Our ProWritingAid Review – Is It the Perfect Grammar Checker For You in 2022

I can’t imagine trying to write professionally or in higher education and not using a grammar checker.

I mean, I DO remember most of the grammar rules of the road – but it’s so nice having software help catch when I make a mistake.  It’s a great set of second eyes to watch over me.

Now that we are in 2024, technology has advanced enough that there are a lot of choices available when picking your grammar editor.  It’s hard to decide which one is right for you.

Is ProWritingAid the perfect grammar checker? How does it compare with ProWritingAid alternatives? Can ProWritingAid help you become a better writer? Who would benefit the most from using ProWritingAid?

My ProWritingAid review focuses on answering these questions and exploring the different ProWritingAid features and benefits. The purpose of this in-depth ProWritingAid review is to help you decide how ProWritingAid can help you. If you are new to proofreading software, this review should help you understand the role and importance of checking your work for errors.

I like Grammarly; it’s the grammar checker I’ve used for years and I’ve become quite comfortable with it.  I will admit that testing ProWritingAid was an exciting adventure. Continue reading to find out how ProWritingAid matches up for my needs vs. some of the other grammar tools out there. Is it one of the best grammar checker tools available?

What Is ProWritingAid And What Does It Do?

Proofreading is part of a writer’s writing process, even if a professional editor will check your manuscript before publishing it. Depending on the writing style, you may require strict grammar rule adherence for academic research papers, or you may enjoy using clichés with informal documents.

Writers are not always the best grammar checkers for their writing.  This is especially true in detecting grammar issues, sticky sentences, overused words, or vague and abstract words.

ProWritingAid is a grammar editor, style manager, and writing mentor. It helps writers avoid publishing books, articles, blog posts, essays, and social media posts with embarrassing typos.

Using ProWritingAid and following its guidelines should improve your writing.

Who Should Use ProWritingAid?

If you use English proofreading software and like to strengthen your writing skills, you will appreciate ProWritingAid as a proofreading software tool. ProWritingAid features all the standard English dialects: American English, British, Canadian, and Australian. It also gives users the option to select General English.

ProWritingAid is for anyone from novelists to academic writers to bloggers who want to identify their grammar errors, avoid making the same mistakes in the future, and produce error-free quality content. Who can use ProWritingAid?

• A fiction author searching for a proofreading tool compatible with Scrivener will love ProWritingAid. Yes, ProWritingAid integrates with Scrivener, a popular writing software among book writers.
• Non-fiction and ghostwriters needing a grammar checker and style editor for their complete manuscript before publishing it as a book.
• Bloggers and article writers who like to publish error-free blog posts and articles.
• A copywriter who writes content for websites, social media, white papers, case studies, and sales material for businesses.
• A freelance writer who writes for a living and uses proofreading software to offer drafts to clients with no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors.
• A business writer, academic writer, and student who writes professional and technical essays, articles, and academic papers.
• Anyone who wants to write better and like details will love the ProWritingAid reports.
• A writer who overuses passive voice, cliches, or thinks readability is essential in engaging an audience.
• Like novelists, some writers want a hybrid tool that proofreads grammar and spelling and helps with their writing style.

Is It Easy to Use ProWritingAid?

The ProWritingAid interface requires getting used to, and all the details and reports could overwhelm new users. ProWritingAid offers a web editor, desktop app, and integration with various formats and platforms like Google docs, MS Word, and Scrivener.

This section of the ProWritingAid review explores ease of use, convenience, and availability on multiple platforms. Having proofreading software checking your grammar and sentence structure in real-time is a convenience any writer will appreciate.

One-Click Ease of Use

ProWritingAid is easy to use once you’ve downloaded and activated the ProWritingAid desktop editing tool, the relevant add-in plugins, and web browser extension. If you write in Microsoft Word, Google docs, on the web, or use Scrivener, then you want to download all the apps and integrations for ease of use.

In the Office app, a window pops up to the writing screen’s right with an overall score at the top and suggestions on improving that score. The recommendations are almost like mini teachings on grammar and spelling. It’s formatted as questions, and it shows you what you did and then gives various improvement suggestions.

Saves Time With Variety Of Suggestions

Using ProWritingAid saves time and is fun; it offers multiple suggestions which authors, novelists, business writers, and copywriters will find helpful. A writer sometimes searches for another phrase or word to express better what they want to say; the ProWritingAid’s Word Explorer and writing options are like writing prompts to a writer.

Although some suggestions aren’t applicable, the ideas may stimulate a writer’s imagination to describe the scene in their novel refreshingly or review a product with fresh words. Alternatively, you can discard those and focus on the relevant suggestions.

On Multiple Platforms (Including Google Docs and Scrivener)

• The downloadable ProWritingAid desktop app works on Windows 7 and higher; it allows you to copy and paste content or upload a document in various grammar and style checking formats. The ProWritingAid desktop app makes it possible to grammar and style check a novel or large documents written in Scrivener without changing the formatting (Free version limits the number of words).

• The ProWritingAid Desktop App for Mac installs similarly to the Windows app and offers the same functions for various formats, including Microsoft Word for Mac.
• The ProWritingAid Office add-in integrates directly into the Microsoft word processor; the editing features also function in Outlook for email writing.
• The ProWritingAid Grammar Checker -Writing Coach Browser extension is available on Google Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. It’s convenient when writing a social media post, blog post, and other web content to have an AI editor at hand.
• ProWritingAid for Google Docx is also a plugin that integrates with Google Docs’ word processor.
• ProWritingAid doesn’t have a mobile app integration, but it has the option for web API integration developers can use when creating an app.

See Also: Our Grammarly Review

ProWritingAid’s Plagiarism Checker

The ProWritingAid’s Plagiarism Checker checks your content with a billion published works, web pages, and academic papers. Use the plagiarism detector with the online editing tool or the Microsoft Word add-in.

ProWritingAid’s Plagiarism detection tool is not free. If you use ProWritingAid’s free version or ProWritingAid’s premium version, you can purchase plagiarism check credits from $10 for ten checks to $200 for a thousand plagiarism checks.

However, the Premium Plus version includes 60 plagiarism checks per year. So, you can check your text’s originality for $4 per month more or $10 per year extra.

ProWritingAid Free Vs. ProWritingAid Premium—What’s The Difference?

Like Grammarly, ProWritingAid has a free version with limited features. Although you have access to the browser extensions and reports, ProWritingAid’s free version limits spelling and grammar checking to 500 words.

Use ProWritingAid’s free version when uploading and checking short blog posts, articles, and essays. If you need editing software for large Word documents with thousands of words like a novel, white paper, or article, the premium version is a better option.

How Much Does ProWritingAid Cost?

ProWritingAid offers subscription plans for individuals and businesses. An outstanding feature is the lifetime license available to individuals. The lifetime license is a one-time payment that includes all updates.

The monthly subscription for a person is $20, and the $79 annual subscription works out to $6.89 per month, a 67% saving. The business subscription costs $6 per month for a single user; it also has subscription options for teams.

What Is ProWritingAid Premium? Is ProWritingAid Premium Worth Paying For?

ProWritingAid features lots of reports and resources assisting all writers, professional and casual writers.

The premium version’s additional features are useful to writers and novelists who use the editing software for more than necessary spelling and grammar checking. The ProWritingAid premium version includes:

• The personal dictionary and styling guide allows you to add texts applicable to your company’s brand or personal writing preference. The grammar checker’s suggestions consider these words and phrases as being correct and won’t flag them.
• The Word Explorer report offers more extensive information and suggestions in the ProWritingAid premium version than the free version.
• Unlike the free version that stops checking after 500 words, the ProWritingAid Premium version checks writing with an unlimited word count.
• Only premium account holders have free access to all ProWritingAid’s library resources. Free version users have access to the ProWritingAid blog posts and grammar guide but not to the eBooks; they can purchase these helpful eBooks on Amazon.

How Can ProWritingAid Help You—And How Accurate Is It REALLY

In this section of the ProWritingAid review, we explore the unique features of ProWritingAid, its accuracy, and how it benefits your writing.

ProWritingAid can help you produce better quality writing. Its text editor contains different reports and grammar tools to guide you when editing documents and creating text with your target audience’s perfect readability score.

The desktop app functions are conveniently similar to the web text editor features, which means if you can use the desktop app’s interface, you can use the web application.

How Accurate Is ProWritingAid?

We tested ProWritingAid with a grammar test that would challenge human editors. We use this for all of our reviews, to give us an objective benchmark so we can compare how well one software does versus another.  You can check out our comparison review for more information.  We have no expectation that any software (nor likely most humans) would get 100% on this test.  It’s meant to be hard.

Having said that,  ProWritingAid was relatively accurate with the grammar and spelling; it caught 44% of these mistakes. Interestingly, it either caught the grammar issue or failed – but it wasn’t ‘partially correct’, like Grammarly often was. When it comes to grammar, partially right is the same as wrong – but it is something to note.

ProWritingAid works as a proofreading software and compares well with its competitors. Use ProWritingAid as a grammar checker but remember that all AI software proofreading tools have limitations. You cannot entirely rely on any of them; you still need to decide whether you want to accept or reject the software’s suggestions.

20 ProWritingAid Reports

The ProWritingAid Writing Reports are like having a writing coach beside you while writing! The reports are self-explanatory, and the individual reports are easy to follow. Some reports are quick-fix suggestions, while others are in-depth reports.

With 20 ProWritingAid reports, you can write about anything, and ProWritingAid will detect gremlins and poor word usage or complex sentences. The different reports will help you realize your common spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and how to improve sentence length, verbs, word choice, and readability.

Grammar Report

ProWritingAid’s grammar check tool uses the latest artificial intelligence algorithms to catch grammar mistakes that Word’s grammar checking tool cannot recognize.

The grammar report contains additional brief explanations of common grammatical issues the ProWritingAid’s human text editors noticed many writers make, for example, confusing two words, like adverse and averse.

Writing Style Report

The comprehensive writing style report contains valuable information to prepare a novel for a publisher. It works on the same principles as a text editor’s grammar check and proofreading report. By proofreading and editing your manuscript, the publisher’s editor can focus on more subtle improvements of the context.

The report draws attention to areas the writer can edit to give readers a better reading experience. It focuses on overused adverbs, passive and hidden words that make sentences weak, repeated sentence starts, and emotional tells.

OverUsed Word Report

Commonly spoken words like “just,” “very,” and “maybe” may sound good but portray poor style when used too often in an article, report, or novel. The overused Word Report highlights these kinds of words to help writers improve their word choices.

Clichés and Redundancies Report

Metaphors give color to a story, but writers should avoid clichés and redundancies; writing should be fresh and exciting. Authors use redundancies to stress the importance or severity of something and evoke powerful emotions, but stating the obvious isn’t always the best method for engaging the reader.

Sticky Sentence Report

Words like “if,” “and,” “or,” etc., are glue words that stick sentences together. Too many glue words, and the sentences become sticky. However, when used correctly, these words hold your sentences together and move the reader forward.

The report highlights sticky sentences to decrease the glue words and create a better word flow.

Sentence Length Report

The Sentence Length Report helps a writer vary the sentence lengths. Long sentences may confuse readers; used correctly; longer sentences can purposefully decrease the reading pace. Short sentences are easier to understand and to read. However, too many brief sentences and a reader rushes through the chapter in a choppy manner.

This report makes the writer aware of the sentence length; it highlights too long sentences and gives you the sentence’s word count. Long sentences are hard to read.

Readability Report

All writers want their audience to read and enjoy their written content; it’s how authors communicate with their audience. ProWritingAid uses various readability tools and formulas that highlight sentences that an audience finds challenging to read. The readability report bases its results on:

• Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease Test score varies from 0 to 100, with 60 as the average for most audiences. The higher the score, the easier the paragraph reads.
• Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Test bases its score on American school grade levels. A novel will have a lower grade level for better readability than an academic research paper.
• Automated Readability Index (ARI) bases its formula on characters and also corresponds to grade level.
• Coleman-Liau Index also works with characters and not syllables like the Flesch-Kincaid formulas. Therefore, these two scores may differ.
• Dale-Chall Readability Formula uses the list of 3,000 most common English words researches compiled after testing American fourth graders.

Pronoun Report

Use too many pronouns in your document, and your text becomes boring to read. On average, the score should be between four and 15%. The pronoun report helps you achieve that goal.

Transition Report

To transition a reader from one idea to the next, every fourth sentence should have a transition word that guides a reader through the argument, cause-and-effect, or contrast. Words and phrases like “to, “nevertheless,” and “as a result” are transition words.

Repeats Check

Repeating the same word in a paragraph could frustrate the reader; it feels like the author recounts the same thing. The Repeats Check report draws your attention to these repetitive words and phrases.

Consistency Check

The Consistency Check feature helps you stay consistent throughout your document, manuscript, or blog post. It focuses on two aspects: It checks if your hyphenations, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are the same throughout the document. Second, it checks if you are consistent with the chosen English dialect.

Dialogue Tags Check

“Show Don’t Tell” is an essential rule when writing a novel. The ProWritingAid Dialogue Tags Check helps novelists draw their attention to dialogue tags that may break this rule.

Pacing Check

Authors use long sentences and paragraphs to slow a reader’s pace deliberately. The Pacing Check screens these lengthy sentences and paragraphs for over-usage.

Contextual Thesaurus

The Contextual Thesaurus is any writer’s dream, irrespective of writing a novel, a business document, or a blog post. Double-clicking any word gives you a range of synonyms that fit the document context.

Diction Report

Why write wordy sentences when you can say the same thing more concisely and clearly? The Diction Report finds these wordy phrases and suggests replacing them with one or two-word alternatives.

Alliteration Report

The Alliteration Report motivates because it shows you where you use alliterations; it is the secret key in providing that rhythm to your story, poem, or text.

Homonym Check

Grammar checkers detect homonyms that spellcheckers won’t. For example, the homonym report will show you where you misused the word “their “instead of “there” or “affect” instead of “effect.” Although they sound the same, these words have different meanings.

Acronym Check

The Acronym Check Report detects inconsistent and misspelled acronyms in documents. Only grammar checkers will catch incorrect acronyms.

House Style Report

The House Style Report, grammar checks according to these personalized rules, which means if you deviate from the house style, it highlights it.

Plagiarism Check

The plagiarism checker makes sure you don’t use content without quoting the source correctly. It is also a tool teachers can use to ensure students don’t plagiarize text in their essays. If you forgot to quote the source, the report should show the correct acknowledgment source.

Purchases the ProWritingAid’s plagiarism checker credits separately from your free, one year, or business subscriptions.

How I Use ProWritingAid For Daily Writing

I love ProWritingAid when writing fiction and large documents. My verdict is that it is an excellent alternative to Grammarly, and in some aspects not only different but more thourough.

What I Love About ProWritingAid

• ProWritingAid has features other ProWritingAid alternatives may not have from a novelist’s perspective. The integration with Scrivener is an enormous benefit for any fiction author, whether it is your first novel or your tenth series.
• The real-time score in the web app motivates me to improve that score, focusing more on spelling and grammar. Each mistake I avoid makes me a better writer.
• The writing reports are fabulous. I love ProWritingAid’s reports; it offers much more than grammar checking; it’s like having a writing coach at your side.
• I love ProWritingAid’s library! Writers often read as much as they write; we enjoy reading books and watching webinars to improve our writing skills. The resources in the library are excellent.
• I write better when using the Word Explorer Contextual Thesaurus report. Sometimes, you need to say the same thing differently, and it’s not always easy to find the right words. The information helps me when I’m stuck; the different choices offered stimulate my thoughts and creativity.
• ProWritingAid edits content on multiple platforms, including Google docs, Microsoft Word, and the web.
• ProWritingAid’s reports also guide me to be wary of common issues I make.

What I’d Change

ProWritingAid is an excellent editing software tool, but its features can be overwhelming. A friendlier interface would help to get to know the product faster. For example, it wasn’t obvious how and where to download the Word integration app. I knew from using Grammarly that there could be an MS Word app. If I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t have searched for it. Perhaps others found it easier, and I searched at the wrong places…

FAQ

ProWritingAid Vs. Grammarly – How Do They Stack Up?

Considering the ProWritingAid review, I would suggest using ProWritingAid, especially to authors and people who use Scrivener for manuscripts and documents. If you are looking for an excellent grammar and spell checker, then Grammarly could be a better option.

Both are useful proofreading software tools that will help all writers improve their skills and create content without grammatical issues. Grammarly’s ease of use and ProWritingAid’s multiple reports could be the deciding factor.

Use ProWritingAid, Grammarly, or another editing software with features you need to improve and strengthen your writing skills.

Does ProWritingAid Work For Mac Users?

ProWritingAid works for Mac Users who write with MS Word. Download the desktop app on your Mac to edit Word documents.

Does ProWritingAid Steal Your Work?

According to the ProWritingAid website, ProWritingAid does not own your content, and they claim no rights to it. ProWritingAid does not review your content except where the law requires it.  This is important to check with any grammar software because there are some tools that require you to give them a non-exclusive right to your work.

Can ProWritingAid Help Improve Your Writing?

ProWritingAid can help improve your writing if you pay attention to its guidelines and detailed reports. Checking your content in real-time makes you aware of consistent errors, like overused words, passive voice, too many adjectives before verbs, and anything else related to style and grammar errors.

Does ProWritingAid Work Offline?

No, ProWritingAid doesn’t work offline because it uses artificial intelligence. You need an internet connection to use the web editor or the ProWritingAid desktop app.

Hopefully, the ProWritingAid review answered your questions and clarified how its features could benefit your writing. If you are a ProWritingAid user, tell us in the comments how you use the tool, why you like it, and what is your favorite report. What would you change?

Perhaps this ProWritingAid review is your first introduction to ProWritingAid or a proofreading software tool? If you are new to ProWritingAid, why not try it the next time you need an editing tool for your manuscript or documents; it integrates with Scrivener, Google docs, Microsoft Word, and other text formats.