If consistency is your main concern, you may want to consider PerfectIt. This software is designed to ensure consistency in documents based on various styles.
However, it may miss some mistakes that a human editor would catch. For this reason, many companies, including Dell and Cisco, use Grammarly Premium.
What is PerfectIt?
A proofreading tool that’s designed specifically for editors and professional writers, PerfectIt is a powerful tool that helps with everything from inconsistency to spelling mistakes. It works on a wide range of writing styles including legal tech, medical texts, and white papers. It can also detect plagiarism by comparing your text to articles in its database.
The tool includes a plugin for Microsoft Word that makes it easy to use. It can also be used on PDFs, although you’ll need to convert them into a Word document first. PerfectIt has a number of additional plugins available for various languages including French, Italian, and Spanish.
For professional editors, the Chicago Manual of Style plugin provides instant access to the time-tested guidance from this classic book. It can check for consistency and even make suggestions on how to improve your style. However, it can’t help with sarcasm or humor, and it doesn’t understand double-entendres. So while it can be a valuable addition to your editing workflow, it shouldn’t replace the work of a human editor.
How Does PerfectIt Work?
PerfectIt helps editors, proofreaders, and professional writers analyze documents for grammatical accuracy. It can also be used to check consistency in writing styles, such as how to properly use hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes.
It does this by checking for style consistency and ensuring that the spelling of certain words matches your preferred spelling. It can also help you identify inappropriate slang or jargon, and it can even locate unnecessary extra spaces.
You can install PerfectIt on your PC or Mac using the Microsoft App Store, though its cloud version is easier to set up because you don’t need to install any additional software. It’s more affordable too, with a single license costing $70 per year for individuals.
It can also be integrated with iThenticate to check for plagiarism, which is useful if you’re a student or academic who needs to ensure that your work is original. However, it would be nice if the software was available in more word processing platforms.
How Does PerfectIt Compare to Grammarly?
When it comes to English writing tools, PerfectIt is the most comprehensive consistency checker. It can identify hard-to-find inconsistencies and save you time. It also has a feature that allows you to edit documents in Google Docs. This is a great feature for editors who frequently work in Google Docs or with clients who use the tool.
Intelligent Editing continues to improve the software based on user feedback and by incorporating research in natural language processing, linguistics, and machine learning (source). They have also worked to incorporate more legal-specific corrections by adding consistency checks for American legal style.
Both PerfectIt and Grammarly offer a free version as well as a paid plan. They both check spelling, grammatical errors, consistency, and readability. They can also detect plagiarism and homonyms. They can also suggest rephrasing and rewording to make your document more clear. They both include a personal dictionary where you can add words that you often use to avoid getting incorrect suggestions.
Which is Better for You?
Grammarly is a good tool for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills. It can help you with your grammar, spelling, and sentence structure. It can also detect insensitive vocabulary and outdated terms. However, it doesn’t always catch everything, so be sure to review your work carefully.
The premium version of Grammarly costs $140 per year and includes advanced features like spotting inconsistencies, typos, and grammatical errors. It can also identify tense shifts, determine sentence length, and find overused words. It can also detect hedging and unnecessary qualifiers, and it will suggest a more inclusive tone.
Unlike Perfectit, Grammarly can check all types of documents, including technical and academic papers. It can even identify plagiarism and provide suggestions on how to correct it. It can also check for plagiarism in emails, tweets, and social media posts. It can even compare your text to existing content to see if it’s original. Moreover, it can recognize plagiarism in different languages.