Tag Archive - editing

How a Writing Tool Can Help You Write Better

Today’s post is by Hayley Milliman.

I started writing when I was seven years old. My first stories were ghost stories, carefully crafted and meticulously printed in small three-ring binders.

As I grew up and moved on to different topics, my love for writing grew too. What didn’t come along, however, was a desire to make sure my writing was perfect.

In many ways, I’m the ultimate pantser. In my ideal world, I spend all day waiting for inspiration to strike, and when it finally does, I write and I write until my fingers bleed. Then, I send off the work, without so much as a single reread.

Of course, writing this way isn’t practical, and it’s certainly not going to get you very far if you’re hoping to actually earn money from your work. As I’ve matured into a professional writer, I’ve had to build a process and structure for myself that ensures my work is not only inspired but technically correct and enjoyable to read. Part of that process includes making use of something I swore I’d never use: an editing tool.

An editing tool is like the plague to a pantser like me. For years, the last thing I wanted to do was go sentence by sentence through my own work, looking for missed commas or clunky turns of phrase. Continue Reading…

5 Things an Editing Tool Taught Me That Might Help You

Today’s guest post is by Kathy Edens.

I spent four years in college working hard to achieve my bachelor’s in professional writing. I say this humbly because it’s certainly no great feat. In fact, using an editing tool for the past year has taught me things about my writing I didn’t learn in four years of college.

If you haven’t tried one out yet, an editing tool like ProWritingAid uses computer algorithms to compare your writing to hundreds of thousands of examples of published writing by great writers and authors. It then suggests ways you can make your writing more readable, and points out technical edits for stronger, more concise writing.

Its strength isn’t in finding grammar errors (though it does that too); rather, it’s in picking out those sentence structures or word choices that make your writing sound awkward or clunky. Continue Reading…

Want to Be a Great Writer? Then Don’t Neglect This!

For this week’s Throwback Thursday, we’re looking at an excerpt from a previous post titled Do Writers Really Have to Learn All That (Yucky) Grammar?

Do writers really need to learn all that yucky grammar? In a word, yes. In two words: absolutely yes.

I hear groans. I hear protests. You hated English Comp in school? Old, crotchety Mrs. Snigglegrass made you dissect sentences and name the parts of speech? You got a what as your final grade?

I feel your pain. Who ever makes grammar fun and easy? Learning grammar, to some people, is as much fun as getting a tooth pulled. Or having to memorize the multiplication tables or the capitals of all the countries in the world (remember when they never changed?). Terms like dangling modifiers, predicates, participial phrases, and subjunctive mood give some people the chills.

Did you have to conjugate verbs back in junior high? Do you know the difference between the past progressive tense and the past perfect? No? Do you care?

More than likely, you don’t. Continue Reading…

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