by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
When the ProWritingAid team recently got in touch with me and offered me the chance to check out their editing tool, I was happy to take them up on it. I have never used editing software and was curious to see how well it would work. (I’m not an affiliate, but I did get a free account to try out.)
After setting up my account I decided to upload a couple of documents. The first I uploaded was the current WiP. ProWritingAid indicated that the document might be too large for the tool to effectively handle. I also uploaded a much shorter document, a condensed version of one of my mysteries that’s going to be translated into Spanish.
As the program predicted, it had some trouble with the big (about 50,000 word) file. It still worked, but the response was slow. The shorter document had no problems at all. It might be best to portion out a completed or near-completed manuscript into smaller chunks to run through the software.
I was impressed by what the program picked up in my unedited document. It quickly pointed out words that I overuse (I’m a ‘just’ fan), instances of passive voice, and times when I needed to either add a comma or remove one. It will prompt you to switch out ‘very small’ for ‘tiny’ or to drop the ‘very’. You can also check your story for specific issues. A click on ‘echoes’ resulted in the software pulling up words or phrases that were repeated closely together. In the example below, it picked up a somewhat larger problem–a split infinitive.
Writers can get a feel for whether they’re being consistent in their style.
A click on ‘pacing’ will pull up instances of slow pacing paragraphs (usually heavy in narrative).
A click on ‘clichés’ will return the clichéd phrases for you to consider changing.
You can pull up various reports for your story, too. I was interested in the readability report, for instance. Because the project was supposed to be written in an easy reader style for an English speaking person learning Spanish, I was glad to see that it was relatively readable.
The software focuses on grammatical errors, style issues, and readability. Did it mess up? Yes. Not as much as the grammar-checker on Microsoft Word, but still fairly frequently. Like Word, writers can ignore its feedback.
This software does not replace human editors but can be an effective tool to help clean up a manuscript before it goes to an editor. It can also help educate writers on mistakes to avoid.
Pricing can be found here and is by the year. Although it’s definitely an investment, I think it’s the kind of program that can help writers save money in the long run by cutting down on the amount of time editors have to spend on their manuscripts. Time is money when it comes to editing.
For further reading, Dave Chesson has a nice post comparing proofreading software.
Have you tried ProWritingAid or other proofreading software? How did you like it?
A Closer Look at Editing Software ProWritingAid: Share on XPhoto credit: *Pasha* on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-SA
Now that sounds like an excellent editing tool. It finds the stuff that really matters.
I was impressed with it. I think it could really cut down editing costs.
Sounds like a useful tool, and the price seems fairly reasonable. I’ll look into it further when I have some loose cash lying around (might not be any time soon, but we’ll see.) Thanks!
It caught more than I thought! I ran the whole book through the tool, in chunks, made corrections, and then sent it off to my editor.
Wow, this sounds really helpful, Elizabeth! I like it that it looks at several aspects of the story, too – things you might not notice at first. And you’re not the only one that lets overused words go by. I use ‘scoop’ a lot for some reason. And I don’t think about it as I’m going. Nice to have a tool that catches those things.
It’s nice to have a digital set of ‘eyes’ checking over it, too! I was pleasantly surprised at how well it did.