Top 15 Best Websites that Will Help
Improve Your Writing Skills
Writing is an inherent skill. Either you’re a born writer or you aren’t, I firmly aver. Over the years I’ve heard several arguments against my viewpoint. However, I prefer sticking to my guns to assert that writing is indeed something that should come naturally.
Over the last few decades, we’ve seen journalism and mass media courses on offer from some of the topmost universities around the world. You could learn writing to some extent from them, if you already possess a knack to present something with words.
Regardless whether you’re a born writer or have tried to acquire writing skills, most of us face certain common problems. These include writer’s block, incorrect grammar and sometimes, we also fumble for words.
Thanks to the Internet, there’re several online resources, especially websites where you can earn that can help improve your excellent writing skills.
Here’s my list of top 15 best websites that will help improve your writing skills.
Best 15 Websites to Improve Writing Skills
This list of top 15 websites to improve writing skills are something I often refer to myself. At the same time, I’ll emphasize that these best 15 websites could help you to improve your writing skills. They won’t teach you how to write.
Associated Press Style Book
Associated Press Style Book is my favorite website that helps me improve writing skills, despite being in this profession since long. You can subscribe to the online version of AP Style Book or download an older version as PDF free of cost. Or you can also buy the printed version of the book. The Associated Press Style Book is the most sophisticated, comprehensive and wonderful online and offline resource that helps improve your writing skills. It doesn’t come cheap though. Subscription rates for online access vary according to the country where you live. The same holds true for the print version too.
Grammarly
Grammarly advertises itself a lot through YouTube, Facebook and other apps and websites that we commonly use. Grammarly is all about grammar as the name suggests. It’s available as a basic, free version and the advanced one that comes for a small monthly subscription. If your grammar requires some polishing or you’d like to check what you’ve written for grammatical errors, Grammarly is a website I recommend.
Thesaurus.com
As writers, we often fumble to find a different word to stress something while writing. This is also a common problem among writers that’ve expert level fluency in the English language. At such times, the best website that can help improve your writing skills is Thesaurus.com. It helps you find different words to describe something, while explaining their meaning too.
Dictionary.com
As the name suggests, Dictionary.com is an online dictionary. Often we have the word that we wish to use while writing but are unsure whether it fits into the context. At such times, simply look up Dictionary.com for the accurate meaning of the word. It also provides nouns, verbs, adverbs and other such resources. You can also subscribe to the daily newsletter free from Thefreedictionary.com. This newsletter teaches you a new word every day, which can prove very useful to improve your writing skills.
Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting
As writer, surely you’ve heard about the highest accolade- the Pulitzer Award. The same foundation operates a wonderful organization known as the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. This website features amazing news articles and features written by top journalists from around the world that receive grants from the Pulitzer Center. Reading these articles helps you learn how to present what you’re writing, structure your sentences and content or article properly. You’ll also learn how to write in a manner that interests people and keeps readers engaged.
Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma
Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma is a website with a difference. It doesn’t help you directly to improve your writing skills. However, if you’re a frontline journalist, you’ll find excellent resources that could help you do better reporting while avoiding or minimizing the risk of trauma while covering disasters, suicides, terrorist acts, crime, war and other traumatizing events. As a result, you can do a better job while writing about such unfortunate incidences as a frontline journalist.
Readable.com
As a writer, maybe you’ve heard about something known as Flesch-Kincaid Readability Tests. Or maybe you haven’t. Therefore, I’ll briefly explain what Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test is all about. This test helps you find out how easy or difficult would people find understanding your writing. Obviously, the aim of every writer is to reach to the highest possible number of readers. And this test helps you achieve that. It also helps you eliminate confusing words and long sentences from your writing. The next time you wish to find out how simple or hard would readers find your writing, use the free resource on Readable.com. It uses the Flesch-Kincaid formula to assess ease of reading of your content.
Turnitin.com
As writers, we’ve to ensure that our content is unique and authentic. That it doesn’t contain any sort of plagiarism. Because, if someone finds that you’ve plagiarized, they could reject all your writings, regardless whether you’re an author, freelance writer or journalist, among others. Turnitin.com is a paid resource that helps you ensure that your content is authentic and doesn’t contain what may seem like plagiarism to someone else. This helps you improve your writing skills and helps ensure that nobody finds even the slightest hint of plagiarism in your writings.
Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is a very vital online resource and website for content writers and bloggers. That’s because blogs and websites strive to reach the largest number of people worldwide. Some of these readers would be native English speakers while others might have only basic or working knowledge about this language. Yoast SEO helps improve your writing skills by showing what you need to do for making your writings more reader friendly. It also helps plug loopholes in your writings that could prevent it from ranking on Google searches.
The Purdue Online Writing Lab
The Purdue Online Writing Lab is a free resource from the Purdue University. Here, you can get several free resources for learning to improve your writing skills, testing own writing, teaching others to write, grammar and spell-checks and lots more. This is a superb free website for any fresher that wants to start writing, either as hobby or profession but is facing several hurdles such as lack of adequate vocabulary or simply, the Writer’s Block. Try this website to improve your writing skills to meet global standards.
The Hemingway App
The Hemingway App is a desktop app. You can copy and paste your article on this app. It breaks down sentences to show you how to present what you wish to say in simpler, easier words so that most people would understand. This app also exposes grammatical and other errors. It somewhat rewrites a copy to make it reader friendly while eliminating complexities. Use this app if you’re a fresher and would like to know how to present your articles or content that appeals to readers of all ages.
Writer’s Digest University
Writer’s Digest University is a paid online resource. On WDU you will find workshops that teach you everything from writing simple essays to complex, fiction stories and present them in an amazing way. They conduct regular online workshops that you could attend to improve your writing skills in many ways. Though this is a paid resource, it’s definitely worth the small expense since writing is a very profitable profession. As long as you can present what you write wonderfully, that is.
Aztekera.com
Aztekera.com is a rather simple website that will help improve your writing skills. It does nothing more than checking there’s a proper balance in active voice and passive voice in your content. Or, whether you need to use active voice or passive voice only. Each kind of content is written differently, as you would know. Aztekera.com helps you create an article that is either written in active, passive or a blend of both voices.
Investopedia.com
Many writers would be surprised to find me mention Investopedia.com on this list. There’s a strong reason for this. Money is the most common subject that people love reading about since it concerns their lives right now and in future. And countless writers around the world specialize in writing about money. If you’re among such writers that create content, write articles or engage in financial reporting, Investopedia is a website you simply can’t afford to ignore. That’s because it explains all financial terms in very simple ways so that you can improve your writing skills to write content that helps people earn money or invest it wisely.
Pro Writing Aid
Pro Writing Aid is yet another superb website that helps you improve grammar on your writings as well as improving your writing skills. It comes as a basic free version and a paid premium one too. Pro Writing Aid doesn’t actually correct what you’ve written. Instead, it provides you different options to change the language and grammar to improve writing skills. You can study these options they display on the website and change your style and language if necessary.
In Conclusion
As a content writing trainer, the first tip I give my students is to read a lot of good articles before actually getting down to write. Unfortunately, reading is a hobby and habit that’s declining rapidly since people prefer spending more time on smartphones and entertainment apps. However, if you truly want to improve writing skills, I suggest you first start reading and then use these free and paid websites listed above.