Hello Guys,

Can someone suggest a good free proof reading tool .. or paid tool that's with a lifetime subscription that's not too high.

Thanks for your help.

Best Regards

You might check out:

http://www.grammarly.com/?q=proofrea...FR845wodaUV4ng (Web based, free as far as I know)

http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_fl...FU3X5wodnlONOA (Not free, but can get an 80% discount if you click the "get now" button and fill in then use your browser back button to not proceed )

Those are a couple that I came up with doing a quick Google search using 'proofreading software' in the search.

HTH a bit!

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Jules, SunRise Virtual Solutions - WordPress Customization & XHTML/CSS Web Sites

Hey .. Thanks a lot .. I will try those ...

I used http://spellcheckplus.com/ - though it took care of spellings ... and simple errors ... it wasn't enough .. I tried few other and was not happy either ...

Best Regards

Originally Posted by Business-Bytes

You might check out: http://www.grammarly.com/?q=proofrea...FR845wodaUV4ng (Web based, free as far as I know) http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_fl...FU3X5wodnlONOA (Not free, but can get an 80% discount if you click the "get now" button and fill in then use your browser back button to not proceed ) Those are a couple that I came up with doing a quick Google search using 'proofreading software' in the search. HTH a bit!

Grammarly ... is paid .. it check the text and for details takes to a payment page ...

The other one is good . It's paid .. but overall it's good .. I have used it earlier.

Best Regards

I thought this was an interesting thread since it's a subject that's been on my mind lately--I'd blogged about the limitations of automated spelling and grammar checkers just last week. I decided to test the tools you all listed using the first paragraph of that blog post as my text. This is what I found:

• Grammarly: Until you sign up, which I didn't, you don't see the detailed results page. But the basic results page listed five issues.
  • Plagiarism: 1 issue. This text IS published online at my blog, so Grammarly gets the thumbs-up on this one.
  • Subject and verb agreement: 1 issue. Bzzz! Wrong. There are no subject-verb errors in the text. I'm pretty confident I know which sentence tripped it, though: "...that first draft DOESN'T show up...." This is a common problem with automated grammar checking software. If a verb phrase includes a modal (or "helping verb," in this case, "does"), grammar checkers don't understand its relationship to the phrase. They only notice that the main verb (in this case, "show") isn't conjugated as usual ("shows"). "Fixing" this problem as suggested would actually make the sentence wrong.
  • Writing style: 1 issue. No details are listed without an account. However, I would note that style in general is a subjective topic. I have little faith that an automated checker has that kind of higher-thinking capability. Although the suggestions Grammarly returns may be valuable food for thought, I wouldn't treat them as the absolute last word.
  • Vocabulary use: 2 issues. No details are listed without an account. However, I suspect one of the suggestions would be to eliminate the repeated word "always" in the first sentence. Repetition is a pattern that is frequently flagged in automated checkers. Sometimes it's appropriate, and sometimes not. Again, a little human judgment to balance the automated critique is in order. The second issue? I have no idea...but I'm not curious enough to sign up.
  
  On the plus side, Grammarly does seem to do a very thorough check. As it ran, the progress bar listed each problem type it was looking for. There are literally DOZENS of categories of problems in the listing, and many of them are things that a great number of people have trouble with, so they're also the kinds of problems that I would definitely advise checking. Granted, a couple were irrelevant, arbitrary, outdated, or otherwise NOT absolute rules (such as "no ending a sentence with a preposition" or "no beginning a sentence with a conjunction"). But I think I'd rather see software flag things that are not necessarily real problems, and let the writer decide for himself whether to take each suggestion or not, than to miss things that certainly ARE problems.
  
• White Smoke: I didn't test this one since it's a paid service. However, one of my blog readers has used it in the past. She emailed me a detailed review. You can read her take on the software in the first comment on my blog post.
  
• SpellCheckPlus: This one found no problems, so I can only project on its accuracy and thoroughness. First, I'm not sure why it uses yellow to highlight some problems and red for others. It says red is for spelling errors, but the first problem it displays is spelling, and that one is in yellow. I also suspect it doesn't really check grammar thoroughly at all since the only grammar problems that are flagged in the example occur in side-by-side word pairs. In English, grammar problems (such as pronoun case or subject-verb agreement, for example) often do NOT occur in side-by-side words but at whole different parts of the sentence, or even across more than one separate sentence.
  
  On the plus side, I like the way it is set up to return suggestions. It applies yellow or red formatting to any problems it finds. Then if you roll over each problem, an explanation/suggestion box pops up. It seems to be easy to use and understand, and it definitely ran fast. (You can see this feature at work without pasting in your own text by clicking on the "Show an example text" button.)

The bottom line? I'm sure all of these checkers have their merits, and they can definitely be a good starting place for self-editing. Grammarly in particular seems to have a lot of promise. Just keep in mind that none of them is 100% correct, 100% of the time. If your grammar checker tells you something that doesn't quite jibe, it's a good idea to ask a real person's opinion before you accept the automated answer.

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AnnaLisa Michalski, Sunny Words Writing Services