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- Apr 12, 2018 A number of free Mac apps designed for writers are worth considering. Manuscripts is a serious writing tool that allows you to plan, edit and share your work. It includes templates, an outliner, writing goals, and publishing features. It has features particularly suited to writing academic papers. Typora is a minimalistic writing app based on.
- Jan 03, 2020 If you are a writer, a blogger or a journalist looking for the best laptop for writers, the best laptop for bloggers, or the best laptop for journalists, you are in the right page. In this article, we will review several best laptops that are optimal for journalism, blogging and writing books, novels, notes, business proposals etc.
Jan 07, 2020 And since it’s one of the most popular apps in existence, there’s a veritable boatload of browser extensions and add-ons available for it as well. Evernote offers a free version that provides a slew of basic functionality, up to 60MB of uploads a month, and syncing for two machines, but if you’re a heavy user.
Writing a book is hard. I’ve written seven books and at some point during each one I had the thought, “There has to be a tool, a piece of book writing software, that would make this easier.”
Bad news/good news: writing a book will always be hard, and the best piece of writing software in the world won’t write your book for you. But the good news is there is book writing software that can make the process a little easier.
In this post, we will cover the ten best pieces of software for writing a book and look at the pros and cons of each.
FREE eBOOK: Every professional has a set of tools at their disposal that not only makes their job possible, but makes them better at doing it. Writing is no different, and while the right software is important, it’s just one of the many tools you need as a writer. That’s why we published this free 22-page eBook, 7 Tools to Help You Write a Novel. You can download it for free here. Enjoy!
Click the links below to get our review on the best writing software.
Best Writing Software: Contents
Worst Pieces of Software for Writing a Book
First, though, let’s cover software you should avoid, at least while you’re writing a book:
- Video Games. Especially World of Warcraft (always always always!) but also Solitaire, Sudoku, Angry Birds, and, for me right now, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.
- Facebook, Twitter, and Other Social Media Software. Do I really need to say more? Fortunately there’s a piece of book writing software for avoiding this very distracting software (see Freedom below).
- Other Productive Software Not Directly Associated With Your Writing. Yes, it’s good to reconcile your bank account on Quickbooks or make sure you’re up to date on your calendar app, but responsible, well-meaning work can easily be an excuse for a quick distraction that turns into a major distraction from writing your book.
Set aside time for your writing every day and then stay focused!
If you need a game, make writing your daily word count your game.
If you want more “likes” on social media, imagine how great getting five-star reviews on your book will be.
If you need to check your bank balance several times a day, think about what your bank balance will be when you stop checking it constantly, finish your book, and become a successful author.
The 10 Best Pieces of Book Writing Software
No piece of writing software will write your book for you, but these ten will help. Let’s look at the pros and cons of each.
1. Scrivener (Word Processor)
Scrivener is the premier book writing software. It is made by writers for writers. Scrivener’s “binder” view allows you to break up your book into chapters and sections and easily reorganize it. Project targets let you create word count goals and then track your progress daily. Its composition mode can help you stay focused by removing all the clutter. Plus, it allows you to format for publishing (e.g. on Amazon or Barnes & Noble).
There are some problems with Scrivener. Formatting is more complicated than it needs to be and collaborating isn’t easy, meaning it loses its effectiveness as soon as you bring on an editor. But it more than makes up for that by being so helpful in the early stages of the writing process.
In fact, we believe in Scrivener so much, we published a book about how creative writers can write more, faster using it. It’s called Scrivener Superpowers. If you’re using Scrivener or want to save yourself time as you learn how to use it for your creative writing, you can get Scrivener Superpowers here. The next edition comes out on Tuesday!
Cost: $49 for Mac, $45 for Windows
You can get a copy of Scrivener here, or learn more about how to use the software with one of these resources:
- Scrivener Superpowers by M.G. Herron
2. Google Docs (Word Processor)
While Scrivener is the best book writing software, once you get to editing and getting feedback, it begins to fall short.
That’s why Google Docs has become my second go-to piece of book writing software. It’s free, very easy to use, and requires no backups since everything is in the cloud.
Best of all are its collaboration abilities, which allow you to invite your editor to the document and then watch as he or she makes changes, tracked in suggestion mode, and leave comments on your story (see screenshot below).
Cost: Free!
Where to find it: Get started with Google Docs here
3. Google Sheets (Spreadsheet)
If you’d told me when I was first trying to become a writer that one of my most-used tools in my book writing software toolkit would be a spreadsheet, I would have told you I didn’t major in English to have to use a spreadsheet.
But now, as I’m finishing my twelth book, I realize that I’m using spreadsheets almost daily.
Spreadsheets allow you to get a sense of the elements of your book at a glance, and when you’re working on a 300-page document, distilling it down to useable information becomes very necessary.
You might use spreadsheets for:
- Character tracking
- Scene lists
- Outlines
Google Sheets is perfect for this because it’s free and you can quickly share your documents with your writing partners, editors, or beta readers to get feedback. Microsoft Excel is another great option, but for writers, I suggest Google Sheets.
Airplay apps for mac. Cost: Free!
Where to find it?Get started with Google Sheets here
4. Vellum (Book Formatting/Word Processor)
If you want to turn your book into an eBook, it’s not that hard. Scrivener, Word, Pages, they all can make eBooks. But that doesn’t mean they’ll look good. In fact, it takes a lot of skill and effort to make an eBook look good on any of those word processors. That’s why I love Vellum so much.
Vellum makes beautiful eBooks.
Vellum picks up where Scrivener, Word, and Pages leave off, giving you a tool to make great looking eBooks every time.
The most important part of this is the previewer (see the image below), which lets you see how each formatting change or book edit you make will appear on Kindle, Fire, iPhone, Nook, and other eReaders.
It also has stripped-down, option-based formatting, which is perfect for designing eBooks.
I really love this app!
Best Mac Apps For Writing Technical Documents Download
UPDATE: Vellum recently expanded into formatting for paperback books! I haven’t tried it yet but it looks awesome!
Cost: $199 for eBook generation, $249 for Paperback Formatting
5. Freedom (Productivity App)
One question writers always ask me is, “How can I stay focused enough to finish what I write?”
I have too many thoughts on this for this article, but as far as writing software to encourage focus, I recommend Freedom.
Freedom allows you to block your biggest distractions online, including both websites and mobile apps, for a set period of time. So when you mindlessly escape your book to scroll through Facebook, you’ll find the site won’t load.
You can also schedule recurring sessions, so that at a scheduled time (e.g. Mondays from 6 am to 10 am), you won’t be able to access the sites on your blocklist, even if you try.
There are other apps like this that we’ve written about before, notably Self-Control for Mac and StayFocused for Windows. But Freedom goes further, allowing you to block sites on both your computer and your phone, and enabling recurring sessions.
You can learn more about how writers can get the most out of Freedom on our review here.
Cost: $29 / year for Pro version, which I use and recommend (Free trial available)
Where to find it:Get started with Freedom here
6. Microsoft Word (Word Processor)
Again: no piece of book writing software is going to write your book for you. If you’re looking for the next “shiny new toy” to help you write your book, it might be an excuse to avoid doing the hard work of writing.
Most of us learned how to use computers by using Microsoft Word, or a program like it. Word gets the job done. Sure, Scrivener is a little better for books, but I wrote my first book on Word and it’s fine.
I wrote a long review of the pros and cons of using Word to write books—the main problem is that as your document grows, it becomes more and more difficult to work with, whereas with Scrivener, it becomes easier—but the point is, if Word is what you have, don’t let that stop you from finishing your book.
As Jeff Elkins said in his review of Word, “If you aren’t already putting in the hard work to be the kind of writer you want to be, it doesn’t matter what new writing software you invest in. It is not going to help.”
Cost: $69 / year from Amazon (includes Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and other Microsoft software)
7. Ulysses (Word Processor)
When I’m writing for a long time, I like to get up and go for a walk. Sometimes, I wish I could continue writing while I walk. Other times, I come up with an idea while I’m walking, type it up on my phone, and then want to easily move what I wrote to my laptop without having to go through the hassle of emailing it back and forth to myself.
That’s where Ulysses comes in.
Ulysses is a word processor for Mac that allows you to sync between all your devices, so you have what you need wherever you are. Scrivener recently released their iOS app which allows you to do this as well, but the process is clunky and requires you to purchase both the desktop and iOS apps. Ulysses’ sync makes the process much more seamless.
Like Scrivener, it has a binder-like sidebar that allows you to move documents around. Ulysses is not designed specifically for books so it takes a little configuring to make it work for you, but once you have it set up the way you want it’s very intuitive.
And while I hate Markdown, I actually like the paired-down formatting options Ulysses gives. Overall, I’m not going to convert from Scrivener to Ulysses any time soon, but I think it’s a great option for most writers.
Cost: $45 Overdrive app for mac download.
Where to find it: App store, or here (Mac only)
8. Microsoft Excel (Spreadsheets)
As Jeff Elkins says in his review of Microsoft Excel, it’s great, but “it’s a little like bringing a bazooka to a knife fight. You will need only a small fraction of its capability.”
If you have Excel and love it, great. Otherwise, use Google Sheets, especially if you’re sharing your sheet with a collaborator or editor.
Cost: $69 / year from Amazon (includes Word, Powerpoint, Outlook, and other Microsoft software)
9. ProWritingAid (Grammar/Spell Check)
Can book writing software replace an editor?
Definitely not. But if you ask Alice Sudlow, our in-house editor, she’s tell you, “If you don’t have access to an editor (or if you do, but you don’t want to hire them to edit your emails or Facebook posts), grammar checking software like ProWritingAid is an accessible, affordable alternative.
If you struggle with grammar, sentence structure, spelling, or even writing style, ProwritingAid can help. It goes far beyond your built-in spell-check.
You should still learn grammar skills, but ProWritingAid can help you start to see the patterns and grow as a writer.
There’s a free version that’s very good. It can even be installed into your browser or Word processor, so you can check your grammar wherever you write. The paid version, just $60 a year (less than half of what Grammarly costs), gives you additional support on sentence structure, style, and vocabulary.
Learn more about how writers can get the most out of ProWritingAid here.
Cost: Free! (Premium version is $60 / year)
Where to find it: Get started with ProWritingAid here
10. Hemingway App (Grammar/Style Checker)
Most writers think their sentences are easier to read than they are. You think you’re coming across clearly, that your writing makes sense, but then someone reads it and comes away with something totally different.
Hemingway App helps with that.
Hemingway App is a free website that checks readability. You can copy and paste your writing into the website’s input box. Then it will grade your writing based on your used of adverbs, passive voice, and sentences as units.
Hemingway App is useful, but even the best book writing software can’t replace a good editor.
Cost: Free!
The 7 Tools Every Writer Needs
Every professional has a set of tools at their disposal that not only makes their job possible, but makes them better at doing it. Writing is no different, and while the right software is important, it’s just one of the many tools you need as a writer. Android app similar to soundboard for mac.
That’s why we published a free 22-page eBook, 7 Tools to Help You Write a Novel. In this short guide, we’ll cover some of the basic tools that form the foundation of a writing life.
You can download it for free here. Enjoy!
The Most Essential Book Writing Software
Imagine it’s three thousand years ago. You’re sitting around a campfire with some of your family and friends, tired from the day’s work. You begin to tell a story. It’s one you’ve told before, told a hundred times. You can see faces around the fire, the children with their eyes wide, the men and women who have heard the story before but still enjoy it because it brings meaning to their lives.
Storytellers—writers—have existed since the beginning of humanity. They didn’t always have book writing software. They didn’t have the printing press or the internet. They didn’t always even have the alphabet to write their stories down.
Instead, storytellers had their imaginations, their voices, and a rapt audience.
You don’t need book writing software to write a great story. Book writing software can make the process a little faster or easier, but the truth is great stories will always exist, no matter what kind of software we have.
The only three things essential to writing a great book:
- Your imagination
- Your words
- A desire to tell your story
That’s all you need. Do you want to write your book? If you do, then do it. Write it. Nothing is stopping you except you. So go get writing.
What pieces of book writing software do you use? Let us know in the comments.
PRACTICE
The world is full of powerful software to help you write your book. In the end, though, all these tools are just that—tools. The stories you imagine and your discipline to put the words on the page are far more important.
So for this practice, set aside all the fancy software. Eliminate all the bells and whistles and open up your computer’s native text editor (TextEdit for Mac or Notepad for Windows). Take fifteen minutes to write without any distractions. Continue your work in progress, or start a new story based on this prompt:
A student discovers one of their teachers is not what they appear to be.
When you’re done, share your writing practice in the comments. And if you share, be sure to leave feedback for your fellow writers!
Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. You can follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).
Having worked as a Technical Writer for about 10 years in my career, I’ve used a variety of documentation tools on a need basis. As a technical writer, the primary job role is to get the content right.
Using the right tools for technical writing makes the life of a technical writer easy. There are tooling available for different purposes — authoring, publishing, screen captures, drawing, image manipulation, and more.
What is Technical Writing?
So, let me start off with the basic question — what exactly is technical writing?
Before going into knowing about the tools for technical writing, let’s get the context right. Technical writing is the art of explaining how to use a technology to a non-expert user using easy-to-understand language.
In a more generic way, technical writing means technical communication — to convey complex information in a simple format.
Download the eBook of this article to learn “10 Most Popular Tools for Technical Writing” in offline!
10 Most Popular Tools for Technical Writing
This blog will cover the 10 most popular tools for technical writing that every writer should use to make the most while curating content. Hope this blog adds value for aspiring technical writers and for those who are keen to expand their knowledge horizon.
We will split the blog post based on the phase of documentation for which you can use the tools for technical writing:
- Authoring tools (on-premise and cloud)
- Screen Capture tools
- Image Editing tools
- Publishing tools
- Spell check tools
Authoring tools for technical writing
Microsoft Word
When it comes to content writing, Microsoft Word is the first tool that comes to mind in a flash for any technical writer. Microsoft Word is definitely a technical writer’s best friend. What makes it so popular is its simple and elegant look combined with a rich set of features.
According to a report from Microsoft, 1 out of every 7 persons uses Microsoft Word either for his/her professional or personal work. Statistics also say that about 80 percent of students use Microsoft Word for individual work, while 13 percent use it for group work.
Here’s a list of features that makes Microsoft Word the best tool for content writers:
- Automatic spell checker and highlighter, inbuilt grammar check capability
- Pre-loaded document templates such as brochures, flyers, technical whitepapers, troubleshooting guides and so on
- Tracks changes — useful for editors and peer reviewers to review and suggest edits to the content.
- Want to replace a word across the entire document? Find and Replace is probably, your life saver.
- Save your document to different formats such as PDF, XPS, web page, Rich Text Format (RTF), plain text, and more
Additionally, you can define your own style for the documentation. You can define text and paragraph formats, add Table of Contents for your content, create tables and do wonders with the tool.
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Get StartedNotepad / Notepad++
Notepad is the default text editor that ships with Windows. You can write simple text file content such as a ReadMe file, or License Agreement file.
![Mac Mac](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126033004/111142414.png)
You can use notepad in cases where you don’t need rich formatting capabilities. Say, you are in a meeting/conference and you want to take quick notes, Notepad is the better choice of tool.
Tip: Use notepad when your focus is more towards writing than on formatting.
Notepad++ is an advanced text/source code editor that offers support for more languages. In addition to typing text, Notepad++ supports spell check, find and replace capability (very handy feature when you have a lengthy file and you want to change multiple occurrences of a word), and more.
These features make Notepad++ score more brownie points when compared to Notepad.
Google Docs
Google Docs is a free, multi-user collaboration tool that is available as a part of Google Drive. It’s best suited when multiple users want to collaborate and curate content together on a specific topic. Most businesses these days are adopting this tool to increase the efficiency of their staff and make information readily available on the cloud.
With Google Docs, you don’t have to worry about versioning problems for your documentation. Because you will see who is working on the document as users make changes to the content. Changes are automatically saved every few minutes to your Google Drive. This means the data is always available in your Google Drive account.
In Google Docs, you have three options — Editing, Suggesting and Viewing. In the editing mode, you can edit the document directly and the changes will not be tracked. Suggesting will enable tracking and the edits you suggest will become suggestions. You can read or print the final document from the Viewing mode option.
Few disadvantages with Google Docs (despite being one of the popular free online word processor) — it requires internet access to view/edit the documents. While this is an advantage on one side of the coin, on the other side, this becomes a disadvantage.
Without internet access, you cannot access Google Drive (or your Google Docs!). The documents that you are working on will not be available in the absence of an internet connection. Google Docs also lacks the wide range of formatting options available in traditional word processing systems.
Markdown Editor
In the recent years, Markdown has attained a lot of interest and attention. Markdown was initially aimed and developed as an alternative for HTML. The intention was to help people to create web pages easily using plain text writing without much HTML experience. As the tool grew popular, people also started to make use of Markdown for taking notes, to-do lists and so on.
Markdown uses simple formatting syntax that most users are familiar with. There are no extra words or syntax used for a specific operation. For example, bold is **bold**, heading 1 is # Heading 1, [link] (URL) for hyperlinking. This is very simple when compared to HTML syntax such as <a href=”link url”>Link</a>.
You don’t need any special WYSIWYG editors to get started with Markdown. You can use any plain text editor (even notepad!) to create content using the Markdown syntax. There are lot of markdown editors that you can get started with. You can also use Dingus — the browser version of markdown editor created by John Gruber.
Did You Know? Document360 also uses Markdown editor to help content writers build knowledge base articles for their software products? You can give it a try here.
Screen Capture tools
If you are a technical writer or a blogger, it’s very common to add screenshots of an application or a product. There are hundreds of tools available to take screenshots.
Screenshots are the face of your product/application. That is the first thing people will see when they land on your website/blog post. Having screenshots of the application in your documentation also plays a major role in decision making. Therefore, it’s crucial to get the perfect screenshot in the correct screen resolution setting.
You also need to be careful in deciding what to show in the screenshot. Things like names, email addresses should be removed or erased off from the screenshot. Therefore, it’s very important that your screen capture tools provide these capabilities to make changes to the images.
In this section, we’ll list out the common screen capture tools for technical writing that you can use to grab screenshots.
Snipping Tool
If you are used to Windows, there’s a very handy tool that comes pre-built called the “Snipping Tool”. With this tool, you can grab a screenshot of the entire screen, the window alone or grab a portion of the screen using the rectangular snip option.
After snipping the content, you can use the pen tool, highlight the text to make it look prominent. You can save the image into different formats such as PNG, JPEG, GIF or Single File HTML (MHT). There is also an option to directly email the snippet to an email address as an attachment.
TechSmith SnagIt
SnagIt is a simple and powerful screen capture software from TechSmith targeted for marketers and technical writers. SnagIt is supported on Windows and Mac OS. With SnagIt, you can capture your screen and save them as .PNG, .JPG, or share it to different outputs such as File, FTP, Screencast, Camtasia studio, and more.
With SnagIt, you can capture a specific scrolling area (horizontal/vertical/entire scroll area) from the window. SnagIt also supports the Video Recording capability. This feature can be used to record actions being performed on the screen. Recent versions of SnagIt support a new feature called the Panoramic capture that is like scrolling capture. The major difference is that you can control how much of area to capture from the screen.
You can also format your images with borders, use paint tools to add arrows, text boxes, callouts, blur out text and so on. You can also combine multiple screenshots into a single image.
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Get StartedSnagIt is available in a one-time purchase licensing model ($50) and a 30-day money back guarantee. With different pricing options such as Personal and Professional, Education and Government, it is one tool that cannot be missed in the arsenal of a technical writer. You can also try SnagIt free for 15 days!
FireShot
FireShot is a browser plugin available with most modern browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera. This tool gives the option to capture a page or select an area on the browser.
Once you have taken the screenshot, you can perform quick edits such as crop, resize, adding annotations. You can save the screenshot as an image or as PDF.
When the plugin is added to Chrome, this is how it will look on the address bar. Clicking the icon will present different options to capture the screenshot.
If you need advanced editing tools and capturing techniques, you can upgrade to FireShot Pro version for $60.
Image editing tools
Many times, content writers use royalty free images in the articles or blog posts. These images sometimes cannot be used as-is. It will require some edits that is difficult to achieve with screen capture tools. You will require proper screen editing skills to achieve the edits.
If you have access to your web design team, this makes your job lot simpler. However, not all times you may have the liberty to reach out to the designer requesting for edits. In this case, knowledge of an image editing software will come in really handy.
Adobe Photoshop
According to Writers UA User Assistance Tool Survey, Adobe Photoshop is the 4th most used tool by technical writers. Technical writers can use Photoshop to edit graphics and create images from the scratch. It is always a good practice for the technical writers to understand the know-how of Photoshop.
Adobe Photoshop is best used to create web page designs, ad banners for social media promotions, edit pictures, merge multiple images into one, add special effects to an image and lots more.
The learning curve of Photoshop is quite steep. There are alternatives such as GIMP that should work for technical writers, but GIMP also requires its own learning curve.
Publishing tools
Adobe FrameMaker
If you are concerned about writing content and re-using the existing content, known as single source authoring, then you can consider Adobe FrameMaker for your requirements.
FrameMaker is best suited for industrial standard documentation for documents spanning over 200+ pages.
You can generate structured documentation with an XML framework that’s 100% DITA compliant. FrameMaker is a DITA-friendly authoring tool with the built-in Print a PDF option.
Additionally, you can define templates and draft content according to the templates. You can generate the automatic hyperlinks, Table of Contents, List of Figures and List of Tables in just a few clicks.
However, some common limitations with FrameMaker is that it is expensive and requires a steep learning curve.
RoboHelp
RoboHelp is an application that technical writers can use to publish online documentation. It is one of the most popular Help Authoring Tools (HAT) developed and published by Adobe Systems to help technical writers develop help projects and render them across different formats. RoboHelp is used by businesses to deliver online help content and knowledge base articles.
You can use RoboHelp to generate output in the following formats --
- HTML5 help format
- XML
- Printed documents
- Mobile App formats
- WebHelp formats
- eBook
The RoboHelp interface is user friendly and helps users to publish content easily without any hassles. Being a HAT, users can take care of creating the documentation for publishing the content without any assistance.
The major downside of RoboHelp (or any HAT for that matter) is that it takes time to accustomed to the software. Also, when collaborating with multiple users (for peer reviews), it gets difficult to share the content with other users since the content resides within the tool. The cost of Adobe RoboHelp (latest version) costs $1000 which is not suitable for independent technical writers or small businesses.
Recommendation: You can also use knowledge base software like Document360 to publish your documentation online. You don’t have to invest lots of money in setting up an online knowledge base.
You get rich WYSIWYG or Markdown-based editor, maintain versions of your articles, import your documentation from other platforms with ease, and lots of super cool features.
Spell check tools
If you are a technical writer or blogger, you will know how much spelling and grammar mean to your content. It’s easy to write an article but the hardest part is to proofread the content and making sure it is perfect. This will increase the quality of the blog or technical article.
Grammarly
Grammarly is the writing assistant for most technical and content writers. This is one of the widely used tools for technical writing. Grammarly is available for free as an online text editor and a free extension for Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.
Grammarly automatically highlights the mistakes instantaneously; and offers suggestions to improve or correct the errors. For terms specific to your requirement, you can add them to the dictionary so that Grammarly will not flag them as an error in future.
Grammarly also has the interesting feature where it has the capability to check a document for plagiarism. It has an internal logic that automatically classifies the content as copied from the internet.
Final Thoughts
Finally, As technical writers, it’s important that you choose the right tools for technical writing. Technical writers work in different industries and are the primary responsible sources to generate quality documentation.
Before getting started on any of the tools for technical writing, make sure you read the features offered. This helps to make a better decision.
Picking the right tools for technical writing will help you generate quality content for your products that will interest the users. Download apple photos app for mac.
Best Writing Apps For Free
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Get StartedSo, if you are a technical writer reading this blog post, do you use any of the aforementioned tools for technical writing? What are your thoughts on the products?
Feel free to share your comments. If there are better alternatives to the products suggested, please recommend the products so that it will benefit our readers.