Why a writing editor app is important
There is a very good chance that you spend more time communicating via text than by any other format. And no, I'm not talking about text messaging.
I'm talking about things like email, social media, or perhaps your website. It's important for us to be able to convey ourselves in a clear and concise manner so we can get our message across.
So in today's video, I want to show you why it's important to use a writing editing app and how I've been using a particular one over the last few weeks to help improve my online messaging.
Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. A few weeks ago, I was on my own website, and I was reviewing some of the content that I had included on my About Me page, and something really stood out to me.
As I was reviewing my existing text, I identified a spelling mistake, a spelling mistake which has probably existed on this page for the past two years.
But beyond just that small mistake, I also realized and discovered, with the aid of a tool, that I could really improve my communication. I could be a lot more specific and get my message across to my potential clients.
So what I've been using is a tool called ProWritingAid, and it's so much more than just a grammar and spell checker. It's actually helping me improve my readability and it can help improve yours as well.
How to use the ProWritingAid browser extension
I want to show you three different ways in which you can use ProWritingAid, and let's start with the first one, and that is right within your browser. Now, this is probably the easiest one, especially when we are crafting our email messages or perhaps our social media posts.
As you're writing, as I'm showing you here in this example, it's gonna highlight certain errors but also suggestions here as well. You can see there's three different colors it's highlighting here in front of me.
I've got a yellow, a couple of blues, and a red. The red is probably the most obvious—it's a spelling mistake here.
Yeah, "forgotten" does not have a zed at the end, but I've got a few other suggestions here as well. My readability may be enhanced if I removed "that."
When I read the sentence, yeah, "that" is just a filler word. I don't need to include that here.
And then, the blues in this particular case have a little more to do with grammar and some punctuation here as well. So yes, that's not the proper form of "know."
There should be an S on the end, and "details" in this particular example should have a comma at the end. However, there's a good chance that you may be writing longer form content, such as a blog article or perhaps your own website, like in my own example.
How to use the ProWritingAid web editor
That's where the online editor comes into play. So here we are. I haven't downloaded anything.
I'm just within the ProWritingAid site, and here I can either copy and paste content, I can upload a document, or I can just write right within this window. In this particular case, I've chosen to use a blog article that I wrote a few years back to see if I can improve on it with ProWritingAid.
Now, when you first input your text, your realtime editor may be off, but let's turn that on and see what it has found. And I've got about nine different suggestions waiting for me here.
So we see some of the same colors that we saw on the extension version when I was writing my email. In this case, there's a few different things that I should be looking to improve upon.
But you'll also notice up here, at the top of the menu, I have a large number of different reports where I can dive into in a lot more detail.
So let's take a look at a couple of my favorites. One of the ones that I've been using a lot is called Sticky.
Now what Sticky is referring to are sentences which may trip up some of my readers. Perhaps I'm using words or language that is just not as smooth for someone to digest as they're reading this content.
Think of how important that is when you're trying to convey your message. Maybe you're creating a sales page and you're trying to sell a service or a product.
Or maybe it's just the landing page of your website, and you know that you only have a few seconds to get your message across before they move on to something else.
So the last thing you want is to trip them up by including a confusing sentence or maybe too many filler words where you don't need to here. So here, I've got a few different things highlighted.
If I go over here to the left and click on this, I've got some examples here, such as "When I," "I don't," "It allows," "So select." These are things that I could maybe tighten up a little bit, use different words or fewer words, so it's easier for people to understand.
The other one that I use a lot here within ProWritingAid is Readability. So in this case, it looks like I'm pretty good.
If I hover over these different paragraphs, it says that, hey, great, this has a Flesch Reading Ease score of 84.9. However, if I come down to the bottom of the screen here, this is my last sentence or my last two sentences, and it may be a little bit difficult for some of my readers to wrap their heads around or understand me correctly.
And keep in mind, you don't always know your audience and their background. You don't know what their reading level is.
You don't know what their native language is, or perhaps what country they are coming from. So it's so important that you have clear and concise language so that they're not confused and they understand the message that you're trying to get across.
How to use the ProWritingAid Microsoft Office add-on
Now, the third way in which you can use ProWritingAid is with your favorite word processor, such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word. So in this case, I've downloaded and installed the ProWritingAid extension from Microsoft Office.
So I can use this within my own desktop setup here. Here, I've got a different article that I've been working on, and you can see that Microsoft tries to help us out with a few simple suggestions here.
You may see some of these blue underlines and red for a spelling mistake, but here in the top right-hand corner, I've got my ProWritingAid icon. And if I select this to turn on Realtime checking, it's gonna take a look and give me a variety of different suggestions.
Here again, we see those blues, some yellows, and some reds as to where we can improve upon. But if we want to go even further, at the very top of the menu, I can click on ProWritingAid, and now I've got all of these reporting options available to me again.
Helpful reports to improve your writing
So let's take a look at two more that I think you might find helpful as well. The first one is called Echoes.
If I click on Echoes, it's gonna take a second to analyze my text. What Echoes does is it highlights any words or phrases that I may have repeated within a short timeframe.
Maybe I've repeated it one after another in a few different sentences or short paragraphs. So if I open up this option here, the first one is "exercise."
Now in this case, this article is about exercise, so that's probably okay. But the second one here is "first thing," and let's take a look at that.
In this paragraph, I've got "first thing" right after one another, then I've got "first thing" in the following paragraph, and "first thing." It doesn't need to be that way.
I might be boring my audience by using that same phrase, that combination of words, time and time again. So it's highlighting where I can improve my writing, not just the readability but make me a stronger writer over time as well.
The other one that I think is most helpful, regardless of what type of thing that you're writing, whether it's email, social media, or otherwise, is sentence length. Sometimes, if you write too long of a sentence, it is very difficult for someone to follow your train of thought and what you're trying to convey to your audience.
So in this case, I'm pretty good. Most of my sentences have received a blue here, but I've got a couple of reds which are highlighting sentences that are perhaps a little too long.
Maybe I can shorten them up. Maybe I can break them into two to make it that much easier for those people who will be reading this content.
Now, if you'd like to learn more and try ProWritingAid for yourself, be sure to click the link in the description below. And I'd love to know from you, what type of writing are you involved with on a day-to-day basis?
Are you producing articles? Are you revising sales copy, or is most of your writing related to email or social media? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
