The Best English Proofreading Tools

The ability to write properly in English is an important part of learning the language. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation are three key factors that influence the overall impression of a written text. Fortunately, there are many tools available to help improve English writing. Let’s take a look at 12 of the best free online grammar checkers that can enhance your English writing skills and check your text for errors. We’ll try writing a sample text that contains many mistakes and see how all of these checkers perform. You’ll be able to see the results of the checks in the screenshots.

12 Best Free Grammar Checkers for Enhancing Your English Writing

ChatGPT

You’ve probably seen many grammar and writing assistance tools, most of which utilize artificial intelligence. An interesting fact is that many of them are actually based on ChatGPT’s API. Therefore, the first tool that can be used to detect errors and improve text is ChatGPT itself. All you need to do is write the right prompt. It can help you with checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, writing style, and more. It works with different languages, including English, and has browser extensions for Microsoft Edge. It allows checking a large number of characters at once and can check entire documents (in the paid version). For example, you can ask it: “Check my resume for grammar and punctuation” or “Rephrase my text as a story.”

Advantages:

• Helps with checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, writing style, and much more.
• Supports various languages, including English.

It all depends on how you write the prompt.

Claude 2

Claude 2 is very similar to ChatGPT. It is another grammar checking tool developed by Anthropic. It not only fixes grammatical errors but can also make judgments about the content it generates. It has sophisticated reasoning capabilities and even scored 76.5% on an LSAT question-answering exam. It works with different languages, including English, and is accessible through the API or through the beta website claude.ai. It allows checking up to 200K characters at once and can check entire documents. For example, you can ask it: “Summarize this COVID-19 article for me.”

Advantages:

• The free version allows uploading an entire document to work on (compared to ChatGPT where this feature is paid).
• Fixes grammatical errors and assesses the content quality.
• Adapts to different writing goals and audiences.
• Supports various languages, including English.

Bing with Copilot

You may think Bing is just a search engine. Well, not only. It contains an AI assistant called Copilot. This tool also enables grammar checking. It checks grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and more. Very similar to ChatGPT. In fact, it has ChatGPT integrated – you just need to toggle using ChatGPT. It can provide personalized advice to help improve your writing skills. It has browser extensions, integrations with Microsoft Word, Outlook and Google Docs, as well as desktop and mobile versions. It offers a free version with basic capabilities. It allows checking up to 60,000 characters at once and can check entire documents.

Advantages:

• Detects grammar, spelling, punctuation and style errors.
• Option to use ChatGPT 4 for free.
• Direct internet access.
• Provides personalized writing improvement suggestions.
• Checks text originality and prevents plagiarism.
• Adapts to different writing goals and audiences.
• Supports over 20 languages, including English.

Bard / Gemini Pro

Bard / Gemini Pro – These are AI chat tools from Google trained on vast datasets. Bard can generate text, translate languages, write various creative content, and answer questions informatively. It can also check text for grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors. When using Bard in English, you have the option to try Gemini – a multimodal large language model developed by Google DeepMind as a successor to PaLM.

Advantages:

• The free version allows uploading entire documents.
• You can test out Gemini through Bard, just access the English version.
• Fixes grammar, spelling errors, and assesses content quality.
• Adapts to different writing goals and audiences.
• Supports various languages, including English.
• Checks writing style.

Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the most popular English proofreading tools. It offers a wide range of features including checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, and plagiarism. It also provides personalized writing suggestions to help improve your skills. Grammarly has browser extensions, plus integrations with Microsoft Word, Outlook and Google Docs, as well as desktop and mobile apps. There is a free version with basic checks and a paid premium version with additional capabilities.

Advantages:

• Detects grammar, spelling, punctuation and style errors.
• Provides personalized writing improvement recommendations.
• Checks for plagiarism and text originality.
• Adapts to different writing goals and audiences.
• Supports over 20 languages, including English.

QuillBot / Scribbr

QuillBot / Scribbr are powerful grammar checking tools that identify and correct issues with grammar, spelling, and punctuation. They also provide advice on style and clarity. These work across platforms, including Microsoft Word, and don’t require signing up. There is an “Fix all issues” feature that enables quickly and easily correcting many problems with one click.

Advantages:

• No signup required
• Finds grammar, spelling, punctuation and style errors.
• Leverages QuillBot’s paraphrasing capabilities.

Ginger

Ginger is another popular English proofreading tool. It offers many of the same capabilities as Grammarly, including grammar, spelling, punctuation, style and plagiarism checks. Ginger also provides a “translate” feature that can be useful for students learning English as a second language.

Advantages:

• Available translation capability that can be helpful for students learning English as a second language.
• There is a free version available with limited functionality.

OnlineCorrection

OnlineCorrection – A free online tool for checking English text. It offers grammar, spelling and punctuation checks but does not have style or plagiarism functions.

Advantages:

• Free
• Available as an online tool

LanguageTool

LanguageTool – Another free online tool for checking English text. It offers grammar, spelling and punctuation checks as well as some basic style functions.

Advantages:

• Free
• Available as an online tool and browser extension

TutorAm

TutorBin – An online service for checking written texts. It allows users to check their texts for grammatical, lexical and stylistic errors. TutorBin also provides recommendations for improving writing style and structure. TutorBin uses machine learning technology to check texts. This means the service becomes more accurate as it analyzes more texts.

Advantages:

• TutorBin is available for free for non-commercial use.
• Provides suggestions for improving writing style and structure.

GrammarCheck

GrammarCheck is a simple and convenient way to check grammar directly in your browser. It checks grammar, spelling and punctuation, and also provides advice on word choice and phrasing. It has a “Deep Check” feature that utilizes Grammarly technology for more detailed analysis. It allows checking up to 250 words at a time and does not support checking entire documents.

Advantages:

• Free
• Available as an online tool and browser extension

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid – A tool for checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, style and plagiarism. It uses artificial intelligence to detect issues in your writing.

Advantages:

• Improves your writing style
• Makes text more understandable
• Identifies plagiarism problems

How to choose the best English proofreading tool?

When choosing an English proofreading tool, consider the following factors:

• Features: What capabilities do you need? If you only want to check grammar and spelling, a simpler tool will suffice. If you also want to improve your writing style or check for plagiarism, you’ll need a more powerful tool.
• Price: Some English proofreading tools are free, while others require payment. If you’re looking for a free option, OnlineCorrection or LanguageTool are good choices. For more capabilities, use ChatGPT, Claude, or Bard. If you’re willing to purchase a service package, Grammarly is a solid option.
• Ease of use: A user-friendly tool is easy to understand and use. Opt for one with a simple interface and clear explanations of errors.

After determining what factors are most important for you, you’ll be able to choose the best English proofreading tool for your needs.

Tips for using English proofreading tools

Here are some tips for utilizing English proofreading tools:

• Don’t rely solely on proofreading tools to check your work. Always reread your text before submitting or publishing.
• Don’t blindly accept every suggestion from proofreading tools as correct. Sometimes the tools make mistakes, so it’s important to apply your own critical thinking.
• Use proofreading tools as learning aids. They can help identify errors in your writing for you to correct and improve your skills.
• For maximum effectiveness, it’s best to use multiple tools.
• Most existing tools you’ll find actually utilize the ChatGPT API and everything else is just a nice wrapper.

After testing different tools, it’s hard to pick just one. It’s clear artificial intelligence-powered tools work best and are most flexible, but require more practice and experience to use effectively. It all depends on your needs – some only require basic spell check while others need to paraphrase pages of content.