ProWritingAid Review: Is it worth buying?

ProWritingAid - Grammar checker and writing tool

Be it business writing, a novel, or even a simple email copy, a good writer always makes sure that the content they are passing on is grammatically sound and catchy. Even the best editors and writers need a tool to proofread their documents.

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After all, having an accurate system for editing is better than reading it manually tens of times and still not being able to get all the corrections in one go.

ProWritingAid is one such tool that is extremely versatile in ways that it aids the process of writing.

What is ProWritingAid?

ProWritingAid is basically a tool for checking grammar and writing style for business writers, novelists, bloggers, ghostwriters, etc. It helps you correct any mistakes you might have made during the writing and also helps you edit the writing style, suggests your best word and phrase choices, and suggests corrections for punctuation as well.

You can check any text on this tool, be it books, articles, blog posts, social media copies, etc. This software can be accessed on both Mac and Windows on a web browser. It allows integration with Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and Scrivener. This app is particularly helpful for fiction writers as it helps greatly with the writing style. 

Who can use ProWritingAid?

Originally prepared for all kinds of writers, business people, authors, or bloggers, this app helps anyone who writes a lot. Surprisingly enough, this tool is a super-accurate editing and proofreading program that comes with multiple features and solutions for real-time editing in terms of writing style and grammar. It can help you with the following:

  • Improving word choice
  • Correcting spelling errors
  • Correcting grammar errors
  • Sentence modification tips to avoid slowing down the readers
  • Tense consistency throughout the content piece
  • Improving readability of your content

You can use ProWritingAid in multiple ways including but not limited to those above. 

It is possible to integrate ProWritingAid with Google Docs, Microsoft Word, most web browsers, and a writing app called Scrivener. However, they have only developed an application for Windows.

The Desktop App is not available for Mac. But one can easily use this tool on a web browser even if you are working on a Mac. 

Basically, it is a grammar checker cum editing app that is for everyone who wants to write flawlessly. The best professionals that benefit from these apps are students, copywriters, storytellers, fiction writers, etc. 

It is quite useful in corporate settings as well because it comes in handy while drafting presentations, emails, reports, etc. to make their text readable and understandable. 

Is ProWritingAid a free tool?

Yes, and no! ProWritingAid offers multiple features, of which some are free and some are only made available when you purchase a premium plan. The free version can be used as a demo to understand how it works and if it is helpful for you and your business. Once you are convinced that this is the right tool for you, you can go ahead and purchase the premium version. 

The premium version offers the following features:

  • Browser extensions
  • Web-based and desktop-based apps
  • Integration with Google Docs, Microsoft Word, MS Office, and Scrivener
  • Writing style reports
ProWritingAid MS office add-in
ProWritingAid MS office add-in

In order to cross the limit of checking anything above 500 words, you need to purchase a premium plan of ProWritingAid.

How to use the ProWritingAid premium version?

It can be used on a browser, or simply on the desktop version of the application. While we’re eager to explain how exactly the app functions, let us go through a general product description first.

When you type, ProWritingAid highlights your spelling errors as a red underline and writing style suggestions and corrections by using a blue underline. One can simply click on the underlines to check what are the errors.

After that, you can choose to use or ignore the suggestion. In case you keep seeing the same error over and over again, but wish to keep the spelling exactly the same way, you can click on “add to dictionary” and the app will not show the same suggestion to you again.

That was about the basic real-time editing. This software also offers various reports and audits for different types of documents. Following are the types of reports that it offers:

  • A holistic analysis of your document
  • Writing style check for the overall content in your document
  • Grammar checker report
  • Myriads of suggestions via a thesaurus that offers suitable synonyms
  • Overused words report
  • Pacing, structure, and readability of the sentences in your document
  • Plagiarism check

By using these features, a collective report will be generated on the side of your document in order to suggest you specific areas that need attention. However, it is completely up to you to accept or ignore the changes.

How much does ProWritingAid cost?

Unlike other online editing software apps, ProWritingAid is comparatively cheaper. Following is the list of prices that it offers:

ProWritingAid Premium costs $20 for a monthly subscription,  $79 for an annual subscription, or $399 for a lifetime subscription. This is the reason that ProWritingAid is chosen by many writing professionals. Its affordability actually attracts more subscribers.

However, the plagiarism checker is not included in this price. As you include the plagiarism checker in your plan, the price goes slightly up. They call it their premium plus plan and the pricing is as follows:

ProWritingAid Premium Plus costs $24 for a monthly subscription,  $89 for an annual subscription, or $499 for a lifetime subscription. This includes the plagiarism checker as well. 

Are ProWritingAid reports any good?

Yes, and in fact, the reports are the most valuable feature on ProWritingAid. It doesn’t just give you an indication of what is wrong. Instead, ProWritingAid provides you with specific reports about required improvements in your document. These suggestions come in the form of reports and help you tackle the specific issues with your content. 

The first and foremost report carries a summary, breaking down all the aspects of your report. It comes up as a large page that cannot be edited while you read the summary. Based on spelling, grammar, style, and terminology, it scores your document out of 100 in this summary report.

Now, in order to improve the score, the same document gives you a checklist with key suggestions. As you go through the summary report, you can see your word count, overused words, readability, spelling issues, sentence variance, etc. the summary report is an intricately detailed overview of how the content looks. 

Going forward, you can switch between other reports to analyze your content specific to each aspect. The writing style report focuses more on the readability issues, your usage of adverbs, and it also scans your report for passive voice.

This report is also displayed on the side and it underlines the issues in real-time. You can either understand these issues by checking the report itself or by simply following the underlined phrases.

The two unusual and unique reports provided by ProWritingAid are “Pacing report” and “Sticky sentences report”. The “sticky sentences” report shows you the number of glue words you have used in your document. Glue words are simply words that do not add to the meaning of your sentence but just make it word-heavy.

Eventually, it slows down the reader. Now, you will not be offered exact suggestions to edit these sticky sentences, but ProWritingAid will identify the glue words for you, and hence, you can edit the sentences on your own.

Next, the pacing report will allow you to examine the sections of your sentences where the phrases or fragments lack action. Again, the editor does not give you direct suggestions on how to edit the sentence, but it will help you identify the areas that need work.

There are other reporting features, such as readability, that allow you to understand how fast a reader would go through your text. Moreover, all these reports come with a link that further leads you to a webpage explaining the grammatical mechanism behind those suggestions. 

Does ProWritingAid help you learn better writing?

Honestly, that is up to us. Blindly accepting suggestions will not help you learn better or faster. But, if you think your writing is all right and great, give ProWritingAid a try. See how many underlines show up when you write a content piece. That will help you understand the areas where you need improvement in your writing. 

Learning with the intention of learning is very important if you are relying on any online tool. Sometimes, we are biased towards a certain writing style, the use of certain types of words, or even habituated to using some catchphrases in our articles or documents.

We don’t notice those because it has become our habit to write in this particular manner. However, using ProWritingAid will help you highlight, understand, and improve upon those errors and biases.

Now, one more thing: Sure, ProWritingAid has many suggestions for your text. It helps you remove the unnecessary fluff from your documents. But at times, it is necessary to keep some of those words it suggested removing. Writing is more of an art than merely a task that could be analyzed by artificial intelligence.

Tools are so useful to accentuate our writing style, but at last, it is the kind of emotions your writing brings out. No one writes without a purpose, so feel free to ignore a suggestion or two when it is defying your purpose.

Conclusion

Overall a really good tool to improve writing style and edit documents, ProWritingAid is also an affordable option as compared to other online editing tools. It offers you a lot of feedback on each aspect of your writing and that is something we love about ProWritingAid. Furthermore, it helps you learn in a passive manner.

While they aim for maximum comprehension, it is our responsibility to keep the essence of the text intact. It surely is difficult to choose between accepting or ignoring the suggestions, but the onus is on you.

As a good writer, you must also be a good reader. And if you are a good reader, you will easily identify the suggestions that need to be accepted!

All in all, ProWritingAid offers a myriad of suggestions and reports to improve the quality of your text, your writing style, and grammatical construct of the documents, and that too at an affordable price!

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