Grammar Wars: A Software Showdown
Most sporting events award first, second, and third place. There may be hundreds of competitors, but only the top three get recognition. Likewise, when it comes to writing software; (specifically editing software), I’m going to cover the first three. These three programs will outperform a regular word processor when it comes to basic grammar and spelling. The three big contenders are grammatically, ProWritingAidand the Publisher Hemingway. Yes, I’ve used all three, but I’ll be dropping one of them shortly.
The biggest ad budget goes to Grammarly, hands down. You can see it advertised on YouTube, Facebook, blogs and websites all over the world wide web.
Many writers, especially those who use Scrivener, prefer ProWritingAid.
The underdog, and less known to most, is Publisher Hemingway.
A lot of people like to root for the underdog, so that’s where I’ll start. The Hemingway Editor is the least expensive of the three programs with a single purchase price of $19.99. Note that all three have free versions available. One of the beautiful things about this program is that you do NOT need Internet access to use it. It focuses on five main areas to improve your writing. These areas include readability, adverbs, passive voice, word choice, and sentence structure. You can export to a variety of formats, including HTML, PDF, text, and Word. Add this to your existing word processing program and Will raise the quality of your work.
As mentioned, Grammarly is VERY popular and for good reason. In addition to being able to use it in your novel or story, it can be used in email and in the Chrome browser. That means no shame when you post to your writers group on Facebook and use the wrong version of the effect (for example). It has a Word plugin that works very well on Windows, but not so well on Mac. It has good suggestions for improving vocabulary and supports more than 30 file types. It has a plagiarism checker and according to the website, the paid version has more than 400 controls and features. Please note that I DO have the paid version and have no idea what features they include. Some will argue, you get what you pay for, but be warned. The cost of this program is $139.95 by year.
ProWritingAid has the widest compatibility with Windows and Mac operating systems. It works great with the best word processing programs like Word, Scrivener, Open Office, Google Docs and more. It has a Word Explorer feature that contains a thesaurus, dictionary, reverse dictionary, collocation dictionary, alliteration dictionary, cliché dictionary, rhyming, and usage examples of poetry, prose, and songs. It has more than 25 reports that examine different areas of your writing, including contextual checking for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This means that it provides recommendations based on what you actually write, not an outdated rulebook. Pricing for this software starts at $40.00 per year, but you also have a $140.00 option for a lifetime license.
So who won the gold? To answer that, I decided to test all three of them. I made this on Thanksgiving Day 2017. I selected a 1200 word scene from one of my works in progress. Since Grammarly seemed to be the big favorite, I started there. I used the plugin for Word 2016 and received 15 critical errors. Then just for fun I ran it online where it said it had 9 critical errors AND 24 advanced issues (because I had the paid edition). Fifteen verses thirty-three, strange. I thought it was the same program, but apparently not.
The Hemingway Editor was much more consistent in submitting 36 errors both online and independently. Yes, the cheapest of the three found twice as much as the most expensive program in the bunch. It makes me wonder.
Now for the moment of truth, ProWritingAid found 222 errors in 22 separate detailed reports using the same 1,200-word document. They offered easy-to-understand explanations for everything they marked. I’m not saying I’d use all 222 recommendations, but even if I only accepted 50%, that’s a lot more than the other two.
So, in summary, ProWritingAid took gold, Hemingway Editor took silver, and in a distant third place, Grammarly took bronze. Remember when I said I’d be releasing one of these shortly? Guess which one I no longer use. If you don’t like these results, run your own tests. (There are free online versions of each.) Play with all three and decide who won the Grammar War for you.