Grammarly

Grammarly is an online website that was founded in 2009 by Max Lytvyn, Alex Shevchenko, and Dmetro Lider. While the website itself was founded in 2009, the Web Editor was not launched until 2010. Grammarly has over two hundred team members and over twenty million daily users and can be accessed by everyone, for free, on Google, or just about any other search engine. The website offers three different accounts. The first account is their free account which helps improve and strengthen everyday writing.  With the Premium account, they offer more advanced grammar checks, an advanced plagiarism detector, and enhanced vocabulary suggestions. The Premium account has a few different prices based on how you pay with their cheapest plan being the annual pay; it is $11.66 per month and is billed as one payment of $139.95. The last account they offer is their Business account which allows a business to buy the account and allow their workers to use Grammarly in order to make their writing more engaging and clear. 

With a free account, they offer assistance with a multitude of websites including Gmail, Facebook, and other very popular sites. It will go through what has been typed in order to find mistakes or ways to improve the writing. If it finds a mistake or an improvement, it will underline the word or phrase and all the writer has to do is hover over the underlined portion with the mouse, and it will allow the writer to fix their mistake. In the account settings, they offer a tab to customize each user’s account by offering a personal dictionary, which allows a user to add words that they do not want to be flagged as a misspelling. They also offer to check writing in American, British, Canadian, or Austalian rules. 

On a Macbook laptop, when visiting their website, they offer users the option to download Grammarly to Safari. If the user chooses to do so, they offer assistance on anywhere a user writes on the Web.  This website would be useful to anyone that has to write. Students in college and high school could use this website to proofread their work before turning in an assignment. Anyone with a career that involves writing could use this website to make sure their writing is correct. This website was not intended for one specific audience but, instead, built for a wide audience in order to help everyone improve their writing.

Works Cited 

Grammarly. Grammarly Inc, 2019.https://www.grammarly.com/?q=brand&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand_f1&utm_content=76996511046&utm_term=grammarly&matchtype=e&placement=&network=g&gclid=CjwKCAjwxt_tBRAXEiwAENY8hSwUm-J_0Wd2_rrvdpRUh0TzSxJbbp3M06wolkAh1x1OLYMFeVvn_hoCBIIQAvD_BwE. Accessed 29 Oct 2019.

Pure Writer

Kathryn Holeton

The Pure Writer application was created in December 2018 by the software developer, Drakeet. This application is an alternative to Google Documents and Microsoft Word for the phone only. This application is better and worse than other programs like Microsoft Word and Google Documents. Pure Writer offers easy access to different backgrounds and a backup option in the setting drop-down. This application is advertisement free, which allows the user to write in peace and without distraction.

This application is compatible on all smartphones and tablets and there is a desktop version. The desktop version of Pure Writer is available through the purchase of the Pro version of the application, which costs $3.99, but the desktop version of the application is still under development (Pure Writer- Never Lose Content Editor & Notepad). There are a few other tools available through Pro, for example the ‘Find and Replace’ mechanic, the ‘Custom’ theme option, and the ‘Preview Mode’ option (Bennett). There are other tools available on the non-Pro version of Pure Writer. The non-Pro version of the application offers a ‘Typewriter’ tool, a virtual assistant, a ‘History’ tool, themed backgrounds, a ‘Backup’ tool, and organization. The organization on the application allows the user to sort their writing into a ‘Chapter.’ Inside the chapters, the user can then sort their writing into a ‘Category.’ The categories can be moved and arranged to the liking of the user. The ‘Backup’ tool allows the user to save their writing to the application or to an external storage unit like the ‘Cloud.’ The application offers an array of themed backgrounds that the user can change to their preferences. The ‘History’ feature is a better version of the undo option. The user can scroll through previous saved points and choose which area to return to. The virtual assistant in Pure Writer is named ‘Time Machine’ and it is supposed to function like ‘Google Assistant;’ however, ‘Time Machine’ does not work that well. The ‘Typewriter’ function highlights the line that is being written and darkens the lines that are not being written, which allows the user to focus on the line they are writing (Bennett). The ‘Typewriter’ function can be turned on by going to the drop-down menu and selecting the box next to the term ‘Typewriter.’

Works Cited

Bennett, Brad. “Pure Writer is a mobile text editor designed by a writer for writers [App of the    Month].” Mobilesyrup, Mobilesyrup, 5 May 2019, Accessed 25 Oct. 2019.

“Pure Writer- Never Lose Content Editor & Notepad.” Google Play, Google, 2019, Accessed 25    Oct. 2019.

Poet Assistant

Kathryn Holeton

Poet Assistant was created in 2016 by Carmen Alvarez (Google Play). The application assists poets with writing poetry by providing an accessible and easy to use ‘Dictionary’, ‘Rhymer’, a ‘Thesaurus’, and a ‘Random Word’ generator. A Desktop version of this application is not available at this time but, it is available on Android and Apple devices and its version number is v1.30.0. This application was made to be serviceable to its users by providing a dictionary, thesaurus, and a tool that rhymes words in one place. Poet Assistant provides free access to all of its functions and there are no advertisements in this application. This application contains a ‘Dictionary,’ ‘Thesaurus,’ ‘Rhymer,’ ‘Composer,’ and ‘Favorites’ function. The ‘Favorites’ tool allows the user to save words that they liked for later. The ‘Composer’ tool permits the user to type their piece of written literature, and the ‘Composer’ will read aloud what was typed. The ‘Rhymer’ feature searches for words that rhyme with the word in the search engine. The ‘Thesaurus’ function searches for synonyms and antonyms related to the desired word. The ‘Dictionary’ tool finds the definition of the word that was typed in the search engine. The ‘Thesaurus’ and ‘Rhymer’ tools, the definitions of the word are provided. Poet Assistant also has a ‘Random Word’ generator, which finds a random word for the user (Alvarez).

            In the settings drop down, there are four categories, ‘Theme,’ ‘Layout,’ ‘User Data,’ and ‘Voice.’ In the ‘Theme’ category, the user can change the color theme of the application from ‘Light,’ ‘Dark’ or ‘Auto.’ The ‘Layout’ function allows the user to change the layout to ‘Clean’ or ‘Efficient.’ The ‘User Data’ category lets the user to import or export favorite words from Poet Assistant to other applications and devices. The ‘Voice’ section allows the user to change the pitch and speed of the voice that is part of the ‘Composer.’ The search history can also be cleared in this category. The application also has a ‘Share’ feature which allows the user to send information from Poet Assistant to any other application that accepts files from Poet Assistant (Alvarez).

Works Cited

Alvarez, Carmen. Poet Assistant. Carmen Alvarez, 2016. v1.30.0. Google Play,                 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ca.rmen.android.poetassistant&hl=en_U  S.

“Poet Assistant (English).” Google Play, Google, 2019, Accessed 30 Oct. 2019.

Thesaurus.com

Paula J. Rodriguez

Thesaurus.com is a website that not only provides synonyms to commonly used words but prompts to improve writing. The writing tool allows the writer to write or paste the document into “word swap” and useful synonyms are provided for words used too often throughout the document. Even though you might be able to simply use the thesaurus included in Microsoft Word there are other uses for Thesaurus.com than simply finding synonyms for a document.

Thesaurus.com includes a word of the day along with writing prompts that assist in the use of the “word of the day”. For example, the word of the day on October 23^rd was erumpent and the theme for the word of the day in the week before Halloween seems to follow the holiday spirit with words such as macabre, ghoulish, and ghost word. One of the writing prompts is to see the definition of the word of the day and use it in a paragraph.

The writing prompts are not confined to the “word of the day” and include prompts on how to improve vocabulary, punctuation, grammar, and improvisation when writing any document. One of the articles that is shown daily is the importance of commas to make a sentence sound right. The writing article to improve writing on October 22^nd focused on empathy and how it influences writing. While the writing article on November 1^st focused on how to kill off a character when writing a story.

Thesaurus.com is published through Dictionary.com and has been available to the public for over 20 years. There is also an app for android and iOS devices for both Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com available for the public. This website connects to Lexico Spanish which is a site that shows a Spanish word of the day as well as tools to practice and study Spanish. This website is much more than just a thesaurus, it’s a tool for writers to improve and grow in their writing and for readers to strengthen vocabulary.

Google Docs

Google Docs is a free online word processor that is offered by Google as a part of its Google Driveservice. Within that free service and in addition to Google Docs, Google Driveservice also includes Google Sheets, a spreadsheet program, and Google Slides, a presentation program. Google Docs and its sister programs are accessible through an app on phones or computers, or it can be accessed directly through a search engine, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Edge, and Internet Explorer. Therefore, Google Docs is widely accessible, in fact, Google’s mission as a whole is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” (“Google Docs Online”). 

In addition to its easy accessibility, Google Docs also offers many attractive features for students and english students in particular. The most popular features include commenting and real-time editing, unlimited revision history, the ability to work across devices with or without internet, easy-to-manage sharing controls, and integrated add-ons. Commenting and real-time editing are noteworthy features because they allow students to collaborate on the same document instantaneously, whether that be notes during a lecture, group projects, or papers. Also, it’s easy-to-manage sharing controls are a key feature that allow the user to decide who gets access to his documents and folders and grant certain individuals or groups the right to edit, view, or make comments. Additionally, the integrated add-ons allow a user to research topics, define words, and insert citations directly in the Google Docs document. All in all, Google docs is universal, easy to use, and more advanced than most typical word processors. 

Works Cited

“Google Docs.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, 16 Apr. 2015, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Docs.

Google. “Google Docs: Online Word Processing for Business | G Suite.” G Suite: Collaboration & Productivity Apps for Business, gsuite.google.com/products/docs/?utm_source=google &utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=na-US-all-en-dr-bkws-all-all-trial-b-dr-1007175&utm_content=text-ad-none-any-DEV_c-CRE_337191507243-ADGP_Hybrid%20%7C%20AW%20SEM%20%7C%20BKWS%20~%20BMM%20%2F%2F%20Docs%20%5B1:1%5D%20Google%20Docs-KWID_43700009812540086-kwd-25567368937&utm_term=KW_%2Bdocs-ST_%2Bdocs&gclid=CjwKCAjwusrtBRBmEiwAGBPgE_qy5MMzrqaOM62xDFVFLLtvn_nwrEFDGEOC0jweeCdr3X6EF3R9ZBoCg44QAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds.