As someone who blogs, and contributes to a lot of web forums, my writing skills matter. I want readers to digest what I say, without the text sounding like I'm talking to a 5-year old. The technical content of a lot of what I post makes that even more challenging. I’m sure I am not the only person who cringes when I see a typo or a bit of appalling grammar in my output.
Today, I came across an interesting page from StumbleUpon, called ‘3 Simple Writing Tools that will blow your mind’. I did find the inconsistent use of capital letters in that headline to be amusing. But the content was good – and very useful!
The first tool is Headline Analyzer – which does what it says. You type in an article’s headline to the page (http://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer) and then the page analyses the headline for you. It shows common, uncommon, emotional and power words in your headline. Increasing the number of uncommon or emotional words can improve the headline. The page also shows how your article might appear in both google and email! If better headlines increase readership, then so much the better! I’ve bookmarked this page!
The second tool is Hemingway – a tool at www.hemingwayapp.com. You paste your article headline/text into the page, and your text is analysed for thinks like use of passive voice, or for phrases that have simpler alternatives. Running this article’s draft through Hemmingway showed some sentences/phrases that could be improved. This is another page I have bookmarked.
The final tool is called Grammarly. This is a chrome plugin that checks your text as you type into text boxes on Web pages. I installed it, and instantly the SpiceWorks pages give me this nice editor. This tool is free, and I’m already hooked!
Tools like these are a gas!
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