Free English writing tools

How the checker is different

Most checkers underline a word and offer a replacement. That fixes today's sentence and teaches you nothing, so you make the same mistake next week.

This one shows four things for every finding: what you wrote, what it should be, up to three options you could choose instead, and the rule behind the change written in plain words. The goal is that you stop needing the tool for that mistake.

What each tool actually checks

Grammar

134 rules, grouped by the kind of mistake rather than by name. Subject and verb agreement. Verb form after helper words like will, did and to. Countable and uncountable nouns. Comparatives. The prepositions that go with particular verbs. Confusable word pairs like your and you're.

Spelling

Every word you type is checked against a dictionary of 276,734 English words, so any misspelling is caught, not just a fixed list of the usual suspects. When a word is not in the dictionary, the tool looks for the closest real words and offers up to three.

It stays quiet when a word has no close match, because that usually means a name or a technical term, not a mistake.

Clarity and word choice

Flags phrases that take five words to say what one word says better, and adjectives propped up by "very". Each one comes with two or three stronger options.

Word counter

Words, characters, sentences and estimated reading time, updating as you type.

Your text is never uploaded

The whole tool, dictionary included, downloads to your browser and runs there. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, so there is no server copy of your essay, your cover letter or your message to your boss.

You do not have to take our word for it. Open your browser's network tab, type a sentence, and watch that no request goes out while you type.

What these tools will not catch

Worth knowing before you trust a clean result, because most tools stay quiet about this.

• Agreement when the subject is a noun rather than a pronoun. "The boxes is heavy" slips through.
• Comma placement, run-on sentences, and where one sentence should become two.
• Tense that drifts halfway through a paragraph.
• A real word in the wrong place, such as "form" where you meant "from".
• Tone, argument, and whether the writing makes its point.

A clean result means nothing on our list matched. It is not a promise that the writing is correct.

For how automated grammar checking works and where its limits come from, see the overview of grammar checkers on Wikipedia.