Editing, grammar and proofing software

I've spent quite a bit of time evaluating some of the many software applications out there that aim to help us all write better. As you can imagine, some are better than others. I thought I might share my experiences with you.

I put each software application through a series of vigorous tests...

Before I start, I had better explain my own needs here. As a freelancer, I don't have anyone else to read my work before I send it on. I use my own tips for proofreading such as:

• Printing off and reading on paper - this helps a lot as on paper you often spot things you wouldn't see on screen.
• Using a ruler - I often read back with a ruler under each line which helps me focus on one line at a time.
• Reading backwards - this can be helpful because you read each word out of context.
• Reading out loud - this is good for spotting missing prepositions and clunky sentences.

Even with all that, the odd thing can slip through the net. Essentially it's because my brain works faster than my fingers can type - this means when reading back, I see what I expect to see, not always what is really there.

Let me start with Whitesmoke (www.whitesmoke.com)   This company has a very effective affiliate programme going on - you can't move on Google for different people offering this product for sale. I tried it and quite frankly it failed the first test.  I typed in a sentence, and substituted the word 'by' for 'be', which within the context of the sentence, should have been very easy to spot. Needless to say it didn't. Plus, it doesn't like you evaluating other software at the same time and somehow managed to disable other things I was trying to use in order to draw comparisons. So my view, is not great.

My next one was Grammerly (www.grammerly.com). This is one of those sites where you can't get access to the trial until you put in your credit card details. I don't know about you, but this really annoys me. A good free trial should have no strings attached in my opinion. Anyway, I bit the bullet via Paypal (I thought at least that gives me an extra layer of protection). But it didn't download properly and and after an hour trying to sort it out, I gave up and uninstalled it. I might change my mind and have another go, but I wasn't in the mood to faff about. Easy should mean easy and this was a pain.

Ginger was next. (www.gingersoftware.com) This one I liked. It passed my tests with flying colours. Plus it has this additional nifty little feature that reads the copy out loud for you. The reading is not exactly BBC announcer quality, but it's certainly good enough to allow you to hear anything that doesn't work well.  So I think I'll by buying this one.

Stylewriter (stylewritersoftware.com/) is also good and one I will be purchasing. It's not quite as good as Ginger at spelling and grammar, but it does analyse your work very well and I can honestly say it pushed me to make some changes that created much better copy. Things like the passive use of verbs, and overlong sentences are flagged up. It also gives you a 'bog' score, which tells you how easy or hard it is to read the copy. Other nifty things include a flag on repetitive words, and words which are commonly misused. For example I put in a sentence that had the word 'contemporary' in it. The system prompted me to consider its true meaning. We often use contemporary to mean modern - when in actual fact it doesn't mean that at all, it means 'at the same time as'. I thought that used in conjunction with Ginger, this is a great tool.

I tried a free tool called Paper Rater. (www.paperrater.com/) This is mainly aimed at academic writers. The funny thing about this one was that it told me I had a pitiful score on vocabulary, saying that I should aim to use more complex words. As someone who writes a lot of marketing copy, my view has always been the simpler the better.  Anyway, if you're doing a thesis, this might be great, but for sales and marketing purposes, not terrific.

Perfect is a product from a company called Intelligent Software (http://www.intelligentediting.com/) I have taken a 30 free trial on this but so far I can't work out what it's supposed to do. I tried my benchmark tests of missing and incorrect prepositions and it gave my documents a clean bill of health. I accept that this does not sell itself as a comprehensive grammar checker, but it does claim to clean up common typos. In my mind a missed preposition is a common typo.  It also claims to sort out inconsistencies in documents such as acronyms and capitalisation. Again, I couldn't get anything from it. I'm guessing this tool is best used for situations where you have very long documents with lots of numbering and sub headings etc. The free trial is easy enough to download and the application neatly pops it into the Add ins tab in MS Word.

That's it for now - this blog post is now three times longer than the optimum length of a blog, so I better stop now before someone writes in pointing out all my mistakes.

Anyway, my parting thoughts are that while these tools are very helpful, we are all human.