7 Tools That Help You in Writing and Editing Your Drafts
These web-based tools help you to write and edit in less time
Once you have written your story, the real work begins. You have to edit your story. It is a difficult process.
You are most probably going to miss some types, mess some punctuations, and misuse passive voice. You might have used some cliches, a little jargon, and made some grammatical mistakes along the way. The result would be that your publisher will have no idea why you think you are a writer.
In a fast-paced world, you have to write high-quality stuff more frequently. These tools can save you some time and trouble:
OneLook
Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus: To find the ideal word
OneLook’s Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus can help you to find the right word. It can instantly suggest synonyms, nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.
You can find a phrase or an entire sentence. If you just have the foggiest idea of the word that you are trying to recall, it can help you. If you type, say, “urge to travel”, it will immediately suggest: wanderlust.
Hemingway Editor
For spelling and grammar
The Hemingway Editor helps you to clean up your writing.
Copy and paste your story into Hemingway Editor. It instantly highlights the use of adverbs, the use of passive voice, words and phrases, and complex sentences.
Hemingway provides a grade for reading ease. A lower grade means the story will be easy to comprehend for most readers.
Grammarly
For spelling, grammar, and more
Grammarly also helps you with spelling and grammar mistakes. It is almost magical, and the speed is quite good as well. You can use it online, or you can use the chrome extension.
When you misspell a word, Grammarly underscores it in red color. It also indicates clarity errors in blue color. If the delivery of your message is not correct, it uses purple color. If your writing is not engaging, it uses green color to show that you need to make your piece more interesting.
If also indicates premium usage errors with an orange color. It suggests synonyms and marks complex sentences as well.
Cliche Finder
Best free writing software for finding and removing cliches
Cliche Finder helps you eliminate cliches from your writing, so your work can stand out instead of sounding just like everyone else’s.
Paste your text into the tool, click the Find Cliches button, then see a version of your piece, with any cliches highlighted in bold, red text. You’ll have to make the edits in your original document. But it provides an easy way to identify any place where you’re using a phrase that may need to be re-worded for originality or clarity.
De-Jargonizer
To find uses of jargon
Suppose you’re a doctor writing an article for other doctors. It’s nice to use the medical jargon because your readers understand the meanings assigned to those words. However, if you are writing an explanation for the common people, using medical jargon can confuse and distance your readers.
De-Jargonizer helps you recognize words that might be viewed as jargon and not suitable for your readers.
De-Jargonizer highlights the jargon in orange or red, depending on severity. The words highlighted in red have to be considered for replacement.
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer
For better headlines
CoSchedule Headline Analyzer gives you the power to make headlines that the users may be willing to click. It provides suggestions on length, word placement, and sentiment of the headline as well.
It gives your headline a score, such as 66 for this article.
Its suggestions can help you to improve your headlines by adding power words, uncommon words, or words that evoke emotions.
Draft
For comparing different versions of the draft.
Draft has a different point of view on editing. It does not directly modify the your story. Instead, it creates a new version of the story for a new round of editing.
When you have finished your draft, you can share it with others via a link. Draft high lights the changes that are subsequently made and highlights them in red and green colors. The old version of the text is in red while the modified text is in green color.
It gives you a visual feel of your edits.
Conclusion
These writing tools can help you write and edit your stories. After writing your first draft, you can relatively easily find errors of different types.
There is indeed a learning curve involved with every tool. But, these tools are easy to use because they have been designed for user ease — the user, in this case, is you.
You don’t buy every book when you go to a book store. You read the book reviews for guidance. The curation is a review of your written piece — by Medium. What Medium wants and what you can do about it — an explanation of the requirements for successful curation.