English is one of the most complex languages in existence today and it is the language of communication and journalism. With approximately 372 million speakers in 106 countries, it’s also one of the most widely spoken languages.
As a journalist, whether English is your first, second, third or fourth language, there are always ways to improve your English and communicate more effectively.
Here’s a look at just some of the tools you can find online to help polish up your written English, as a journalist:
If you’re a grammar wonk, Grammar Girl is a great site to add to your bookmarks tab. It features regular blog posts (and a podcast) explaining the rules behind punctuation, grammar, word usage and more. Mignon Fogarty offers helpful ways for you to remember the quirks and (sometimes infuriating) inconsistencies of the English language, brushing up on the difference between active and passive voice and how to identify a comma splice which are especially important in journalism.
Reverse Dictionary is every journalist’s new best friend. To use it, simply type a phrase or definition that describes the word you’re looking for into the search bar, and the Reverse Dictionary will present you with a list of possible matches. It’s also a great tool for non-native speakers of English to explore synonyms and grow their vocabulary.
Most word processors come equipped with some sort of spell-check function but when it comes to checking your grammar, these processors are sorely lacking. Enter Grammarly, a free Chrome extension that will comb your writing for grammatical errors and help teach you how to avoid such mistakes in the future. The extension catches more than 250 types of grammatical mistakes, as well as contextual spelling errors (write/right, affect/effect, etc.) and poor vocabulary usage. You can use Grammarly while writing emails, articles, social media posts and more.
Ginger helps to catch spelling and grammatical mistakes. It is also helping you learn from these mistakes. Non-native English speakers can benefit most from its learning center, which keeps track of your most common grammar mix-ups and offers personally tailored reports to show your progress over time. In addition to its grammar checker, Ginger includes a dictionary, sentence rephraser, text reader and translation tool.
As a journalist, this free tool helps you cut down on long, complex sentences to make your writing more immediate and direct. It offers suggestions for simplifying words, axing adverbs and avoiding passive voice. It has a great feature called the readability score. This shows how easy it is for others to read your writing (the lower your score, the better). Here’s an example:
Every journalist should know how to craft eye-catching headlines for a digital audience. This tool can help you do that. Whether you’re writing a headline, an email subject line or a tweet, Headline Analyzer offers suggestions that can drive more people to your work.
This is another tool that helps you measure the readability of your writing. The app calculates your average readability score based on a number of algorithms and indexes. Your readability score will indicate the average level of education someone needs to read your work. The tool then highlights areas for improvement, helping you maximize the clarity of your writing. While Readable is intended for English writing, it can also be used with most European languages.
Cheers!
Culled from ijnet.org
