I wanted to share the information I have found over the last year on the best editing apps to help you get your manuscript to the finish line, or just to help you make it better before you send it to an editor.
Grammarly:
The first app I found was Grammarly. I had seen ads before but was reluctant to try it out until a friend told me how great it was. You can use Grammarly on a desktop or in the app on your phone. The app itself is free, but it will limit you to what you can do in the free version. I opted to pay the $30 monthly fee since I only planned to use it for a month. Once I was done, I canceled the subscription, which was easy to do on their website. You can try the free version first if you want to see if it is right for you, but I ended up loving it! I loved that Grammarly gave me scores and highlighted what needed to be fixed. It checked for so many things that I would have likely not caught on my own. Grammarly will also give you suggestions for how to fix the mistakes, so if you are not sure you would be able to know how to fix something, then I would take a look at their suggestions. I would not recommend selecting "fix-all" for anything because depending on your writing style, it will correct things that you wrote a certain way intentionally. For example, some of my dialogue showed that it needed correcting, but I chose not to correct it because I do not talk the way Grammerly suggested that the dialogue reads.
ProWritingAid:
ProWritingAid is another app that was extremely helpful during the writing process. Again, this app is free but you can upgrade so you can upload longer sections of text (i.e. your whole manuscript, whereas Grammarly has a word limit). If you do not download the software to your computer, it will run slower if you use it on your web browser if you upload a large manuscript. I still made it work for me, but towards the end, I got frustrated with how long it took to load changes so I started adding in one chapter at a time. I did pay for the upgraded version so I was not restricted by the maximum word count. It was still worth the cost (around $15 a month) and once I was done, I canceled the subscription, which was very easy to do on their website.
Once you are logged in, then you go to the Use App menu and it will take you to the document editing part of the website. There you can upload or copy and past your manuscript.
This app was probably my favorite out of all of the ones that I tried because it gave so many options and suggestions when something needed fixed. It will score your overall piece and then give you suggestions for how to increase your score.
Hemingway Editor App:
This is the last app that I would recommend to anyone who needs help editing their manuscript. This app is great because it is completely free. It does not restrict your word count either like the other two apps. This one does not give the suggestions that the other two apps give but it has a lot of other great features. This app will give you the grade level for your writing, and from what I have read online, you want your grade level on this app to be between a 4th and 9th-grade
reading level.
These three apps were all great and I would recommend them to anyone. These should not replace hiring a professional editor, but they can help you point out the little things. I hope this information was helpful!
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