3 Blogging Tools to Improve Your Content Quality

Want to publish more polished blog posts?

Look­ing for free or low-bud­get tools to help?

In this arti­cle, you’ll dis­cov­er three blog­ging tools that will help you catch typos and improve read­abil­i­ty of your blog posts.

#1: After the Deadline

After the Dead­line can be best sum­ma­rized as a “lan­guage check­er for the web.” This free tool offers con­tex­tu­al spell check­ing, advanced style check­ing, and intel­li­gent gram­mar checking.

Many spell-check tools seem odd­ly igno­rant of any con­tex­tu­al rel­e­vance for words. After the Dead­line stands out from the com­pe­ti­tion by using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to look at con­text and make an appro­pri­ate recommendation.

It’s not just an edit­ing tool, though. It can also help you avoid the com­mon mis­take where you use one word when you meant to use anoth­er. With a data­base of over 1,500 of the most com­mon­ly mis­used words, it checks that the words you’re using fit with the sur­round­ing text and sug­gests words that may work better.

While mis­spelling and mis­us­ing words are cer­tain­ly issues, how you write is just as impor­tant as what you write. Clar­i­ty and brevi­ty are the order of the day for blog­ging, some­thing that After the Dead­line seems to under­stand perfectly.

The style check­er has thou­sands of rules and relies on con­text to make an appro­pri­ate sug­ges­tion. Among oth­er things, it makes a point to iden­ti­fy com­plex phras­es and sug­gest sim­pler ones, flag pas­sive voice, and find clichés and biased lan­guage in your blog posts.

Whether you’re tech-savvy or not, After the Dead­line has an instal­la­tion option for you. It’s avail­able as a Word­Press plu­g­in, Google Chrome exten­sion, and OpenOf­fice extension.

To keep things sim­ple, we’ll focus on the most straight­for­ward option: the Google Chrome exten­sion. Click Add to Chrome to install the exten­sion and auto­mat­i­cal­ly enable it in your web browser.

From now on, most text-focused box­es will look like the exam­ple below. To proof­read your con­tent, click the ABC icon in the bot­tom-right cor­ner or use the des­ig­nat­ed short­cut (Ctrl+Shift+S, by default). If you don’t see the ABC icon in a text box, you can’t use the tool to proof­read your text.

If the tool finds a poten­tial issue with your text, it flags the word with a col­ored under­line (red for spelling, green for gram­mar, and blue for style). Click the under­lined text to see a pop-up menu with suggestions.

Then enable or dis­able options to cus­tomize the tool for your needs.

#2: Clar­i­ty Jar­gon Buster

Clar­i­ty Jar­gon Buster helps you iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate jar­gon from your blog posts. The tool was designed to cal­cu­late a jar­gon-den­si­ty score, which is the num­ber of buzz­words found divid­ed by the total num­ber of words in your text.

You can use this tool to find jar­gon not only in your mar­ket­ing con­tent, but also in white papers, brochures, and any oth­er busi­ness con­tent. It relies on its own jar­gon dic­tio­nary of 800+ words, focus­ing on overused pro­fes­sion­al lin­go. So if words like “action­able” or “band­width” show up too fre­quent­ly in your blog posts, this tool brings it to your atten­tion so you can improve the integri­ty of your content.

To check your text, paste your con­tent into the text box and click the Check but­ton. The tool then cal­cu­lates a jar­gon-den­si­ty score and lists the buzz­words it identifies.

You don’t need to install any­thing to use Clar­i­ty Jar­gon Buster’s free online tool, which lets you check up to 800 words of text at a time. If your posts are on the short­er side, the free ver­sion should work well for your needs. If you’re cre­at­ing long-form con­tent or want the full expe­ri­ence, you can buy access for as lit­tle as $2.99 per year.

#3: Gram­mar Checker

Gram­mar Check­er offers one of the most in-depth spelling and gram­mar check ser­vices avail­able. It’s an online tool that’s free to use and sur­pris­ing­ly thor­ough. You can use it to check entire blog posts. From com­mon mis­takes to com­plex, nuanced errors, it is designed to let you fix mul­ti­ple mis­takes with one click.

To use this tool, paste your text into the text box at the top of the page. Then select the check box to prove you’re not a robot and click Check Gram­mar. If you see a pop-up box, click OK to sub­mit your text for review.

The tool will then check your spelling, flag poten­tial errors in your writ­ing, and sug­gest changes to improve your con­tent. Click under­lined text to see why it was flagged and view rec­om­men­da­tions. You can then accept the sug­gest­ed change, type in your own word, or ignore the suggestion.

Con­clu­sion

Time is mon­ey, and your busi­ness invests a lot of time and effort into cre­at­ing valu­able con­tent for your blog. How­ev­er, if your posts are full of typos and gram­mat­i­cal errors, it weak­ens the cred­i­bil­i­ty of your blog and your content.

The three tools above can help you check your writ­ing for poten­tial errors and offer sug­ges­tions for improv­ing your posts, max­i­miz­ing the effec­tive­ness of your content.

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