Sometimes, writing articles can be difficult, and you might have questions such as:
- How do I pick a topic?
- How can I make sure my content does not have grammatical errors?
- How do I improve my writing to make it more concise?
- How do I write compelling titles?
And many others. As someone who has been blogging for years and growing a tech blog, these are the questions I ask myself frequently.
I found some tools on my blogging journey that helped me improve my writing skills and become a better writer. These tools certainly helped me produce compelling articles, write more consistently and write more SEO-optimized content.
In this article, you can see a curated list of great free and paid tools that can help you become a better writer too!
The Hemingway Editor is a writing and editing tool that helps you improve your writing. The application enables you to identify and fix:
- common grammar mistakes
- lengthy sentences
- over-use of passive voice
- weakening phrases
Figure 1
Figure 1 shows a screenshot of the Hemingway Editor. You can see that the application highlights the issues with your writing. Each issue has an associated color, so you can spot and fix them quicker.
Also, the application has two modes: writing and editing. You can easily switch between the two modes, and the only difference between them is that the writing issues are not highlighted in the writing mode.
The Hemingway App is a practical and effective application that helps you become a better writer.
Coming up with article ideas regularly can be challenging and overwhelming. What do you do when you run out of ideas?
Thankfully, the Hashnode RFA (Requests For Articles) comes to the rescue. The Hashnode RFA is a webpage where people can request articles they want to read.
For instance, if I want to read an article about "how to start a developer blog", I can submit a request on the RFA page. After that, anybody interested in talking about dev blogging can write the article and submit it to my request.
Figure 2
Thus, the Hashnode RFA aims to solve the time-consuming issue of coming up with article ideas consistently. It's a great place to get articles ideas when you stumble upon writer's block.
Read more about Hashnode RFA.
Writing effective article titles is crucial because they influence whether people will read your article or not.
The first thing people see on search engines and social media is the title of your article. A great headline can bring lots of readers to your article, whereas an ineffective one can do the opposite.
You do not want to write a great article that nobody reads because of an ineffective title. So, would it not be nice to have a tool to help you craft good, effective headlines?
Figure 3
The Headline Analyzer from CoSchedule helps you write better article titles. You can see the application in action in figure 3 above. We used the application to improve the title of this article.
The Headline Analyzer application is an excellent tool for writing effective headlines.
Another essential tool in any writer's toolbelt is the Quillbot application. Quillbot is an AI tool that allows writers to rephrase, enhance and improve their texts.
It's a great application, especially for non-native English speakers who might have limited English knowledge. You can use Quillbot to:
- shorten sentences and make them more concise
- find synonyms and antonyms for words
- make the text more creative
- fix grammar mistakes
Figure 4
Quillbot is an excellent application for people who want to add variety to their writing.
Getting feedback on your work is of utmost importance. You can share your drafts with other people and fellow writers to obtain objective opinions.
What may seem common sense or good for you might not be the case for others. The reason is that you are subjective when you write articles. Reviewers are more likely to spot issues and mistakes in your writing since they look at it objectively.
Getting feedback on your writing helps you improve your style, grammar, and writing overall.
Figure 5
Hashnode allows you to write drafts and share them with others so you can get feedback. Figure 5 illustrates this article as an example - I can grab the link and send it to fellow writers. Then, they can leave feedback on the draft using the comments.
From now on, you can use the Hashnode drafts to share your work with others.
Read more about Hashnode drafts.
Grammarly is one of the most popular writing assistants, and it helps you with:
- grammar
- spelling
- punctuation
- clarity
- engagement
- delivery
As a result, Grammarly acts like an assistant who proofreads your work. You can use it to correct your mistakes and improve your written content.
If you decide to go for the Premium version, it becomes even more powerful. The premium version allows you to check your content for plagiarism, and you also have an option for human proofreading.
Figure 6
Grammarly has a lot of handy features, and it's a valuable tool for any writer!
Power Thesaurus is an online thesaurus that you can use to find new English words, synonyms, antonyms, and word definitions.
Using such an application is beneficial because it helps you diversify your English knowledge. Searching for new synonyms and antonyms helps you learn new words and improve your vocabulary.
Figure 7
In figure 7, you can see the Power Thesaurus in action. Searching for the word "blog", it returned a list of synonyms. You can also select definitions, antonyms, sentences, and more.
Power Thesaurus is a great tool that will help you improve your English knowledge and writing.
When you write in a physical notebook, you want to have a desk free of distractions. You only want to have your pen and notebook for maximum productivity.
It's the same thing when it comes to writing digitally. You want your editor to be free of distractions so you can only focus on the writing.
Figure 8
Hashnode comes to the rescue with the distraction-free editor, which you can see in figure 8. The Hashnode editor has a minimalist view, removing all the extra stuff that would distract you from writing.
With the distraction-free editor, you can achieve more in the same amount of time!
Writing titles is essential, as you have seen in section 3. However, besides writing compelling titles, you need to capitalize them appropriately as well.
There are multiple styles, guides, and rules on capitalizing titles and headlines depending on where you publish the content. The primary capitalization styles are as follows:
Figure 9
If you're not familiar with these different styles, you can use Capitalize My Title (as seen in figure 9) to save yourself time.
Not sure which style to choose? Technical writers tend to use APA, but MLA is also common. The most important thing is to pick one and stay consistent with it.
It's a really handy tool that makes your titles look better!
Sometimes, you might struggle to come up with good article ideas. As a result, any help would be welcome.
Thankfully, the title generator application can help you with ideas. All you need to do is enter the article topic, and the application generates a variety of titles for you (figure 10).
Figure 10
The application has 13 categories, each with at least 10 title suggestions. Thus, you have 130 suggestions at minimum to get inspiration for your titles.
Publishing content and hoping that people will find it is not a great strategy. You might write a great article, but what if nobody reads it?
To avoid that, you need to optimize your content for search engines. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential because it helps people find your content easier on search engines like Google and Bing.
You can optimize your content by following SEO best practices, which are suggestions/rules that help you improve your content ranking in search engines.
But what if you do not have time to learn all the best practices? That's where the SEO Writing Assistant from Semrush comes to the rescue! The assistant enables you to check whether your content is SEO optimized or not. Your piece of content gets a score, and based on that score, you get suggestions on improving the content. The more suggestions you implement, the better the score.
Figure 11
Figure 11 above illustrates the application in action. You can see that it also tells you how readable and original the content is.
Overall, the Writing Assistant is an excellent tool that helps you improve your content from all aspects. By using the tool, you can create content that is SEO optimized, original, and enjoyable to read.
Conclusion
These ten tools cover the full spectrum of writing, and they will help you to:
- improve your English and writing skills
- find ideas for your articles
- write compelling titles
- write better articles
Let me know what you think. Do you use other tools? If so, feel free to tell me in the comments!
You can read more articles on my blog.
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