Best Writing Enhancement Software 2019 - Editing, Proofreading
One of PDF-Xchange Editor’s best features is the ability to use OCR to recognize text in scanned documents – ideal if you only have a printout rather than the original file (a handout from a. Best Text Editors for macOS Note: In this article, we are focusing on the best text editors for coding but if you are looking for a text editor for your writing purposes, you can check out our article on the best writing apps for Mac.
The best writing enhancement software is more than a simple spelling or grammar checker – it should include resources to help you improve as a writer, as well. After 60 hours of tests and research on the best writing enhancement software products, we recommend WhiteSmoke as the overall best option for most people. It works anywhere you type, so you can use it to check your documents, emails and social media posts to make sure your words represent your best writing. We also recommend Grammarly Premium for writers and Writer’s Workbench for students.
Best Overall WhiteSmoke
WhiteSmoke is the best overall writing enhancement software because of its simplicity. Its wealth of features can be used in real time wherever you use a text box.
Best Value for Writers Grammarly Premium
Grammarly Premium offers the best value for writers of all skill levels because of its excellent spelling and grammar checker, active online community and Personal Writing Handbook.
Best Educational Software Writer’s Workbench
Writer’s Workbench is the best option for in-depth writing analysis. Its comprehensive features for writing improvement and learning make it our recommendation as the best software for educational purposes.
Best Overall
WhiteSmoke
Performs checks in real time
Doesn’t check for plagiarism
Does not correct passive voice
We recommend WhiteSmoke as the overall best writing enhancement software because it is so easy to use for everything you type. Once the software is installed, it pops up as an icon whenever you type, whether that is in a word processor document or text box.
Other products can require a lot of copying and pasting, but WhiteSmoke integrates itself easily into your workflow, allowing you to check yourself at any time with just a click.
Aside from the standard underlining of errors in red or green, WhiteSmoke does an excellent job of catching contextual missteps such as commonly misused words. After it completes its spelling and grammar check, WhiteSmoke generates a writing review report and overall text rating based on six categories, including sentence length, structure, voice, formality, word choice and redundancy. These ratings are color-coded so you know at a glance which are good to go and which areas need more work. It also offers suggested changes with explanations why things are marked wrong.
Another standout feature for the WhiteSmoke writing enhancement software is its translation tool. It offers fairly accurate computer-generated translation into 11 languages. Its other reference tools, including dictionary, thesaurus and template library, are extremely helpful as well.
Aside from the standard underlining of errors in red or green, WhiteSmoke does an excellent job of catching contextual missteps such as commonly misused words. After it completes its spelling and grammar check, WhiteSmoke generates a writing review report and overall text rating based on six categories, including sentence length, structure, voice, formality, word choice and redundancy. These ratings are color-coded so you know at a glance which are good to go and which areas need more work. It also offers suggested changes with explanations why things are marked wrong.
Another standout feature for the WhiteSmoke writing enhancement software is its translation tool. It offers fairly accurate computer-generated translation into 11 languages. Its other reference tools, including dictionary, thesaurus and template library, are extremely helpful as well.
Best Value for Writers
Grammarly Premium
Grammarly Premium Annual$11.66
Grammarly Premium Monthly$29.95
Excellent grammar and spelling check
Online community and forums
Microsoft Office integration not available on Mac platforms
No included translation tool
Grammarly Premium offers an exceptional array of tools catered toward writers of all skill levels, making it our recommendation as the best value writing enhancement software for writers. It was a top performer in our grammar and spelling check test, and it provides a flash card for every grammatical error it finds, which provides an explanation and examples of improvements for the sentence.
One of Grammarly Premium’s unique features is that it can filter its analyses by genre, providing a level of contextual analysis that is unmatched in other products. Other tools that are helpful for writers include the plagiarism check and vocabulary enhancement tool, which helps to elevate your writing by offering suggestions for stronger word choices. Grammarly Premium’s Personal Writing Handbook is also an extremely useful tool for writers, as it keeps tabs on everything you put into Grammarly so you can see your progress and improvement. This tracks things like writing habits, personal strengths and weaknesses.
Grammarly is available to use in a web browser or as a Microsoft Office add-on for Windows platforms. The Office integration is not available for Apple, which is unfortunate because the two use options make Grammarly an intuitive and flexible presence. The browser version of Grammarly functions as a word processor, as well, so you can use Grammarly without Microsoft Office.
Grammarly is available to use in a web browser or as a Microsoft Office add-on for Windows platforms. The Office integration is not available for Apple, which is unfortunate because the two use options make Grammarly an intuitive and flexible presence. The browser version of Grammarly functions as a word processor, as well, so you can use Grammarly without Microsoft Office.
Best Educational Software
Writer’s Workbench
Writer's Workbench
In-depth text analysis
Excellent help and support
Dated interface
Writer’s Workbench is our recommendation as the best educational writing enhancement software because of its in-depth writing analysis. This software does have a bit of a learning curve and is a little too demanding for casual use, but it is a great learning tool if you want to invest your time and effort into improving your writing.
It is also important to note that this product only works with Microsoft Word.
The scope of Writer’s Workbench’s grammar check tool is extensive. When you run text through its check, Writer’s Workbench creates a report with more than 20 categories. It offers detailed explanations for every tool and suggestion it offers, and it does not autocorrect anything so you can choose to change or keep everything that gets flagged, which forces you to think critically about your grammar and sentence structure. You can also run text through any of 25 different analysis settings. This is a great tool for teachers, as these analyses can provide insights into specific areas or concepts where a student is struggling.
Writer’s Workbench provided the best help and support. It offers an in-depth user manual to explain all the software’s features, which is helpful since it is a somewhat difficult interface to master. There are also tutorial resources for beginning writers.
The scope of Writer’s Workbench’s grammar check tool is extensive. When you run text through its check, Writer’s Workbench creates a report with more than 20 categories. It offers detailed explanations for every tool and suggestion it offers, and it does not autocorrect anything so you can choose to change or keep everything that gets flagged, which forces you to think critically about your grammar and sentence structure. You can also run text through any of 25 different analysis settings. This is a great tool for teachers, as these analyses can provide insights into specific areas or concepts where a student is struggling.
Writer’s Workbench provided the best help and support. It offers an in-depth user manual to explain all the software’s features, which is helpful since it is a somewhat difficult interface to master. There are also tutorial resources for beginning writers.
Best for Everyday Use
Microsoft Word
Office 365 Personal$69.99
Office 365 Home$99.99
Office 365 Business Premium$12.50
Customizable autocorrect options
After years of dominating the market, Microsoft Word continues to be the most ubiquitous word processing software available.
When we put it to the test and compared it with other writing enhancing software, we weren’t really surprised to find that it held its own. There are only a few programs that had more of the features we looked for. Microsoft Word underlines errors in different colors to indicate the root of the problem. You can also set it to autocorrect as you work and even customize the list to fix certain mistakes. This software isn’t quite hands off; it’s not quite smart enough to detect some more complex syntax and grammar errors. When composing with Microsoft Word, you want to make sure to read through its changes and suggestions before publishing or submitting them. There are some connectivity options that let you share documents through Microsoft Office’s online hub. Microsoft is such a common program, and it's powerful enough to help you, even if you compose documents every day.
Best for Teachers
Editor 3.8
Outdated interface
Editor 3.8’s reporting options make it a good choice for teachers who are interested in their students’ composition progress.
When you load a document, you get comprehensive, printable feedback about your project. The reports can be tricky to read the first time around, and some of the information is repeated several times in the report. We liked the usage section because it provides insightful feedback, though it’s occasionally inaccurate – a not-uncommon problem with writing enhancement programs. The interface is very dated and can be tricky to navigate. Also, the program’s standard features, like spell check, are counterintuitive compared to those in other software we tested. To match its reporting features, it needs a cleaner interface with more intuitive controls. However, if you need a tool to keep track of students’ writing abilities, Editor 3.8 might be the right choice.
Why Trust Us?
We are a group of research, writing and product testing experts who love words and grammar. Even so, we have colleagues who edit everything for us before we publish our words online. We know that not everyone has that luxury. While maybe not as amazing as our editor friends, writing enhancement software can help you clean up your spelling and tighten up your grammar so that you can present your best-written self in papers, emails, memos and even tweets.
Our unique knowledge base and expertise puts us in the fortunate position of being able to help you find the best writing enhancement software to fit your needs, writing style and budget. Extensive thought, research and testing went into our product recommendations. We present only the most important information about only the best products, so you can make an informed decision and have confidence in whichever software you choose.
How Much Does Writing Enhancement Software Cost?
There are a few ways to get your hands-on writing enhancement software, including one-time downloads and monthly subscriptions. A few programs even come on CD-ROMs. The benefit of a monthly subscription, such as Grammarly, is the software continuously updates as it becomes smarter. A few subscription programs even offer a free trial to give you the opportunity to check out their features. We recommend spending between $10 and $20 on a monthly subscription and less than $100 for a one-time download or CD-ROM.
How We Evaluated
We started our search for the best writing enhancement software by seeing what was available. We compiled our list of products and started narrowing down the search by researching their specs, features, and reported performance on developer websites and based on user reviews. We were specifically looking for software that enhanced writing generally, not programs created for specific uses, like resume writing, creative writing or screenwriting. Once we had narrowed down the list to the top 15 products, we acquired each in order to do some hands-on testing.
We evaluated these writing enhancement software products based on their editing tools, performance, reference tools, and help and support, and we expand upon each of these categories in each product’s review. To test each program’s tools and performance, we learned the software to assess its ease of use and limitations, and then ran a test paragraph through each one. The paragraph had some obvious and some subtle errors throughout, and we rated the products based on how they responded to these errors.
In every test performed, we strived to mimic typical consumer use as closely as possible so our results would be representative of your own experience. After testing, we combined our research and our test results to pick the top 10 products so that you can find the best writing enhancement software for you, whether your needs are more general or more educational.
Some writing enhancement software is available to use over the internet, which offers more flexibility than products that only work in conjunction with a word processor.
What to Look for in Writing Enhancement Software
Editing Tools
A basic grammar and spelling check is necessary for writing enhancement software. The best products, in addition to offering these features, have the capacity to catch more complicated discrepancies, including mistakes in context, commonly confused words, numbers and capitalization. Writing enhancement software should also explain why it marks things as incorrect and offer helpful suggestions to make your writing better. The best products work both online and in a word processor.
A basic grammar and spelling check is necessary for writing enhancement software. The best products, in addition to offering these features, have the capacity to catch more complicated discrepancies, including mistakes in context, commonly confused words, numbers and capitalization. Writing enhancement software should also explain why it marks things as incorrect and offer helpful suggestions to make your writing better. The best products work both online and in a word processor.
Performance
Performance is gauged on how well the included editing tools react to errors. It doesn’t matter if a writing enhancement program has a vast array of features if these features do not perform well. The basic grammar and spell-check functions are the best place to start when assessing the value of any writing enhancement software. A product that fails to catch typos or sentence fragments makes you wonder about the accuracy or efficacy of the product’s other features.
Performance is gauged on how well the included editing tools react to errors. It doesn’t matter if a writing enhancement program has a vast array of features if these features do not perform well. The basic grammar and spell-check functions are the best place to start when assessing the value of any writing enhancement software. A product that fails to catch typos or sentence fragments makes you wonder about the accuracy or efficacy of the product’s other features.
Reference Tools
You definitely want to choose writing enhancement software with a dictionary and thesaurus that are regularly updated to include new words and new uses of words. A template library for help with common formats such as resumes and letters is also useful. The best writing enhancement software also included a translator and access to additional resources such as forums and writing tutorials.
You definitely want to choose writing enhancement software with a dictionary and thesaurus that are regularly updated to include new words and new uses of words. A template library for help with common formats such as resumes and letters is also useful. The best writing enhancement software also included a translator and access to additional resources such as forums and writing tutorials.
Help & Support
Should anything go awry while you use your writing enhancement software, it should be easy for you to find out how to fix it. All products we reviewed provided a customer support email address, but the best products provided multiple ways to get in touch with someone to answer your questions, including phone and live chat options. Written literature such as FAQs, manuals and online forums are also helpful.
Should anything go awry while you use your writing enhancement software, it should be easy for you to find out how to fix it. All products we reviewed provided a customer support email address, but the best products provided multiple ways to get in touch with someone to answer your questions, including phone and live chat options. Written literature such as FAQs, manuals and online forums are also helpful.
Get Extra Help from Vocabulary Software
So many online tools are designed to help you craft the best possible piece of writing and then polish it before you send it off. And while writing enhancement software goes a long way to help yo, by fixing grammar and spelling errors, there is another aspect of your writing that is easy to overlook: vocabulary.
The language you choose to use says a lot about you. And your story deserves to be as beautifully crafted as it is interesting; vocabulary software can help you expand your personal dictionary and make your writing more robust. It’s even a helpful tool for English students, and those preparing to take SAT or GRE exams.
Vocabulary software is designed to help you learn new words, experience them in a variety of contexts, and practice using them. The best vocabulary applications are easy and even fun to use. Any writer worth their mettle can use it in tandem with writing enhancement software. Taking the time to expand your vocabulary means that your writing can potentially become stronger, more precise and more impactful.
Related Product Reviews
There are some fantastic free PDF editors around, so we've rounded up the very best to make your life easier.
PDF documents are designed to look and behave exactly the same way on any device. That makes it a brilliant format for sharing, but editing them is another matter. Most office software and photo editors let you export documents in PDF format, but editing requires a dedicated tool. That's because PDF was initially a proprietary format owned by Adobe, and it still owns some of the technologies associated with it. Other companies can license those technologies, but only for a fee that's usually passed on to you – the user.
There aren’t many free PDF editors, and even fewer that won’t leave your documents with unsightly watermarks. That's why we've hand-picked the very best free PDF editors, which offer all the tools you need and won't spoil your work with unsightly watermarks.
1. Apowersoft Online PDF Editor
A powerful free PDF editor that works right in your browser
Plenty of editing tools
Apowersoft Online PDF Editor is a powerful PDF editor that's free to use, and runs in any modern web browser.
Before you can use the online PDF editor, you’ll need to click ‘Launch online’ and download Apowersoft’s launcher – a browser add-on. This take a little extra time, but the effort is well worth it.
The PDF editor will open outside your current browser window. You can edit text – very unusual for a free PDF editor, and very handy.
Text won’t always flow the way you’d like it to, so you may need to spend some time tweaking alignment and text box size, but it’s very impressive for a free PDF editor. Your exported PDFs won’t be watermarked either. We're converted.
2. SmallPDF
A compact but powerful PDF editor
Cloud-based
Limited free trial
SmallPDF is a cloud-based PDF editor, which means it can be used through any device using an internet browser.
It uses a simplified interface to make it easy to edit or add text, as well as drawings or images. Using drag and drop, you can add or remove content as required.
It also comes with a PDF to Word editor, which means if you need to make more detailed edits in a Word doc you can, and even better is that formatting should be preserved.
Uploads and edits are made securely via SSL, so you don't need to worry about third-parties accessing your PDF documents, which could be a concern if the information in them is confidential.
You can also use SmallPDF to fill in forms, esign, unlock, or protect a PDF. Files can be imported directly from online storage providers such as Google Drive and Drop Box.
Overall, SmallPDF is a compact but powerful PDF editor, that should be able to help you achieve most initial edits required, with the helpful doc conversion for more complicated edits.
While it's not free to use continuously, there is a 14-day free trial, which can be useful if you only need to get a few documents edited. After that, pricing begins from around $5 per month.
Best Text Editors For Mac 2018 Collections
2. PDF-XChange Editor
Another superb tool for editing text in PDFs, with built-in OCR
Optical character recognition
Splits and extracts pages
If you need to edit the text in a PDF, PDF-XChange Editor is ideal. It lets you retype, delete, and reformat text, and adapts well if the document uses a font that isn’t installed on your PC. You can also attach comments, split PDFs, and extract pages.
One of PDF-Xchange Editor’s best features is the ability to use OCR to recognize text in scanned documents – ideal if you only have a printout rather than the original file (a handout from a lecture, for example).
Some of the features visible in the menus and toolbars are only available in the premium version of the software, PDF-XChange Editor Plus, but you can easily hover your mouse pointer over an icon to find out if it’s included.
If you go ahead and use a premium tool anyway (adding polygonal shapes or new text boxes, for example), your document will be watermarked. Look out for a warning message underneath the main toolbar before saving your work, just in case.
The paid-for downloads, PDF-XChange Editor costs $43.50 (£35) for the normal version, but for additional features such as form creation and use you will need to buy PDF-XChange Editor Plus, which costs $54.50 ($48).
3. Sejda
An online-only free PDF editor with a great choice of tools
Cloud storage
Best Text Editors For Coding
Free online PDF editor Sejda offers an excellent range of tools, with an added layer of security: all files are deleted from its servers after five hours.
You can add text, images and links, sign documents, add annotations, and insert ellipses and rectangles. There’s also a ‘whiteout’ option, though this simply draws a white rectangle – it doesn’t remove any data. There’s no OCR either, so you won’t be able to edit text in scanned PDFs.
When you’ve finished editing, click ‘Apply changes’ and you’ll be able to download the document, send it to Dropbox or Google Drive, delete it, or access a shareable link. The link will expire after seven days.
There are limits on the free service: every hour, you can process no more than 200 pages or 50MB data (whichever comes first) and perform no more than three tasks. That’s pretty generous, but if you need to perform more tasks, there are weekly, monthly and annual passes available.
At $5 (about £4, AU$7), a weekly pass would work out quite expensive over a long period, but is perfect if you’ll only be needing the full tool for a short time and don’t want to commit to a longer subscription.
5. PDFescape
A free online PDF editor that lets you add new text and images
Lets you add media
There are two versions of the PDFescape PDF editor: a free web app and a premium desktop program. Here we're using the online editor; if you download the desktop software, you'll only receive a trial of the premium edition. It's suitable for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, and will probably work fine on other Chromium-based browsers too.
PDFescape's online editor lets you create new text boxes on the page, but unless you upgrade to the full desktop software there's no way to edit existing text either, you you can create simple geometric shapes and – as with Sedja, above – add white rectangles to obscure parts of the document when it's printed.
PDFescape lets you select a picture from your PC, then drag a rectangle to insert it. You can insert text fields too, enabling you to create simple forms – a rare and welcome feature for a free PDF editor.
- Check out our guide to the best free PDF to Word converters