What writing aid software do you use?

[Melooon]

I'm curious to hear about people using (or not using) apps to help with writing! I definitely have a long and messy history of using apps and tools to try and make things I say and read more understandable (dyslexia!); but I'm also quite lazy and sometimes I just don't bother 

The classic option is having a Word document open; I often write messages, then paste them into Word to check them, and then paste them back into whatever text box I was writing in. I do this less because the built-in spell checker has gotten a lot better, but sometimes it's still necessary. There are also new-fangled tools like Grammarly which a few family members use; it seems to have privacy issues, but I guess that's not such an issue if you're writing public posts.

I also find I have to search words a lot to check the correct spelling or meaning; often spell check is not good enough to figure out my spelling

And then finally I often use text-to-speech to read my messages back to me, so that I can hear if it sounds good, and if any of the words are incorrect (usually some are)

What do you use when you're writing? I think it's particularly useful to know on the forum, where we are often working on long, casual but high-effort posts!

[Memory]

I don't particularly use any of that, but sometimes when writing super long posts I kind of "pre-write" them in a text editor of my choice, simply because I don't trust the text box in a browser to not refresh and delete it all. 

[Memory]

Citizens of the internet, human or not, HEED MY WORDS!
Never write anything you care about on the regular notepad because if your computer dies the text is gone forever! FOREVER!

Lil dumb me wrote several long (and I mean LONG) roleplay texts on the regular notepad only for the computer to die and then its gone forever ;_; Now I use notepad++ which has autosave feature.

.......

On usual daily tasks and communication the built-in auto corrector of Slack, Discord and the browser do help me a lot specially with spell checking, english is not my main language and despite being fluent on it there are still words that blow my mind and for the sake of me I cannot write them without aid like... neighbourhood!

If I am writing something more serious or longer then I use google docs and check it multiple times.

When it comes to talking to friends in my mother tongue then it becomes a shit-show, somehow we all type so badly but we still understand each other.

[tarraxahum]

For work I sometimes use a Grammarly browser extention 'cause when you type a lot you gotta miss some typos (and not all of them are obvious when you re-read the result either). It doesn't catch such wonderful brain glitches as writing 'man' instead of 'sad' because the keys are somewhat close to each other and apparently I have an unhelpful auto-correct in my fingers now, but, you know. Still helps.

As far as posts go I don't use anything, but I do re-read them, like, at least three times before sending, and if I miss something then that's just fate, you see. And if I lose a huge post because of a misclick or a browser lag then, well, that's between me and a waterfall of cursing I spew out while stubbornly and angrily re-typing everything.

Writing as in, say, fiction... Well, an open Word document or anything equally 'serious' scares me and kills the vibe 'cause it smells too much of work. So all my literary texts are written on my mobile phone in the basic notes app while I am laying on my couch upside down in some pose that's lethal for my spine like some kind of a cryptid creature. Or on a train commute. In extreme cases - under the table on a family gathering where I'm trying to ignore my uncle's bigoted bs in favor of writing my favorite characters pining after each other. Notes app. ~Zero pressure environment~

(I do however check the result with at least the in-built browser spell-check before posting it anywhere.)

[SilkSkull]

I always write in a microsoft word document and can never seem to get it to work well, it tries to format everything as formal writing which half the time makes it worse. I've actually been looking for better software so I might try some of the ones mentioned here!

[Memory]

Writing as in, say, fiction... Well, an open Word document or anything equally 'serious' scares me and kills the vibe 'cause it smells too much of work. So all my literary texts are written on my mobile phone in the basic notes app while I am laying on my couch upside down in some pose that's lethal for my spine like some kind of a cryptid creature.

Maybe try a basic notepad-ish program on your PC, it has the same effect for me :)

[Version]

Oh boy have I used a whole bunch of different writing software in my life. These are what I use right now:

SmartEdit Writer for writing fiction. Though I'm not writing a whole lot of that at the moment.
It's pretty alright, as far as my experience goes. The text editor has the basic functionality of a word document (As far a writing a piece of fiction goes anyways, tough it does not have more fancy stuff like automatic formatting, titles, styles etc. If that's not enough you can add word documents to your directory I think). Tough that's not the main function of the program. It's mostly meant for you to keep your scenes and ideas (which you can use notes for) organized and at that it really excels. It has a lot of other functions that I haven't tried out yet too like a tab for your research, daily word counts which can be enabled and character name lookup.

I have recently began using Zettlr for study notes, and it's pretty good so far! The markdown editor is really limited. But for my purposes I really don't need any more than it provides (Well you can't highlight things with the contextual menu and there's only one color as far as I can see but other than that it's fine). It's main point is the zettelkasten system which I haven't really gotten into yet but it's supposed to be really good for organizing all the knowledge that you acquire. It allows you to used tags, manage citations easily, cross link notes and documents among other things.

For a french orthographic corrector I use Scribens.

If you ever need to find a piece of software for a specific purpose I highly recommend alternativeto. If you plug in a category or piece of software, it gives you a list of alternatives, while showing what is open source and free vs what is not.

[minttea]

I'm currently using the Most misc of writing programs, JRNL. I got it from a charity bundle and well! I'm probably not using it for its intended purpose. For some reason, I really like just opening a random day on its calender, and starting to write a snippit of fiction writing.

Is this the best way to write? Probably not. Does it fill the niche of 'not too professional'? Absolutely. If nothing else, I never find myself intimidated by the empty page using this, which is more than enough for me.




...Most of the time, if I don't use that, I'm just writing right in the message/submission box, though. You probably shouldn't do that...

[princemaggots]

My current main writing software (mainly for fiction + academic writing, not so much for writing posts) is Microsoft Word. I used to use Google Docs a lot (for the automatic backups), but Word both works offline and also has a full dark mode, unlike Docs for whatever reason. xP I don't particularly enjoy feeling like I'm staring into the sun while I try to write. It's also what currently makes me only write on my main laptop, as my other ones run Linux and I haven't yet found software that has as good of a dark mode as Word (I also haven't looked very hard though, to be fair...)

Other than that, I primarily use Notion for my school notes/occasional journal and it works pretty well. Since it automatically syncs I don't have to worry about losing stuff, but I do have to have spellchecker turned off so it doesn't flag all the acronyms and names I have in there unfortunately >_>

For random notes or just as a visual aid, I usually use Notepad since it doesn't autosave, meaning if I don't want to keep something, I don't have to do so.

[RodFireProductions]

I mainly use the personal version Obsidian for writing things. It's where I write things, plan things, and take notes. I use Quartz with it so that I can reference it from anywhere with an internet connection.

I also tend to use Window's Notepad a lot for quick writing things that I don't need to save. For example, I'm writing this post in Notepad right now.

I'm personally not a fan of online text editors. I honestly dread Google Docs; it's so slow for me, plus I need good internet to edit it. If I have to write papers for my classes, I use LibreOffice.

[Wildcat]

I use Scrivener for my creative writing, and Google Docs for everything else. I want to start using LibreOffice more.

[rhenn]

I use Obsidian a lot! It's good for both notes and more structured stuff, while also being pretty lightweight. Though sometimes I edit the same file in Obsidian and VSCode at the same time... (tip: don't do this lol.)

I've also been using overleaf recently, but that's mostly out of necessity. It's easier than going through the pain of getting LaTeX set up on various workstations, but I can't recommend it outside of academic stuff.

[almostcorporeal]

i mostly write short fanfictions and I write them all in LibreOffice. i've been considering checking out manuskript for my longer projects though since i have no interest in paying for scrivener

[grubbyfox]

I think the only actual writing tool i use on PC is EditPad Lite. The one I have on my win7 and older PCs has always looked the same. Basically just Notepad with tabs and a few extra features. Similar to Notepad++ or something?

But when I installed it on Win11, it was a bit changed. A lot of featured were moved around and made different by default, ui and all was changed I think too. I ended up having to google a few things to get it to the way I wanted. (I always use the font System for example.)


I still recommend it though, but I think if I knew it was that finicky on Win11 I would maybe have tried the other options instead.

I use a physical notebook tho to keep tabs on my fic-writing. Like, I will draw timelines and notes and stuff on paper rather than on PC before I actually write. 

[Junebug]

Emacs is my writing tool of choice, purely because it can be navigated entirely by keyboard shortcuts. Writing almost as quickly as my mind comes up with the words is highly appealing to me.

Before Emacs, however, I used Scrivener, and I'm still a big fan of it today. I use Scrivener in a weird way these days: it's the main place I compose the actual content of my fansite's webpages. From there I move what I write to Notepad++ to fix up the HTML that will ultimately become a new page. I could definitely move this entire work flow to Emacs, but I just don't have it in me to completely abandon Scrivener. What it lacks in keyboard shortcuts it makes up for in a truly useful GUI that lets me focus on creating rather than wrangling the program.