We all want to read content that inspires, motivates and entertains us, but the competition is fierce. This is why it’s never been more important to ensure your copy is error-free, original and well-researched. To make this easier for you, there are a number of content writing tools which can help you craft high-quality copy.
Not only will they ensure your content is free from grammar, spelling and punctuation errors, but they can help you achieve a consistent style that engages your audience. To keep your readers hungry for more, check out our guide to the best content writing tools.
Table of contents
- What are content writing tools?
- The top 10 content writing tools
1. Grammarly
2. Hemingway Editor
3. The Guardian and Observer Style Guide
4. UK vs US spelling
5. Title Capitalisation Tool
6. Zest
7. AnswerThePublic
8. Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator
9. Copyscape
10. Plagiarism Detector - Explore more content writing tools online
What are content writing tools?
Content writing tools are designed to assist writers in various aspects of the content creation process, from ideation and planning to editing and optimisation. These tools are meant to make the writing process more efficient and effective, enabling writers to create higher quality content in less time.
Some content writing tools for grammar are focused on improving the quality of the writing itself. For example, grammar and spell checkers can help writers catch errors and improve their writing style. These tools can highlight common grammatical mistakes, suggest better word choices, and provide feedback on sentence structure and readability.
Other content writing tools are focused on helping writers generate new ideas and plan their content. Writing prompts and content idea generators can help writers break through writer's block and generate new topics to write about. These tools can provide writers with inspiration and help them come up with fresh and engaging ideas.
SEO tools are another type of content writing tool that can help writers optimise their content for search engines. These tools can provide keyword research, suggest meta tags and descriptions and analyse content for on-page optimisation factors. By using these tools, writers can ensure that their content is targeted to specific audiences' search queries and to the kinds of criteria search engines have, such as quality and readability, helping the page to rank well and attract organic traffic.
The top 10 content writing tools
Here are 10 of the best content writing tools to try using in your work:
1. Grammarly
Considered one of the most popular grammar checkers out there, Grammarly’s free online text editor is available as an extension for Safari, Chrome and Firefox. A much more sophisticated version of Microsoft Word’s spellcheck, it will flag up grammar, punctuation and spelling errors as well as word choice and style mistakes to make sure your content is effective and easy to read.
The Premium subscription offers all the same features as the free version but will also scan your content for writing inconsistencies, appropriate tone, unclear structure, overuse of words, insensitive language and wordiness.
2. Hemingway Editor
Highlighting common errors and suggesting ways to tighten up your writing, the Hemingway Editor uses principles followed by Ernest Hemingway, who was known for his simple yet direct prose. Some of its standout features include the passive voice detector and its ability to find and highlight complex sentences. It will also give you a readability score based on the Automated Readability Index and suggest changing words that can be simplified.
3. The Guardian and Observer Style Guide
The Guardian and Observer Style Guide was initially created for the Guardian newspaper’s large freelance writer base to ensure uniformity across content. Although it is typically used by journalists, we couldn’t leave it off our list of content writing tools. Offering advice on everything from whether you should use ‘a’ or ‘an’ before ‘h’ words, to whether or not there needs to be a hyphen in zigzag, it provides in-depth guidance on numerous spelling and punctuation queries.
4. UK vs US spelling
Like the Guardian and Observer Style Guide, this isn’t a tool as such, but it is really useful if you’re required to write content for both UK and US audiences. It provides a comprehensive list of American and British spelling differences, including -ize and -ise endings.
5. Title Capitalisation Tool
While most English-speaking countries write headlines and titles in sentence case (only the first letter of the first word is capitalised), in the US it’s more common to use title case (the first letter of all words except prepositions and conjunctions are capitalised).
If you’re a UK content writer working on copy for a US audience, capitalising words in titles won’t come naturally to you, so the Title Capitalization Tool will be really useful. However, it works in reverse too, so you can change headlines that are currently in title case to sentence case as well.
6. Zest
Zest is a content stream that uses AI and manual community curation to filter out low-quality content. While it mostly shares educational marketing content, it’s a valuable resource if you’re looking for topic ideas related to SEO, eCommerce, blogging, branding, paid search and much more. You will need to download the Chrome extension which replaces your Google home screen, but once you do you’ll have access to fresh content that updates regularly.
7. AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is a consumer insight tool that curates the suggested searches from Google and Bing and visualises them in a chart. Organised into categories such as where, what and why, it is great for coming up with new blog ideas and can suggest questions you can answer to help you get onto Google’s featured snippets. You can also get more insight into your target audience, keyword research and longtail phrases.
8. Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator
A straightforward concept, Hubspot’s Blog Ideas Generator is popular among bloggers and writers alike. Simply enter up to five nouns on topics you want to write about and the tool will generate 5 days’ worth of blog ideas. Although there doesn’t seem to be much variation in topics using the basic functionality, you can unlock a whole year’s worth of ideas as well as more information on improving your SEO strategy if you sign up.
9. Copyscape
Plagiarism is one of the biggest offences you can commit as a content writer, so it’s important that you try your best to ensure everything you create is written in entirely your own words.
Copyscape scans your copy for similarities to content that’s already published on the internet, giving you the opportunity to rewrite any sentences that could result in a Google penalty. The free version only allows you to search for copies of your content on the web, but if you have a premium account, you can copy and paste your content into the site and carry out a high-level search.
10. Plagiarism Detector
Another great plagiarism checker, Plagiarism Detector allows you to scan up to 1000 words at a time for free.
There is a pro option which allows you to check unlimited words, but if you have the time, you can simply scan your content in sections using the free tool. Once you do, you’ll be given two scores, one for uniqueness and another for plagiarism. If it detects any plagiarism, this will be highlighted in red and you will be able to see which sources have been flagged.
Explore more content writing tools online
We’ve only touched upon a handful of the best tools for content writing here, but there are hundreds more available to explore online. Really, it all comes down to what you will benefit from the most, whether that’s a grammar checker, style guide or plagiarism detector. Equally, you’ll need to decide whether you’re happy to use free tools or you’re willing to purchase a subscription.
Remember, content writing tools alone won’t provide a complete solution, but they will certainly allow you to focus on what matters most: creating high-quality content.
Main image credit: Riccardo Annandale
Internal image credits: Romain V, Alexander Andrews, Agence Olloweb
