Is there any proofreading website worth paying for?

[BernKatstel]

Anything that is at least somewhat accurate in identifying things like passive voice, spelling mistakes, overly long sentences, etc? Free grammarly sucks pretty hard except for the most basic of tasks and when I use chatGTP I am the one correcting it.

 

[MajorKerina]

Just do deepL and quillbot with a little bit of Grammarly. You always have to correct most editors with what you prefer over what it decides. Because so much of editing is choice and style in the creative fiction sphere.

 

[Obsoleteness]

I have been wondering about this as well. I started using free grammarly about 10 chapters ago and while it is a clear improvement to the mess the previous 20 chapters is, it still leaves much to be desired. ChatGPT helped me correct some mistakes (unless it just lied to me and I don't know any better) but I'm interested if it's worth investing in anything.

 

[MajorKerina]

Here are the links to the two I mentioned by the way

https://www.deepl.com/write-mobile - this one I initially found on here actually and my caveat is it kinda sucks but offers multiple ideas for rephrasing and I think it's actually learning over time. Most of the time it's kind of dumb but if you phrased a sentence or paragraph really awkwardly and you don't know how to disentangle it, it'll give you options that read better.

And then Quillbot is just awesome for finding stuff that I miss - https://quillbot.com/grammar-check

Those and Grammarly are the best ones I know but they tend to all be long in editing.

 

[BernKatstel]

Just do deepL and quillbot with a little bit of Grammarly. You always have to correct most editors with what you prefer over what it decides. Because so much of editing is choice and style in the creative fiction sphere.

Thank you. I’ll try out the combination and see if there’s any improvement. I am pretty happy to see if anything works

I have been wondering about this as well. I started using free grammarly about 10 chapters ago and while it is a clear improvement to the mess the previous 20 chapters is, it still leaves much to be desired. ChatGPT helped me correct some mistakes (unless it just lied to me and I don't know any better) but I'm interested if it's worth investing in anything.

Probably not. I feel like chatGTP is still pretty good for the basic stuff compared to grammarly.

 

[Corty]

I am a paid Grammarly user. Would not unsubscribe. It is a great help with grammar and helps me straighten out the structure of the sentences, translating them from my native tongue into English.

 

[BernKatstel]

I am a paid Grammarly user. Would not unsubscribe. It is a great help with grammar and helps me straighten out the structure of the sentences, translating them from my native tongue into English.

Interesting. Did you try out the free version at first? If so, did you notice a significant difference between the help both versions provided?

 

[TASTYLEADPAINT]

I am a paid Grammarly user. Would not unsubscribe. It is a great help with grammar and helps me straighten out the structure of the sentences, translating them from my native tongue into English.

Same here as well paid Grammarly is pretty good (I would suggest you pick up an annual plan instead of a monthly one tho. It's too expensive that way) it has helped me a lot and its usually right 8/10 times. My only gripe is that it likes to simplify too much. Which can take away from the tone your going for.

Chat gpt is a good option as well just enter "Rephrase the following [your text here]" and it will usually give you something decent you can rephrase or drop straight in.

Interesting. Did you try out the free version at first? If so, did you notice a significant difference between the help both versions provided?

Yeah. It picked up a lot more mistakes with my punctuation and helped me rephrase sentences a lot more

 

[Corty]

Interesting. Did you try out the free version at first? If so, did you notice a significant difference between the help both versions provided?

From the limited experience I had with the free version, it is night and day. It is much more precise and identifies more issues than anything the free version can offer.

 

[BernKatstel]

Same here as well paid Grammarly is pretty good (I would suggest you pick up an annual plan instead of a monthly one tho. It's too expensive that way) it has helped me a lot and its usually right 8/10 times. My only gripe is that it likes to simplify too much. Which can take away from the tone your going for.

Chat gpt is a good option as well just enter "Rephrase the following [your text here]" and it will usually give you something decent you can rephrase or drop straight in.

Yeah. It picked up a lot more mistakes with my punctuation and helped me rephrase sentences a lot more

From the limited experience I had with the free version, it is night and day. It is much more precise and identifies more issues than anything the free version can offer.

Thank you both. Sounds a bit promising. I‘ll have to try it for myself and see how it performs now.

 

[FatElf]

You can use https://hemingwayapp.com/ to check for passive voice, adverbs and complicated sentences.

If you are willing to work in return for the own review of your work, you can always try www.scribophile.com.

Scribophile is intended for authors to critique each other's work, and they are pretty gung ho against using AI there, so you'll get at least three people reviewing your chapter for grammar, sentence and any other advice they come up with.

But it does need a lot of effort on your part as well. To post one chapter for critique, you need usually to critique 3 to 5 other chapters in return, depending on the amount you write. And not all the feedback you receive is good, given some people just want to get the points to get their own chapters reviewed and don't really care about improving other's work.

And if you don't want to sub in the website, you can only keep two chapters at a time. Which shouldn't be a problem, really.

As one last thing to point out, the people there are usually more interested in formal publication instead of webnovels, but it is still a great way to improve your writing, with people pointing out to you things to improve.

 

[billydbd]

I pay for grammarly… then use any website i can find for proofreading when i want a sentence change.

 

[BernKatstel]

You can use https://hemingwayapp.com/ to check for passive voice, adverbs and complicated sentences.

If you are willing to work in return for the own review of your work, you can always try www.scribophile.com.

Scribophile is intended for authors to critique each other's work, and they are pretty gung ho against using AI there, so you'll get at least three people reviewing your chapter for grammar, sentence and any other advice they come up with.

But it does need a lot of effort on your part as well. To post one chapter for critique, you need usually to critique 3 to 5 other chapters in return, depending on the amount you write. And not all the feedback you receive is good, given some people just want to get the points to get their own chapters reviewed and don't really care about improving other's work.

And if you don't want to sub in the website, you can only keep two chapters at a time. Which shouldn't be a problem, really.

As one last thing to point out, the people there are usually more interested in formal publication instead of webnovels, but it is still a great way to improve your writing, with people pointing out to you things to improve.

I did try Heming for a bit, but the site felt clunky and a few of the highlights were kinda weird. Thank you for suggesting Scribophil, though. That actually sounds like a lot of fun, will have to see if I can make use of the dynamic there.

 

[Bobple]

I use free grammarly (Can't afford to pay for it), and it did help me a lot when I first started using it. But now (Cause I have improved!) it use is less, I know there is still a lot of problems with my work but the free version doesn't catch most of those issues.