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Most of us can’t afford to hire a personal editor or writing coach to review everything we write. Yet, most of us want to improve our writing skills when we get the chance.
That’s why when we writers run across a tool that claims to be able to analyze our writing or otherwise challenge us, we pay attention.
Playing with words and sentences is almost like recreation for some of us. Of course, many non-writers would rather have their teeth pulled than play with grammar apps. But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?
In this post I list not one, but four, apps to analyze or challenge your writing skills.
Of course, no app or tool is substitute for a human review of your writing. But if you decide to play with the tools in this post you’ll have fun. You might even learn something about how you write.
Use These Apps to Check Your Writing Now
Here’s my list of four fun-to-use writing tools:
- Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway had a distinctive writing style. His sentences were known to be short and to the point. This fun tool uses an algorithm to analyze and improve your writing style. (Found via my Google+ friends Mary Iannotti and Mark Traphagen)
- I Write Like. Maybe you don’t write like Hemingway, but do you write like someone else famous? This one’s purely for fun. Find out what famous writer you’re most like by pasting your writing samples into this free tool.
- The Up-Goer Five text editor. You would think ten hundred words would be enough to explain a concept, but imagine that you were limited to ten hundred words. That’s idea behind this tool, which challenges you to explain your idea using only the most common words.
- WritersDiet™. Is your writing fat or is it lean and fit? Find out with this fun tool, which identifies unnecessary words and phrases in your writing.
Enjoy! But don’t waste too much time. 😉
Your Turn
Do you have any fun writing tools you’d like to share? Or share your results from the apps above.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Jeremy // Feb 28, 2014 at
I tend to get stuck in a rut writing some days … these tools will help me with that … thanks for this post! 🙂
2 Laura Spencer // Feb 28, 2014 at
Thanks Jeremy. I’m glad you found it useful.
3 Samantha Gluck // Mar 12, 2014 at
Haha! Love this post. Apparently, I write like Cory Doctorow. I had to look him up to see who he was, but I guess he’s pretty cool. I use Passivator and the ToBe Verb tool to check posts of contributors and clients for passive voice and other things. Those two tools aren’t NEARLY as fun as these you have listed here, but they are helpful.
4 Laura Spencer // Mar 12, 2014 at
Glad you liked it Samantha!
It is fun to play with, isn’t it? 🙂 I got Cory Doctorow for many of my posts too.
I’ll have to check out the two tools you mention. I definitely want to keep passive voice to a minimum.
5 Samantha Gluck // Mar 12, 2014 at
They’re great and they’re free. I can send you the links if you like.
6 Laura Spencer // Mar 13, 2014 at
Sure Samantha! That could be fun. 🙂
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