Having the right tool at hand makes your work easier – this also applies to writing texts. That’s why we’ve put together a collection of different authoring tools for you.
Your text is ready, maybe even-handed in, and you want to reread it before starting the next assignment. Suddenly you find a mistake or see that you have used the same word several times in a row. Your “favourite mistake” has crept in again. And isn’t this sentence a bit too nested?
Why didn’t you notice? It is effortless: if you have been working on a text for a long time, you run the risk of overlooking errors and weaknesses when proofreading because you know them and no more extended register. You are the most practical technical writing aids you can use to refine your writing process and texts further. There are supporting programs, apps, and free tools for almost every step of text creation.
Here you will find, for example, spell checkers and Word tools that will help you track down errors after you have created the text.The question is how to spell words? With special text analysis tools, you can polish your articles stylistically and make them more readable and understandable. We also have specialized translation tools for multilingual authors among you. Apps and other programs help you concentrate on your work and organize your ideas and research results. It’s worth trying!
Before you concern yourself with the expression, sentence structure, or the appropriate use of the keywords, you must first check something fundamental: the spelling. Most word processing programs offer a spelling words checker, but this is not always entirely reliable. Different rules and spellings are constantly adapted. A second test, for example, with the online test of the spellquiz.com, makes perfect sense. The whole thing only takes a moment, and you avoid risking a lower rating by careless mistakes.
Word quality assurance tools
A large number of the authors at Text broker work with Microsoft Word. This program does come with an integrated spell checker that finds many errors. However, it can be improved further with additional plug-ins.
RepetitionDetector
The RepetitionDetector does what the name says: It looks for repetitions in the text. Because sometimes, when you write, you focus so much on formulating the perfect sentence that you run the risk of overlooking the surrounding sentences. The RepetitionDetector is quickly shown when you overuse a specific verb or use a new adjective. Even if you have a “favourite phrase” that comes up over and over again, he’ll point it out to you. The relevant areas are highlighted in color in the text to identify and revise them quickly.
The settings are in the left column: Here, you can see exactly how often the word occurs in the text. You can also enter words that the RepetitionDetector shouldn’t count – for example, keywords. To the right of the text, you can see a list of the most common words in your text. Do you also write in other European languages? The tool is also available for English, French, and nine different languages.
Word league
At the word, league, it is possible to have texts examined for filler words, modal verbs, and other stylistic blunders – even while you are writing. Here you cannot change the parameters that are used for checking. For this purpose, the complaints about and types of errors are highlighted by different colors in the text. The writing tool shows you how long the reader needs your text and how many characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs your text contains. Wortliga also checks your text for sentence length, formatting errors, and various stylistic aspects. Thanks to an integrated readability index, you know exactly how easy or difficult to read it is. Thus, the word league page is well suited for a final examination of texts to avoid stylistic errors.
Also see: The most common surgical errors
Writing laboratory
The writing laboratory, which can be used free of charge, helps you check your text for anglicisms, filler words, and phrases. In addition, it assesses the legibility of your text with three different indices:
- The Flesch Index: This famous index rates the legibility of the text on a scale from 0 to 100. The lower the number, the more sophisticated the text.
- The Viennese factual formula: The text is assigned a rating from four to 15. It shows which German school class level the text corresponds to.
- The Kincaid Grade Level: Like the Viennese formula, it is shown which US American school class level the reader must have completed understanding the text.
At first glance, the results display looks a bit confusing, mainly if you are used to word leagues. However, the marked error points and the assignment of the text types to specific values of the Flesch index are advantageous. You can use this tool to check longer texts of up to 650,000 characters without having to split them up – an advantage over the word league, which only allows 1500 characters.
Spell Check24
With the online tool Rechtschreibprüfung24, you not only find spelling mistakes, but it also offers you a style analysis. To do this, insert your text on the website and confirm by clicking on “Start Test.” RSP24 then paints all questionable areas in colour. If you click on the coloured words, a separate window opens with an explanation – just like you know it from Textbroker Feedback. You can either accept the tool’s fix or tell it to ignore this type of error. If it has crossed out a word that it does not yet know, you suggest it for inclusion in the database. In this way, the tool learns and continues to improve with every text it checks.
One disadvantage: Although the website advertises that the program also finds grammatical errors, it often overlooks congruence errors.
Papyrus Author
The paid analysis program Papyrus Autor examines your text even more precisely than Microsoft Word and OpenOffice: It helps you improve the spelling and style of the texts and make them more reader-friendly. His extensive analysis finds repeated words and filler words, underlines sentences that are too long, and draws the author’s attention to phrases in his text. Using a legibility and style analysis, the program examines the text for comprehensibility and marks paragraph by paragraph in different colours. For example, suppose a section is red. In that case, the reader is very complex, contains long sentences and words with too many syllables. On the other hand, the blue color indicates easy to normal understandability – the text is pleasant to read.
The right authoring tools for translations
Translating a text or writing it in a foreign language is a challenge even for experienced authors. For example, it is not enough to translate expressions literally from one language to another, as they differ significantly. What sounds good in one language sounds strange in the other or is even grammatically incorrect. Even with small things such as quotation marks or points for large numbers, mistakes can quickly occur. Specialized copywriting tools for translations make it easier for you to avoid these pitfalls skillfully.
PerfectIt for English
PerfectIt, a checking tool for the English language, not only has an improved spell checker, but it also alerts you to inconsistencies in the text. It finds differences in upper and lower case and indicates when a word appears in different versions in the text. The same applies to the summary with or without a hyphen, for example, email versus email. Once you have created lists and headings, PerfectIt checks whether they are formatted consistently. These functions are beneficial for longer texts and for proofreading to eliminate series of errors efficiently. PerfectIt is also a good style checker. Because in the settings, you can determine which words, phrases, and formulations should not appear. If you use them anyway, the program will work.
TransTools
TransTools was specially designed for translators and is compatible with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and AutoCAD. With this helper, you can remove extra line breaks with just one command, convert German quotation marks into English or let the tool search for typical typing errors. It supports you in every step of the translation with various functions. As part of the preparation, for example, it cleans up the formatting of the text and standardizes it. During the translation, you can change the spelling of the numbers in the respective language, take notes on text passages and create a to-do list. Once you’ve finished translating, the writing tool will help you troubleshoot.
LanguageTool
LanguageTool offers a spell and grammar checker for over 20 different languages. For example, in German texts, it detects more than 2500 errors in grammar, upper and lower case, hyphenation and compound spelling, punctuation, and more. If it has discovered one, it marks the spot in colour. Just hold the mouse over the place to view the explanation and correction. You can use it online on the website and as an add-on for Firefox and Chrome free of charge. The add-on is also accessible for LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice, and it is chargeable for Microsoft Word. In addition, there are several other versions on the website for other programs that the user community has developed. According to the provider, the LanguageTool is updated every three months.
