It also makes new steps in live collaborative editing. First Impressions I'll get back in a moment to the issues caused by Pages' new file format, and by the temporarily-missing features. But anyone looking for a Mac-based alternative to should take a close look at the new Pages—not only because Apple gives it away free to anyone who buys a new Mac or already has an earlier version of the app, but also because the new Pages is impressively intuitive and elegant. Pages 4 app for macbook air.
Writing is a very personal practice, and as a result you have a million writing-focused apps to choose from. From distraction-free apps that take up your whole screen to feature-packed mainstays like Microsoft Word, we've put together a guide to help you choose the writing software that's right for you.
There was a time not that long ago where your choices for writing apps boiled down to plain text or Microsoft Word. Things have changed a lot over the years. Nowadays, you have almost too many options. So, with that in mind, we've tested out a ton of writing software to pick our favorites depending on what your needs are. We're leaving out notes apps here, so favorites like Evernote and Simplenote won't make an appearance. Instead, we're concentrating on tools for long form writing.
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For the Most Options and Compatibility: Microsoft Word
Taking a quick look at the new shazam app for Mac and PC.
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Let's face it: some people don't have an option other than Microsoft Word ($80). Whether you're writing a novel, putting together some short stories, or just drafting up a memo for the office, Microsoft Word is the most powerful tool around.
Since Microsoft Word is the industry standard, it's good to get your bearings with it. Word is the most popular because it has the most features. With Word, you can do just about anything you could imagine with your text. It features all types of formatting options, customizable toolbars, application-specific keyboard shortcuts, draft versions, collaboration, and more. It's the kitchen sink of word processors, and if that's what you need, Word's you best option. That said, LibreOffice's Writer is pretty good these days if you prefer free software.
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If you're not a fan of the visual clutter in Microsoft Word but you're stuck with it, you can clean it up pretty easily. That'll at least make it a little less distracting to use.
For Novelists Who Hate Microsoft Word: Scrivener/Ulysses III
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Microsoft Word might be the default app for writing a novel, but it's not necessarily the best. If you're looking for something created with long form writing in mind, both Scrivener and Ulysses III are excellent choices.
Scrivener ($45) is a Windows and Mac app that gives you a single place to dump all your ideas and writing. It includes tools to keep notes, collect research, outline, and organize your writing. With all that, you can navigate to different sections of your text, jump around to different parts of research, and find whatever you're looking for with powerful search options. Basically, Scrivener is like Evernote for longform writing, and if you're looking for a way to organize and write in the same place, it's an excellent option. Scrivener also integrated with Simplenote if you want to take your writing on the go.
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Ulysses III ($44.99) for Mac takes a similar approach to Scrivener, but simplifies things a little bit. It uses plain text or Markdown for writing, but also includes statistics, notes, exporting, organization, and more. The Markdown support means you can use it for regular old blogging just as easily as for novel writing. Ulysses III fits somewhere between a minimalist writing tool and Scrivener. It's feature packed, but offers a ton of options for hiding those features away too. If you want to take your writing on the go, Ulysses III integrates with Daedalus Touch on iOS.
Both Ulysses and Scrivener have demo versions, so check them both out and see which works best for you.
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For Distraction-Free Writing: FocusWriter
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There's no shortage of distraction-free writing tools out there, and most of them are pretty similar. After all, the main goal of a distraction-free writing app is provide a blank canvas to write on in a nice, full-screen view—and nothing else. That said, we like FocusWriter because it's free, works across Windows, Mac, and Linux, and includes a few optional features if you're looking for something more than a blank page.
With FocusWriter you can write text on a page and save it as a TXT file. On top of that, FocusWriter also includes timers, alarms, goal setting, themes, typewriter sound effects, statistics, and spell checking. Still, its main goal is to keep things simple and FocusWriter accomplishes that goal. If you're looking for just a place to write, regardless of what operating system you're on, FocusWriter is an excellent choice
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For Screenplays: Final Draft/Fade In/Trelby
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Final Draft is the industry standard for writing screenplays on both Windows and Mac. At $250, it's a tough sell, but it has everything you'll need. It includes a massive notes section for keeping track of characters, an index card system for summaries, a special scene view so you can see a script at a glance, and more. Of course, it also has templates for different screenplay types, a formatting assistant that helps you get used to screenwriting formats, and a revisions system for when you're ready to go to production. $250 is a lot of money, but Final Draft has a trial version to check out to make sure it'll work for you.
That said, you don't have to use Final Draft if you don't want to. Fade In is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) script writing software with features that rival Final Draft for just $50. Like Final Draft, it comes with organization tools, revision tools, a ton of autocomplete tools, and a variety of formatting options. Fade In doesn't have all the extra bells and whistles that Final Draft does, but if writing is all you care about, Fade In has what you need.
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All that said, if you just want to dip your toe into screenwriting, Trelby is a free alternative for Windows, Mac, and Linux, that has enough features to at least get you started. Just don't expect more than a text editor with screenwriting formating built into it.
For Editing: Hemingway/Marked 2/Phraseology
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Editing is often the hardest part of writing, but you won't find a ton of tools specifically made for dreaded task. That said, you have a few great options for apps that help put a spotlight on your mistakes, spot repeating words, and help you clean up your writing a bit.
Hemingway is a web app that highlights problems in your writing. Once you paste your text into it, Hemingway highlights hard to read sentences, adverbs, complex phrases, and passive voice. What you decide to do with that information is up to you, but it's a great tool for editing it you're the type to use too many adverbs or drop into passive voice.
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On the Mac, we like Marked 2. Technically, Marked 2 is just a Markdown previewer, but it includes a ton of tools for writers. You'll get word counts and a ton of advanced document statistics, but its best feature is 'Visualize Word Repetition.' This mode highlights words that you repeat throughout the document, which is helpful if you're the type to repeat phrases a lot.
For a similar experience to Hemingway on your iPad, we like Phraseology. It's a fantastic tool that includes syntax highlighting, statistics tools, readability scores, and root word breakdowns. Basically, it gives you every piece of data about your writing you could want so you can pinpoint how to fix it up.
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For Journaling: Day One/RedNotebook
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You can use any text editor you want as a journal, but having a special app just for this kind of writing makes it a little more fun.
If you'd prefer an open source (and Windows/Linux) option for journaling, RedNotebook is your best bet. It's a pretty simple app that lets you quickly get to writing a journal entry and moving on. Once you get going, you can easily search through old journals, find specific dates, and do just about everything else you'd expect to do in a journal.
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Without a doubt, Day One is the best journaling app for iOS and Mac. On top of providing a clean place to write your thoughts, it also includes syncing, photo imports, a passcode lock, a public publish option, reminders, Markdown support, and more. It also pulls in a lot of information automatically, so you can add weather, location information, and even your daily exercise. Day One is incredibly organized and easy to browse through, so if you're digging through old notes you can find what you're looking for.
Once you get going, you should see all kinds of handy benefits from journaling, regardless of which app you choose.
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For Writing on the iPad: Editorial
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We liked Editorial when it was first released, and it's still the most powerful writing program on the iPad. The reason is pretty simple: Editorial lets you make it as simple or as complicated as you want it.
As a straightforward writing program, editorial checks all the boxes you'd expect. It supports Markdown, plain text, offers outlines, word counts, Dropbox versioning, and all the other stuff you'd expect from a text editor. Where Editorial gets interesting is its workflows. Here, you can create Automator-esque custom actions that do everything from send a block of text to Evernote to sending an email. It's complicated, but once you find a few workflows that work for you, you'll be able to use Editorial for writing in all kinds of contexts. We can't begin to go into the depth needed to get into Editorial's systems, but MacStories has a fantastic starter guide that should answer any questions.
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You have hundreds of writing apps on the iPad (and iPhone) to choose from and each has their own strengths. Which one works best for you likely depends on what you're looking for, but this chart should help you pick the right one.
For Writing on an Android Tablet: Write
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Writing on your Android tablet doesn't offer nearly the (over) abundance of app choices as on an iPad, but Write checks off most of the boxes for anyone looking for a simple writing app.
At its core, Write is a full screen writing app that gives you a place to dump your ideas and just write in plain text. If you want more, it also has Markdown support, a statistics menu, automatic saving, a file management system, and supports backup to pretty much every cloud service out there. It's simple, but it gets the job done and clears a space for you to just write.
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Of course, if you're looking for more power, TextMaker, Google Docs, and QuickOffice are excellent choices that work more like a word processor than just a writing tool.
As we mentioned at the start of this post, thousands of options for writing software exist. Each of those has a specific set of features that's going to appeal to some people more than others. So, it's usually a good idea to treat your writing software like you would any productivity tool: settle on an app that works for you and stick with it.
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Photo by Yaviki.
Microsoft Word comes with built-in spell checker and grammar checker. It also offers robust support for dictionaries.
Given we now produce so much content in a digital format, the tools are useful. You’re much more likely to make spelling errors5 Clever Writing Tools to Proofread Important Documents5 Clever Writing Tools to Proofread Important DocumentsGood writing comes with any job. You need to make an impression with every email and all documents you send. You don't need to be an excellent writer as these tools help you out.Read More when using a keyboard rather than a pen.
The tools work automatically most of the time, but there are many ways to customize them. For example, you can use AutoCorrect to speed up your typingHow to Enable Autocorrect Everywhere in WindowsHow to Enable Autocorrect Everywhere in WindowsWe love autocorrect on our phones, but what if you could get it across Windows?Read More. And the dictionary menus are packed with clever features and hidden options.
In this article, we’re going to explain how to use the spelling and grammar checkers, then take a more detailed look at the dictionary feature.
How to Do a Spelling and Grammar Check
Microsoft Word offers several ways to check the spelling and grammar in your document. Let’s take a closer look
In-line Spell Checking
By default, Word will use in-line spell checking. Words you misspell will appear with a red line below them. To fix the error, right-click on the word and select the word you meant to type from the pop-up menu.
Of course, Word doesn’t know every word that existsHow to Stop Microsoft Word Underlining Correct Words as ErrorsHow to Stop Microsoft Word Underlining Correct Words as ErrorsMicrosoft Word tends to underline words that aren't even errors. Here's how to stop that from happening.Read More — especially names of things.
To have Word ignore a “misspelling” that’s correct, click Ignore All. If you plan on using the word a lot, click Add to Dictionary and Word will remember the word in the future.
In-line Grammar Checking
Grammar checking works the same way, but grammar errors will be marked with a blue line. To manage settings for spell and grammar checking, go to File > Options > Proofing.
Manual Spell and Grammar Checking
To check an entire document, click the Review tab and then hit the Spelling & Grammar button. Alternatively, you can just press the keyboard shortcut60 Essential Microsoft Office Keyboard Shortcuts for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint60 Essential Microsoft Office Keyboard Shortcuts for Word, Excel, and PowerPointHundreds of keyboard shortcuts are available in Office, but these are the most important ones you should know because they will save you a lot of time.Read MoreF7.
Word will go through your mistakes individually and allow you to fix them. Using this approach is much faster than finding each error on the screen manually, so should be deployed when you’re working on longer documents.
To “unignore” words you’ve ignored in the current document, thus making Word flag them as misspellings again, navigate to File > Options > Proofing and click on Recheck Document.
Change Your Language
You may want run spelling and grammar checks in a different language. To do this, click the Review tab, select the Language button, and click on Set Proofing Language.
Languages you have installed will have a little icon to the left of their names, indicating you can switch to them immediately.
You can also set a language as your default language for future documents from here.
Disable the Spell Checker
You may want to disable the spell checker entirely when working on documents that contain a lot of words the app doesn’t understand.
To disable spell-checking, click File > Options > Proofing. Scroll down to the When correcting spelling and grammar in Word section and unmark the checkbox next to Checkspelling as you type.
It will prevent annoying red and blue lines from popping up all over your documents while you’re working. Instead, Word will only check spelling when you click the Spelling & Grammar button.
Alternatively, you can disable the spell checker and/or grammar checker entirely for the document you’re working on. Go back to File > Options > Proofing, scroll down to the bottom of the window, and mark the checkboxes next to Hide spelling errors in this document only and Hide grammar errors in this document only as required.
Lastly, you can control spell-check on a per-paragraph basis. Select some text, and then click the Set Proofing Language button under Review > Language. Use the options in the dialog box to disable spell-check for the selected text.
AutoCorrect
The AutoCorrect feature can automatically replace words you type with correctly spelled words. It’s enabled by default, replacing common misspellings like “realyl” with “really.” You can disable AutoCorrect or manage the list of automatically corrected words and add your own.
This also allows you to speed up typing — for example, if you frequently type a sentence like “Hello, my name is Bob Smith,” you could create an AutoCorrect rule that expands “hmbs” to “Hello, my name is Bob Smith” when you type it. This is known as text expansionWhat Is Text Expansion & How Can It Help You Save Time?What Is Text Expansion & How Can It Help You Save Time?If you could save yourself even a small fraction of the time you spend typing, you could save hours of your time every week. That's exactly what text expansion is for.Read More.
To manage AutoCorrect, click File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options.
PowerPoint, Excel, and Other Office Applications
PowerPoint also uses in-line spell checking and everything works about the same. However, Microsoft Excel — which is frequently used for other types of data — won’t automatically inform you about errors.
In Excel, you’ll have to run a manual spell by navigating to Review > Spelling on the ribbon.
Becoming a Dictionary Power User
So far, we’ve only looked at how to add words to a custom dictionary (refer back to the “In-line Spell Checking” section if you’re not sure). But the dictionary is far more useful than merely being a catalog of unusual spellings.
If you become a dictionary power user, it can take your spell checking tool to a whole new level. And you don’t even need to use Cortana.
Let’s look at some of the dictionary’s most exciting features.
Free Grammar Check App For PcRemove Words from Your Custom Dictionary
It’s sensible to spend some time cleaning up your custom dictionary occasionally. Maybe you’ve accidentally added a few words, or there are lots of custom words related to a specific project that you no longer need.
To remove words from your custom dictionary, go to File > Options > Proofing and click on Custom Dictionaries in the When correcting spelling in Microsoft Office programs section.
Highlight the dictionary you want to remove a word from and click on Edit. Next, select Edit word, highlight the word you want to erase, and click Delete. To wipe a dictionary entirely, click on Delete all.
Two Custom Dictionaries
When you navigate to File > Options > Proofing > Custom Dictionaries, you will see two custom dictionaries: CUSTOM.dic and RoamingCustom.dic.
The latter saves words into the cloud, meaning your dictionary is available on other computers you log into. Words in CUSTOM.dic are only available on your local machine.
Adding New Dictionaries
Broadly, there are two reasons why you would want to add a new custom dictionary. You probably either want to write in a different language, or you need to add a long list of specialized words (such as medical terminology).
If you just want to add dictionaries for other languages, go to File > Options > Language. In the Add additional editing languages drop-down menu, choose your desired dialect. When the language appears in the box above, click on Not installed to download the associated files.
To add a third-party dictionary, go to File > Options > Proofing > Custom Dictionaries and click on Add. In the new window, point Word at the DIC file you want to add.
To delete a dictionary, highlight its name and click Remove.
Ignore Custom Dictionaries
If you have a lot of custom dictionaries installed, there might be times when you want the spell checker to ignore them.
It’s easy to force Word to ignore your custom dictionaries and only use the main dictionary for corrections. Go to File > Options > Proofing and mark the checkbox next to Suggest from main dictionary only.
Exclude Words From the Dictionary
One of the biggest downfalls of spell checkers is their frequent inability to spot typos if the new word is still in the dictionary.
For example, how many times do you accidentally type “latter” rather than “later” or “suing” rather than “using”? Word won’t bring your attention to the error because “latter” and “suing” are both real words.
If you find yourself making the same errors with regularity, you can exclude the incorrect words from the dictionary. It forces Word to always mark them as incorrect.
To exclude a word, navigate to C:Users[username]AppDataRoamingMicrosoftUProof. The folder contains an exclude list for every dictionary you have installed.
Find the file that corresponds to the dictionary you want to exclude the word from. Right-click on the file and go to Open With > Notepad.
In the notepad file, type the words you want to exclude. Put every word on a new line and make sure you include any apostrophe marks or other punctuation. When you’re ready, navigate to File > Save.
Share Your Spell Checker and Dictionary TipsNews App For Mac
In this article, we’ve explained the most important features of Microsoft Word’s spell checker, then introduced you to some of the best ways to use the app’s dictionary feature.
Best Grammar Check App For Iphone
Remember, you shouldn’t view the spell checker and the dictionary in isolation; they are both essential parts of Word’s proofreading capabilities. One won’t work efficiently without the other.
Now it’s over to you. We want you to share your favorite tips about the spell checker and the dictionaries. Do you know about any hidden features10 More Hidden or Overlooked Microsoft Word Features to Make Life Easier10 More Hidden or Overlooked Microsoft Word Features to Make Life EasierHow well do you really know Microsoft Word? Heard of Researcher, Smart Chart, and Read Aloud? Or have you customized the Ribbon and Status Bar? No? Read on!Read More?
Originally written by Chris Hoffman.
Explore more about: Digital Document, Microsoft Office 2016, Microsoft Office Tips, Microsoft Word, Spell Checker, Text Editor.
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