Online Editing Helpers (Part II)
An Editor’s Review of Web-Based Editing Tools
Welcome back to Shelf Life and to Part II of my evaluation of online editing helpers. In Tuesday’s essay I gave you background on the landscape of digital editing “tools” and jumped in with an evaluation of market leader Grammarly. Today’s essay evaluates competitors Hemingway Editor, ProWritingAid, and Typely and then compares all four applications to finish up with some recommendations.
Without further preamble—let’s get back to it.
Hemingway
Hemingway Editor requires no account creation and no download. You just open the web browser, paste in your text, and you’re off to the (editing) races.
In the sample text I pulled from the web, Hemingway found three adverbs and suggested one be removed (Grammarly did not suggest removal of any). Hemingway correctly identified two instances of passive voice that were not highlighted by Grammarly. Hemingway suggested the removal of one “however” to streamline the sentence that included it (Grammarly suggested inserting a comma after “however” but not removing it). Of 28 sentences, Hemingway flagged five as “hard to read” and four as “very hard to read” and rated the sample at a ninth grade level (good).
Hemingway rated my revision at a tenth grade reading level (“ok”) and suggested I aim for the ninth grade reading level. Hemingway was overall not impressed with my edit and thought I made the text harder to read rather than easier.
Of the nine “hard” or “very hard” to read sentences, I had edited seven for clarity in my own edit.
In my own text sample, Hemingway found 10 adverbs and suggested I remove 9 (Grammarly only recommended removal of 7) including “just” but still missing “away.” Hemingway found zero instances of passive voice and suggested zero rephases. Of 27 sentences, it flagged one as “hard to read” and six as “very hard to read” and rated my writing at a seventh grade reading level (good).
Of the seven “hard” or “very hard” to read sentences, I had edited or completely recast all of them for clarity in my own edit.
Hemingway rated my revised text at a fifth grade reading level (still “good”) and found two “hard” and two “very hard” to read sentences out of 27. It found only four adverbs and suggested I remove two.
ProWritingAid
I’d tested out ProWritingAid before but it had been quite a while so I gave it a fresh go with a new account. I used a Google account to sign in and was taken automatically to a web browser interface where I was able to paste my text.
For the first sample text, ProWritingAid gave me a score of 78% (orange) for goals and 63% (also orange) for improvements, which, I confess, I did not understand at all. After poking around a bit I think I have determined that the “goals” panel updates your score on the fly as you write without making specific suggestions. As you improve your text, your scores for items like “Grammar/Spelling” and “Style” improve. The improvements panel recommends specific edits; for this text it recommended 22—but I was only able to see 20 of them as two were “premium suggestions.” ProWritingAid did not like my edit much better, scoring it 78% (no improvement!) and 67% (both still orange).
ProWritingAid gave my own draft a 63% (orange) for goals and a 57% (red) for improvements. ProWritingAid suggested 29 improvements, of which three were premium. ProWritingAid caught more fake sci fi words than the other apps, but also flagged some real sci fi words (like Eridani, as in Epsilon Eridani) as fake. When I put my edited version into ProWritingAid, it did not find my work much improved—68% and 59% (still orange and red, respectively).
Typely
Typely started with the potential to be my dark horse in this experiment; it was a totally unknown quantity to me. Like Hemingway, the editor is free to use online, in a web browser, and does not require account creation.
Unfortunately, the editing was—not. That is, not what I would characterize as editing. In the first sample (pulled from the web), Typely identified six “consistency” issues, which were all double spaces after a period. It also identified one “weasel word,” an instance of “very,” which was in this instance not a weasel word but a differentiation between “cold” and “very cold.” Thanks, Typely, you tried.
Typely gave the sample text a score of 98 and indicated the reading level as tenth grade. Although my own edit had removed all instances of double spaces, I (correctly) left in the offending instance of “very” and so Typely gave my version a score of 99 (thank you) and a tenth-grade reading level.
Typely had even less to say about my draft text, and flagged one phrase (“sigh of relief”) as a cliche and that’s it. I cannot stress how messy this text is. I’m honestly shocked it found only one thing worth noting. It flagged the same cliche in my revised sample, and nothing else.
Comparison
At the end of the day I cannot recommend Typely. All it caught for me were double spaces after a period, which are an absolute nonissue. Any publisher’s pre-edit will take these out, and self-editing, self-publishing authors can always nail this by using any word processor’s search-and-replace function (search for space space replace with space, done). Typely has been around since at least 2017 (Google dates the site Aug 31, 2017) so I’m not picking on the new kid; however, I did note that their blog has not been updated since 2019 so perhaps the tool is defunct, no longer being updated and just an artifact of the web. Anyway, skip Typely.
The real contenders are Grammarly, Hemingway, and ProWritingAid. To make a useful comparison, I’m not only going to compare their actual editorial capability but also their ease of use.
Grammarly and ProWritingAid both required a signup while Hemingway did not. I was able to sign up for both Grammarly and ProWritingAid just using a Google account so I didn’t need to set a separate password. Grammarly may not have required a download but it implied that a download was required—it took me, immediately after signup, to a screen that indicated an either/or choice—Windows app or Chrome plugin. I chose the Windows app but somehow ended up:
Without a desktop app.
With the Chrome browser extension installed, which I expressly did not want.
Forwarded to an in-browser interface to paste and evaluate my text.
Once I was at the in-browser interface, Grammarly was as straightforward to use as ProWritingAid and Hemingway. All three apps have an in-browser interface into which you dump your text and receive notes on it in a sidebar. The ease of getting to that app goes in reverse order: Hemingway is easiest (no signup or download needed), followed by ProWritingAid (no downloaded needed but signup required), then Grammarly (signup required and download shoved in user’s face though not required I don’t think).
The ease of interpreting feedback is also a factor. ProWritingAid’s “goals” and “improvements” panels were somewhat opaque and, while I think I’ve figured out what they mean, I didn’t find any easily accessible documentation explaining the interface or tools. Further, ProWritingAid teased several text improvements that were locked behind a paywall; clicking the suggested improvement caused a popup to suggest I pay for a higher-tier account to see the “premium suggestion.” While Grammarly also has a higher-tier paid account that ostensibly evaluates text more closely and catches more things, Grammarly didn’t dangle specific changes in front of me like “hey we found a mistake but you have to pay to know what it is.” That did not sit well with me while evaluating ProWritingAid. (Hemingway has no premium account tier; it’s all free.)
Hemingway app highlights words, phrases, and sentences different colors and the colors correspond to a legend. Yellow text is a hard-to-read sentence, red text is a very-hard-to-read sentence, blue highlighted words are adverbs, and so on. Hemingway does not make suggestions for how to improve the text; it only shows you where your text includes one of the five things it’s looking for (adverbs, passive voice, simpler alternatives, hard-to-read, and very-hard-to-read sentences). For my personal use I like Hemingway best, because I don’t need suggestions on how to fix any of these items; it’s enough to point out to me where they are and then I can address them. It is, however, the least fully featured of the three contenders.
ProWritingAid and Grammarly will be the best bets for folks who want to see their problematic text flagged and receive suggestions on how to fix that text. I found ProWritingAid’s feedback to be more correct more of the time than Grammarly’s.
Further, ProWritingAid was the only app that noticed an appreciable difference in quality between the sample text I pulled off the web and my own first draft. My first draft was a mess. The quality was bad. The writing was in very bad shape. This was text that came straight out of my brain and had no editing or revision at all. By contrast, the web sample was only mildly bad; this was the work of a writer who had already revised a bit and just wanted to have an editor go over their final before a public release. I expected all of the apps to detect a serious quality differential with the web sample rated cleaner and in need of less revision and my draft rated worse in all ways.
Instead, Grammarly and Hemingway found both samples to be about the same in terms of quality. Only ProWritingAid noticed that my draft was in significantly worse shape than the web sample.
Overall, I recommend the use of ProWritingAid over Grammarly; they fill the same niche and there’s no reason to use both. ProWritingAid annoyed me a bit by paywalling suggestions but the suggestions it did show me were better. It gives writers two ways to edit (the “goals” panel and the “improvements” view) and—I didn’t mention this earlier because I didn’t fully explore the feature, but I’ll just drop a note on it here—ProWritingAid lets you select the type of writing you want evaluated. ProWritingAid will apply different standards and styles to, for instance, an academic essay versus a science fiction novel.
I also recommend the use of the Hemingway app in addition to either ProWritingAid or Grammarly. Hemingway is free, easy to use, and quick to start up with—plus, it checks for different things and evaluates in a different way than ProWritingAid and Grammarly do.
My suggested order of operations for a writer polishing their own work ahead of hiring a pro editor or submitting to an agent or self-publishing is this:
Use your word processor’s built-in helpers as a first step.
Read and edit your own work to the best of your ability on your own.
Use an app like ProWritingAid or Grammarly to polish your writing further.
Use the Hemingway app to ensure your readability is exactly where you want it.
I don’t think any of these replace even a moderately skilled copyeditor—but not everyone can afford to hire a human being for this type of work. Others may want to polish their work to the best of their personal ability before bringing in a pro for editing. Everyone can, and should, use the tools available to do their best work.
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