You’ll see suggestions for simpler alternatives to complex words and the app will highlight adverbs and instances of passive voice. The app highlights “hard to read” and “very hard to read” sentences, but leaves you to your own devices in terms of fixing them. Rather than a grammar checker, think of Hemingway as a readability checker. If you’re tempted, make sure you sign up for the Antidote+ 30-day trial before you buy so that you avoid any costly disappointments.
It takes the form of a customizable standalone text editor for both Windows and macOS, and it integrates with many email clients for checking outgoing correspondence too.Īlternatively, you can pay $59.95/year (less than half of what Grammarly is asking) for Antidote+ which includes a web app, mobile apps, future updates (for as long as you’re subscribed), and the downloadable offline version. For $129.95 you can purchase Antidote 11 as an offline writing tool. The one thing Antidote has that Grammarly doesn’t is a buy-it-outright option. When Antidote makes a suggestion that could improve your writing, it will explain why the suggestion was made so that you can learn from your mistakes. The service features dictionaries for finding alternative words and a rhyming dictionary. It combs your text for spelling mistakes and makes suggestions that may improve the style of your writing, complete with Grammarly-style suggestions that you can keep or dismiss. On the plus side, the app didn’t scream at us for using unfamiliar terms as we often do in How-To Geek articles (something Grammarly frequently flags).ĭruide Antidote is a premium writing tool for checking both English and French text. Slick Write didn’t pick up on some obvious garbage words that we dropped into the text (unless they formed incomplete sentence fragments), so you may still need to rely on your browser’s spellchecker. These may appeal to some people, but they can feel like statistics for statistics' sake. With these you can gauge the flow of your writing, how often you slip into passive voice, how complex your sentences usually are, and so on. There are a whole range of charts that allow you to see your writing through an analytical lens. Quotes simply highlights any quotes you’ve put in your writing, while Vocabulary demonstrates word choice variety. Structure looks for complex sentences, compound sentences, sentence fragments that don’t make sense, and combinations thereof. The Features tab highlights wordy phrases, adverbs, excessive prepositional phrases, and instances of passive voice among others. Fortunately, you use it as a web app or a browser extension too. This can be a bit of a double-edged sword since you might not want Grammarly checking your Discord chats, instant messages, or casual emails to friends. You can download Grammarly as an application for your Windows or Mac computer, which allows it to check everywhere you type. Grammarly has also added AI features that can help generate text, rewrite passages, and more. It can also make suggestions to better align your writing with your audience and overall intent. It can cut down on wordiness, passive voice, and repetitious use of words. Not only does it look for grammatical errors, but it checks your spelling and aims to improve readability too. Grammarly is by and far the most popular grammar checker you can use. If you’re not convinced by Grammarly, there are some alternatives you can try instead. Grammarly has taken the writing world by storm, but it’s not the only grammar checker, proofreader, and readability tool in town.