How Well Do You Write?

How Well Do You Write?

Check Your Writing, Get a Grade, and More, with Paper Rater

Just to be honest with you, let me tell you that we use Grammarly (free version, cuz we’re broke) to check our writing for spelling and grammar errors. We used to use EB, but she got old and…

No, seriously, folks, Grammarly does a good job of finding glaring grammatical errors, misspellings, and the like.

But one thing Grammarly (free) does not do is give you scathing reviews of your writing ability. Plus you do have to cough up your email address and sign up for an account to use it – yes, even the free version.

Not only does Paper Rater not require you to sign up for an account, but it will also give you a detailed critique of your writing prowess. And if you’re a masochist, it will grade your writing and give you a letter grade… just like my good old 8th-grade English teacher, Mrs. McComb used to do. Mrs.McComb almost convinced me I couldn’t write at all, but later, in high school, Mr. Zimmer told me I should keep on writing after he feasted his eyes upon my classic short story “The Attack of the Giant Blueberries”. I would gladly share that story with you, but  I’m sorry to say that that wonderful masterpiece has disintegrated into the past along with most of my life.

Anyway…

PaperRater’s grammar and spelling checker can find grammar and spelling errors and help you correct them, offering suggestions along the way too, Paper Rater will help you with vocabulary, word choices, passive voice, and more. It uses AI (artificial intelligence) to help check any writing you submit and it can help improve your writing and your writing skills.

Look what it’s done for me! <cough, cough>

You can choose to use or ignore any suggestions Paper Rater gives you. You can use the basic Paper Rater service for free, and you, as we mentioned earlier, you don’t have to sign up for anything or even surrender your email address.

This free service is one of the best free grammar and spell checkers we’ve tried (and yes, despite what you think, we’ve tried some – like Grammarly). How hard is PaperRater to use? Not hard at all. All you have to do is enter or paste the text you want to check into a form on the Paper Rater site, then select the type of writing it is (essay, short story, obituary – just kidding about obits), and click “Get Report”. You will get suggestions, corrections, and even a grade if you like. But its grading is harsh. harsher even than Mrs. McComb’s. Just a polite warning for you.

Here’s what the creators of PaperRater have to say:

“About Paper Rater

PaperRater.com is a free resource that utilizes Artificial Intelligence to help students write better. Our Paper Checker technology combines Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, Computational Linguistics, and Data Mining to produce the most powerful automated proofreading tool available on the Internet today. PaperRater.com is used by schools and universities in over 100 countries to help students improve their writing and check for plagiarism. It has been our mission to offer tools that are both powerful and accessible to users regardless of income.

As part of the development process, we put together a team of computational linguists and subject matter experts to develop a core Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine using statistical and rules-based NLP to extract language features from essays and robustly translate that into statistical models. The end product is a state-of-the-art system combining Automated Grammatical Error Detection, Automated Essay Scoring, Automated Proofreading, and plagiarism detection.

What makes us different?
We’ve tried out similar websites and found them to be out of touch with most writers’ needs. We found false-positive rates as high as 50% on grammar detection. As the Hippocratic Oath encourages medical doctors to “first do no harm”, we wanted to create tools that do not muddy the waters in the process of assisting with the craft of writing. These same websites require hefty payments for the use of their services, while our goal has always been to provide tools that are universally accessible. By ‘accessible’, we mean that our tools are free and not hidden behind signups, logins, and trial offers.

Plagiarism checker
In addition to our free online grammar check, we offer a free plagiarism detector that utilizes the massive indexes of the major search engines.

Vocabulary Builder
Besides our flagship product, we also offer a premiere Vocabulary Builder tool designed to help students learn proper usage of more sophisticated words. Learning a new word with just a definition was always a frustrating experience when growing up, so we solve this problem by integrating example sentences to show the correct usage of each word in a real context…”

Be forewarned if you consider yourself a good writer. Paper Rater is a tough grader. I just checked a few of my essays and the best grade I got was a B. But I don’t feel bad, I checked a random 300-word excerpt from “To Kill a Mockingbird” (Harper Lee) and a 400-word excerpt from Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain) and both got a grade of “C”.  Paper Rater even gave its own intro a grade of B minus. It’s a tough grader like Mrs. McComb. 

Don’t forget to check out the other features of their website like the Plagiarism checker (feel free to check me out!) and the Vocabulary Builder (you too can be a sesquipedalian!). So… if you’re looking for a harsh critique of your writing skills and/or a good spelling and grammar checker you will not find a better free one than Paper Rater. Go to http://www.paperrater.com/ and give it a try.

We’ll try it again real soon. Maybe it will give me a better grade than B next time, but I doubt it. Hope springs anew!

In case you’re wondering, and by now you’re probably not even reading this, Paper Rater gave me the same grade for this bit of writing as it gave to Mark Twain and Haper Lee… a  “C”. 

Paper Rater is now an official Cloudeight Site Pick!