Editing Software Wars

author of Night to Dawn magazine

A lot of editing software has come out to help us writers improve our writing. The two top-rated ones are Grammarly and ProWritingAid. Dat’s wight, wabbits; I’m talking about editing software, not balloons, though a few Mylar balloons have followed me home from the store.

ProWritingAid has tempted me with a great deal on their premium membership, and so I got one. You must wonder why when I’ve been extolling the virtues of Grammarly. In several blogs, I’ve read that it’s best to use a combination of Grammarly and ProWritingAid. ProWritingAid looks for overused words, cliches, echoes, repeated phrases, and alliteration. It also evaluates the readability of your writing, such as paragraph lengths and consistency. It also has seminars that explain how to use these features here.

Grammarly has been convenient because I have its app in my Word file. I click on the green “Open Grammarly” button, and the software does its work. ProWritingAid has an app, but I haven’t yet figured out how to download it. After writing the introduction to NTD 41, I uploaded it to ProWritingAid and was amazed at how it caught errors. However, there’s a learning curve with ProWritingAid. I don’t know what they mean by echo, for example. Several of the paragraphs in my intro were labeled “hard to read,” and I’m not sure I understand why. Grammarly doesn’t mark a section hard to read, but if you’ve got a clunky sentence, they’ll point it out.

I will continue to use Grammarly for my nonfiction material. I used it well in my Night to Dawn stories, including the ones in Margaret Carter’s Vampire Doctor. But I want to give ProWritingAid a go, especially with my fiction work. It would behoove me to attend some of these seminars and not daydream about my balloons. However, my balloons can also listen and learn something.

Do you use editing software in your writing? What kind? I’d love to hear about your experiences.

vampire fiction by Margaret L. Carter

About Barbara Custer

Author of: Twilight Healer Steel Rose Life Raft: Earth City of Brotherly Death Close Liaisons Infinite Sight When Blood Reigns Infinite Sight Publisher / Editor of Night to Dawn Books & Magazine
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