ProWritingAid vs. Grammarly

[Bill Hiatt]

For those of you who self-edit or for those of you who hire an editor but don't want to pay for a separate round of proofreading, it's nice to have a good set of proofing tools. I've had a fair amount of experience with Grammarly. I've worked with ProWritingAid enough to be able to see the differences.

Grammarly is less expensive, but it also has a much larger number of false positives than PWA does. One of the reasons I tried PWA was that Grammarly was burying me in false positives--items marked as incorrect that were correct. Of course, anything short of actual AI is going to have some situations like that because it's looking at patterns, not actually reading what you wrote. Still, most Grammarly's proposed suggestions end up being false positives. PWA has a much lower percentage, at least so far, and very seldom gives a recommendation that's flat-out wrong, which I found more often in Grammarly. Both will give recommendations that involve subjective matters of style, but that's to be expected.

One of the things I noticed is that PWA handles subjunctive mood correctly at least some of the time. Grammarly always sees it as a subject-verb agreement problem. Sigh!

Both programs give you options to set that influence what rules are applied, but PWA has a wider range of options. For instance, it not only allows you to select creative but also to select the specific genre. I'm not sure how much of a difference that makes, but I thought it was interesting.

Also interesting if you want to think about global issues, is PWA's range of reports. Some of them, like pacing, are fascinating. (The pacing report attempts to distinguish action from things like backstory and explanation and to see if those elements are properly balanced. That's naturally a subjective call, too, but I've never seen another program that even attempts that kind of analysis.) All reports provide a genre comparison (though I'm not sure how much data they have for that) and an author comparison you could use as a benchmark if your favorite author is one of the possibilities.

A recently added feature in PWA is the ability to remember previous suggestions that you've ignored. This is especially handy in doing a long manuscript because you can pick up right where you left off in your last session. Grammarly has a tendency to reincarnate the suggestions you've already processed.

Both integrate with popular programs, though Grammarly doesn't give a list. Both work in Mac and Windows. PWA includes Word, internet (through browser extensions), Open Office, Libre Office, Google Docs, and Scrivener, among others. If you compose in Vellum, it doesn't integrate with that, so you'd have to export to another program.

I would consider myself a good proofreader, but programs like this do catch things I miss. And though neither is as good as having a professional editor looking over your shoulder, both can give you something to think about. Of the two, I've found PWA to be more effective.

[Post-Crisis D]

Have you evaluated the Hemingway Editor?  It doesn't have as many features, but doesn't require a subscription, doesn't require an Internet connection and has a desktop app available for Mac and Windows.

[Wonder]

+1 for PWA. I upgraded to a lifetime subscription a while back, and I use it all the time. I even use the browser extension to edit my newsletters before I sent them.

The trick is not to run every report under the sun (takes too long), and not to blindly accept all suggestions as they can flatten your prose a bit. But it's a great resource. I get good mileage out of the grammar and style reports and the consistency report.

Wonder

[R. C.]

A couple of years ago, I tried the numerous editing support tools and settled on Grammarly for one reason: Integration with MS Word.

Having finished (this morning) the first draft of my current WIP, it is worthy of an experiment.

I download the WinTel version of Hemingway and ProWritingAid. Loaded up the docx file and, damn, it is not pretty but not as bad as I expected.

More analysis to follow.

R.C.

[PJ Post]

For a long time now I've used the 'free' Grammarly app and Word's editor (365 version) in tandem. But Microsoft recently integrated ChatGPT/OpenAI with Office. It's called Copilot.

[LilyBLily]

I used PWA last year to review two of my books and thought it did a decent job. Good enough that I also bought its lifetime version when the deal came around.

I'm not terribly worried about grammar; most of my characters do not use the subjunctive even though I still do. I actually dumbed down a word on my WIP today because I just didn't think my character would know or use that word.

[Bill Hiatt]

Have you evaluated the Hemingway Editor?  It doesn't have as many features, but doesn't require a subscription, doesn't require an Internet connection and has a desktop app available for Mac and Windows.

I have no experience with it, but at first glance, it looks as if it would be a viable choice for a tight budget and/or internet issues.

[Bill Hiatt]

+1 for PWA. I upgraded to a lifetime subscription a while back, and I use it all the time. I even use the browser extension to edit my newsletters before I sent them.

The trick is not to run every report under the sun (takes too long), and not to blindly accept all suggestions as they can flatten your prose a bit. But it's a great resource. I get good mileage out of the grammar and style reports and the consistency report.

Wonder

Yes, as is true of pretty much every tool like this, you need to have a pretty good sense of grammar and confidence in your own style to use it. The shortest possible version of a sentence isn't always the best in a particular context.

[R. C.]

...
More analysis to follow.
...

As promised. This is MY OPINION. We all have them but if you wipe well...


I made three passes with the same .docx file using Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and Hemmingway.
Then I passed the results in the order of Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and Hemmingway.

TL:DR:
ProWritingAid and Grammarly, used in combination, will result in a cleaner, easier-to-read document with almost no grammar or spelling errors.
Hemming way… Meh.

ProWritingAid
Now integrates with MS Word as an ADD IN. Sweet! Works well, but there are no keyboard shortcuts to help you navigate the document.
The first pass found no passive voice in the WIP. (See Hemmingway.)
Found spelling errors (typos) missed by Grammarly and MS Word!
A lot of false positives. Struggles with statements that could be flipped into a question.
Certainly helped reduce my propensity for the use of obtuse words.

Hemmingway
The interface is cumbersome and hard to grasp.
The app barfed over the amount of passive voice. (See ProWritingAid)
Not easy to use, and no MS Word ADD IN.

Grammarly
I think it is best at identifying incorrect sentences.
My gut tells me the code was written by non-native English speakers. Example: Too often, the tool suggests inserting a comma, then indicates the comma be deleted. The kicker, often commas are needed, but a non-native speaker would not know they are required.

I must reread the WIP and put it back into my voice.


Final note - When the tools argued over pigsty being one word or two, I default to whatever the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says.

R.C.

[Bill Hiatt]

The variations are interesting.

Some tools I think assume anything with a be verb in it is passive voice (properly speaking, a construction in which the doer of the action is not the subject of the sentence). Sentences like, "John is tall," isn't passive voice because it isn't expressing an action. But on somewhat longer versions of the same pattern, I've had Grammarly mark it as passive voice. What PWA identifies as passive voice generally is passive voice.

I've often seen Grammarly do the routine where it advises a correction, then advises you to change it back or change it to something else. PWA has only done to me once so far.

Spelling is difficult because English spelling has no universally accepted guide. You can look in different dictionaries and see different spellings. (I'm not talking about differences likes that between US and UK but rather differences between different US dictionaries. Merriam-Webster is the one that I've heard is generally relied on in the publishing industry. But the tools don't generally reveal which dictionaries and style guides they are using.

I have now noticed that PWA tends to want to correct proper names. I have a character named Maria Hernandez whom PWA wanted to rename to Marina Fernandez. WTF. I guess maybe there's a famous Marina Fernandez--I didn't check. But I did hit the report incorrect button to suggest that the program should probably leave proper names alone. (That's a nice feature, by the way. If you see something that is definitely right being corrected, you can report it with a click or add a comment to explain the issue. Theoretically, that helps to improve the product.)

[Bill Hiatt]

PWA has replaced the Word add-in with ProWritingAid Everywhere. The way it operates in Word is identical. But I noticed that it was now offering me suggestions when I typed emails. It doesn't offer suggestions while I'm typing on the forum, so presumably, I need the Chrome browser extension for that, but it should work in other word processors without requiring separate installation.

[idontknowyet]

as a person whose grammar stinks royally, i like using both.

I find both to be extremely flawed and wrong the majority of the time, but they are each good at pointing out different errors. One rocks at missed punctuation and the other seems to be better at tenses and articles. I pay for prowritingaid but use the free version of grammarly.

When I'm done my book goes from about 2k errors to about 500 most of which are commas

[R. C.]

as a person whose grammar stinks royally, i like using both.

I am glad I am not the only one... D'oh!

... When I'm done my book goes from about 2k errors to about 500 most of which are commas

I leave one, usually Grammarly, open while being creative. It is a PIA but saves me the angst at the tool finding TEN THOUSAND missing or misplaced commas.

R.C.

[Bill Hiatt]

I used to save a check with Grammarly to the end. Currently, I'm trying an experiment in which PWA is active while I work.

For some people, that might interfere with their workflow, particularly during a first draft. There are purists who correctly claim that different parts of the writing process utilize different parts of your brain and thus shouldn't be mixed--no proofreading while you're initially getting ideas down on paper. I've never quite worked that way, though.

If an alleged error is marked, I don't necessarily deal with it right away. But if I'm ready to break or need to think through something before continuing, I process any possible errors. Before I finish for the day, I process any remaining ones. That avoids a program finding 2000 or more errors all at once. Unlike Grammarly, PWA has the handy feature of remembering that you've rejected certain corrections, so it doesn't try to show them again.

So far, my creative flow doesn't seem to be suffering, and I'm taking care of corrections more as I go, which may save time later. (The former Grammarly run at the end of the process used to take three days or so for me to process all the errors, and I had to keep the computer on, since Grammarly doesn't remember corrections already rejected.)

I'm anticipating processing as I go may save most or all of those three days. We will see...