As its name implies, ProWritingAid is a helpful tool for writers, content creators, professionals and students who are looking to improve their writing and communication skills. But how exactly does the platform work, and does its readability checker offer all of the features you need to help take your writing to the next level?
We put the ProWritingAid Readability checker to the test in this detailed review. Keep reading to find out what we’ve learned, how it compares to other readability tools and how to use it to make your writing more clear and concise.
ProWritingAid is an online writing tool that checks for readability, grammar, spelling, style and tone and much more. As one of its central features, it offers a readability checker to tell you how easy or difficult your writing is to understand based on a thorough analysis of the sentences, vocabulary, syllables and other details.
ProWritingAid’s Readability Checker offers a number of valuable features that can help you increase the readability of your content, including:
Compare to Popular Readability Scores - ProWritingAid provides readability scores based on well-known formulas including Flesch Reading Ease, Gunning Fog Index and others
Analyze Sentence Length - ProWritingAid’s readability checker looks at sentence length (one of the key factors analyzed in readability) and offers suggestions and tips to better balance out simple and complex sentences, ensuring a smoother flow of information.
Analyze Paragraph Structure - The tool evaluates the structure of your paragraphs to ensure that they flow well and are concise and coherent. If it finds long paragraphs that could be overwhelming to readers, it offers recommendations for breaking them down into smaller, more manageable chunks.
Analyze Word Choice - ProWritingAid examines your word choice and flags any complex or jargon-heavy terms that might affect understanding, suggesting simpler alternatives while making the writing clearer and more accessible to a wider audience.
Opportunities to Use Transition Words - It highlights opportunities to use transition words and phrases to improve the flow and coherence of your writing. This makes for a more logical progression of ideas and makes your content more readable.
Passive Voice and Nominalization - The readability checker identifies excessive use of passive voice and nominalizations, encouraging you to use active voice and more straightforward language.
Vocabulary Complexity - It checks the complexity of your vocabulary and helps you maintain simplicity and sophistication to make your content more accessible to your readers without interfering with depth and clarity.
ProWritingAid is available as a web-based tool as well as a browser extension and a plugin for the most popular word processing programs including OpenOffice and Microsoft Word.
As with all readability checkers, ProWritingAid has both advantages and limitations in its use. In our detailed ProWritingAid readability review, here were the pros and cons we discovered.
Detailed Writing and Readability Analysis - The tool does more than just provide you with a number or a score. It goes in detail in telling you precisely what needs to be corrected and how.
Highlights Your Strengths - The tool lets you know what you do well and highlights your strengths. For example, if you have good sentence variety, shy away from starting sentences with -ing words, avoid complex jargon and so on.
Genre-Specific Style Checker - ProWritingAid understands the differences between different types of genres and will check your work and your readability with a keen eye for differences according to whether you’re writing fiction, non-fiction, academic writing, blogging, copywriting and more.
Integrates With Multiple Tools - The readability checker and writing tool integrate with a number of popular programs including Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.
Deep Learning Curve - Some of the suggestions require a deep and insightful knowledge of English language and grammar structure and how things like prepositional phrases and other details work together, resulting in a steeper learning curve than competing writing tools.
Over Reliance on Suggestions - Like the Hemingway App, ProWritingAid tends to rely heavily on its suggestions and its way of doing things. Remember that writing is subjective, and not to lose your own unique voice and style
500 Word Count Limit - With the free version of ProWritingAid, you’re limited to editing a document of 500 words or less.
Limited Number of Revisions - In addition to limiting the number of words that can be analyzed for readability and writing improvements, you’re also limited in the number of revisions you can have the tool check with the free plan.
English Analysis Only - ProWritingAid’s readability checker and writing improvement tool only works for English language texts. Its suggestions may not be accurate in other languages.
Plagiarism Checker Only Available with Premium - The site’s built-in plagiarism checker is only available in the premium version.
If you’re looking for alternatives to ProWritingAid, you should consider the following readability checker and writing tool platforms:
Grammarly is a well-known online writing tool that, like ProWritingAid, checks your grammar, spelling, punctuation and style. As you write, it offers suggestions to help you improve the clarity and readability of your content. It also offers genre-specific suggestions and the premium version includes a plagiarism checker. Grammarly integrates with a number
Similar to ProWritingAid, Hemingway relies heavily on its suggestions to help your writing sound clearer and more direct, like the app’s own author namesake. It also offers a distraction-free writing environment which can help spur your creativity. Unlike other readability tools, it’s available as both a web-based editor and a desktop software program for macOS and Windows.
A web-based tool and browser readability checker that combines the latest in artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing to check readability across a number of popular formulas. In addition, the premium version of the tool checks for plagiarism and AI writing using an affordable credit-based system.
Originality.AI is a unique AI detection, plagiarism detection and readability checker that helps ensure authentic human writing while analyzing content for any of the tell-tale signs of artificial intelligence writing. Using the latest developments across a number of AI platforms, including ChatGPT, it detects AI writing with a high degree of certainty and confidence.
As part of its continued work toward helping content creators, writers and website publishers improve their work, Originality.AI has also released a free readability checker.
ProWritingAid’s readability checker analyzes writing through a handful of readability checkers while offering grammar and spelling tips. In comparison, Originality.AI’s readability checker spans 11 different popular readability formulas, giving you the broad picture of the readability of your text. It also color-codes your content to give you at-a-glance details on long sentences, complex vocabulary, use of adverbs and other areas where your writing can be improved for greater clarity and comprehension.
The Originality.AI readability algorithm works by first breaking down your text into chunks and analyzing it from different angles including sentence length, word complexity, paragraph structure, grammatical features and more. It then plugs into the various readability formulas such as Flesch-Kincaid, Coleman Liau, Gunning Fog and many more, to determine how your content would rate when analyzed using those specific formulas.
It then displays the results in a clear, easy-to-understand user interface, as well as statistics about your writing and the keyword density of the piece, which can help you if you’re involved in creating content for search engine optimization.
ProWritingAid is an excellent tool for improving your writing in terms of structure and clarity, however its readability checker leaves much to be desired, especially compared with the breadth and depth of tools like Originality.AI. Its free tool is limited by word count and number of revisions, whereas Originality.AI’s free readability checker analyzes up to 10,000 words — considerably more than ProWritingAid.
The best part is that you can try Originality.AI’s readability checker for free. If you want to check your writing on an even deeper level, such as running it through a plagiarism checker or AI detection service, you can do so for as little as 1 cent per 100 words scanned. All of these tools are available in the premium version of Originality.AI and can be used on a monthly or credit-based basis, so you only pay for what you need. Try it now!
