what is the best essay editor

Free online proofreading and essay editor

A reliable proofreading tool and essay editor for any writer or student, a complete environment.

Typely is more than just a proofreading tool. It's a complete writing environment.

Thousands of checks

More than a thousand checks are being performed and we've only scratched the surface.

Inspired by the greatest writers

Gain access to humanity’s collective understanding about the craft of writing.

A proofreading tool that does not bark at every tree

Typely is precise. Existing tools for proofreading raise so many false alarms that their advice cannot be trusted. Instead, the writer must carefully consider whether to accept or reject each change.

We aim for a tool so precise that it becomes possible to unquestioningly adopt its recommendations and still come out ahead — with stronger, tighter prose. Better to be quiet and authoritative than loud and unreliable.

Relax, focus, write your next masterpiece...

Writing presumes more than simply laying out words on a paper. Typely helps you get in the mood and keeps you focused, immersed and ready to write your story.

Whether you need a distraction-free environment, some chill relaxing sounds or a pomodoro timer to manage your time we got you covered.

Got questions? We have answers.

No. Typely is completely free and we plan on keeping it that way. We are considering some advanced features however that might be available under a premium plan.

The only limit we have applied thus far is on the number of characters you can submit and that is being set at a maximum of 50,000.

In theory yes but that will require a lot of work and professionals dedicated for this job. We are considering a way of letting the community participate somehow.

Typely does not do grammar checking because it's hard and almost impossible to get right. The aim for Typely is to be precise and reliable.

Table of Contents

What Is Proofreading Software?

The 5 types of proofreading tools.

• The Best Proofreading Tools & Editing Software

Final Thoughts

The best free & paid proofreading & editing software (to use in 2023).

If you’re looking for the best proofreading tool on the market, I’ll tell you what it is:

The best proofreading software out there is Grammarly .

But even in 2022, it still has severe limitations.

We at Scribe tested the 8 most popular editing apps on the market in 2022, and none of them could hold a candle to a human proofreader .

But that doesn’t mean proofreading tools are worthless. Not at all.

I highly recommend Grammarly for :

• Flagging possible grammar mistakes
• Finding repetitive words and phrases
• Noticing “picky” details like spacing
• Highlighting basic style issues
• Cleaning up your writing before it goes to an editor
• “Last looks” for typos

I do not recommend Grammarly for :

• Accepting every suggestion
• Blindly altering your writing style
• Skipping a human editor

Why not? Because of writing like this:

“Our team has reviewed and requested our Chrome product team to review the GingerChrome store page again and fix any necessary correction.”

This was an actual comment from the team of the Ginger editing app (not Grammarly), on a negative review of the Ginger Chrome Extension.

As part of our test, we ran their comments through the Ginger app itself, and the app found nothing wrong with it .

Then we ran it through another app. And another. Of all the proofreading apps we tested, most found 0 errors in that sentence.

Even Grammarly, the top performer, only found 2, and one of its suggestions was arguably worse. (I’ll show you those suggestions in the Grammarly review.)

So, before you start using Grammarly , make sure you understand what it is and isn’t good for—in 2022 and beyond.

True editing apps, like Grammarly, apply artificial intelligence (AI) to proofreading.

AI is the science (and art) of programming computers to think and behave like human beings. It’s at the cutting edge of technology, but it has a long way to go.

You might think that Microsoft Word’s spell checker is pretty good—and it is—but it isn’t artificial intelligence. MS Word just checks each word you type against a dictionary.

That’s pretty basic stuff.

Editing apps are far more than spell checkers; they’re true grammar checkers. They’re even style checkers. And those kinds of mistakes are a lot harder to find than spelling errors.

Why? Because grammatical errors depend on context.

Here’s an example:

If I write, “It was the best of time, it was the worst of time,” you know right away that “time” is missing an “s.”

A spell checker wouldn’t flag it because “time” is in the dictionary. The word exists, it’s just being used incorrectly

Human beings see issues like that immediately because our brains are wired for language. But teaching a computer to do the same thing is far more complicated than you might imagine.

In fact, it’s so complicated that even the best proofreading app doesn’t do it very well.

That’s why a good proofreading app needs to explain each flagged issue, simply and clearly, to help you decide how (or even whether) to follow the suggestion.

There are 5 different types of proofreading tools, most of which can be useful to professional Authors. All 5 of them check for spelling mistakes, grammar errors, and style choices, but they’re used in different places.

1. Chrome Extensions

Proofreading extensions for Chrome or other browsers (like Firefox or Safari), evaluate your writing no matter where you go on the web. If you’re typing online, they watch what you type and offer suggestions.

You can install these like any other browser extension, and they add writing tools to your browser that check spelling, grammar, and style.

If you write in Google Docs, you’ll need more than a Chrome extension. You’ll need a grammar tool that integrates directly with the Google Docs app.

2. Online Proofreading Tools

Website apps.

Free online proofreading apps are websites that offer a simple text box where you can paste limited amounts of text to check it for spelling, grammar, and style.

They’re free, but you get what you pay for. The ones we tested ranged from bad to terrible.

Full-service online apps

Some services (like Grammarly) offer true web apps, akin to Google Docs, that let you write and save documents in your own cloud space.

They include a full range of built-in proofreading tools, but their formatting tools are limited. For professional manuscript formatting , I recommend writing in MS Word with a Grammarly addon.

3. Mobile Apps

These are keyboard extensions for phones and tablets that automatically check your writing on every text and tweet.

If you write on an iOS or Android tablet in a mobile word processor, you’ll want a mobile proofreading app.

4. MS Word Add-ons

For writers who compose on MS Word, proofreading addons provide grammar and style suggestions right in your Word documents as you type.

If you write in MS Word, this will be your best choice, but these add-ons only work on MS Office for Windows. Apple users will need to use a desktop app.

5. Desktop Apps for Mac and Windows

Desktop proofreading software provides a native word processor that’s designed for proofreading and editing .

Most of these apps don’t have great formatting options, so I recommend writing in MS Word even if you use a desktop app for editing.

If you don’t have access to an MS Office add-on, you can open any .docx file in a desktop proofreading app to check it.

The Best Proofreading Tools & Editing Software

1. grammarly.

Grammarly is far and away the best proofreading and editing tool on the market. It offers:

• Browser extensions
• A full-service online app
• Mobile apps
• An MS Office add-on for Windows
• Desktop apps for Mac and Windows

It even has a Google Docs integration, but this is a newer offering that seems less robust than the others. It let me type “I eats the pudding” without any complaints, even though the browser extension flagged it correctly.

The MS Office add-on doesn’t work on a Mac, but the desktop app lets you drag and drop a .docx file to open it in the app and check your writing.

The Chrome extension and desktop app were extremely easy to install, and Grammarly’s features (which work the same way across every version) made it the clear winner:

• It has the smartest AI (and best proofreading flags) of every app we tested
• One-click suggestions make it easy to accept good changes
• The clean, intuitive interface requires almost no learning time
• You can filter the suggestions by category with one click
• There’s even a “Change-all” option for pervasive errors

Basic suggestions are free, with advanced grammar suggestions (including tone) in paid plans:

• Premium Version: $139.95 per year
• Business Version: plans starting at $150 per member, per year

Caveat of Grammarly

1. internet requirement.

Grammarly has to be connected to the Internet to work, even with the desktop app. That’s because the AI “lives” in the cloud, not in the app that sits on your desktop.

If the app can’t communicate with the AI, it can’t understand what you’re typing.

2. The AI is still learning

Grammarly was the smartest app we tested, but that only says so much.

For our sample text:

The Grammarly desktop app suggested:

“Our team has reviewed and requested our Chrome product team to discuss the GingerChrome store page again and fix any necessary corrections .”

This isn’t much better. But I’ll let you in on a secret: this is a very hard test for any proofreading AI system.

Why? Because it probably wasn’t written by a native English speaker. “Fix any necessary correction”? Nobody would say that. The construction is just too strange.

Which is exactly the problem.

AI systems get smarter with feedback. They learn which suggestions people did or didn’t accept, and they adjust future suggestions based on that information.

But mistakes that native speakers would never make are, by definition, very rare, so the system doesn’t see them often enough to learn from them.

That’s why we chose this as a test: to push the proofreading AI’s to the limit of their capability.

The fact that Grammarly made any sense of it was impressive.

2. ProWriting Aid

ProWriting Aid was the only other app we tested that had a chance against Grammarly. It works with:

• Google Docs
• MS Office (in Windows)
• Desktop app

Not surprisingly, it also needs an internet connection to work. Powerful AIs need powerful computers. They live in the cloud on fast, dedicated servers and work with your computer (or phone) remotely.

It also doesn’t work with MS Office on Apple, just like Grammarly.

But in the battle of ProwritingAid vs. Grammarly, this one lost because:

• It offered fewer one-click fixes
• The interface was not as clean
• Navigation was not as intuitive
• The suggestions were not presented as well
• Extra features, like reports, cluttered the screen without being useful

3. Hemingway App

We included the Hemingway App in our test because it appeared in other articles on grammar checking software, but it was designed more for bloggers than professional Authors.

And it wasn’t very smart.

The one feature it did have was the ability to work offline, but that’s the tradeoff. If you want an AI that’s smarter than a word processor, you’ll need an Internet connection.

The Hemingway App failed our test because:

• It does not offer one-click fixes
• It gives general writing guidance but no specifics
• It’s designed for WordPress and Medium, not book Authors

It does have a free online tool, but the tool doesn’t save your work. If you get disconnected or you close the tab by accident, you can kiss your work goodbye.

The Hemingway App is good for helping you see things that need to be fixed, but that’s about it.

4. Ginger Software

We loaded the Ginger Chrome extension to give it a try, but the AI didn’t even come close to Grammarly.

These are the folks who wrote our bad test copy, and their own software didn’t correct it.

They did a nice job designing their sales page, but the app doesn’t stand up to the hype.

5. WhiteSmoke

WhiteSmoke is the used car lot of proofreading services.

The sales page extols the virtues of proofreading apps in general, hoping you won’t notice that the “demo” video doesn’t show the product and that they hardly offer any screenshots of the app.

There’s no free version or trial version, and what little you can see of the app doesn’t look great.

This is not the app you’re looking for.

6. PaperRater

PaperRater is a website that’s supposedly designed to help students write papers (not books), but it doesn’t even do that.

• It doesn’t offer any fixes
• The “report” is terrible
• If you click on “advanced analysis,” it takes you to Grammarly

Enough said.

7. LanguageTool

LanguageTool offers add-ons and/or extensions for several browsers and word processors, but the AI just isn’t up to par.

You can try it for yourself for free using the online tool, which does offer one-click changes, but if you hit “undo,” you’ll have to run the check all over again.

It found no errors in our horrible test copy, and it tags people’s names as misspellings.

8. SlickWrite

The free online version of SlickWrite is reasonably smart when it comes to finding issues, but it’s lousy at fixing them.

It doesn’t offer any suggestions, and the explanations it does offer are far too technical. You won’t understand them unless you already have a solid command of sentence structure, grammar, and style, which largely defeats the purpose of the app.

Although it’s far from perfect, Grammarly has a solid place in the professional Author’s arsenal.

It offers a ton of useful features in a simple, clean interface, and it’s the smartest proofreading AI by far when it comes to writing skills.

Authors who want to self-publish ( and 99.99% of them should ), will still need to hire an editor . But that editing will be faster, smoother, and a lot cheaper if you’ve done everything you can to clean up your writing before you get there.

The Scribe Crew

Read this next.

10 of the Most Common Grammar Mistakes to Avoid (& How to Fix Them)

What are Beta Readers? (& How Authors Can Find Them)

How To Find & Vet Professional Book Editors

11 Best Editing and Proofreading Services in 2024

#scribendiinc

Written by  Scribendi

As a writer, it's not always easy to find typos or spelling errors in your own work. 

However, online editing services make error-free writing easy so you can focus on writing, not editing.

Below, we've listed the top 11 best editing and proofreading services for 2024 while considering years of experience, turnaround times, pricing, and quality. 

What Is the Difference Between Editing and Proofreading? 

Many people will hire a proofreader when they are really looking for an editor, and vice versa. However, editing and proofreading have different functions, and you will need one or the other depending on the requirements of your document. 

With editing services , your editor will: 

• Focus on improving the flow of language
• Check the overall readability
• Verify the accuracy of language
• Ensure the content follows a logical order
• Make sure your transitions are clear
• Verify that every paragraph is relevant to the overall argument
• Determine whether the tone fits the audience
• Ensure gendered language is used properly

With proofreading services , your proofreader will: 

• Check for grammatical errors
• Point out mechanical mistakes, such as misspelled words
• Correct missing or incorrect punctuation
• Verify correct and consistent capitalization 
• Fix sentence structure errors, such as run-on sentences or fragments

If you want in-depth feedback and revisions to improve your writing, editing is what you need.

If you need a final check to ensure your document is error free, proofreading is what you need.

What to Look for When Hiring an Editing or Proofreading Service

When hiring an editing or proofreading service, there are a few things to keep in mind!

Editor Qualifications

Experience and education play a large role in selecting the right editor or proofreader. You want to work with someone who is qualified, who has expertise doing the type of editing you're looking for, and who has had satisfied customers in the past. 

Check each service's ratings on review sites to ensure their customer satisfaction levels match what the service promises.

An editing or proofreading sample can give you an excellent idea of what to expect from your editor. Samples may be free or paid and allow you to evaluate the quality of an editing or proofreading service.

Communication

Good communication is also crucial. Will you be able to ask your editor questions during or after the process? 

The goal of any editor is to help you develop your best work, so clear communication throughout the process is key.

You might be wondering what is a fair price to pay for proofreading. Professional proofreading rates vary, and so does quality. To get the best-value proofreading, you will need to find a reputable proofreading company.

Read More: How Much Does Proofreading Cost?

11 Best Editing and Proofreading Services for 2024

1. scribendi.

Since 1997, Scribendi has been providing high-quality editing and proofreading services to students, academics, and authors from around the world. 

An ISO-certified industry leader in editing and proofreading services, Scribendi has a global team of hand-picked editors, many of whom hold master's degrees and PhDs. The onboarding process for new editors at Scribendi is intentionally rigorous so that only the highest-quality editors are selected—around 5% of all applicants. 

With Scribendi, you can expect affordable services and turnarounds in as little as 2 hours. The type of content Scribendi edits ranges from websites and blogs to essays and personal documents, with many other document types in between. Scribendi offers extensive feedback to its clients to help them develop their best work.

On the Scribendi website, you can also find case studies and reviews , along with a breakdown of how Scribendi customizes each service to specific clients. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 2 hours

Number of years in business: 25+

Free sample: Yes, 1,000-word free sample for editing or proofreading

ISO certified: Yes

Account deposit feature: Yes

Competitive Advantages

When it comes to fast turnaround times, affordable services, and professional, high-quality revisions, Scribendi has a competitive advantage over many other editing services.

With 25+ years' experience, their 480+ editors are available to proofread academic essays, novels, business materials, personal documents, or student essays 24/7, 365 days a year. 

Polish Your Writing with Our Book Proofreading Service

2. proof-reading-service.com.

Proof-Reading-Service.com offers high-quality English editing and proofreading services exclusively for professionals in science and academia. 

An England-based company, the proofreaders at Proof-Reading-Service.com are native English speakers with experience in various academic disciplines. Each proofreader on their team is personally selected and holds at least a master's degree, so their academic clients are fully supported.

The types of editing they help with range from journal and scientific editing to PhD thesis and manuscript editing. Since their specialty is in science and academia, this service would be most helpful to professors, lecturers, post-doctoral researchers, and research students.

Proof-Reading-Service.com offers a flat rate per 1,000 words. This rate does not change based on the type of content, so you always know how much proofreading will cost you.  

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: No instant quote

Number of years in business: 16

Free sample: No

ISO certified: No

An affordable option for academics and scientists, Proof-Reading-Services.com offers highly educated editors with expertise in many fields. 

Fiverr is a marketplace for digital services that allows buyers and sellers to work with each other through Fiverr's transactional platform. 

Through Fiverr, many freelance proofreaders offer their services at different rates and turnaround times. Within the platform, editing services can be filtered by budget, delivery time, and content type.

You can also sift through the profiles of freelance editors, read their reviews, and learn about their history with editing and with Fiverr itself. Each editor offers different rates depending on their experience and turnaround time.

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: N/A

Number of years in business: 12

Account deposit feature: Yes (for Fiverr Business users)

With Fiverr, you have the flexibility to choose a specific editor, and many niche options are available. The process is simple and easy, and each transaction is made through the Fiverr platform.

4. True Editors

True Editors offers professional editing services for academics, business owners, authors, and job applicants.

Their editing team is composed of engineers, research scholars, postgraduates, physicians, and even journal peer reviewers. Each editor on the True Editors team receives specialized training in academic editing and must take a language proficiency exam to qualify for their editing team.

To use True Editors' services, you can upload a file or enter your word count and choose your turnaround time. Their pricing varies by word count, and their website provides editing samples so you can get a feel for their editing style. If you're ever unhappy with their work, they also offer a free revision of your document.   

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 4 hours

Number of years in business: 10+

Free sample: 300 words or less for editing

True Editors has editors with specific subject-matter expertise.

5. ProofreadingPal

Operating out of Iowa City, IA, ProofreadingPal is an editing service that utilizes a two-proofreader model. This means that two proofreaders work on every piece of content ordered through their service.

ProofreadingPal offers editing services for students, professionals, and authors, including academic editing for writing styles such as APA, Chicago, MLA, or CSE. Their services are available 24/7, 365 days per year, with turnaround times ranging from 30 minutes to 7 days.

What also makes this service unique is that they accept orders both online and by phone, and their customer service team is available every day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. CT. They offer free sample edits of up to 400 words, and they don't have a minimum word requirement if you'd like to submit a small document for review.  

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 1.5 hours

Free sample: 400 words or less for editing

With ProofreadingPal, you get two proofreaders reviewing every submission instead of one and quick turnaround times. 

6. PaperTrue

PaperTrue started in 2014 as an editing service but has since expanded its services to include essay writing, formatting, and plagiarism checking for students, as well as cover design, typesetting, and online distribution for authors.

Operating with the belief that language shouldn't be a barrier to success, PaperTrue helps a global audience of businesses, authors, and researchers edit their writing so they're able to reach their full potential. To date, they've served over 52,000 clients and have 4.5+ stars on review sites, including Google Reviews and Sitejabber. 

PaperTrue also offers a three-step quality checking process and hand-picked, qualified editors for each document reviewed. With locations in the US, Singapore, the UK, and India, they offer round-the-clock editing services with a turnaround time of 12 hours for documents up to 6,000 words. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 12 hours

Number of years in business: 8

With PaperTrue, you get not only editing and proofreading services but publication services as well, including typesetting, cover design, and online distribution.

Proofed is an editing and formatting service that helps students, businesses, authors, academics, researchers, and other professionals communicate effectively. Its mission is to provide the highest quality proofreading and editing services in the world.

With a diverse group of editors, the team at Proofed offers extensive knowledge on nearly every subject. All editors have undergone Proofreading Academy training, a course developed by Proofed, to ensure the highest standard of editing possible. 

Proofed offers speedy delivery (up to 10,000 edited words within 24 hours), with express and rapid turnaround times that range from 2 to 12 hours for select word counts. Their system supports over 15 different document formats, which makes the submission process easy, and their team offers 24-hour support.

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 2 hours  

Free sample: 500 words for proofreading only

ISO certified: Yes 

Account deposit feature: No

Proofed offers proofreading expertise in many fields, as well as formatting services.

Enago provides 24/7 editing services for the global research community. More than just a team of editors, Enago works with researchers in over 125 countries to help them publish their work in international journals. 

With end-to-end publication support services, such as pre-submission peer review, journal selection, and post-submission review, Enago also offers competitive quality assurance with unlimited edits and a money-back guarantee for manuscripts that are rejected due to language issues.  

Enago's editors all hold a PhD or master's degree, and they have an average of 19.4 years of academic editing experience. Each manuscript is assigned to an editor with similar subject area expertise, assuring high-level accuracy. 

Like ProofreadingPal, Enago also operates on a two-editor model, where all manuscripts are reviewed by no fewer than two native English-speaking editors. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 24 hours

Number of years in business: 17

Enago offers highly educated editors in the fields of science, academia, and business, along with help and support during the academic publication process. 

American Journal Experts (AJE) offers in-depth scientific and academic editing services, in addition to translation and manuscript formatting services, to help researchers publish their best work. Its mission is to improve the exchange of discoveries in the international research community by identifying opportunities to improve the research, publishing, and discovery cycle.  

In addition to providing quality editing services, their team of PhDs supports researchers when they have questions regarding manuscript submission and publishing. AJE also matches each manuscript with an editor who is a subject-matter expert. 

Prices and turnaround times, as well as more in-depth information regarding the details of each type of editing offered (standard, advanced, or premium), can be found on the AJE website. 

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 48 hours  

Number of years in business: 18

Free sample: Editing of up to 500 words for an abstract

AJE's editors have subject-matter expertise, and the service also offers translation and formatting services. 

10. Editage

Editage partners with researchers to offer advanced and premium editing as well as publication support and translation services. Their goal is to assure the publication success of hopeful researchers, scholars, and students. 

Each document submitted to Editage is assigned to an editor who best matches the content subject matter. Editage even offers the option to select your expert, price, deadline, and style, so researchers have full control of the service they receive. Researchers can also collaborate with their editing expert to ensure the paper follows their vision. 

Editage also has local language support, turnaround times of as little as eight hours, and a two-step revision process for quality. Their team of over 2,000 native English editors has publication expertise and covers over 1,000 subjects.  

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 8 hours

Number of years in business: 20

At Editage, two editors review every submission. They also offer client-to-editor Q&A interaction and translation services.

LetPub offers editorial services for researchers in the scholarly publishing community. In addition to editing, LetPub offers scientific illustration services, plain language summaries, and graphic and video abstracts. 

The LetPub team is composed of experts and senior editors who come from a wide range of disciplines, each one a native English speaker with experience editing both scientific and technical documents. The types of editing included in LetPub's services range from grant and language editing to response letter and scientific editing. 

Because many of LetPub's editors and staff have research backgrounds, they're familiar with the level of effort it takes to write a paper for publication, and they will reedit a paper at no cost if it is rejected for language reasons.

Fastest turnaround time for 1,000 words: 48 hours

ISO certified: Yes (for translation services)

Competitive Advantages 

LetPub offers expertise in science for scientists and academics, as well as translation and formatting services. 

Perfect Your Writing with High-Quality Academic Proofreading

There's a lot to consider when choosing an editing service. Save our table as a quick reference for your next document.

As long as you understand the important factors that go into choosing a great editing service, like experience, customer satisfaction, and quality, you'll be well equipped to choose the right one for you.

About the Author

Scribendi's in-house editors work with writers from all over the globe to perfect their writing. They know that no piece of writing is complete without a professional edit, and they love to see a good piece of writing turn into a great one after the editing process. Scribendi's in-house editors are unrivaled in both experience and education, having collectively edited millions of words and obtained nearly 20 degrees collectively. They love consuming caffeinated beverages, reading books of various genres, and relaxing in quiet, dimly lit spaces.

Achieve Perfect Writing with High-Quality Proofreading

Try our essay proofreading service.

Have You Read?

"The Complete Beginner's Guide to Academic Writing"

Related Posts

10 Reasons to Hire a Professional Editor

Value Proofreading: How Much Does Proofreading Cost in 2024?

Why Hiring a Copy Editor Is a Good Idea

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What Our Customers Say

How we can help, proofreading services.

We’ll polish your writing, making sure it’s error free and easy to read. Our proofreading service includes:

• Correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation
• Improving word choice
• Ensuring consistency
• Leaving helpful feedback
• Highlighting clarity issues

Editing Services

In addition to proofreading your work, we’ll refine your writing to ensure it has the greatest possible impact on readers. As well as basic proofreading, our editing service includes:

• Revising sentences for clarity and concision
• Restructuring text to ensure a smooth flow
• Ensuring the tone of your writing matches its purpose
• Providing feedback and advice on writing style
• Applying your preferred style guide to the letter

Formatting Services

Tell us exactly how you want your work formatted, or select from one of our predesigned templates. Common formatting options we can apply include:

• Creating a cover page
• Inserting a dynamic list of charts, figures, and tables
• Adding headers and footers
• Generating a dynamic table of contents
• Adding captions to charts, figures, and tables
• Ensuring consistency in use of fonts and styles

We Work With Every Major Format

Our system supports over 15 document formats, making it easy to submit content for proofreading and editing. Click on a file icon below to learn more.

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Editing and Proofreading

What this handout is about.

This handout provides some tips and strategies for revising your writing. To give you a chance to practice proofreading, we have left seven errors (three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors) in the text of this handout. See if you can spot them!

Is editing the same thing as proofreading?

Not exactly. Although many people use the terms interchangeably, editing and proofreading are two different stages of the revision process. Both demand close and careful reading, but they focus on different aspects of the writing and employ different techniques.

Some tips that apply to both editing and proofreading

• Get some distance from the text! It’s hard to edit or proofread a paper that you’ve just finished writing—it’s still to familiar, and you tend to skip over a lot of errors. Put the paper aside for a few hours, days, or weeks. Go for a run. Take a trip to the beach. Clear your head of what you’ve written so you can take a fresh look at the paper and see what is really on the page. Better yet, give the paper to a friend—you can’t get much more distance than that. Someone who is reading the paper for the first time, comes to it with completely fresh eyes.
• Decide which medium lets you proofread most carefully. Some people like to work right at the computer, while others like to sit back with a printed copy that they can mark up as they read.
• Try changing the look of your document. Altering the size, spacing, color, or style of the text may trick your brain into thinking it’s seeing an unfamiliar document, and that can help you get a different perspective on what you’ve written.
• Find a quiet place to work. Don’t try to do your proofreading in front of the TV or while you’re chugging away on the treadmill. Find a place where you can concentrate and avoid distractions.
• If possible, do your editing and proofreading in several short blocks of time. Your concentration may start to wane if you try to proofread the entire text at one time.
• If you’re short on time, you may wish to prioritize. Make sure that you complete the most important editing and proofreading tasks.

Editing is what you begin doing as soon as you finish your first draft. You reread your draft to see, for example, whether the paper is well-organized, the transitions between paragraphs are smooth, and your evidence really backs up your argument. You can edit on several levels:

Have you done everything the assignment requires? Are the claims you make accurate? If it is required to do so, does your paper make an argument? Is the argument complete? Are all of your claims consistent? Have you supported each point with adequate evidence? Is all of the information in your paper relevant to the assignment and/or your overall writing goal? (For additional tips, see our handouts on understanding assignments and developing an argument .)

Overall structure

Does your paper have an appropriate introduction and conclusion? Is your thesis clearly stated in your introduction? Is it clear how each paragraph in the body of your paper is related to your thesis? Are the paragraphs arranged in a logical sequence? Have you made clear transitions between paragraphs? One way to check the structure of your paper is to make a reverse outline of the paper after you have written the first draft. (See our handouts on introductions , conclusions , thesis statements , and transitions .)

Structure within paragraphs

Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence? Does each paragraph stick to one main idea? Are there any extraneous or missing sentences in any of your paragraphs? (See our handout on paragraph development .)

Have you defined any important terms that might be unclear to your reader? Is the meaning of each sentence clear? (One way to answer this question is to read your paper one sentence at a time, starting at the end and working backwards so that you will not unconsciously fill in content from previous sentences.) Is it clear what each pronoun (he, she, it, they, which, who, this, etc.) refers to? Have you chosen the proper words to express your ideas? Avoid using words you find in the thesaurus that aren’t part of your normal vocabulary; you may misuse them.

Have you used an appropriate tone (formal, informal, persuasive, etc.)? Is your use of gendered language (masculine and feminine pronouns like “he” or “she,” words like “fireman” that contain “man,” and words that some people incorrectly assume apply to only one gender—for example, some people assume “nurse” must refer to a woman) appropriate? Have you varied the length and structure of your sentences? Do you tends to use the passive voice too often? Does your writing contain a lot of unnecessary phrases like “there is,” “there are,” “due to the fact that,” etc.? Do you repeat a strong word (for example, a vivid main verb) unnecessarily? (For tips, see our handouts on style and gender-inclusive language .)

Have you appropriately cited quotes, paraphrases, and ideas you got from sources? Are your citations in the correct format? (See the UNC Libraries citation tutorial for more information.)

As you edit at all of these levels, you will usually make significant revisions to the content and wording of your paper. Keep an eye out for patterns of error; knowing what kinds of problems you tend to have will be helpful, especially if you are editing a large document like a thesis or dissertation. Once you have identified a pattern, you can develop techniques for spotting and correcting future instances of that pattern. For example, if you notice that you often discuss several distinct topics in each paragraph, you can go through your paper and underline the key words in each paragraph, then break the paragraphs up so that each one focuses on just one main idea.

Proofreading

Proofreading is the final stage of the editing process, focusing on surface errors such as misspellings and mistakes in grammar and punctuation. You should proofread only after you have finished all of your other editing revisions.

Why proofread? It’s the content that really matters, right?

Content is important. But like it or not, the way a paper looks affects the way others judge it. When you’ve worked hard to develop and present your ideas, you don’t want careless errors distracting your reader from what you have to say. It’s worth paying attention to the details that help you to make a good impression.

Most people devote only a few minutes to proofreading, hoping to catch any glaring errors that jump out from the page. But a quick and cursory reading, especially after you’ve been working long and hard on a paper, usually misses a lot. It’s better to work with a definite plan that helps you to search systematically for specific kinds of errors.

Sure, this takes a little extra time, but it pays off in the end. If you know that you have an effective way to catch errors when the paper is almost finished, you can worry less about editing while you are writing your first drafts. This makes the entire writing proccess more efficient.

Try to keep the editing and proofreading processes separate. When you are editing an early draft, you don’t want to be bothered with thinking about punctuation, grammar, and spelling. If your worrying about the spelling of a word or the placement of a comma, you’re not focusing on the more important task of developing and connecting ideas.

The proofreading process

You probably already use some of the strategies discussed below. Experiment with different tactics until you find a system that works well for you. The important thing is to make the process systematic and focused so that you catch as many errors as possible in the least amount of time.

• Don’t rely entirely on spelling checkers. These can be useful tools but they are far from foolproof. Spell checkers have a limited dictionary, so some words that show up as misspelled may really just not be in their memory. In addition, spell checkers will not catch misspellings that form another valid word. For example, if you type “your” instead of “you’re,” “to” instead of “too,” or “there” instead of “their,” the spell checker won’t catch the error.
• Grammar checkers can be even more problematic. These programs work with a limited number of rules, so they can’t identify every error and often make mistakes. They also fail to give thorough explanations to help you understand why a sentence should be revised. You may want to use a grammar checker to help you identify potential run-on sentences or too-frequent use of the passive voice, but you need to be able to evaluate the feedback it provides.
• Proofread for only one kind of error at a time. If you try to identify and revise too many things at once, you risk losing focus, and your proofreading will be less effective. It’s easier to catch grammar errors if you aren’t checking punctuation and spelling at the same time. In addition, some of the techniques that work well for spotting one kind of mistake won’t catch others.
• Read slow, and read every word. Try reading out loud , which forces you to say each word and also lets you hear how the words sound together. When you read silently or too quickly, you may skip over errors or make unconscious corrections.
• Separate the text into individual sentences. This is another technique to help you to read every sentence carefully. Simply press the return key after every period so that every line begins a new sentence. Then read each sentence separately, looking for grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors. If you’re working with a printed copy, try using an opaque object like a ruler or a piece of paper to isolate the line you’re working on.
• Circle every punctuation mark. This forces you to look at each one. As you circle, ask yourself if the punctuation is correct.
• Read the paper backwards. This technique is helpful for checking spelling. Start with the last word on the last page and work your way back to the beginning, reading each word separately. Because content, punctuation, and grammar won’t make any sense, your focus will be entirely on the spelling of each word. You can also read backwards sentence by sentence to check grammar; this will help you avoid becoming distracted by content issues.
• Proofreading is a learning process. You’re not just looking for errors that you recognize; you’re also learning to recognize and correct new errors. This is where handbooks and dictionaries come in. Keep the ones you find helpful close at hand as you proofread.
• Ignorance may be bliss, but it won’t make you a better proofreader. You’ll often find things that don’t seem quite right to you, but you may not be quite sure what’s wrong either. A word looks like it might be misspelled, but the spell checker didn’t catch it. You think you need a comma between two words, but you’re not sure why. Should you use “that” instead of “which”? If you’re not sure about something, look it up.
• The proofreading process becomes more efficient as you develop and practice a systematic strategy. You’ll learn to identify the specific areas of your own writing that need careful attention, and knowing that you have a sound method for finding errors will help you to focus more on developing your ideas while you are drafting the paper.

Think you’ve got it?

Then give it a try, if you haven’t already! This handout contains seven errors our proofreader should have caught: three spelling errors, two punctuation errors, and two grammatical errors. Try to find them, and then check a version of this page with the errors marked in red to see if you’re a proofreading star.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Especially for non-native speakers of English:

Ascher, Allen. 2006. Think About Editing: An ESL Guide for the Harbrace Handbooks . Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Lane, Janet, and Ellen Lange. 2012. Writing Clearly: Grammar for Editing , 3rd ed. Boston: Heinle.

For everyone:

Einsohn, Amy. 2011. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications , 3rd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Lanham, Richard A. 2006. Revising Prose , 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Tarshis, Barry. 1998. How to Be Your Own Best Editor: The Toolkit for Everyone Who Writes . New York: Three Rivers Press.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

College Essays

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

• Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
• Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
• Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
• Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

• Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
• Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
• Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
• Tell you what to say and how to say it
• Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
• Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

• An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
• An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
• An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

• If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
• If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
• If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

• Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
• Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
• Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

• Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
• How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
• Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
• Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

• Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
• Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
• Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
• Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
• What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

• You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
• A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
• A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
• A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
• All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
• Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
• If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
• Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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14 Best College Essay Services for 2024 (40 Services Reviewed)

Research conducted by Emily Kierkegaard , PhD, and expert-reviewed by Kevin Wong, PrepMaven Co-founder

Not sure which college application essay coaching and editing service is the best? We compared the top 40 services, created in-depth reviews for 14 of them, and narrowed it down to the 4 best that will help guide you through the process of writing amazing college application essays.

What is the Best College Essay Service?

• PrepMaven  – best college application essay service overall
• College Essay Mentor  – best for individual consultants
• The College Essay Guy  – best for unlimited essay assistance
• College Vine  – best of the big platforms

The best of the rest:

Individual essay consultants:

• College Essay Editor  – small editing team
• Allison Karpf  – former English teacher helping students
• Your College Vision  – former journalist with more affordable rates
• The College Guru  – good on paper but unresponsive
• Sofia Zapiola – budget-friendly application assistance

Mid-size teams:

• Lotus Learning  – focus on health sciences

Large platforms:

• Study Point  – larger platform with mystery editors
• Ivy Select  – larger platform with mystery editors
• Empowerly  – larger platform with mystery editors
• BeMo  – expensive and aggressive with wrong expertise

Schedule a college essay consultation

Best College Application Essay Services in 2024

#1 – prepmaven.

Our Verdict — Best College Essay Assistance Overall Price: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package) PrepMaven’s one-on-one college essay assistance is the best option overall. Founded by brothers and Princeton grads Greg and Kevin, almost all of PrepMaven’s essay coaches have Ivy-League experience, primarily from Princeton and Harvard. All essay coaches also undergo a thorough training program in PrepMaven’s methods, developed by professional writers with deep understanding of the college admissions process, for helping students to discover the most compelling stories for their essays. Unlike other services, PrepMaven offers college essay assistance at several different price points. At the most accessible rate, students can work with current Ivy-League undergraduates who specialize in writing and have recently aced the college application process. At higher rates, students can work with coaches who are both Ivy-League grads and professional writers (screenwriters, journalists, editors) with many years of experience helping students to craft compelling essays. Interested students can even work directly with founders Greg and Kevin, who have over 15 years of experience helping students through the entire essay-writing process. PrepMaven’s services combine many of the best features of other good options into one, and it’s hard to beat their experience.

Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help now

Any student wanting college essay help, at any point in the process, with a range of budgets.

At a glance:

• Cost: $79–349/hour (minimum $510 package)
• Writing coach qualifications: Princeton graduates and professional writers (or current Princeton students); all trained

What we like:

• Ivy League experience —most of their writing coaches are Princeton grads or current students, with some from Harvard and other Ivies
• Different pricing options to meet different families’ circumstances
• More flexible and greater capacity to take on new students compared to individual consultants

Sign up for PrepMaven’s college essay help

#2 – College Essay Mentor

Our Verdict — Best of the Individual Consultants Price: unknown but high Some college essay consulting services consist of just one expert. Of these individual essay consultants, Chris Hunt at College Essay Mentor is our favorite. He combines writing experience as a journalist for the Economist and the Wall Street Journal with personal experience as a graduate of Dartmouth. However, he only works with a small number of students each year, and students need to apply to work with him — he only accepts students with top grades and test scores who are already strong applicants for top schools. Chris offers the option for one-time written feedback, but this only gives big-picture generalizations. (And written-only feedback is always limited.) In order for help with the essay process, students need to purchase a complete essay package.

Students with top grades and test scores who want to work with a one-person business, who have a sizable budget, and who are ready to get started early.

• Cost: $210 for a one-time written essay feedback (big picture only), then $110 per draft feedback; pricing for essay process packages unknown
• Essay coach qualifications: professional journalist, Dartmouth grad
• Professional writing experience as a journalist
• Extensive experience working with college applicants
• Partners with Debra Felix, former Director of Admissions at Columbia, for full application review

What we don’t like:

• One-on-one work is limited to very high-achieving students, who need to apply with a resume : “I limit my one-on-one work to students who I believe will be strong applicants to elite universities. As a rule, this means having high grades in challenging classes, a test score of ACT 34+ or SAT 1500+, and substantial activities outside of the classroom.”
• Works with a limited number of students (60 per year), so often no availability
• All-or-nothing packages don’t allow students to work with Chris for just a few hours or for part of the essay-writing process
• Secretive about pricing (he’ll only give pricing details once he’s reviewed the student’s resume and agreed to work with them), but we expect the minimum cost of working one-on-one to be several thousand dollars

#3 – The College Essay Guy

Our Verdict — Best for Unlimited Essay Assistance Price: $4900 for application to 3 schools, $8050 for application for 10 schools We’re fans of Ethan Sawyer, the original “college essay guy”— his book, College Essay Essentials , is a great guide to the essay-writing process. Ethan doesn’t work directly with many students these days, but he now has a team of consultants who help students follow his principles. Their assistance is really all-or-nothing — they prefer to work with students from the very beginning of the process, and their minimum package is $4900, which includes assistance with essays for three schools. If students are applying to ten schools (a more realistic number for students aiming at competitive colleges), the fee is a hefty $7400.

Students who want unlimited help through the entire process, who have a sizable budget.

• Cost: $4900 (supplemental essays for 3 schools) – $7400 (supplemental essays for 10 schools)
• Essay coach qualifications: mix of Ivy grads and former teachers, some writers/screenwriters; all trained
• Great free resources about the essay-writing process
• Their Matchlighters Scholars Program gives back to the community by providing admissions consulting for select qualifying students
• All-or-nothing packages have a high minimum fee and don’t work for students who want just a few hours of feedback or help with just part of the process

#4 – College Vine

Our Verdict — Best of the Big Platforms Price: $140–180/hour There are plenty of large platforms with large stables of part-time tutors and coaches available to work with students. Of these big platforms, we think CollegeVine has the best offerings. Compared to other large companies, CollegeVine provides more information about their tutors, and students can pick individual tutors to work with from their roster. However, this model is really just a way of finding individual tutors to hire. Tutors don’t receive any training and don’t share a common approach, so it’s a mixed bag. Their rates are fairly high for part-time tutors who don’t have specific expertise and training in college essay consulting. Because CollegeVine is really just a marketplace where individual tutors can find students, the quality and price will vary widely.

Students who want to work with a big company, or those who want a quick session or two to go over their essays.

• Cost: Typically $140–180/hour
• Essay coach qualifications: no specific qualifications, but a few are Ivy League graduates
• Possible to select individual editors to work with from their roster.
• Easy to schedule ad-hoc sessions with a tutor through the website.
• No training or common approach for tutors
• Editors are part-time , with no option to work with full-time college admissions experts
• Relatively expensive for this level of expertise

College Essay Editing Alternatives (that Didn’t Make the Cut)

Individual essay consultants, #5 – college essay editor.

Our Verdict — Small Editing Team Price: Roughly $5,950 for applications to 10 schools College Essay Editor comprises two graduates of Stanford. This means that they have personal experience applying to highly competitive schools. One member of the team also has a college counseling certification, which is a good background for college essays. Based on their website, they appear to focus on the editing and proofreading phase of the essay-writing process. This can be helpful to students, but we recommend working with a service who can help students to uncover their values and brainstorm really great material that allows them to really shine—and if this doesn’t happen at the beginning of the process, it’s much harder to add in later on.

• Cost: $195/1000 words for proofreading, $495/1000 words for 3 rounds of editing and proofreading, or $595/1000 words for unlimited rounds of editing and proofreading; for the purposes of comparison, complete applications to 10 competitive colleges would be around 9,650 words, or $5950.
• Writing coach qualifications: Stanford graduates, one of whom has college counseling certification
• Editors are graduates of Stanford University , and one is a member of NACAC, the national association of college counselors
• They focus on editing and proofreading only , not on the crucial earlier steps of brainstorming and strategy
• Small team with very limited availability
• All asynchronous editing so you won’t be able to cultivate a real relationship with your essay coach.

#6 – Allison Karpf

Our Verdict — Former English Teacher Helping Students Price: $385/hour or $3850 package for application to one school Another option for students looking to hire an individual consultant is Allison Karpf. Allison is a former high school English teacher and a graduate of UC Berkeley who also holds a Masters of Education from Stanford. Her rates are definitely on the higher side, especially for someone who doesn’t have a professional writing background, but she does have extensive experience working with students to craft their essays.

• Cost:  $385/hour or $3850 unlimited counseling (includes supplemental essays for one college)
• Essay coach qualifications: former high school English teacher; Berkeley grad, Stanford MEd
• Lots of experience helping students improve their college essays
• Very quick to respond to client requests
• No professional writing experience or Ivy-Plus undergraduate experience
• High rates relative to other options
• Limited availability , since she works alone

#7 – Your College Vision

Our Verdict: Former Journalist with More Affordable Rates Price: $180/hour, or packages starting from $3500 Laurie Lande is another individual consultant who helps students through the essay-writing process. She comes recommended by other consultants like Chris from College Essay Mentor . Laurie did not herself attend a highly competitive school, so she doesn’t have that personal experience of going through the selective admissions process, but she does have a professional writing background as a journalist for the Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong.

• Cost: $180/hour or packages starting at $3500
• Essay coach qualifications: journalism background
• Affordable pricing , relative to other options
• Not a graduate of a highly selective school

#8 – The College Guru

Our Verdict — Good on Paper but Unresponsive Price: unknown Yet another individual essay consultant is Geanine Thompson from The College Guru. Geanine attended Dartmouth as an undergraduate and also holds an MBA from Duke. She also has a professional writing background as an assistant book editor at Berkley Publishing Group. Like Greg and Kevin at PrepMaven , she combines experience in the business world and at Wall Street firms with experience in education.

• Cost: unknown
• Essay coach qualifications: former assistant book editor; Dartmouth grad, Duke MBA
• Dartmouth graduate and former book editor
• Not responsive to emails and client requests

#9 – Sofia Zapiola

Our Verdict — A budget-friendly, personal essay editor. Price: $80/hour Yet another individual essay consultant is Sofia Zapiola, who offers a mix of essay editing and college application counseling services.

• Cost: $80/hour
• Essay coach qualifications: M.A. from Harvard; certificate in College Counseling from UC San Diego.
• Individual approach, budget-friendly rates, commitment to working within families’ budgets.
• Very few testimonials, so it’s difficult to evaluate how effective she is.

Mid-size Teams

#10 – lotus learning.

Our Verdict — Expensive for Tutor Background Price: $165/hour Founded by a Harvard grad who is a former teacher and veteran of the publishing industry, Lotus learning offers college essay help in the Boston area. They have a small team of tutors, mostly recent grads from good but not Ivy-Plus colleges, and mostly with focus in health sciences.

• Cost: $165/hour (minimum 8 hours)
• Essay coach qualifications: tutors are recent grads, but not Ivy-Plus schools
• Reasonable pricing with flexible packages
• Essay editors aren’t graduates of Ivy-Plus schools and don’t have professional writing experience

Large platforms

#11 – study point.

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: Rates Between $60 and $120/hr Study Point is a larger essay editing service. They claim to have several decades of experience helping students to craft their college essays, but they do not give information about who their essay coaches are and what qualifications they might have.

• Cost: $60-120/hr, depending on tutor experience
• Essay coach qualifications: unknown
• Larger company with several decades of experience
• Unclear who the essay coaches are
• Lack of statistics about their results

#12 – Ivy Select

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: unknown Ivy Select makes a lot of big promises on their website about having the best college essay consultants in the business, but they offer no information on who these consultants are, or on their backgrounds. They also brag that each consultant “only” works 20 students in one application cycle, but in our experience, that’s quite high.

• Long list of impressive (but anonymous) testimonials
• Only work with “top students”
• No information on their website about who the editors are
• Each essay coach works with up to 20 students at one time

#13 – Empowerly

Our Verdict — Larger Platform with Mystery Editors Price: High, from $6000/year Empowerly has over 60 college counselors who each work with an average of 5 students per year, in order to have more time to devote to each student. Their counselors come from “different educational backgrounds,” and while they do not provide specific biographical details we can assume that most of their essay coaches did not attend highly selective schools.

• Cost: typically from $6000/year
• Essay coach qualifications: college counselors
• Counselors work with just a few students per year
• You have to upgrade to “Empowerly Elite” to guarantee a counselor with a more selective educational background
• No professional writing experience

#14 – Prepory

Our Verdict — Expensive but with Good Expertise Price: $325/hr Prepory is a college application and career counseling service that offers a comprehensive program for college applications at any stage of the process (including as early as 9th grade). They make a lot of impressive claims about the expertise of their coaches, but it’s quite difficult to actual find much information about their essay coach qualifications.

• Cost: $325/hr
• They have a comprehensive college application program that begins as early as 9th grade.
• Limited information about essay coaches
• High prices

Top 40 College Essay Services Considered

• College Essay Editor
• The College Essay Guy
• College Vine
• College Essay Mentor
• Study Point
• Allison Karpf
• The College Guru
• Lotus Learning
• Summit Prep
• Sofia Zapiola
• Ivy Global / New Summits
• College Essay Solutions
• Your College Vision
• Essay Edge*
• ServicEscape*
• PapersForge*
• QuickWriter*
• JustEditMyEssay*
• JustDoMyEsssay*
• ExpertWriting*
• SpeedyPaper*
• GradeMiners*

* A number of services will edit essays directly for students, or even write portions of the essay for students. We do not condone this. Admissions officers can tell when essays have been written or edited by adults and this can have severe consequences. We have excluded these services from our reviews.

Why are college application essays important?

Can a great college essay alone get you into Harvard?

No. You’ll need your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities (as well as letters of recommendation and interview) to be outstanding.

But can a mediocre essay be the reason you didn’t get into Harvard?

Yes. There are thousands of amazingly-qualified students who graduate from high school each year. Great grades and test scores might be a prerequisite for admission to a competitive college, but they alone aren’t enough.

College essays are a key component of a student’s application . When done well, they transform a collection of numbers—GPA, class rank, SAT or ACT scores , number of AP classes taken, AP scores—into a glimpse of a real, individual person.

Essays do many things. Good college essays can highlight extracurricular achievements which otherwise would be overlooked in a sterile list. Strong essays often indicate the student’s future plans —how they plan to leave a mark on their college campus and on the world. They can shine a light on unique challenges that a student may have had to face on their journey.

College admissions officers only have a few minutes to spend on each application. College essays need to be original, interesting, and memorable . They need to grab the attention of the admissions officer and persuade them that this is the student out of hundreds or thousands of other similarly-qualified applicants who should be admitted.

College admissions essays are usually unlike any other kind of writing that students have done before. They’re a combination of memoir and marketing pitch, and they need to be creative but also highly strategic. That’s a tough assignment!

What’s more, students are left to figure this assignment out on their own. A thoughtful and generous high school English teacher may provide guidance or offer to read essays and give feedback, but these teachers are responsible for many students, and they’re (usually) not experts in admissions strategies.

There’s another reason college essays are especially important from 2024 on. After the recent Supreme Court decision, the application essay has become one of the main ways that you can communicate how your racial identity has affected your life.

In fact, the New York Times published an article about how important it can be for students to discuss race in their college application essays!

Why work with a college essay service?

You may want to consider a college essay service if:

• You have no idea where to start in order to write your college application essays
• You feel overwhelmed by all of the different ideas you have and don’t know what would be the most strategic for college admissions—and what topics to definitely avoid for college essays
• You don’t know how to craft a compelling stor y
• You’re not sure how to edit and refine what you’ve written
• You have a hard time keeping yourself on track and want an external structure to hold you accountable
• You’re tired of conflict between students and parents about college essays
• You’re aiming at a competitive college (not just the Ivy League!) and know that you need your essays to be outstanding
• Your grades, test scores, and extracurriculars aren’t exceptional, so you need your essay to make your essay stand out from the pack
• You’re unfamiliar with the US college admissions process (a common situation for international students and first-generation families in the US)

Any of these are strong reasons to consider working with a college essay service!

It’s also worth remembering that a lot of the free advice on college’s website isn’t always very clear. For example, NYU’s admissions Senior Assistant Director of Admissions says that “There is no right or wrong way to answer as long as your answer is genuine to you.”

While that’s true, that doesn’t offer much guidance on how to actually write the essay!

Though many college applicants might not mention it, more and more students are using professional college application consultants. Research at the University of Chicago has shown that over a quarter of high-achieving seniors employed private specialists to help with the college application process.

In fact, according to NPR , some companies are even offering college admissions counseling to their top employees as an incentive–that’s just how important professional help can be in the current landscape of college admissions.

It’s important to note that a good college essay service will not write your college application essays for you . This is unethical and illegal. That’s not just coming from us: take it from a school like Princeton, whose website insists on the importance of writing your own application essays.

A good college essay service will guide you through each step of the process , teaching you how to self-reflect and write well while sharing insider insight about admissions strategy .

What makes a good college essay service?

We strongly believe that students need to write their own college essays , and we do not condone plagiarism or “buying” a college essay.

However, writing college application essays requires a completely new set of skills that is rarely taught in high school!

Writing a personal essay is much more creative than simply writing a good paper for English class. It requires a compelling narrative and a great deal of writing craft . A good essay service will teach how to do this kind of writing.

There are many college essay services that will provide only written feedback to students, usually in the form of comments added to an essay draft. (Remember, it’s important that students write their own essays, so avoid any college essay service that will make edits directly to an essay document .)

Written comments can be an effective component of good essay coaching. However, writing college essays is a deeply personal process , and it’s incredibly difficult to guide a student through the process of self-reflection, brainstorming, and planning purely through written comments.

In addition, a great college essay coach will teach students how to do this entire process of brainstorming, planning, outlining, writing, and revising . It’s difficult to learn why an essay coach is advising certain changes through written comments alone.

For these reasons, look for a college essay service with live, one-on-one services , not just written feedback. These days, it’s easy to work with the best college essay consultants in the country over Zoom!

Students need to reflect on their goals, their passions, and what drives them to be the person they are. This requires a great deal of self-awareness and self-analysis . An experienced college essay coach can help draw these ideas out of students through tested introspection techniques and brainstorming exercises .

On top of all of that, students need to be cognizant of which traits and accomplishments will be most appealing to colleges , and which stories will be cliche and boring. Personal statements and supplementary essays need to fit together to tell a cohesive story, and they need to work together with the rest of the student’s application (extracurriculars, grades, and other accomplishments).

In other words, there’s a great deal of strategy here! An experienced college essay service can help students decide how to present themselves in the best possible light .

Furthermore, most students don’t know how to edit effectively . A really top-notch college essay service will also teach students how to edit their own writing —how to reorder sections for better flow, cut unnecessary words to meet a word count, eliminate passive verbs, and make their writing vivid and exciting. Our students are routinely amazed by how transformative this step can be, and how much they learn by doing it together with the essay coach.

Finally, the best college essay services can also help students to make a writing plan and keep them on track , so that parents don’t have to be involved directly.

Ready to work on your college essays? Schedule a free 15- to 30-minute consultation with Jessica or one of our founders.

Best overall: PrepMaven’s tutors offer the highest quality at the best price. With three tiers of tutors, they make it easy to work with an Ivy League undergraduate for as little as $79/hr. Or, families can work with education professionals or Ivy League graduates from $150/hr. PrepMaven’s track record means that you can be sure every hour is being spent productively, so that you can expect real results from the work.

Best for individual consultants: College Essay Mentor. In theory, College Essay Mentor would offer an unparalleled level of individual attention and guidance: his website boasts of some very impressive results. You might find it hard to actually schedule with him, however, since he’s very selective about his clients.

Best for unlimited essay assistance: The College Essay Guy might not offer that personalized attention you get from live, face to face essay coaching, but they do offer unlimited essay editing for up to 10 schools (if you’re comfortable paying a hefty package price).

Best of the big platforms: College Vine will always be a bit of a gamble. Because it’s a tutor marketplace, your results (and costs) will really depend on how lucky you get with your consultant. From our research, however, many of their essay coaches look to have solid track records.

Ready to work on college essays with one of our experienced writing coaches? Schedule a free test prep consultation with Jessica (Director of Tutoring) or one of our founders to see what would be the best fit for your family.

It’s always best to start early and not wait until the last minute to write your college essays! Remember that essays can be used to earn scholarships as well as college admission, so a few months of writing now can pay off with up to $300,000 in tuition saved later. 

We work with students at all stages of the writing process, from I-have-no-idea-what-to-write to final edits. To start working with an Ivy-League writing coach today, set up a quick free consultation with our team.

Schedule a free college essay consultation

Top College Essay Posts

• 14 Best College Essay Services for 2023 (40 Services Reviewed)
• Qualities of a Successful College Essay
• 11 College Essays That Worked
• How to Answer the UC Personal Insight Questions
• How Colleges Read your College Applications (A 4-Step Process)
• How to Write the Princeton Supplemental Essays
• The Diamond Strategy: How We Help Students Write College Essays that Get Them Into Princeton (And Other Ivy League Schools)
• What is the College Essay? Your Complete Guide for 202 4
• College Essay Brainstorming: Where to Start
• How to Write the Harvard Supplemental Essays
• How to Format Your College Essay

Emily graduated  summa cum laude  from Princeton University and holds an MA from the University of Notre Dame. She was a National Merit Scholar and has won numerous academic prizes and fellowships. A veteran of the publishing industry, she has helped professors at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton revise their books and articles. Over the last decade, Emily has successfully mentored hundreds of students in all aspects of the college admissions process, including the SAT, ACT, and college application essay. 

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The 11 Best Windows Text Editors for Every Use

Finding the best Windows text editor for your needs could be a game-changer.

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The best text editors for coding on windows, top windows text editors to simplify note-taking, the best text editors on windows for web designers and developers, the best general use text editors on windows.

Text editors are unsung heroes, allowing us to craft everything from simple notes to complex code precisely and efficiently. If you're a programmer, finding the right text editor for your code can be a game-changer. These are some of the best text editors for Windows you can get.

The tools you use when editing code can make a world of difference, starting with text editors for coding on Windows. These pack must-have features, like syntax highlighting , code folding, and auto-completion.

1. Sublime Text

With features like effortless split panes, intuitive code navigation, and side-by-side definitions, Sublime Text provides everything you need for efficient work.

A key feature is tab multi-select, which makes split views and navigating between files a breeze. You can view definitions from auto-complete popups and jump to references with a click. Multiple selections also allow you to rename variables quickly across a project.

Sublime Text is impressively quick as well, with indexed project files enabling near-instant searches across thousands of files. This sets it apart from other editors, including Visual Studio Code. Paired with its super smooth UI, you'll wonder how you ever coded without it.

While Sublime Text is available indefinitely for free evaluation, you’re encouraged to buy a personal (or business) license. Personal licenses are a one-time fee of $99 and include three years of updates. Not only does this remove the nagging notifications about your unregistered license, but you also get all the premium goodies.

Download : Sublime Text (Subscription required, free trial available)

When it comes to coding, efficiency is key. VS Code truly shines in this area—it’s lightweight while packing serious power under the hood.

IntelliSense auto-complete means your fingers never have to leave the home row. Debug directly in the editor using breakpoints and call stacks. And managing source control is easy with integrated Git support and the ability to stage, commit, and push changes.

However, VS Code’s true power lies in its many extensions . You can add new languages, themes, debuggers, and services to expand functionality significantly. Need Python linting? React IDE features? Serverless deployment to AWS? There's a plug-in for that and more.

VS Code is free and supports dozens of languages through the Marketplace.

Download : VS code (Free)

3. Notepad++

Notepad++ provides features like syntax highlighting, code folding, and basic auto-complete for over 70 languages. Powered by the fast Scintilla editing component, Notepad++ remains lightweight and responsive.

Tabs allow working with multiple files simultaneously, and plugins extend functionality further. Default plugins include spell-checking, HTML validation, text sorting, and quote manipulation. Notepad++ also supports internationalization through translation files for additional languages.

While it lacks more advanced code checking and completion, Notepad++ excels at plain text handling with features like auto-save, string finding, and replacing with regex, line bookmarking, and macros. It recognizes different line endings and can reinterpret encodings on the fly. For basic coding needs, it remains an indispensable free Windows text editor.

Download : Notepad++ (Free)

Whether you're brainstorming code ideas or documenting hacks, your notes are crucial companions. But with so many options, which editor best fuels your flow? Here are a few focused yet feature-packed options.

4. Windows Notepad

As the default text editor pre-installed with Windows, Notepad is easily accessible for taking notes. While basic, it fulfills your basic need to record code snippets, configuration instructions, and other informational text documents.

Windows Notepad allows you to write code or take notes without visual clutter. Its key strengths include instant access, swift loading times, cross-platform compatibility, and the ability to strip any unwanted formatting. It supports multiple encodings to preserve character sets and can handle different line ending types.

Although heavier editors provide more robust options, Notepad is enough to maintain small code documents, documentation, TODO lists, and other light referencing materials during your workflows. Best of all, it's free and comes pre-installed on Windows.

Download : Windows Notepad (Free)

If you live and breathe markdown, Typora is a natural note-taking environment for you. Its seamless live preview removes the need to switch between write and view modes, keeping you fully focused on content. Typora simplifies markdown through intuitive formatting, lists, images, and mathematical syntax support.

You can organize your notes through Typora's customizable file tree, search, and outline panels. Various themes optimize visual comfort during extended writing sessions. You can save your files on cloud services like Dropbox , and an array of export options also exist for sharing your notes.

While a license costs $14.99, you can take advantage of a generous 15-day free trial to experience Typora's full capabilities.

Download : Typora (Requires subscription, but offers a 15-day trial)

6. Code Writer

Code Writer is a capable yet lightweight text editor optimized for Windows environments. Its fluid interface streamlines workflows through features like syntax highlighting across more than 20 file types, multiple document handling, and distraction-free full-screen focus.

Edit, print, search, and seamlessly open any accessible file while zooming and dragging text to your heart’s delight. This free text editor serves as a slick Notepad replacement with coding tools incorporated.

Download : Code Writer (Free)

As a web developer, you need lightweight yet loaded tools to tinker and make your ideas a reality. Here are two often unknown yet hugely capable text editors for your front-end fight.

7. Bluefish

Bluefish seamlessly handles the varied demands of web development. It supports over 20 markup and coding languages via real-time syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and code folding. With Project Support, you can even transition smoothly between tasks.

Bluefish’s powerful search/replace and snippet functionality helps you streamline repetitive jobs. Loose integration with external validation and compilation tools places relevant feedback within the editing context. Online documentation and translation into 17 languages further open the text editor to international users. Best of all, Bluefish is completely free.

Download : Bluefish (Free)

8. Brackets

Are you tired of switching between tabs? Bracket’s interface includes visual tools that eliminate the need to switch while working on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript notes.

Powerful preprocessor support integrates seamlessly into the workflow. But Brackets truly shines through its live browser preview—changes made in code are instantly reflected, closing the loop between writing and seeing results. This tight feedback loop is perfect for quickly iterating on web page mockups or prototypes.

A robust extension ecosystem, including additions like Emmet and Autoprefixer, further enhances the experience. Cross-platform, customizable, and fully immersive in the development process through an intuitive visual editing surface, Bracket remains an excellent free choice.

Download : Bracket (Free)

Most times, when it comes to editing, one size does not fit all. Here are a few powerhouses that’ll fuel your flow—in totally different ways.

Emacs is a highly customizable text editor that also functions as an entire computing platform. As one of the oldest text editors still in active development, Emacs has evolved far beyond basic text editing into a diverse ecosystem of contributed modes, plugins, and enhancements.

You can benefit from its self-documenting nature, built-in tutorials, and coding modes optimized for every language. Notes become code through its powerful Lisp-based macro language. Personal configurations completely reshape Emacs through live customization of nearly every aspect.

With decades of community innovations freely available, Emacs remains the ultimate sandbox for ambitious developers to manage all aspects of their work .

Download : Emacs (Free)

10. Textpad

Sometimes, simple is best. Built on the philosophy of intuitive usability over complex learning curves, Textpad seamlessly handles common workflows programmers encounter when managing notes. It excels as a plug-and-play solution for anyone tired of wrestling with configuration or learning curves just to edit plain text efficiently.

Key features like syntax highlighting, code folding, multiple clipboards, and regular expression search/replace optimize workflows. Reusable snippets across projects streamline repetitive tasks. Extensive language support covers documentation, scripts, code, and more.

This editor is not free, but you can access a free trial to see if it's the right fit for you.

Download : Textpad (Requires subscription, but offers a free trial)

Vim is a venerable yet ever-evolving text editor with roots as the standard Unix tool vi. Its deep extensibility through a powerful plugin system and hundreds of supported file types have sustained Vim as a classic programmers' tool for efficient coding workflows.

Taking advantage of macros, registers, and deep undo allows your text to be efficiently transformed with more functionality and potential. Syntax highlighting and configurable keys in Vim optimize the visual parsing of code snippets. Integrations with build tools and debuggers bring relevant project data into your editing context. A vast online community continually develops extensions that integrate new languages and features.

While initially daunting in its keyboard-centric interface, Vim adapts well to simpler usage through configuration presets. For ambitious programmers, this free text editor cultivates proficiency worth investing in.

Download : Vim (Free)

There are many capable options available, but finding an editor that seamlessly enhances your unique workflow and continuously inspires productivity will prove most valuable in helping you effortlessly bring your ideas to life.