20 English Writing Apps for Checking Grammar, Boosting Vocabulary and More
Do you need to improve your writing skills?
As with many of life’s problems, “there’s an app for that.”
In this post, I’ll recommend a range of helpful English writing apps that will help you correct your grammar, learn new vocabulary, improve your creativity and more.
These English writing apps will make a huge difference in your writing skills!
Contents
- Best For Checking Spelling: iA Writer
- Best For Checking Grammar: Grammarly Keyboard
- Best For Beginners: Ginger Grammar Spellchecker
- Best For Boosting Vocabulary: Terminology Dictionary
- Best For Finding Forgotten Words: Reverse Dictionary
- Best For Learning Idioms: English Idioms Illustrated
- Best For Finding Rhymes: Rhyme Builder
- Best For Story Prompts: The Brainstormer
- Best For Practicing Before Exams: Writing Roulette
- Best For Advanced Students: Creative Writer
- Best For Simple Writing Inspiration: Brainsparker
- Best For Formatting: Werdsmith
- Best For Native Speaker Feedback: HelloTalk
- More Writing Prompt Apps
- And One More Thing...
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
Best For Checking Spelling: iA Writer
In a nutshell: A word processor in which simpler is better.
Price: $$. A two-week free trial is available.
Main features:
- Syntax Control. The app will mark your writing with different colors depending on the part of speech of each word.
- Focus Mode. It focuses the view on the sentence or paragraph you are working with. The rest of the text becomes less visible to help you focus on what you are currently working on.
- Style Check. This option is only available for Mac and iOS users. It checks your writing and helps you get rid of repetitions, redundancies (unnecessary words) and clichés.
- Spellcheck. Never miss a spelling error again.
Best For Checking Grammar: Grammarly Keyboard
In a nutshell: A built-in virtual keyboard that checks your writing as you go.
Price: $$ per month. The basic version of the app is completely free, and you get a discount with quarterly and annual plans.
Main features:
- Spelling and grammar checker. If you make a mistake, the keyboard will tell you. It can also autocorrect your errors.
- Smart prediction. The keyboard is smart enough to guess what you are trying to write.
- Writing assistance. You will get suggestions on unclear sentences, synonyms, too long sentences, etc.
Best For Beginners: Ginger Grammar Spellchecker
In a nutshell: A grammar and spelling checker with lots of extras for a one-time payment.
Price: $.
Main features:
- Smart spellchecker. You will be able to correct all your mistakes in one click. You can ignore the corrections you do not want to change in your text.
- Rephrasing and synonyms. You will be given rephrasing and synonym suggestions whenever possible.
- Extras. The app also includes human voice text-to-speech, US/UK dialect option, a personal dictionary and machine translation of your writing into over 30 languages.
Best For Boosting Vocabulary: Terminology Dictionary
In a nutshell: A dictionary, a thesaurus and a research tool in one.
Available on: iOS
Price: $ with in-app purchases.
Main features:
- Off-line US dictionary. Use the dictionary offline and find simple definitions, synonyms, antonyms, collocations and more.
- Personalization. You can create your own list of favorite terms and add notes to them.
- Resource lookup. This feature allows you to look up words on Wikipedia, Google, Dictionary.com and other websites.
Best For Finding Forgotten Words: Reverse Dictionary
In a nutshell: A twist on dictionaries to improve your vocabulary in a fun way.
Available on: Android
Price: Free.
Main features:
- Reverse search. If you are writing and do not know a word (or cannot remember it), but know its definition or some keywords related to it, just write what you know and the dictionary will give you a list of words that match what you are looking for.
- Definitions. Once you have found the word you were looking for, you can view different definitions for it.
- Different options. The app will also show you anagrams, synonyms and more.
Best For Learning Idioms: English Idioms Illustrated
In a nutshell: A beautiful and fun way of learning English idioms.
Price: $. You can download the app for free and have the first 35 idioms right away, and the whole collection can be purchased for a one-time fee.
Main features:
- Origin and meaning of idioms. You not only get what the idioms mean but also where they come from.
- Beautiful illustrations. The amazing illustrations will help you remember the idioms much faster.
- Free content. Start with 35 idioms for free.
Best For Finding Rhymes: Rhyme Builder
In a nutshell: An app to find words that rhyme, perfect for writing poetry or lyrics in English.
Available on: Android
Price: Free.
Main features:
- Rhyme search. Look for words that rhyme with your words while you write in the app.
- Save your work. You can save your writing and have a look at it later.
- Simple look. The app is very simple, which makes it easy to use.
Best For Story Prompts: The Brainstormer
In a nutshell: An idea and story generator for people who love a challenge.
Price: Free with in-app purchases. The app with the classic Brainstormer is free. You can buy additional content (Character builder, Creature builder, World builder, etc.) for a small fee each.
Main features:
- Three wheels. Three wheels will spin to give you a conflict, a setting and a subject. The possibilities are practically infinite (go on forever).
- Creative thinking. The words in each wheel have been carefully selected to maximize creative thinking.
- Personalization. You can create and edit your own wheels.
Best For Practicing Before Exams: Writing Roulette
In a nutshell: An app for people who need writing practice and inspiration.
Available on: iOS
Price: Free.
Main features:
- Writing inspiration. Get an image and a writing task and let your imagination fly.
- Different writing tasks. From the classic 100-word exercises to haikus, you will have plenty of different ways of practicing your writing before an exam.
- Personalization. You can create your own tasks and complete them in the app notepad.
- Important: There is no “save” option in the app, so if you don’t want to lose what you write, just use the app to get inspiration and do the exercises somewhere else.
Best For Advanced Students: Creative Writer
In a nutshell: Recycle already written texts to create your own.
Available on: iOS
Price: Free with in-app purchases and pro version for $. The app with all the basic features is free. For a small fee, you can download Dictionary PRO and the Writer’s Pack, as well as smaller packs like Recipes or Poetry.
Main features:
- Different genres. The app includes texts from genres such as poetry, prose, dialogues, lyrics, romance and cooking, among others.
- Easy to use. If you do not feel like typing (which you can also do), just choose the tapping option.
- Dictionary PRO. This is an amazing tool to learn new words and use them in your writing. It includes definitions, rhymes, antonyms, synonyms and much more.
- Writer’s Pack. A powerful tool with writing ideas and millions of sentence segments analyzed.
- Other features. The app includes a cute robot that talks and types by itself and a beautifully designed notepad. Some features can even be used offline.
Best For Simple Writing Inspiration: Brainsparker
In a nutshell: A deck of cards to inspire your brain to write.
Available on: iOS | Android to be launched
Price: Free with in-app purchases for $. You can buy additional specialist card packs (like Blogger’s pack, Character’s pack, Quotes pack, Numbers pack or What if? pack) or a VIP pass that includes all the specialist packs available plus all future packs.
Main features:
- Inspirational prompts. Over 250 prompt cards to make you think and write on many different topics.
- Free pack for kids. The app includes a free pack for kids (which is also great for adult learners!) with over 150 creative activities.
- Free Vision pack. Another free pack that includes 52 goal-setting questions.
Best For Formatting: Werdsmith
In a nutshell: A portable writing studio for professional writers.
Available on: iOS
Price: Free with the option to subscribe for $ per month. Members get more themes, novel and screenplay writing tools, hundreds of writing prompts and the possibility of using Werdsmith on their computer.
Main features:
- Personalization. You can personalize your writing studio and change the theme and the formatting options.
- Save, sync and share. The app allows you to save your work and share it with your friends. You can also synchronize between devices—meaning that no matter where you do your writing, you will be able to access it from any other device—which makes the app totally portable.
- Goals and rituals. Create daily goals and rituals and challenge yourself to do them every day.
Best For Native Speaker Feedback: HelloTalk
In a nutshell: An app to learn English through conversation and writing.
Price: Free with in-app purchases. You can also become a VIP member to get benefits like learning three languages at the same time or finding more language partners.
Main features:
- Multiple languages. The app has native users from over 150 different countries, so it will be very easy to find the perfect one for you.
- Improve your speaking skills. You will be able to talk to native speakers of English, which will allow you to boost your level in a fun and easy way.
- Chat. Practice your writing skills in the chat. This is the perfect way of getting grammar and spelling feedback from your language partners.
- Moments. Use the Moments feature to share, answer and ask questions related to the culture of the language you are learning.
More Writing Prompt Apps
There are literally thousands of prompt and creative writing apps available for mobile devices. It would be impossible to include them all in one post.
However, there are some others that are worth mentioning:
- Writerly: This is a magnificent app with hundreds of exercises to practice your writing skills. It also includes tips, quests and mini-essays.
- Paperblanks Journal Prompts: This app will give you writing and drawing prompts and ideas to use in your personal journals and sketchbooks.
- Daily Prompt: Get a new writing prompt every day on your phone. The premium version allows you to enter writing competitions and receive feedback for your work.
- Writing Prompts: With this awesome app, you will get five prompt generators (News, Scenes, Sketches, Words and Texts) with literally hundreds of ideas each.
- Morning Pages: This app helps you build the habit of writing 500 words every morning. I personally love the Insights feature, which analyzes your writing and tells you what mood you are in on a specific day according to what you write.
- Writing Challenge: If you like competing against the clock, you are going to love this app. Set the timer and the app will give you a new prompt every time the clock reaches zero (you decide the length of the intervals).
So, there you go, friends.
These 20 apps will help you bring out your inner writer and improve your writing skills in ways you would never think were possible.
Stay curious my friends and, as always, happy writing!
And One More Thing...
If you like learning English through movies and online media, you should also check out FluentU. FluentU lets you learn English from popular talk shows, catchy music videos and funny commercials, as you can see here:
If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.
The FluentU app and website makes it really easy to watch English videos. There are captions that are interactive. That means you can tap on any word to see an image, definition, and useful examples.
FluentU lets you learn engaging content with world famous celebrities.
For example, when you tap on the word "searching," you see this:
FluentU lets you tap to look up any word.
Learn all the vocabulary in any video with quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.
FluentU helps you learn fast with useful questions and multiple examples. Learn more.
The best part? FluentU remembers the vocabulary that you’re learning. It gives you extra practice with difficult words—and reminds you when it’s time to review what you’ve learned. You have a truly personalized experience.
Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)
