The TOP 7 proofreading tools

Let’s assume that you have written a text that you want to publish. Are you convinced that you wrote it correctly? Unfortunately, practice has shown that authors rarely see the mistakes they make in their own texts and the built-in error checking feature in text editors does not always catch all typos. Luckily, there are proven text proofreading tools that will help you work on your content.

What are proofreading tools?

Theoretically, basic text proofreading tools are built into any editor, such as Word or Google Docs. However, they have the disadvantage that they offer very basic possibilities, so their role in checking errors is limited. You will find significantly more advanced solutions in dedicated tools that will not only spot grammatical errors, but also suggest changes in style.  Keep in mind, however, that while they work almost without any trouble with simple documents, it is best to use an online human proofreader service for more complicated texts.

LanguageTool

If you have decided that you are using a proofreading tool, then it is definitely worth paying attention to LanguageTool. It is one of the most popular solutions on the market that offers proofreading in English, Polish, Chinese, Ukrainian and many other languages. It is able to catch many stylistic, grammatical or punctuation errors, but it’s worth having limited confidence in it, because it may not be able to handle more complicated documents. 

One of the advantages is the fact that this online text checker is partially available in a free package. This way, however, you can check only up to 20 thousand characters at a time.  When you buy one of the higher packages, you will receive an unlimited number of characters to check, plus the option of integration with Microsoft Office and detection of mistakes in the courtesies.

Grammarly – browser add-on

Grammarly is a slightly different tool which works as an add-on to browsers. Its undoubted advantage is the fact that it corrects your texts in real time when you write anything in your browser. Therefore, it is great if you want to ensure correctness of e.g. posts or comments on Facebook or on any other social channel.

It’s good to know that Grammarly detects not only grammatical but also stylistic errors. It also has a very interesting feature that detects the nature of the text – i.e. whether you wrote it in a formal, friendly, optimistic way, etc. You can also integrate this tool with Microsoft Office – just download the file and install it on your computer. The disadvantage is that Grammarly only supports spelling in English, so you won’t need it when working on Polish, Italian, Spanish or German texts, etc.

Ortograf

Ortograf.pl is another interesting solution, which is available completely free of charge and exclusively in an online version. It is an online text proofreading tool that checks grammar and punctuation errors for over 1000 rules. However, you must be very careful, because it may happen that it does not catch all the errors in the text. Therefore, while it is worth using it for simple documents on a daily basis, it is better to find another solution or order a professional text proofreading service when it comes to more advanced and complicated content.

Jasnopis supplied by the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities

Jasnopis is a very interesting tool for proofreading. This tool was created as a result of work on a project of linguists from the SWPS University. Scientists from such scientific fields as philology, linguistics, psycholinguistics, as well as computer science worked on it. Jasnopis evaluates the difficulty of your text, suggesting adjustments if required. In advanced features you will find such options as: determining the education of the recipient in years, as well as the scope of proposed adjustments.

Although a free demo version is available on the Internet, it is a very interesting solution for all creators of utility texts. You can order the full version of the tool. Just contact the creators. However, this is not a standard online text proofreader that will check for grammatical and punctuation errors, because this is not its intended purpose. The biggest downside, however, is that Jasnopis supports only Polish – so it is not a tool for people working in other languages.

KorektorOnline.pl

You can find online proofreading support for more languages at korektoronline.pl. Although under this domain you will only find the option of checking text in Polish, the same creators provide tools for English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Russian. The tool was created based on other similar projects, such as LanguageTool, Hunspell and DICTION.

The biggest advantage of this solution is the fact that it is free in all language versions. Keep in mind, however, that it may not spot all the errors in your text, hence it should be treated as a tool supporting the creative process, rather than a proofreader. It works with simple content, while more advanced documents will require completely different support.

Proofreading in English and French

It is also worth noting the solution offered by Reverso. Although by default it is a kind of an online translator, it has a feature that checks the grammatical correctness of the text in English and French. It will make it possible to avoid problematic typos, which will significantly increase the attractiveness of your text. The disadvantage is that there is a limit of two languages only, and also the functionality is limited. When you use this tool you will not find out, among others what stylistic mistakes you have made.

Hunspell

Finally, there is a solution that is not available online at all. Hunspell is a software that provides spell checking in Chrome, Libre Office, Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, and can also be used in macOS, InDesign, memoQ, Opera and SDL Trados. What makes this tool special is the fact that resources are saved in a C ++ language library, as well as access to ready work environments for Android, XSpell, Delphi, Java, Perl, .NET, Python, Ruby, UNO and RichEdit.

What does that mean? First of all, Hunspell is a text proofreader that checks spelling not only in typical text editors, but also in software developing tools. This feature is not available in any of the above-mentioned tools that are unable to distinguish codes from words of a specific language. So it can be used by both programmers and creators of utility texts, which significantly broadens the potential group of users.

Text proofreading tools or human proofreader?

Although there are many text proofreading tools available on the market, it is worth considering whether it would be a better idea to use the services of a professional proofreader. Please note that such tools are only tools and will not provide a linguistic sense that an actual human possesses. So while such solutions can be used in simple texts, in the case of complex documents or texts that are highly important, it is much better to order an online human proofreading service. This will be a guarantee of high quality content that you wish to publish.

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