ProWritingAid Review 2024: Features, Pricing & Comparison

This In-Depth ProWritingAid Review includes Features, Pricing, and Comparison with Other Tools like Grammarly, Ginger & WhiteSmoke:

You must have heard the phrase ‘Content is King’, quite frequently. While we cannot attest to the content being king, content, however, is imperative for the modern digital world to operate efficiently.

This has given the profession of writing a new lease on life. Although writing does exist in its traditional form of journalism and novelization of stories, content writing has also gained prominence in the age of SEO and social media marketing.

Needless to say, writers are in demand, and many have taken up the profession as a full-time career. The cherry on top is the ubiquitous nature of digital tools that have shown the promise of turning even the mediocre writers to the level of Shakespeare.

Gone are the simple days of grammar check systems in Microsoft Word. The practice of checking and verification has evolved with tools that are specifically designed for the purpose of making written articles grammatically sound and impervious to errors.

One such tool that we are going to discuss in this tutorial is ProWritingAid. We will go in-depth to understand what makes this tool tick, how exactly does it help in improving your writing skills, its affordability, its performance compared to other similar tools, and whether you should spend your hard-earned money to purchase its many premium plans.

ProWritingAid Review

ProWritingAid is a premium writing editor and grammar checker, specifically made for bloggers, content writers, and novelists alike. It allows users to optimize their written articles, erase errors and rectify grammatical and punctuation mistakes in an automated manner.

In other words, this tool assists writers in creating compelling blog posts, telling well-written stories in the form of novels, and writing engaging content in the form of business blogs.

Currently, the editing software works with both Microsoft Windows and Mac. It is also compatible with other writing software like Google Docs, and Scrivener.

As we said earlier, ProWritingAid can be used to serve a variety of writing purposes, but where it really shines is in the field of fiction writing. It is also rumored that many fiction writers today use this tool to assist them in their writing endeavors.

What Does ProWritingAid Do?

ProWritingAid works phenomenally as both grammar and a spell checker. It also allows users to enhance the readability of their articles. For the purpose of this review, we have tested both the desktop as well as the web app thoroughly.

This is how it works:

• First, open the Desktop App.
• Upload your documents to ProWritingAid. Remember, it is compatible with MS Word, Scrivener, text files, and more.
• Once uploaded, the app starts scanning your document.
• An editing tool panel opens up with the text from your document.
• The spell checker will underline spelling errors if any.
• Issues with style, weak sentence structure, and substandard writing are all highlighted.
• Grammar mistakes are underlined in blue color.

The Online Editor can also be used to check:

• Overused words
• Slow reading sentences
• Vague words
• Clichés
• Incorrect tense
• Duplicate Words
• Long sentence length
• Overall readability of the article

Reports on all of the above aspects of your article are generated with additional suggestions on how you can fix this underlining issue in your written content.

Perhaps, its best merit is that the way it acts as a writing mentor of sorts, especially in the field of fiction writing. It allows you to analyze the strength of your content against other better writers in your genre.

The free version of this tool provides 22 reports, as compared to its paid version which provides 25 reports. Compared to other grammar checkers in the industry, ProWritingAid steals the show like no other tool has the capacity to provide as many reports as this tool does.

ProWritingAid Features

As we have mentioned before, ProWritingAid’s mettle lies in its ability to generate reports on various different aspects of proficient writing. The best part is that it also allows you to choose a writing style, and suggests appropriate edits.

So let’s look at all the reports that distinguish ProWritingAid from its competitors.

#1) Writing Style

This feature allows users to identify issues such as overt use of passive voice, repetitive sentences and deleting unnecessary adverbs.

#2) Grammar

Prominently known as a Grammar checking tool, the tool improves grammar by identifying misuse of punctuation marks, incorrect tenses, and fragmented sentences.

#3) Cliches

Clichés and redundancies in the article are underlined, and solutions are suggested to fix them.

#4) Overused

The tool alerts writers of words that are being overused in their writing. Repetitive words are a sign of weak writing. ProWritingAid fixes that.

#5) Repeats

Duplicate words and phrases are identified.

#6) Sticky Sentences

Sticky sentences are the ones that can slow down your readers or get them stuck in the middle of reading your article.

#7) Sentence Length

A graph of sentence length is generated to allow users to add some variety in writing skills.

#8) Pronouns

The tool announces the pronoun percentage so that you can control the usage of particular pronouns in your writing.

#9) Consistency

Consistency includes reporting of punctuation, spelling, and capitalization.

#10) Transitions

The tool generates a transition score based on the percentage of transitional sentences in your content. ProWritingAid recommends the usage of 25% as the transition score.

#11) Dialogue Tags

Dialogue tags are used to identify the speaker. Too many dialogue tags can drag your story. ProWriting Aid alerts users of its overuse.

#12) Pacing

The tool identifies pacing in your writing with slow passages, thus allowing you with the option of improving the pace of the story.

#13) Readability

The tool generates a report that calculates 4 scores for the purpose of comparing it to their guidelines.

• Flesch Reading Ease Score
• Coleman Liau Formula
• Dall Chall Grade
• Automated Readability Index

#14) Vague Words

This feature suggests writers to use normal words instead of vague ones to maintain the comprehensive nature of your content.

#15) Diction

This report helps fix complicated writing.

#16) Thesaurus

This is a feature for suggesting replacement words.

#17) Alliteration

The tool alerts users on the overuse of consonant words and helps you to avoid them.

#18) Homonyms

This feature alerts writers of words that sound the same but are spelled differently.

#19) Acronyms

This feature allows you to check whether all of the abbreviations used in your content are accurate.

#20) Corporate Wording

This alerts writers from using elitist and pompous sounding words and phrases

#21) Complex Words

This feature underlines words with more than three syllables and suggests simplifications.

#22) Eloquence

Identifying an array of styling techniques

#23) Combo

This feature allows you to choose all the ProWritingAid features at once that you desire.

#24) House Style

You can make custom rules for your ProWritingAid to obey.

Overall Impression On Improvement Of Writing Skills

As you can tell for yourself, ProWritingAid bequeaths users with 25 reports to improve your writing skills in more ways than one. What is really impressive is that it does so in real-time.

Below are some of the features that stood out in our testing of the tool:

• Improves writing skills by generating reports on overused words and suggesting appropriate alternatives to replace them with.
• Generates clichés report to polish your phrases and furnish your dialogues.
• Allows use of inbuilt dictionary and thesaurus to improve your choice of words. It automatically analyzes your entire content to suggest better words that make your writing more engaging.
• It allows you to alternate choose between US and UK English to maintain consistency in your writing.
• Generates readability reports to tell you whether your written content is easy to understand or not.

It uses the most well-known readability test for English to fulfill the readability report on your content. The tool also offers grammar and style checking scores in real-time. It appears on the upper left corner of your editing screen.

A special look at its Plagiarism Checker

To avail ProWritingAid’s plagiarism checking feature, users are required to opt for a special premium plus plan. The plan allows writers to conduct up to 60 plagiarism checks per year. Since you are required to pay extra money for availing this one feature; we decided to look deeper into this aspect of the tool.

In our testing, the tool was successful in finding sentences that were plagiarized, while also addressing the link from which those sentences were lifted. This makes the feature especially helpful for students in writing assignments, or academic essays.

ProWritingAid Integration With Other Software

Like we have said before, ProWritingAid is compatible with almost all available writing tools. This includes Google Docs, MS Word, Scrivener, etc.

ProWritingAid with Chrome and Google Docs

The process to use ProWritingAid with Chrome or Google Docs is no rocket science. The tool comes with a browser extension for Chrome. Once the extension is installed, all of your online writing is checked and verified automatically on the go. You can use it to improve your content on social media posts, emails, and to rectify simple grammatical errors.

Google Doc, on the other hand, requires a separate add-in for the purpose of scanning documents. You get all the usual features with reports for your writing with the Doc version as well.

Using ProWritingAid on Scrivener

Scrivener is a very popular tool, especially among fiction and indie writers. We’ve already discussed how ProWritingAid is more inclined towards benefitting fiction writers. As such, its compatibility with a tool like Scrivener can be easily understood.

To use it on Scrivener, open a Scrivener document in ProWritingAid. The tool presents a folder structure for your content. You can navigate to whatever file or folder you want to check, and thus fix errors that occur on the go.

This feature cannot be found in any other Grammar Checker tool that we’ve come across. This fact alone speaks highly of the tool’s appeal.

How To Use ProWritingAid With Word

MS Word is without a doubt the most pervasive writing tool in the industry and is still used vigorously by a majority of this global population. ProWritingAid can be used for Microsoft Word by simply downloading an add-in or opening a word file in the ProWritingAid desktop app.

As soon as your word document is open in the tool, it starts scanning for errors and grammatical mistakes and generate reports to help you fix the issue.

Comparing ProWritingAid With Other Grammar Checkers

First, let’s just get this out of the way. ProWrtingAid is definitely better than the inbuilt grammar checking systems of many writing tools. No inbuilt system can hold a candle against these tools in that regard. That being said, let’s focus on some of its competitors in the market.

In our research and use of this tool, we found that it does stand on its own against other Grammar Checkers when it comes to accuracy and a comprehensive user interface. In fact, it has great admirers in the field of fiction and novel writers.

It also provides extensive writing reports which are way more detailed than those found in other tools. This is a major appealing factor for both novelists and blog writers alike. In terms of cost too, ProWritingAid is way more affordable than its competitors.

ProWritingAid Vs Other Grammar Checking Tools

While comparing it to other popular grammar checking tools, we made the following observations.

#1) ProWritingAid Vs Grammarly

• ProWritingAid doesn’t have the stunning visual appeal of Grammarly.
• It is packed with way more features than Grammarly.
• It is way more pervasive in its compatibility with other writing tools and operating systems like Word, Google Docs and Mac, as compared to Grammarly.
• It is a way more affordable with a lifetime plan of only $299. Grammarly offers no such lifetime plan.
• It has a slower crawling speed than Grammarly
• You have to pay extra for the plagiarism check feature in ProWritingAid. The plagiarism checker comes along with the premium packages of Grammarly.

#2) Ginger Vs ProWritingAid

• Ginger is best for users and small business personnel, helping them write short-form blogs and business content. ProWritingAid, on the other hand, caters more to long-form content writers like novelists and fiction writers.
• It has more features as compared to Ginger i.e. generating a whopping 25 reports. Ginger is also devoid of features like Plagiarism checker and statistical reporting, which are very much a part of ProWritingAid.
• Ginger cost around $89.99/year as compared to ProWritingAid’s $80/year price tag. ProWritingAid also has a lifetime plan priced at $299.
• Ginger is available as a mobile app for both Android and Apple device, which is sadly not the case with ProWritingAid
• ProWritingAid has a much cleaner and comprehensive user interface than Ginger.

#3) ProWritingAid Vs WhiteSmoke

• WhiteSmoke suits best for corporate and business personnel who have to write business reports and compose formal emails. ProWritingAid caters to novelists and fiction writers.
• ProWritingAid beats WhiteSmoke when it comes to features. The one feature that is missing from WhiteSmoke is the ability to generate statistical reports on the quality of content.
• WhiteSmoke is also similarly priced as ProWritingAid, costing at around $4/month per user, to $17 per month for its business plan.
• WhiteSmoke is also available as a mobile app for both Android and iOS.

Issues with ProWritingAid

We found ProWritingAid to be a bit slow as compared to other grammar checking tools such as Grammarly. It is also a very tedious task to click on individual errors to fix the issue. Rather, we would much prefer to have our information be presented in text boxes to the right of our writing.

Perhaps the most disappointing issue we have found was the absence of a mobile app. Those who choose to write their content on a tablet or mobile device will find this to be a major turn off.

ProWritingAid Pricing

ProWritingAid offers its users with both free and paid versions. You also get to take the premium version for a test drive with a free trial of 14 days. You can generate a few reports in your free trial.

The ProWritingAid free version allows you to generate reports for a very limited number of words.

The paid version is categorized as follows:

• $20 per month
• $79 per year
• $ 299 lifetime

The paid version allows you to generate a whopping 25 reports and covers everything you will need to enhance your writing skills. However, it comes without a plagiarism checker. To avail the plagiarism checker you need to opt for ProWritingAid’s Premium Plus plan.

The plans are listed below:

• $24/month
• $89/month
• $399/month

The premium plus version has all the features you would find in premium, with the added participation of plagiarism checker. The checkers allow you to conduct up to 60 plagiarism checks per year.

Conclusion

In hindsight, ProWritingAid is a fascinating grammar checking tool that has the ability to stand on its own among its competitors like Grammarly and Ginger. In our research we found it to be more geared towards catering to novelists and fiction writers.

Its compatibility with Scrivener, it only goes on to further cement its place among the favorites for both established and novice writers trying to make a name for themselves. It is also a way more affordable than Grammarly, with a plan allowing users for lifetime access to its features at only 299$.

On the downside, an absence of its mobile version can stick out like a sore thumb for some users. Overall, we highly recommend you to give this writing tool a try. It works great for blog writers but is especially adequate for writers meddling with fiction and long-form writing.