Your Nerdy Best Friend

My experience as a copywriter revealed to me the secret insecurities that many people have about their writing. Incredibly intelligent people with excellent communication skills would cringe when they handed me a first draft of a piece they wanted me to shape.

With visions of former English teachers in their heads, they fretted about grammar, spelling and word choice, forever concerned that they were making the mistakes that they made when they were in school.

Most of the time, they had nothing to worry about, but a clever, anonymous tool can help restore a writer’s confidence, no matter his level.

Just paste text into a text box at www.PaperRater.com and receive instant feedback about spelling, grammar, word choice and more. It’ll even analyze your sentence structure and vocabulary use to give you an overall grade, just like your English teacher used to give.

Designed to help students improve their writing, this tool is completely free and a little addictive. I ran several of my published pieces through the analysis and was surprised by the little errors I had missed.

Oh, and I ran this post through PaperRater — I earned a “B.” Harumph. Paper Rater Blog Analysis.

Paper Rater: Free Online Grammar Checker, Proofreader and More.

Now here’s a switch… Penzu is an online blog-type service — that you can keep private! All the other blogs in the world are out there so you can share your thoughts, but Penzu lets you create a private journal for your eyes only, though you can choose to share with others.

I’m not sure what type of business application this might have, but I love the notebook-paper graphics. PC Magazine gave it props for being some of the best free software of 2009.

Penzu – Write in Private: Free Online Diary and Personal Journal.