Writing & Editing Tools We Use At Quietly
What makes a team successful? Hard work, ingenuity, talent? Yes, yes and yes. That—and a thousand other factors—but also what tools they use to stay productive so they can be creative. In the past, we’ve offered resource guides and tools for finding beautiful, license-free images and the best tools for freelancers for you to use. Now, we’re offering up our secret tools for success—the ones that keep us sane, the ones we can’t live without and the ones that make our jobs that much easier.
Welcome to our “Stuff We Use” series. In this post, we’re tackling the writing and editing tools our publishing team uses. From apps to dictionaries to graphic design and content creation software, we thought we’d share our favourite writing and editing tools.
Google Apps
The holy grail of free tools, be it if you are a student or professional. If you have a Google account, you’ve used these handy tools at some point or another. For the Quietly Qrew, these tools are perfect for sharing and editing documents between team members. Blog posts, contact sheets, analytics, social calendar, etc. With a minimum of 15 GB of free cloud space, it’s easy to store, organize and create docs, sheets and slides for any use.
Available: For free.
Canva
We’ve sung the praises of Canva’s blog before, and now we must sing the praises of its product. For anyone who feels like crying after a Photoshop session, Canva is a gift from down under (in Australia, of course). A suite of design tools to create compelling graphics for blog content, email marketing headers and social media posts, ads and more, it’s easy to use. Though some of its capabilities are limited—you can’t resize a canvas after you’ve started working with one, for instance—it’s still has great tools with a fantastic, varied templates designed to save you time.
Available: For free. You can purchase photos to use for $1 and make any edits in 24 hours after your purchase.
Evernote
Evernote is a wonderful, simple tool to organize your notes and thoughts into corresponding notebooks. Use tags to find notes easier, annotate your notes and set reminders for yourself. Because Evernote is available on almost any device—desktop for Macs and Windows, mobile for Android and iOs, Kindle Fires, etc.—it’s a great app for spur-of-the-moment thoughts that you can tuck away and open on another device for later. Bonus points for their great suite of tools. All of our blog ideas—spontaneous or otherwise—are stored in Evernote.
Available: Basic version is free. For Evernote Premium, Individuals cost $5 a month and Businesses cost $10 a month, per user.
Skitch
Belonging to the Evernote family, Skitch is a simple-to-use annotation software for images and screenshots (like the very meta one above). Instrumental in creating how-tos or highlighting new key product features, you can draw shapes, arrows and words over text to emphasize harder to see areas. If you’re looking to use it to create blog post banners/social media images with Skitch, you might stretch being stretching its capabilities—it isn’t sophisticated, but simple. But it’s still our number one tool to create clean, annotated images quickly without opening Photoshop.
Available: Basic version is free for desktops. For Evernote Premium, Individuals cost $5 a month and Businesses cost $10 a month, per user.
WordPress
The most powerful CMS on the web, WordPress is seriously the best at publishing content for any brand, publisher or writer’s need. Thanks to WordPress, we can add posts to this awesome blog with content like this. It’s easy to use, collaborate and experiment our posts, pages and media so that your site looks and feels unique.
Available: For free. Hosting and additional features cost money.
Grammarly
You won’t be able to go back to a regular “spell checker” again once you use Grammarly. Catching more than 250 mistakes (including contextual and vocabulary errors), Grammarly is the Google extension that keeps on giving. Though it doesn’t work in Google Docs (yet), it works everywhere else in your browser—emails, social media posts, WordPress, Grammarly’s editor, etc. Premium is worth the buy for academics, professional publishers and proofreaders, but basic is useful for just about anyone else. Fair warning, though: Grammarly is pro-Oxford comma.
Available: Basic extension is free. Premium version for individuals cost $29.95 per month, $59.95 per quarter or $135.95 per year.
Internet Typewriter
Writing for the internet can be distracting. On the days I can’t shut anything off for FOMO, I turn to this handy web app. It automatically tracks writing goals and word counts, plus I can pretend I’m an old-school writer by turning on the site’s optional typewriter sounds. It even works seamlessly with Google Apps, DropBox and Evernote if you “splurge” for the Premium version (see prices below).
Available: Basic version is free. For its premium version, prices are $5 monthly, $48 yearly or $99 for a lifetime.
OneLook Reverse Dictionary
When our brain decides it doesn’t like words, we use this handy little dictionary by typing in definitions until something clicks. It’s also useful for a word association exercise, and you can make lists of words that relate to one another.
Available: For free.
Hemingway App
This editing software follows the footstep of the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, known for his clean and precise prose. The Hemingway App takes that idea and translates it into an algorithm that evaluates how clear and concise your writing is. If we can’t get a second pair of eyes on our work, then we always look to Hemingway.
Available: Free on the web app. Desktop versions for Mac and Windows cost $6.99.
editMinion
A personal favourite just for the little minion, this free web software scans for common errors such as passive voice, cliches, weak words and adverbs to make your writing stronger. Bonus points for highlighting words of Latin, Greek and Germanic origin. It’s especially useful to make sure your writing is clear of cliches.
Available: For free.
WriteorDie
For people who thrive under pressure, this one is for you (and sometimes us). From the people who brought you editMinion, WriteorDie is a super extreme writing software that forces you to put your thoughts down on a rough draft. You can set a timed word goal and various checkpoints that reinforce you to write. The kindest mode gives you a popup warning if you pause; the strictest mode will delete your writing letter by letter if you pause. The stakes for writing under a deadline will never be any higher! It’s perfect for the days when writer’s block hits.
Available: Basic version of the web app is free. Premium features cost a flat rate of $20.
Asana
For our editorial calendar, we use Asana, which easily allows us to create and assign team members tasks without emailing back and forth. Using the calendar feature, it’s simple to structure the editorial calendar with draft dates, deadlines and social promotions and check off tasks as we see fit.
Available: Free for teams of up to 15 members with unlimited projects and tasks. Premium plans start at $21 per month per 5 team members.
Quietly
Ahem. Of course we use our own tools! All day, everyday. With four awesome display options, you can craft compelling copy, find license-free images with our Flickr and Bing search tools, add locations, upload gifs and link to video, search for websites and customize how it all looks. We’ve even created an awesome WordPress plugin so that adding Quietly to your site has never been easier. Plus, we’re constantly improving and tinkering with our tools so that brands, publishers and writers can get to work.
Available: For free. The way it should be.
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Image Credit: Viktor Hanacek via Picjumbo, Unsplash