9 Tools Every Writer Should Know About

As I’m a developer, I love to use tools that can assist me in my writing. Over the last couple of years, I’ve created an extended list of useful resources.

1. Hemingway App

This is probably the most well-known tool for checking grammar, readability, content difficulty and structure.

2. Screely

Recently, I came across Screely via ProductHunt. The product allows you to upload a screenshot and add a fake window, shadows or background to make it look nice. As the product is still under development, they continuously keep adding more functionality. Here’s an example.

3. Copyscape

Especially for your clients, it is crucial you double-check your content for plagiarism as unique contents scores better in Google. A very good tool for this is Copyscape as it shows where you’ve copied the content from and the match rate. To use the tool, you have to buy at least € 10 worth of credits.

4. Mockdrop

Mockdrop allows you to mock an image inside devices like an iPhone, iPad, iMac. They offer different layouts and background images to make it look real. Here are some examples.

5. Gratisography

Did you ever need a crazy stock photo for your article, Gratisography offers a wide range of crazy images including people, nature, objects, …

My favourite Gratisography image.

6. Crowdfire

Marketing your articles as equally important as creating them. Crowdfire assists you in growing your online audience. The functionality it offers:

• Automatically discover articles and images your audience will love, so you can share them to all your social profiles and keep your timelines buzzing!
• Follow the right people, unfollow inactive accounts, engage with your fans and followers and keep an eye out on your competitors’ followers.
• Preschedule content in advance and publish them automatically at the best times.

7. Upscribe

Do you want to offer a mailing list service for your readers, Upscribe can help you with that. The greatest benefit of the tool is that they offer an embed snippet for Medium articles. Here is how it looks.

8. PowerThesaurus

I don’t like the synonyms Thesaurus suggests me, they are mostly not relevant or too vague. That’s why I started looking for a better synonym finder service. PowerThesaurus provides you with ratings and a bunch of extra information for you to find the best synonym to spice up your text. Great UX!

9. Asciinema

This is a very useful tool for tech writers who want to record their terminal sessions and share them on the web. The tool can be installed via ‘brew’ package manager.

Bonus: Grammarly.com

Ideal tool for checking your content for issues: spelling, grammar, conventions, synonyms, …