Best Tools For Editing Manuscripts
- Melchior Antoine
- Apr 10
- 13 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
The best tool for editing your manuscript depends entirely on the type of writer you are. Editing tools can make the process of completing your manuscript fast and easy. There are, however, several factors to consider before choosing the right one. In addition, you should still know the basics of grammar, spelling, and punctuation to make sure you use them effectively.
Before deciding the right tool, we should consider the two major types of writing for the sake of this article:
Manuscript writing
Content writing
There is no such thing as a universal definition for the differences between these two types of writing. This is simply a distinction being made for the purpose of this article. Let me describe it here. Manuscript editing refers to editing for academia and books, whereas content editing refers to editing writing for blogs.
In this article, we focus mainly on manuscript editing. However, we also talk about other proofreading tools that are not ideal for this type of editing. There are several important proofreading software that can be used both in academic writing and professional writing. However, I will look at only seven here:
QuillBot
ProWritingAid
Wordvice AI
PaperPal
Grammarly
PerfectIt
Scribendi AI
Some of these software tools I have used myself. Just for a quick summary. Many of these software programs are not just proofreading applications. They are also AI-powered writing assistants. PerfectIt is not that, although it i s among my favorites.
It is one of the first and more traditional proofreading tools designed to make academic writing easier, faster, and more efficient for professional editors, scholars, and students.
Grammarly is an AI-powered application that is ideal for blogs and informal writing. However, QuillBot, Wordvice AI, Paperpal, and, to a limited extent, the Scribendi proofreader are ideal for academic writing and editing. The table below provides a brief overview of what tool is best for what:
Manuscript Editing Tool | Ideal User |
PerfectIt | Students; Academic Scholars; Professional Editors |
PaperPal; WordviceAI | Academics; Professional Editors |
ProWritingAid | Novelists; Creative Writers |
Read on to learn more about the unique pros and cons of each of these manuscript editing applications and how you can use them in your own writing, based on the type of writer you are.
Disclosure: The post may contain affiliate links. This means I get a commission if you decide to purchase through my links.
1. Wordvice
The Wordvice AI tool isideal for academic contexts. This is true mainly for one reason: its training data. If a software tool is only as good as the person wielding it, then the training data used to program the software is even more important.
For Wordvice Ai, they developed this tools using the work of highly qualified professional editors editing millions of words. Therefore, you can describe it as the product of the hive brain of efficient and highly trained editors.
Wordvice is a proofreading and editing service that specializes in editing academic content. This means things like:
Academic essays
Research papers
Journal papers
White papers
Thesis and dissertation manuscripts
Think of the proofreading function in Microsoft Word but much more advanced. The tool is designed to correct errors that crop up both in academic and business writing. However, in my opinion, it is best used for academic documents.
If you are in academia, this tool may be just the right fit. It allows you to carry out real-time editing while creating the early stages of your academic work or even when polishing the final versions of your document.
Another cool thing about Wordvvice AI is that it provides you with the choice of human editing assistance. There is a seamless flow or switch between using the software on your own and relying on human editors. Wordvice is a popular proofreading company taht uses more than 500 human editors.
The app can be used alongside Wordvice's reliable team of human editors. When you feel that you have done the best you can using the AI tool, you can simply get in touch for help from a friendly professional editor.
Besides this, the app also has a suite of other tools: 1. AI Paraphraser, 2. AI Summarizer, 3. AI Plagiarism Checker, 4. AI Detector, and 5. AI translator. In summary, it's both a proofreading application and an AI-powered writing assistant.
Wordvice has a Free basic plan that includes most of the features but is restricted. The Premium Plan comes in three payment options that are priced differently:
Annual: $9.95/month
Semi-Annual: $15.95/month
Monthly: $19.95/month
WordviceAI allows you to directly edit text by pasting your work into its web page-based interface. It is a very user-friendly interface, and it doesn't make you feel as if you have to be a professional editor to use it. However, you can also download your document as a Word file and other formats. More importantly, the tool's Word plug-in allows you to use its features directly in Word.
2. Paperpal
Paperpal is a sister company to a bigger publishing and editing company known as Editage. They
also offer professional proofreading services. Similar to Wordvice and QuillBot, this application is perfect for academic use. It goes beyond simple proofreading, as it can also be described as an AI-powered assistant.
Its suite of AI-powered services are:
AI Writer
Paraphraser
Citation Generator
Plagiarism Checker
Summarizer
Translator
The Paperpal AI tool is effective in academic writing because it is trained on the appropriate data. They state on their website that Paperpal's advanced AI is trained on published scholarly content and supported by over 21 years of STM experience. STM stands for science, technology, and medicine.
This means that the tool can understand academic contexts and bases its suggested changes on this. This also makes it iideal if you are a university student or a scholar studying or working in these industries.
In short, it is a tool that is appropriate for students, researchers, and academics. It can be a useful aid from the beginning of the research and writing process to the end when you have to publish your manuscript. This means you can use it to do the following:
Brainstorm ideas
Generate outlines
Begin writing from scratch
This means the software can be a great help in combating writer's block. They offer both a Free Plan and Premium Plan. The Free Plan has limited features. With it, you only have five uses per day of AI features such as paraphrasing and citations.
The Premium plan has three pricing options: 1. Annual at $11.50 per month; 2. Quarterly at $18.30 per month; and 3. Monthly at $25 per month.
3. PerfectIt
PerfectIt can be referred to as a stylistic editing guide. You may wonder what this even means. Well, let me try to explain. The main focus of the app is to ensure stylistic consistency throughout your document. It is ideal for lengthy and very technical academic documents, which cannot be said about rivals such as Grammarly.
PerfectIt is ideal for academic writers and editors who work with technical academic documents that use a high level of jargon. If that's you, this means it can help you save time and increase speed and efficiency. However, blog writers or novelists would not find PerfectIt very useful.
This is true especially because PerfectIt is not a grammar checker like Grammarly that checks for grammar and spelling. Instead, it reviews your paper for consistency in spelling according to your style guide. Here is a list of professionals who will find this tool useful:
Professional editors
Masters and PhD Students writing their thesis
NGOs writing lengthy reports
Corporations writing lengthy white papers
The main advantage of PerfectIT lies in the speed with which it makes consistent changes according to a specific style throughout your document. Where manual corrections could take several hours, PerfectIt does it merely in a matter of minutes.
How PerfectIt works editing manuscripts
PerfectIt uses several ready-made style guides that you can automatically apply throughout your document. Unlike Grammarly, PerfectIT can only be used in Microsoft Word.
Here is a look at some of the multiple styles available in PerfectIt:
American Legal Style
United Nations Style
WHO Style
Australian Government Style
UK Spelling
Canadian Spelling
PerfectIt even has the option of the CMoS style guide, but that is a more premium and expensive version. Each of these styles is applied by the software to ensure that all the academic writing in your Word document complies to the chosen style guide. This means spelling, formatting, heading and subheading capitalization, and so on.
Besides this, with PerfectIt, you can customize its available styles. For example, if you choose the UK style for your document, you can customize settings to make sure you keep “ize” spellings that one typically expects of the US instead of the UK.
4. Scribendi Proofreader
Scribendi Proofreader is a proofreading tool developed by Scribendi, an editing company. It does not belong to the new generation of AI-powered writing assistant tools. Nevertheless, it has the spelling and grammar checking features of Grammarly and the style consistency features of PerfectIt.
The Scribendi Proofreading Tool is best suited for professional editors and proofreaders. However, students and academics who are very proficient in academic writing may find it useful in their academic work.
I recommend this to be used primarily as an application for professional editors working on academic documents. According to Scribendi, their proofreading tool is:
. . . based on a dataset of more than 1 billion words and 30 million sentences annotated by professional editors to mirror the workings of the human brain, offering more accurate suggestions than other grammar tools.
This means that its developers trained the app using input or data from highly qualified editors. The Scribendi proofreading tool has several features to make editing efficient and fast if you are a professional editor. It checks both spelling and grammar and can make corrections on the sentence or phrase level. It also has a bank of comments that you leave for your clients in their Word document. The app is only available for Word.
5. Grammarly
Grammarly, we all know, is one of the most popular proofreading software tools. But does it even deserve to be referred to as a manuscript editing tool? When we think of manuscripts, we think of theses, books, dissertations, and so on.
When we think of Grammarly, we think of a Chrome plug-in that we can't escape. It's everywhere, helping us correct our text messages, social media posts, and emails. However, it is popular among university students.
Nonetheless, it is not an ideal tool for academic writing. Grammarly is best for blogs, emails, and social media posts. It can also be used on “lighter” forms of academic writing. This means relatively short academic essays that don't rely heavily on technical jargon. I mean essays shorter than 2000 words.
Grammarly's popularity is justified. It can be integrated seamlessly into anything on your computer or smartphone. This means:
Your Word document
Google Chrome browser
Google Documents
Your G-Mail software
In fact, you can use both the free and paid versions of Grammarly in just about any window on your electronic device in which you can type.
Grammarly is ideal for catching and suggesting corrections for glaring errors that you miss through rushing or being careless. But the tool was not designed for technical academic writing. Use it instead for professional writing:
Professional emails
Blogs
Social media posts
Short academic essays with non-technical language
The free version of Grammarly may be sufficient for basic proofreading and spellchecking. However, with the premium and business versions, you can:
Adjust your writing tone
Generate text with AI
Incorporate a style guide
Although the free tier of Grammarly provides comprehensive punctuation and grammar corrections, you might want to examine the premium and business versions at $12 and $15, respectively.
6. ProWritingAid
ProWritingAid, just like QuillBot and unlike PerfectIt, belongs to the new generation of AI-powered assistants. It is a comprehensive manuscript editing tool that goes beyond basic grammar and spelling checks.
It is ideal for content editing for blogs and even novels. It offers more than just editing. This means:
Style analysis
Readability checks
Story critiques
The tool's main purpose is to help writers improve their writing across a wide variety of mediums, including novels, blogs, and social media. The tool can be described as a grammar checker, style editor, and writing mentor all in one.
Another good thing about ProWritingAid is the fact that, just like Grammarly, you can integrate into anything or anywhere that you write. This means it can a Chrome extension that can be used with Google Doc. It can also be used with
The price for ProWritingAid begins as low as $30 for the Premium version and $35 for Premium Pro, which allows you to unlock its AI-assistant features.
7. QuillBot
QuillBot is a manuscript editing tool that began as paraphrasing software. This means it was used primarily to rephrase text so that academic writers could avoid plagiarism. Now, it includes a grammar checker in addition to a plagiarism checker.
QuillBot's Grammar Checker is free. It's multilingual and caters to the following five languages:
English
French
German
Portuguese
Spanish
Besides the free grammar checker, it has an 1. AI Detector; 2. Paraphraser; 3. Plagiarism Checker; 4. Summarizer; 5. Translator; and Citation Generator.
You could saythat QuillBot has the ideal suite of tools for university students and academic professionals. The AI Detector can help you pass AI detection, which is becoming more and more a requirement in universities and colleges. The Paraphraser, Plagiarism Checker, and Summarizer also assist in protecting you from accusations of plagiarism, which is heavily frowned upon in academia
When crafting academic ontent, Quillbot ensures that your AI and plagiarism scores remain low as required. It also helps with summarizing and paraphrasing, something that all academics and scholars have to carry out on a frequent basis if they wish to get published.
To summarize, QuillBot is most suitable as a suite for those in academia, that is, students, researchers, professors, and so on. It shouldn't be viewed as a simple grammar checker or proofreader, but as a complete set of tools designed to make you a more efficient and productive academic writer.
The pricing for QuillBot is based on the two available plans: Free and Premium. The free plan has restricted features. For instance, with it, you can paraphrase only up to 125 words. The Premium Plan comes with unlimited features, including AI-assistant features.
The payment options are arranged into three categories: Annual, Quarterly, and Monthly. The Annual Plan is the cheapest and costs $8.33 per month. The Quarterly Plan comes at $13.31 per month, and the Monthly Plan costs $19.95 per month.
Get in touch now for assistance in proofreading and editing your work from a professional human editor |
When to use editing software
A manuscript editing tool is only as good as the person wielding it. In fact, we can say that a pen or typewriter is also only as good as the writer using it. As best, these applications can help you become a better or efficient writer or professional editor.
However, they are not a replacement for effort, planning, and talent. ProWritingAid, in particular, prides itself in training and educating creative writers to become better writers in the same way that a professional human editor can.
Manuscript editing applications help you in the following ways:
To write better
To write faster
To write in gramatically correct English
Anyone in the writing and editing profession can benfit from the use of these applications. You should use if you wish to become a better and more efficient writer. However, you should not abandon the basics of good writing. This involves reading the best-written works actively.
That means you read and learn from the classics or authors you aspire to write like. The best of these tools supports this learning process while making a more efficient writer.
The best mansucript editing tool depends on your profession
There are a wide range of manuscript editing tools out there. I chose to look only at seven of them. The utility of these tools depends entirely on the nature of the work or writing you carry out with them. The seven apps are miles apart from each other in terms of how they work. However, all three have their strengths and weaknesses.
Let's try to break it down by profession. Four types of writers or clients make use of these apps:
Professional editors
Academics
Content writers
Novelists or creative writer
If you are a professional editor, WordviceAI, Scribendi Proofreader, and Paperpal are ideal. These manuscript editing tools are more or less designed for use by professional editors to make their work more efficient and easier. The table below sums up my best choice for a manuscript editing tool:
Ideal User | Manuscript Editing Tool | Why? |
Students and academics | PerfectIt | Helps to enforce consistency in academic documents |
Professional Editors | Wordvice, PaperPal, PerfectIt | Advanced tools that make editors more efficient |
Novelists and Creative Writers | ProWritingAid | Helps improve the skills & knowledge of creative writers |
If you are an academic writing your research paper, thesis or dissertation, then PerfectIt is ideal. The tools for a professional editor might seem attractive as they are also trained to understand academic data and context. However, they are rather complex in that their suggestions cannot always be trusted.
You need the training and judgment of a professional editor to accept the changes made by these tools. In the case of PerfectIt, the focus is on stylistic consistency. This is easier to implement. If you are writing a paper that relies on APA, then PerfectIt can help you format your paper accordingly.
Grammarly is ideal for content writers who write blogs, emails, and landing and service pages. It is not typically useful for "true manuscipts." It is best used in informal professional contexts. ProWritingAid is recommended for creative writers and novelists. It has been trained specifically for writers who operate within these creative contexts.
There is one thing that you should remember, though. Proofreading software tools are only as good as the person who is using them. What does this mean? You should be well-read and informed on proper grammar and punctuation usage. Manuscript editing tools work by offering suggestions.
The likelihood of these suggestions being right is high. However, they are frequently wrong. Even if the suggestions are right 88% of the time, writing is not a matter of averages. If you don't know when to reject suggestions, your writing will end up sounding weird and awkward.
You can rectify this or protect yourself against this problem by reading good old-fashioned books on grammar and punctuation. For example, a good one is The Best Punctuation Book. It’s not enough to blindly depend on editing application. You may also have to resort to using a professional human editor after using your proofreading tool to the best of your ability.
EminentEdit's academic editing services
EminentEdit provides premium manuscript editing services to ensure you publish a academic work that you can take pride in and that meets industry standards. Editing software apps are excellent tools. But sometimes you need that human touch.
EminentEdit provides academic editing and proofreading services that are:
We help you publish a book to take pride in. | Get in touch for help in editing your manuscript We know what you want to say. We help you say it better. |
Our services are comprehensive and focus on making sure you end up with an academic project that meets the highest publishing standards. Our copyediting services include:
Proofreading
Line-by-line copyediting
Developmental editing to improve paper proposals and initial drafts
Extensive commentary and consultations
Talk with one of our human editors today: CONTACT US AT EMINENT EDIT.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, April 10). Best Tools For Editing Manuscripts. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/best-tools-for-editing-manuscripts |
Comments