot
Quillbot is an amazing paraphrasing tool to help you with your writing. Its AI-powered editor enables you to write faster and better. The three main services offered but Quillbot are: a Grammar Checker which helps you detect grammatical mistakes and errors in punctuation and spelling; a Paraphraser which allows you to come up with different ways to phrase your sentences; and a Summarizer which helps with summarizing news articles, long emails, papers, and more. To learn more about this tool check out Quillbot review for teachers and students.
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| Image credit:quillbot.com |
2. Wordtune
Wordtune is a writing tool that uses the power of artificial technology to understand the context and semantics of your writing and provides you with functional suggestions to improve your writing style. For instance, the paraphrasing tool helps you find new ways to word your ideas and restructure your sentences. The translation service is another cool feature I like in this tool.
You can start writing a sentence in a given language and have Wordtune provide you with rephrasing suggestions in English. Wordtune editor works on different platforms including Gmail, Google Docs, Outlook, Facebook, and more. To learn more about this tool check out Wordtune review for teachers and students.
3. Grammarly
Grammarly combines a set of powerful tools into a single platform allowing you to improve your writing and grammar skills. It offers spell check, grammar check, punctuation check, plagiarism check, among others. Grammarly enables you to write better through real-time suggestions and instant feedback on different aspects of your writing including style, grammar, spelling, and clarity.
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| Image credit:grammarly.com |
Besides detecting misspellings, Grammarly can also detect confused words used in the wrong context (e.g., effect and affect). It can also help to fix things such as sentence fragments, subject verb disagreement, and comma splices.
4. ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid is both a writing assistant and a grammar checker to use to improve your overall writing style. ProWritingAid offers a wide range of resources to help you write better including detailed reports on your writing, suggestions for improvement, articles, videos, interactive quizzes, and more.
Other features provided by ProWritingAid include: contextual thesaurus, plagiarism checker, find overused and repeated words and phrases, remove vage and redundant wordings, and more.
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| Image credit: prowritingaid.com |
5. Grammar Check, by Writer
Writer offers a powerful AI-powered grammar check that enables you to detect all forms of grammar errors in your text from 'silly punctuation errors to nuanced grammatical mistakes, irregular verb conjugations, misspelled words, and more'. Some of the features provided by Writer's editor include plagiarism checker, style guide builder, tone detector, a spell checker, among others.6- OutWrite for Chrome
OutWrite is a good tool paraphrasing and proofreading tool. Some of its free features include a spell checker, a grammar and punctuation checker, Thesaurus suggestions, and writing statistics (e.g., readability, grade level and word count).
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| Image credit:outwrite.com |
Premium features include a paraphrasing tool to help with restructuring and re-phrasing whole sentences, style and structure suggestions, and a plagiarism checker. Also, Outwrite works on different platforms including Google Docs, Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn, Word, Edge, iOS and many more.
