ProWritingAid has been around for a while now. It is a grammar checker plus punctuation and writing aid tool to put it simply.
I’d say it’s the most complete writing tool for anyone looking to improve their content & writing in general.
In this review, I’ll show you why ProWritingAid beats Grammarly in certain aspects.
There are many reasons why you’d love to choose ProWritingAid as your go-to content writing & editing tool.
Let’s get right into it.
ProWritingAid Review
If you want your blog post, sales copy, emails, books, or any written content to look and sound professional, ProWritingAid is the tool for you.
ProWritingAid was established in 2013, so it’s been here for a while.
ProWritingAid is an online content editing tool. It’s a multi-platform editing tool that you can access using their web-app, desktop app, and browser extension. It works with Microsoft Word as an integrated app.
It allows you to scan your text to analyze for mistakes and improvements. ProWritingAid can help you fix grammatical errors, line editing, enhance and correct punctuation, choose better synonyms, and improve your writing style by highlighting improper flow and structure of your paragraphs.
ProWritingAid comes with a lot of features ranging from beginner level to advanced. It can help you write almost flawless blog posts and edit a complete novel without a hitch.
Unlike other grammar checking tools, ProWritingAid does not limit how many words it can scan and correct correction.
Not only it finds out the mistakes in your content, but it also suggests the changes by explaining the issue and why the suggested change would be a better choice. It actually teaches you so slowly you’ll sub-consciously grow as a writer while using ProWritingAid.
It gives you the closest level of perfection to a human editor. Once you start using it, it’s surprising how good and powerful it is.
ProWritingAid Features
You need more than a grammar correction tool to become a better writer. ProWritingAid comes with a bunch of such features that’ll help you sharpen your writing skills. Here are all of them.
Real-Time Editing
As you write in ProWritingAid editor, the real-time editing feature keeps highlighting as soon as you make a mistake. It also highlights certain words and sentences while suggesting improvements.
It is much more convenient than other tools, which take significant time to scan and yield correction results. You can keep correcting your punctuation, use the thesaurus to pick new synonyms, and more without breaking your flow.
The real-time editing in ProWritingAid shows you 4 different errors:
- Grammar issues.
- Style errors.
- Spelling mistakes.
- Passive voice issues.
Simply hover your cursor each time you see the highlighted text, and ProWritingAid will show you the recommended replacement word or the re-written sentence suggestion.
Summary Report
Click on the summary report, and you’ll see, well, a detailed summary of your writing. It rates your copy on a scale of 1-100 on the key score data. The key-scores are three important writing scores, which include Grammar Score, Style Score, and Spelling Score.
A good way to analyze your copy’s level would be to check the key-scores before you edit and after you finish.
The summary report has two sections:
- Where your document is good at.
- Where your document still needs work.
The summary report by ProWritingAid is handy if you wish to understand where you need to pay attention to your writing.
ProWritingAid summary report is extremely detailed. It comprises useful suggestions while highlighting the rights and wrongs of your copy. It presents the data in charts and graphs that help you understand every aspect, error, and improvement in your document.
In-depth reports include the readability of your sentences. It shows you all the hard-to-read sentences present in your content and suggestions to quickly make them easy-to-read.
Advanced scores include Sentence variety, Sentence structure, bad adverbs filter, glue index, acronym consistency, and comparison of your sentences with the average web copy. ProWritingAid has many layers under the summary toolbar.
If you pay attention and work to improve the scores in this summary report alone, you will easily improve your writing style over a period.
Passive voice alert shows you the number of times you use passive voice wordplay in a sentence. As a content marketer, my suggestion is always to reduce the possibility of passive voice, especially in sales letters and landing page copy. It’s not direct and makes the copy less impactful.
Your writing is directly compared to Jennifer Weiner’s writing – to show you how a bestselling and award-winning writer structures her manuscripts.
For example, look at my summary report.
As per ProWritingAid, my paragraph has 69% Sentence Lengths Distribution, while Jennifer Weiner has an average of 2%. Well, that’s a light-bulb moment for me.
That just for the free users. When you purchase a ProWritingAid premium plan, you can choose your favorite author for comparison. For example, I chose James Clavell.
There’s an option to print the report as well.
So you can save the summary reports to document how much you’re improving from time to time. This would be a great way to grow as a writer. Looking back at where you were when you started and where you are now.
Writing Style Check
On the top of the ProWritingAid editor, you’ll notice the Style icon. Click it, and a review panel will open on the left. You’ll see several improvements you can make to your writing style.
Style check helps you find out:
- Readability enhancement.
- Passive and hidden verbs.
- Adverbs in dialogue.
- The number of emotional tells.
- Passive index.
- The number of subordinate clauses.
By clicking on any suggested improvements and errors, you can quickly fix each issue without hovering your cursor to the sentences. It makes it a tad easier.
Grammar Check
When you turn on the Grammar Check tool, ProWritingAid scans the whole document ONLY for grammatical errors.
Unlike real-time editing, Grammar Check helps you to fix all the errors without hovering your mouse. You can simply click on the errors highlighted in the Grammar Check panel on the left side of your screen.
How does ProWritingAid spell check compare to Grammarly?
I have a habit of double hitting the “e” key every time I write the word error.
So I thought to scan the above paragraph, making my usual mistake to check how Grammarly and ProWritingAid fix it.
Look at the side-by-side comparison between Grammarly and ProWritingAid spelling check algorithm below:
Grammarly is spot on. It shows one suggestion, and it’s correct. I wrote the word eeors, and it corrected it to errors.
On the other hand, ProWritingAid shows me multiple suggestions as a potential fix for the spelling mistake, but all five of them are wrong.
I’ve got to say Grammarly is as precise as ever. It’s the ability to learn how you write your words and what errors you make frequently.
Apart from this one, every other spelling mistake has been fixed accurately by ProWritingAid.
Thesaurus
Having a good vocabulary is essential. Else, your copy sounds sloppy and repetitive.
If you don’t focus on finding unfamiliar (but not complex) words, you’d soon run out of words to express your thoughts. This can lead to writer’s block.
ProWritingAid comes with a built-in thesaurus. A thesaurus helps you in finding synonyms and related words.
To use ProWritingAid thesaurus, double click on a word and hold your cursor on it. A tooltip will pop up with a synonym(s) and related words/phrases.
Alternatively, you can also click on the Thesaurus icon on the top of the ProWritingAid editor. A Thesaurus panel will open where you can glance at all the words that you can replace with a synonym.
This will automatically scan your document and recommend possible synonyms for :
- Adjectives.
- Adverbs.
- Verbs.
- Nouns.
Select any of the recommended words and then click on the ✔️ beside it to replace it with a synonym of your choice.
Overused Words Check
Words like it, there, think, initial-ing, okay, so – just to name a few are overused in most blog posts.
Especially novice writers like to use the words “So” every time they are trying to explain something. While it’s not bad to use words, you like to express yourself, but this could lead to your content being undeniably difficult to read.
If it’s anywhere above 500 words and you use one word like 20 times, this can make your copy look amateurish.
And you don’t want that to happen.
To help you identify any word(s) that you may have overused, ProWritingAid has another feature called overuse word check.
Click the overuse icon on the top of the ProWritingAid editor, and like the thesaurus, a new panel on the left will open.
Here you’ll find all the overused words with detailed explanations. That’s why I like ProWritingAid so much. Not only it helps you look like a professional writer, it actually helps you become a better writer by explaining what’s wrong with your copy.
You can click on the recommendation to instantly go to the highlighted mistake in your document.
Combo Check
When you complete going through each of the checks and reports, ProWritingAid will show you a combination of your favorite reports in a single screen.
This report highlights all the errors and potential enhancements in your writing. Your document will look like this:
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Hover to any of the highlighted text, and an instant correction and enhancement toolbar will pop up. You can decide whether you’d like to use the ProWritingAid’s suggestion or stick with your own version.
Combo check report basically combines all other reports and checks ProWritingAid has.
It’s more of a fast, and convenient way to find and fix all the issues without going through each report one by one.
For freelancers, the Combo check would be a great time saver and will definitely help boost productivity.
Combo check includes all the fixes, including spell check, diction, vague and abstract words, style improvement, and sticky sentence reduction as well.
Your writing goes through a complete reform when you use ProWritingAid. It’s probably the most powerful and advanced web-editor to date.
Repeats & Echos
ProWritingAid has this unique feature called Repeats & Echos.
If you look at the top of ProWritingAid editor you’ll see two options:
- All Repeats.
- Echos.
Both are basically the same thing. Enabling the All Repeats option will show you the frequency of repetitive 10-1 word/phrases in your copy.
The Echos feature highlights any words and phrases that you have repeated within a short interval in your sentences. According to ProWritingAid, you should try and find something else to say.
This is a bit more advance and time-consuming step but it’s worth it if it makes your document more readable and effective.
More ProWritingAid Features
Apart from the ones we just talked about, ProWritingAid comes with a bunch of additional advanced features such as:
- Readability check.
- Structure check.
- Transition check.
- Sticky sentences check.
- Homonym check.
- Acronym, pacing, and sensory check.
- Diction and pronoun check.
ProWritingAid also comes with a plagiarism checker. But it’s not free like Grammarly offers. You have to purchase the Premium Plus plan to get 60 plagiarism checks by ProWritingAid or you can purchase individual credits if it’s a one-time thing.
Depending on the purpose of your writing, you can specify the writing style for editing. This will help the ProWritingAid algorithm to adjust the level of professionalism, structure, and flow of editing your copy.
ProWritingAid supports five languages:
- US English.
- British English.
- Australian English.
- Canadian English.
- General English.
You can switch between languages through the settings menu.
Feature-wise, ProWritingAid outranks most of the content editing apps and tools.
ProWritingAid Pricing
ProWritingAid is essentially free. But the free version is very limiting. You can only check up to 500 words at a time and the software integrations are also a part of the premium plan.
Also, note there is no option to save your documents in ProWritingAid free version. To save your documents and resume editing whenever you want, you’ll need a premium plan.
So if you’re serious about using ProWritingAid to become a better writer, you need to purchase the premium version.
The pricing structure of ProWritingAid Premium is pretty simple. You have three plans to choose from:
- Monthly subscription – $20/month
- Yearly subscription – $79/year
- Lifetime subscription – $399 (one-time fee for lifetime access)
If you want ProWritingAid to check for plagiarism, you need to purchase the Premium Plus plan priced at:
- Monthly – $24/month
- Yearly – $89/year
- Lifetime – $499 (one time fee)
These plans look very affordable when you compare the price of ProWritingAid with Grammarly which charges $29.95/month or $139.95 per year. And there’s no option to own Grammarly for life by paying once.
Want to save extra money when you buy ProWritingaAid premium? Get an exclusive discount using this coupon code.
You’ll get 20% on all plans, which means savings up to $80. And this ProWritingAid coupon is applicable on the Premium Plus plan as well.
ProWritingAid – Conclusion
With an impressive number of features, ProWritingAid is easily the most powerful web content editor. A tool built for writers who wish to publish flawless content and look professional without much effort.
It’s easy to use and the best part is its explanations of every error you make. It teaches you the ins-and-outs of near-perfect content writing. If you’re a constant learner and pay attention to its suggestions you’ll eventually become a better writer, that’s for sure.
Compared to Grammarly, ProWritingAid doesn’t fall short in any aspect. Instead, it is far more robust and capable of fixing advanced writing issues.
ProWritingAid is less expensive and has its own chrome extension to edit your writing on the go. It integrates with Microsoft Word – a feature many users will appreciate.
It’s your turn now.
Do you use ProWritingAid?
Or are you planning to use it?
Maybe you have a question or something to add of your own?
In any case, leave a comment below and let me know.
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