Discover Top Posts Tagged with #writing tools

Finally started to use Ellipsus properly!

And this is the first scene I wrote on it rather than on Google Docs!

#ellipsus #writing tools #writers on tumblr #writeblr #my ocs <3 #academic fantasy #magic academy #academic rivals #creative writing #holy cow Ellipsus gives a REALLY good atmosphere and mindspace for actually writing!

Quick random question: does anyone know what is the upper character/word limit for a single document in Ellipsus? Because, huh...

It's definitely up there, and big draft document is getting a bit laggy. I'm having trouble adding more to it on PC, I need to split my text by chapter. I'll probably do that either way, to make my life easier, but that's going to take a while. A+++ on working on my clean final chapters, though. No issues there.

#ellipsus #writing #fanfic #writing tools

Any writers using Ellipsus?

Giving this app a try. Anyone here using it? Thoughts/opinions? https://ellipsus.com/

#writing #fan fiction #creative writing #writing tools

Five Free Grammar Checkers Tested on a Real Manuscript

A grammar checker is easy to evaluate on a single sentence and hard to evaluate on a real draft. The cherry-picked test phrases that vendors put in their marketing all get caught perfectly. Real prose, with its mix of declarative, descriptive, technical, and conversational passages, is where the differences show up.

For this review, the same 4,000-word chapter draft was fed through five free or freemium grammar checkers. The chapter is a mid-book section from a nonfiction work on building software teams, so it includes narrative passages, quoted dialogue, a methods section, several long technical paragraphs, and a few bulleted lists. Each checker was run on the full text with default settings, and the flagged suggestions were tallied by category.

This is not a vendor pitch. It is a working writer's notes on which tools earned their place in a regular rotation and which did not.

Photo by David Bares on Pexels

1. LanguageTool (free tier)

LanguageTool flagged 247 items in the chapter. After clustering the duplicates, about 80 distinct issues. Of those, 31 were real grammar or spelling errors that the author had missed. The remaining 49 were style suggestions, mostly around passive voice and sentence length.

Strengths: Genuinely strong on subject-verb agreement, homophones, and comma splices. The Markdown-aware mode correctly skipped fenced code blocks. The personal dictionary worked well for the project's product names after one pass.

Weaknesses: Aggressive on passive voice and weak verbs. The "weak verb" suggestions, in particular, asked the writer to rewrite sentences like "the team was responsible for the migration" in ways that distorted the meaning. The free tier limits the document length to about 20,000 characters per check, which is fine for chapter passes but not for whole-book reviews.

Verdict: Worth installing as the everyday checker. The grammar coverage is the best of the five tested, and the false positive rate is high but readable.

2. Grammarly (free version)

Grammarly flagged 184 items. The free version is more aggressive about stylistic suggestions than the paid version, in the sense that it surfaces more flags but disables the rewrites and asks the user to upgrade. Of the 184 flags, 28 were real grammar errors and the rest were a mix of style, tone, and engagement suggestions.

Strengths: The interface is the friendliest of the five. Suggestions are clearly categorized and easy to accept or dismiss in bulk. The browser extension catches errors in real time on any web text box.

Weaknesses: Many of the most useful flags are behind the paid tier. The free version surfaces the flag but locks the suggested rewrite, which is closer to advertising than editing. The tone suggestions ("this sounds formal") are not useful in a long-form manuscript.

Verdict: Useful for short-form writing in browser text boxes. Less compelling for manuscript work where the locked rewrites add friction.

3. ProWritingAid (free tier)

ProWritingAid flagged 312 items, the highest count of the five. The free tier limits the document to 500 words per check, which made the review process slow. The flags came from a wider rule set than the other tools, including readability, sentence variety, transition density, and a "sticky sentence" metric that rates how often filler words appear.

Strengths: The breadth of the rule set is genuinely useful for revision passes. The readability and sentence-variety reports surfaced sections of the draft that read flatly, which no other tool caught.

Weaknesses: The 500-word limit on the free tier is too short for serious manuscript work. The full version is reasonably priced but the free tier is more of a demo than a working tool.

Verdict: Worth trying for the readability report. Not realistic to use the free tier as a primary checker on long-form drafts.

4. The AI Grammar Checker on EvvyTools

The web-based free grammar checker by EvvyTools flagged 198 items. The split was 41 real grammar errors and the rest style or tone suggestions. The interface uses color-coded inline highlighting and a sidebar that groups suggestions by category, with per-rule toggles that turn off categories that misfire on technical writing.

Strengths: The category toggles are the most useful feature in the lineup. Turning off the passive voice rule for the methods section and turning it back on for the narrative chapters cut the false positive count by sixty percent on the whole draft. The Markdown awareness is good, and the document length limit is generous enough for full-chapter passes.

Weaknesses: The dictionary is solid but does not include every uncommon product name out of the box. A few project-specific terms required manual whitelisting. The tone suggestions are minimal compared to Grammarly's, which is either a feature or a bug depending on the writer.

Verdict: The category toggles alone are worth the workflow. For writers who switch between technical and narrative prose in the same project, this was the easiest of the five to live with.

5. Hemingway Editor (web)

Hemingway flagged 91 items. The tool is focused on readability rather than grammar per se. It marks sentences that are "hard to read" or "very hard to read," flags adverbs and weak verbs, and counts passive voice instances per page.

Strengths: The focus on readability fills a niche that none of the other tools cover well. A 4,000-word chapter that scores at a grade-14 reading level is signaling something about its accessibility, and Hemingway makes that visible.

Weaknesses: Hemingway is not a grammar checker. It does not catch subject-verb agreement, homophones, comma splices, or spelling errors. Treating it as a primary tool means missing the basic grammar layer entirely.

Verdict: Useful as a second-pass readability tool, not as a primary checker. Best paired with one of the other four.

Side-by-Side Numbers

Tool Total flags Real grammar errors False positive rate LanguageTool 247 31 87% Grammarly free 184 28 85% ProWritingAid free 312 22 93% AI Grammar Checker 198 41 79% Hemingway 91 0 n/a

"False positive rate" here means the share of flags that the writer ended up dismissing as inappropriate for the genre. Not a perfect metric, but a reasonable proxy for how much noise the tool produces.

The standout result is the AI Grammar Checker catching the most real grammar errors with the lowest false positive rate. The per-rule toggles do a lot of the work; turning off passive voice on the methods section is what brought the false positive rate down to 79 percent from what would otherwise have been closer to 88.

What This Test Did Not Cover

Single-document tests do not measure everything. The two things this review could not assess are:

The first is long-term dictionary management. A checker that lets you build a project glossary file pays dividends after the third or fourth draft. LanguageTool, Vale-paired setups, and the AI Grammar Checker all support this, with varying interfaces. Grammarly does too, but the personal dictionary is per-account rather than per-project.

The second is editor integration. The browser-based tools are fine for paste-in passes, but a writer who does most of their drafting in Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, or a code editor wants the checker to live inside the editor. Grammarly has the broadest editor coverage. LanguageTool has solid plugins for the major editors. The AI Grammar Checker is browser-based as of this review, which is a minor friction for writers who prefer in-editor.

For a deeper look at why every checker in the lineup over-flags passive voice and what to do about it, the longer guide on why grammar checkers flag passive voice even when it is the right choice at EvvyTools covers the underlying detection logic. The piece holds up regardless of which tool you end up using.

The Short Take

If you want one tool: the free grammar checker by EvvyTools earned the place for low false positive rate and the per-rule toggles, with LanguageTool as a strong second.

If you want two tools paired: LanguageTool plus Hemingway covers grammar and readability without overlap, and both have generous free tiers.

If you write in a specific environment, pick the tool whose editor integration matches your workflow. The grammar coverage matters less if the tool is too far from where you draft.

For more on the underlying behavior of grammar checkers, the Purdue OWL guide on grammar mechanics and the Plain Language Action and Information Network writing guidelines are useful references that no tool fully replaces.

#writing tools #grammar #reviews #productivity #editing

I created a writing tool to help keep organized. Find it at lofi-library.com

#writing #tools #writing tools

Fanfiction is such a fun sandbox to play in, but it's also a great writing tool. With original fiction, there are always so many things to juggle--a whole new plot, new characters, worldbuilding, and backstory--but with fanfiction, a lot of those can be set aside. The world already exists. The characters already exist. So, if you just want to focus on one new thing--like writing romantic tension or a sneaky twist on an old trope--then you can.

You also don't need to commit to a 100,000-word masterpiece to feel like you've written a complete story. You can write snippets, drabbles, a few thousand words, and if it feels complete to you, then it's complete.

Plus, the feedback is so so important. It's very hard to get someone to invest in your original story, especially if it's not complete. But will they read your fanfiction and leave a comment or a like? Yes! And that positive response is really important for motivation. I know we pretend like it shouldn't be, but I think that's silly. It's OKAY to want people to read and like what you've written. It's not cringe. It's human.

#fanfiction #ao3 #writing #creative writing #writing tools

Portable Writing Kit

I briefly mentioned this when talking to @manorofshepard so I figured I'd share with everyone what goes into my Travel Kit for writing!

So in the image above you have:

- An Anker power bank

- 2x grip seal bags containing charging cables

- A pair of headphones

- Collapsible phone stand

- Bluetooth/Wireless Rechargeable Mouse

- Folding Bluetooth keyboard

- Rechargeable Bluetooth Keyboard

- Shoulder Bag

Below is what the stand and keyboard look like setup and the packed bag.

I find this kit great for when I'm in hotel rooms or on planes and want to work on my phone.

The folding keyboard and mouse are ideal for being sat at a desk and typing away as if I'm at a laptop or PC. The other keyboard is great for when I'm laid in bed, on a plane or otherwise want to be comfortable. One thing I haven't included in the pictures is a basic plug socket to charge everything up as the power bank is to be held in reserve.

If anyone has any particular questions about the kit, feel free to ask!

#writeblr #writing #on writing #writing tools #creative writing #writers #ao3 author #iridensia #iridensia: the aspect war #original fiction #travel #travelling writer