The Pros and Cons of ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid Logo
Are you looking for a grammar and style checker?
Grammar and style checkers are popular software add-ins that can help you improve and tighten your writing.
I’ve been using one called ProWritingAid the last few months and want to pass on my experience so you can decide if it’s for you.
I wanted a tool to help me both catch writing mistakes and improve my style, and when I watched Joanna Penn’s review of ProWritingAid on YouTube, I was convinced to buy it as a cheaper alternative to Grammarly. Joanna has lots of good advice for all writers, and her review of the product gives many astute reasons to buy ProWritingAid. And she even offers a 25% discount to the first year’s subscription of the Premium (licensed) edition. So, I bought it.
I have no affiliation to the product or company.
Product Overview
Product Name:
Website:
Price:
Discount link (25% off premium edition):
Rating:
Recommended:
ProWritingAid
Free trial version: for 14 days
Premium subscription: $20/month, $79/year, or $399/lifetime
Premium Plus subscription: $24/month, $89/year, or $499/lifetime
http://www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna
4/5
Yes
ProWritingAid—A Review
ProWritingAid’s MS Word Add-in Interface
Summary
ProWritingAid is a software grammar checker, style editor and writing mentor that helps you find mistakes in your writing. It’s a competitor to products like Grammarly Premium, LanguageTool, Hemingway Editor, and Ginger.
No matter what type of writer you are—business, academic, or creative—ProWritingAid helps by offering twenty-six reports that analyze the style and content of your writing and suggest fixes and alternatives. The application also has comprehensive online help that’s replete with videos, blogs, articles, and webinars.
Pros
An easy-to-use web editor
You access ProWritingAid’s editor on its website after creating a login and signing in. You’ll find separate vaults for private and shared documents, and it’s easy to upload documents to either of them. Open a file and you're immediately in the editing environment: your file sits in the large main window in the centre; there’s a ribbon of twenty-six report icons at the top of the screen, a file listing to the left, and a first analysis of your document on the right. Start running reports and fixing your mistakes. The reports itemize their findings over the file listing on the left. Once you’ve finished, downloading the file back to your computer is also a breeze.
Integration
ProWritingAid offers integration with many applications through its browser plugins (Safari, Chrome, and Edge), an MS-Word add-in (both Windows and Mac), a Google Docs plug-in, and an applet that reads Scrivener project files. All these tools are included with the Premium license. Both the MS Word add-in and the Scrivener app open files into an editor similar to the editor on the web interface. While all the reports and services on the website are also available in the integrated apps, some functions, such as snippets, are not.
Comprehensive reports
You can choose from twenty-six different reports that analyze your writing with respect to style, grammar, vocabulary, repetition, overuse, readability, pronouns, clichés, and more. Recommendations are inventoried to the left of the editing window, each with options to hide it, resolve it, or go to the problem in the document. Clicking the Goto link highlights and underlines the relevant text and pops up a window with further explanation and options to act on the issue. Once you resolve a problem, it’s crossed out in the problem listing.
Writing Styles
ProWritingAid knows about different writing styles (business, academic, and creative) and even lets you configure it with a specific document type. For example, within academic writing, you can specify whether your document is general academic or one of an abstract, an academic essay, an admissions letter, a book review, a compare and contrast essay, or a critique. There’s also a free essay checker.
Different English Styles
ProWritingAid recognizes the difference between four types of English (US, UK, Canadian, and Australian), so it will know when you should use analyze or analyse, color or colour, or any other deviation between the distinctive styles of English.
Customization
ProWritingAid is quite configurable. Options you can change easily include whether to ignore clichés, redundancies, vague work, or diction errors in dialogue; or what the maximum distance between highlighted repeats should be. More complex options include adding your own pet words to the Overused Word report; setting up your own Style Guides; and defining snippets—shortcuts for typing oft-repeated words or phrases.
Extra cost options
Two services require extra payment. First, there is a plagiarism checker which will analyze your text for originality, making sure your words and ideas are not someone else’s. This functionality is available as an add-on to the Premium licence while the Premium Plus license includes it. The add-ons come in bundles of 10, 100, 500, and 1000 checks, where each check tests up to 2000 words of text. The Premium Plus license includes 60 checks per year, after which you’ll have to buy more add-on bundles.
Second, there is an application programming interface (API) which allows developers to integrate grammar checking within any applications developed in popular languages such as PHP, Python and Java. The API is free as the languages are open source, but you must pay for the calls the API makes to the ProWritingAid server where the grammar and usage analysis occurs. Again, this service is available as an add-on, this time in bundles of 10,000 and 100,000 calls (there is a free demo bundle of 500 calls as well).
Online help
ProWritingAid’s online help is very extensive and includes videos, getting started articles, FAQs, webinars, writing resources and grammar guides. The blogging page includes seven sections on The Writing Process, Blogging and Content Writing, Grammar Rules, Business Writing, Writing Apps, How to Use ProWritingAid, and ProWritingAid in the Classroom. Also interesting are the monthly webinars where you can access presentations on editing, book doctors, write-ins, ProWritingAid 101, and ProWritingAid for Business 101.
Cons
Well, no application is perfect, and ProWritingAid has a few problems. Here are some issues I’ve struggled with:
The MS Word add-in disappears a lot and forces me to re-install it. This occurs erratically and without reason, sometimes after a patch, sometimes after merely closing the application.
It’s sometimes difficult to find the problem text in the full editor. Clicking on the Goto link from the problem list is supposed to bring you to the text in the editor, but if the problem is a short word, or a punctuation mark, or at the bottom of the editor, it's difficult to find.
Snippets don’t work in the MS Word add-in. As MS Word for Mac also doesn’t recognize Mac's text replacement feature, I was hoping that snippets would solve my problem, but it didn't. I’m forced to use MS Word's clumsy offering of AutoText that’s offered in the Mac version. A solution, but far from ideal.
The browser plug-ins don’t work with all sites. For me, the plug-ins work in MailChimp but not in SquareSpace, so I must edit my browser articles in MS Word before publishing them.
Personal Experience
ProWritingAid has helped me over the last few months. Here are some examples:
the Pronoun report helped find phrases and clauses that referenced incorrect antecedents, making my writing clearer
the All Repeats report showed when I’ve used too many references to an idea or word
the Length report showed me how short some of my sentences were, helping me create more readable documents
A Word to the Wise
Grammar and style checkers are not a cure-all for bad writing. You still need to know how to write. These applications will highlight many of your missteps and offer solutions you can accept with a click, but not all their solutions are suitable for a situation. For example, ProWritingAid will find passive verbs and offer several ways to replace them, but sometimes the fixes are clumsy, inaccurate, or just not in the required tone. In such cases, you’ll have to construct a new sentence of your own; or you may choose to keep the passive verb because sometimes a passive verb is what’s best for a sentence. These types of situations come up all the time with a grammar and style checker so, after buying one, you’ll still have to work on your knowledge of grammar, style and usage. The application may, however, speed up your ascent of the learning curve.
Conclusion
Who’s it not for?
People who write only occasionally and don’t want to spend extra money.
If you are a casual writer, the Editor facility within MS Word should offer enough services. Or, you could use the free version of Grammarly.
Who’s it for?
Everyone who writes a lot.
If you are a student busy with assignments, a professional bogged down with reports, or a creative writer editing your latest opus, an application such as ProWritingAid is invaluable. If you write a lot, you need a tool like ProWritingAid.
There’s a rumour that even Stephen King uses ProWritingAid.
Final Rating
4/5
It’s not perfect but it’s good value for the price
Get it!