avatarMad Machine

Summary

The website content provides an overview of writing tools and grammar checkers suitable for new writers, with a focus on their features, pricing, and the author's personal experience.

Abstract

The author shares their journey in search of the best writing tools to enhance their writing process on Medium. They discuss the pros and cons of various writing editors like Ulysses, iA Writer, Hemingway Editor, and Medium's own editor, considering factors such as Markdown support, offline functionality, and distraction-free writing environments. Additionally, the author evaluates grammar checkers, including Grammarly, Ginger Writer, and ProWriting Aid, emphasizing their grammar, style checking, and rephrasing capabilities. The article also touches on additional tools like screen capture utilities and image editors that complement the writing process. The author concludes by inviting suggestions for other tools and encouraging readers to support them by joining Medium.

Opinions

  • The author finds Ulysses to be an excellent tool for writing, particularly appreciating its Markdown support, inline images, and preview mode, but notes its expensive subscription model.
  • iA Writer is seen as a strong alternative to Ulysses, offering a minimalistic interface and useful features like Focus Mode and syntax coloring, though it lacks image caption support.
  • Hemingway Editor is recognized for its style checking capabilities but is considered insufficient for tech or image-heavy writing due to its limited formatting options and lack of Markdown support.
  • Medium's editor is deemed sufficient for most users, with its WYSIWYG interface and autosave feature, but is limited by its lack of offline support.
  • Grammarly stands out as the author's favorite grammar checker for its comprehensive features, including style checking and rephrasing, despite its premium cost.
  • Ginger Writer is acknowledged as a cost-effective alternative to Grammarly, with similar features but slower performance and a more affordable price point.
  • ProWriting Aid is noted for its lifetime purchase option and extensive writing style support, though it may not be as user-friendly as Grammarly.
  • The author recommends additional tools such as CleanShot X for screen captures and GIMP for image editing to enhance the writing workflow.
  • The author values the community's input and invites readers to contribute their own tool recommendations.

Writing Tools For New Writers

Having great tools makes the writing process easier for Medium.

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

I put my goal of writing into motion this month, with the primary goal to improve my writing and earn extra cash. I wanted to have some tools to make this process easier. Fortunately, I have an iPad and MacBook Pro with an abundance of apps.

This is the story of my journey to find the best tools for my writing endeavor.

Writing Tool

The first tool I needed was a tool to write with — an editor. Because I have a Setapp subscription, there are a couple of popular writing tools on there.

Ulysses

I started using Ulysses.

These are the pros of this tool:

  • Ulysses has excellent support for Markdown, which I’m already well versed in.
  • It can quickly show just the parts I need, minimizing the distractions — the editor screen, statistics (word count, reading time, etc.)
  • It supports images to be added to the editor via drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste
  • It shows the images inline in the editor window. For example
From Pixabay.com
  • It supports image caption, which you can use to cite the image source if needed.
  • It offers a preview mode that looks amazingly like what Medium would show.
  • You can publish directly to Medium, and it does an excellent job at preserving the look. The preview provided by Ulysses looks identical to how Medium would display it.
  • It’s multi-platform — runs on macOS, iPad, and iPhone — with full synchronization via iCloud.
  • You can use it offline, i.e., when you’re not connected to the Internet.

And the cons:

  • It requires an expensive subscription — $49.99 a year or $5.99 a month. Students can use it for $10.99 for six months.

Besides the price, I don’t have any complaints about Ulysses.

I don’t have a Setapp for my iOS devices, so I wasn’t able to use Ulysses on my iPad beyond the trial period. I wanted an alternative that does not require a subscription.

iA Writer

Although Ulysses offers all the features I need, I wanted an alternative that does not require a subscription. I found iA Writer, a popular, direct competitor to Ulysses, offers almost the same features.

These are the things I like about iA Writer:

  • The screen can be set up to be minimal, removing the distractions.
  • It has excellent support for Markdown, which I am well versed in.
  • It has Focus Mode, which blinds everything except the sentence or paragraph.
  • It can be set up to color different parts of speech to help spot typos, patterns, and structural errors. This helps to spot weak adverbs or unwanted repetitions and superfluous adjectives. This feature reminds me a lot about the Hemingway Editor.
  • It offers preview mode in full window or split-screen. The split view is excellent if you have a large/wide monitor.
  • It can show statistics such as word count and reading time.
  • It can publish to Medium from the app, and it nicely preserves the format.
  • You can use it offline, i.e., when you’re not connected to the Internet.
  • It’s a one-time purchase price of $29.99 for the Mac version and another $29.99 for the iPhone and iPad versions.

And now the cons:

  • Although the cost is a one-time cost per app, it can be costly for some at $29.99 for the Mac version and another $29.99 for the iOS version.
  • It does not provide image captions, so it requires extra work to add the captions after the app has published it to Medium as a draft.

I don’t mind the price because it’s a one-time payment, but the inability to add an image caption is a significant drawback.

Hemingway Editor

This editor is often mentioned in many Medium articles with high approval ratings, so I took it for a spin.

Hemingway is mainly a style checker, designed to “cut the dead weight from your writing.”

The pros:

  • A one-time charge of $19.99 for the desktop version of Hemingway for macOS or Windows
  • The web version is free, but it provides no safety for written pieces if the browser crashes or restarts.
  • The Desktop version can be used offline.
  • It can publish directly to Medium.
  • It does an excellent job with style checking

The cons:

  • It does not support Markdown and provides only minimal formatting support in the editor (Bold, Italic, Headings, Quote, Bullets, Numbers, and Links). It does not support code blocks for anyone writing with code examples.
  • It does not support images.
  • The free web version does not have save feature or protection against browser restarts or crashes.

For some people, Hemingway might be sufficient, but for me it does not offer enough feature for beginners. It should be good for people who write stories, but not for those who write about code/tech or those who use pictures and images.

Medium.com’s Editor

For most people, the Medium Editor is sufficient. It is provided by Medium so it offers WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get). Formatting is easily done by highlighting and selecting the desired format.

Unlike Hemingway, the web-based Medium editor has protection against browser restart or crashes. I believe it autosaves with every change. I tested this and the editor preserved the change after restarting from a force browser restart.

The biggest con for the Medium web editor is the lack of support for offline editing, i.e., it’s not available when there is no Internet.

Grammar Checker

English is not my primary language so I definitely need help from a good grammar checker. I’ve tried many.

Grammarly

This is by far my favorite grammar checker. It not only offers grammar syntax checker, but it also offers style checking and rephrasing. My writing tends to be wordy or phrased awkwardly so Grammarly helps considerably.

The biggest drawback to Grammarly is the cost. While Grammarly is free, it only provides spelling, grammar, and punctuation checks.

To get the Premium feature will cost $12 a month if paid annually or $30 a month if paid monthly.

Premium provides fluency, readability, word choice, plagiarism detection, inclusive language, formality level, and formality level.

Grammarly works great on macOS, iPhone, iPad in almost all apps and in browsers as well. The Grammarly desktop version also works with browsers without the installation of the Grammarly browser extension.

Ginger Writer

Ginger offers almost the same feature as Grammarly at a cheaper price.

Like Grammarly, it also has syntax checker and rephrasing. Rephrasing is available in the free version as well, but has limits as to how many rephrases you can do.

The paid premium feature gives you unlimited sentence rephrasing, synonyms, AI-power grammar corrections, and translation to 40+ languages.

I did notice that Ginger is slower than Grammarly in sentence rephrasing.

The price of Ginger is $7.49 a month if paid annually or $13.99 a month if paid monthly. Students can teachers can get a 70% discount, or about $2.50 a month.

Ginger can also be purchased on iPad and iPhone for $19.99 a year or a $2.99 a month subscription. This is a good price and might be sufficient for writers who write primarily on iPads. This would still not be as easy as Grammarly, lacking support for functioning as a keyboard to provide ability for grammar checking in all apps.

ProWriting Aid

I purchased ProWriting Aid many years ago for about $170 lifetime. The price of ProWriting Aid has increased to $299.25 for a lifetime, $59.25 for an annual subscription, or $20 a month for a monthly subscription.

ProWriting Aid is available as a native macOS app in addition to the web version.

You can pick different writing styles — supporting several dozen types of writing. It provides lots of tweaks for professional writers.

It also provides sentence structure and rephrasing, although this is not as easy to use as Grammarly.

Additional Tools

Depending on the type of writing, you may require additional tools such as screen capture utilities and image editor.

I use CleanShot X as my screen capture utility which I reviewed in this article:

I also use Markdown Note-taking, Note-Keeping app to keep track interesting information as I encounter them or to keep notes of what I learned that could potential turn into a written piece.

I reviewed the apps I used in this article:

For image editing, I use the free GIMP image editor which offers advanced editing similar to Adobe PhotoShop.

Conclusion

I just started my writing endeavor a little over a month ago. These are the only tools I currently use. I welcome any suggestions that you may have.

Please consider joining Medium as a paying member. It’s $5 a month for unlimited access. And if you use the following link it will go a long way in supporting me as a writer.

Writing
New Writers
Mac
Writing Tips
Technology
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