As a freelance writer, I am a frequent user of proofreading tools and have probably tried every proofreading and editing software in the market. Grammarly is my personal favorite and I have reviewed it here. I am also a big fan of Ginger Software, which is almost as good as Grammarly and is a proofreading tool that every freelance writer should have, in my opinion. Let’s see why in this Ginger Software Review 2016.
So what is Ginger?
Ginger is a proofreading tool that is aimed at helping people for whom English is a second language. Ginger is targeted at students, journalists, content writers, bloggers, ebook authors, marketers, copywriters and professionals.
According to the developers of Ginger, they use a new technology that deciphers the semantic meaning and context of the text input by performing a comparison with hundreds of millions of similar sentences on the Web. The key to Ginger’s working as a proofreading tool is its emphasis on the context of the sentences and semantics.
Ginger is an Israeli startup, which puts it in a unique position as Hebrew, the official language of Israel is one of the most complex languages in the world, which is almost impossible to learn as a second language. Hebrew is based on context and semantic, much more so than English. So the founder of Ginger, tech entrepreneur Yael Karov, can be said to be specially qualified to create a proofreading tool in English.
Let’s talk about why Ginger is so highly rated…
Price – Ginger has a unique pricing model. It is available as a Free Version, a Basic Version and a Premium Version. The Basic Version costs $4.90/month or available for life with a one-time payment of $39. The Premium version is available for a one-time payment of $89
Integration with MS Word – This to me is the best thing about Ginger. There is no need to upload documents into the Ginger app, and then copy and paste it into Word. Ginger does the proofreading on MS Word itself.
As I type this article in MS Word, I can see the Ginger icon on top, which I can use anytime I want to proofread a paragraph or the whole article or blog post. I can then make the corrections using a single click. Ginger is one of the most user-friendly proofreading tools I’ve seen and trust me, I’ve seen them all!
American English and British English – As a freelance writer, I write for both American and British clients. Ginger is the only proofreading tool out there which can be adjusted for American English AND UK English. So when you use the UK English option with Ginger, you “favor” is corrected as “favour” and vice versa for the US English option. This is a very unique feature and it’s something that you don’t get even with Grammarly.
Ginger Catches Mistakes that MS Word Fails to Identify – Ginger proofreads one sentence at a time, and stops when it latches on to a mistake. Yes, as I have found there are a number of grammatical errors, punctuation mistakes and more that MS Word fails to identify, but which are caught by Ginger. For me, Ginger and MS Word complement each other and I use both to proofread my writing.
Sentence Rephraser – Ginger has a unique feature called Sentence Rephraser which can be used to say a sentence in different ways. I don’t find this to be a particularly useful feature and I found many of the sentences got from this feature to be rather weird.
Final Thoughts
I hope you enjoyed this Ginger Software Review 2016. I’m a big fan of Ginger and it has certainly made my life as a freelance writer so much easier. Ginger has got an unbeatable price and amazing functionality. Is it the best proofreading tool in the world? No, that honor belongs to Grammarly. But Ginger certainly comes close and is cheaper too.
You can download Ginger Software here and start using it NOW!
I am really glad to read it and being able to share my thoughts on it. I want to use this opportunity to say that I really love this blog. It is an amazing resource of information for my working. Thank you so much.