The Essentials: Tools To Write

The Essentials is a new weekly column where I talk about what we (Paul and I) use to write, work and honestly, survive the work week.

I can’t recall a time in my childhood when I told my parents that one day, I would like to write words on the Internet and have other people read them. Honestly, my entire career has been a series of accidents that have ended with a smile which have helped me climb another rung on the ever so important ladder of life.

Along the way, both Paul and I have picked up several tricks that make, as we call it, guerilla-publishing, possible. While we do have an editor at our disposal if needed, most of the time our content is self-reviewed and published which means our eyes are the first and last to view a content before it’s ready for the world to see.

For those who are new to writing, a couple basic tricks include reading what you wrote out loud and viewing it on another medium. What I mean by this second tactic is that if you write an email in the browser, copy it to Word and then read it again. Or in my case, I write every post in Word and then copy it to WordPress for final proofing.

For those that watched First Ring Daily on Tuesday, you will know about the one tool that we both use that is not as well known. Grammarly, a plugin for the browser, is an excellent tool to give your content a final check before sending/publishing. Think of it as a better spell-check and the best part is that it is free; there is a plugin for Office as well.

There is a premium version of Grammarly; I did try it out but canceled my subscription before the trial was done as the extra revisions were not worth the high price of $139.95 a year. For most users, the basic offering should help improve your writing with little effort.

This column, which I am calling “The Essentials” is, hopefully, going to be a weekly post about how Paul and I work, use technology, and other life hacks that help us get our work done. None of the apps, hardware, or content we use to write this post will be sponsored, this is genuinely how we work.

If you want to download Grammarly, you can find the link below. I will point out that this is a referral link, but using that link, you will get a week free of premium (and so will I) which will allow you to try out the premium product without having to pay for it. If you don’t want to use the referral link, you can use this one instead.

If you do try it out, I'll be curious how well it works for you. Both Paul and I like the extension and so far, it has helped improve my writing (by cutting down on errors), significantly.

Install: Grammarly