These are keyboard extensions for phones and tablets that automatically check your writing on every text and tweet. For professional manuscript formatting, I recommend writing in MS Word with a Grammarly addon. They include a full range of built-in proofreading tools, but their formatting tools are limited. Some services (like Grammarly) offer true web apps, akin to Google Docs, that let you write and save documents in your own cloud space. The ones we tested ranged from bad to terrible. They’re free, but you get what you pay for. Online Proofreading Tools Website appsįree online proofreading apps are websites that offer a simple text box where you can paste limited amounts of text to check it for spelling, grammar, and style. You’ll need a grammar tool that integrates directly with the Google Docs app. If you write in Google Docs, you’ll need more than a Chrome extension. You can install these like any other browser extension, and they add writing tools to your browser that check spelling, grammar, and style. If you’re typing online, they watch what you type and offer suggestions. Proofreading extensions for Chrome or other browsers (like Firefox or Safari), evaluate your writing no matter where you go on the web. All 5 of them check for spelling mistakes, grammar errors, and style choices, but they’re used in different places. There are 5 different types of proofreading tools, most of which can be useful to professional Authors.

So, before you start using Grammarly, make sure you understand what it is and isn’t good for-in 2022 and beyond. (I’ll show you those suggestions in the Grammarly review.) Of all the proofreading apps we tested, most found 0 errors in that sentence.Įven Grammarly, the top performer, only found 2, and one of its suggestions was arguably worse. This was an actual comment from the team of the Ginger editing app (not Grammarly), on a negative review of the Ginger Chrome Extension.Īs part of our test, we ran their comments through the Ginger app itself, and the app found nothing wrong with it. “Our team has reviewed and requested our Chrome product team to review the GingerChrome store page again and fix any necessary correction.”

Cleaning up your writing before it goes to an editor.

We at Scribe tested the 8 most popular editing apps on the market in 2022, and none of them could hold a candle to a human proofreader.īut that doesn’t mean proofreading tools are worthless. The best proofreading software out there is Grammarly.īut even in 2022, it still has severe limitations.

If you’re looking for the best proofreading tool on the market, I’ll tell you what it is:

Best proofreading software free