Episode 10: Can Writer Make You a Better Writer?
Podcast Episode Details
Listen to the podcast to find out:
What Writer (writer.com) is and what it can do for writers and writing teams.
Features of Writer that may set it apart from similar platforms like Grammarly and Jasper.
Why David Crosby should be remembered for his importance to rock and roll and songwriting.
Introduction to Writer
I saw a speaker, May Habib from Writer, at Content Marketing World in September — specifically, the virtual version — I didn't attend in person this year. May's presentation was compelling enough that I decided to check out the platform. If you've been listening for a while, you know that I played around with Jasper for several months in 2022. You can find my review on that in episode 5: Content AI and Humble Pie.
Issues with Content AI Platforms like Jasper
Jasper is a tool that's based on GPT-3 AI project, the same project that ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 are based on. Jasper promises to help you do everything from writing full blog posts, to organizing your thoughts, rewriting existing text, creating captions, writing social media copy, creating product descriptions, and more.
This might be a mild spoiler for my review of that episode, but in general, I found the platform promising, and useful in some cases. I had a few problems with it, and concluded that I couldn't necessarily rely on it for more than simply developing ideas — so I canceled it.
The only problem is that, now and then, I find myself wishing I had some of that functionality back. ChatGPT solves part of the problem for me, but it just isn't as polished or easy to use as Jasper.
Then came Writer.
Is Writer a Grammarly Clone?
At first glance, Writer is a Grammarly clone. Grammarly is the market leader in grammar correction and writing accuracy tools — and I've used it for years.
Pictured: A look at Writer’s interface, with Grammarly-style suggestions as well as AI-driven content rewriting suggestions.
Like Grammarly, Writer watches what you write, and gives you a score based on the quality and accuracy of your writing. It provides suggestions in categories like spelling, grammar, terms, style, clarity, delivery, inclusivity, and plagiarism. If you've used Grammarly, you'll find that list familiar. There are some subtle differences, though.
Terms
One area I found that stood out were Terms. This feature of Writer allows you to enter important organizational terminology that might be specific to your company's brand or industry — things that a basic grammar checker in a word processor, for instance, might not catch.
Inclusivity
Pictured: Writer’s Inclusivity feature.
The other section I find helpful in Writer that Grammarly does offer, but in a slightly different way, is the Inclusivity section. Inclusivity is an important area for content creators to be conscious of. The system gives you a prompt when you have included a gendered pronoun to make sure you've used the correct one. It also will prompt you when divisive, offensive, ableist, insensitive, or stereotypical language is being used. Inclusive language is important when writing content, and we all need to be conscious of it. It's good to have a digital helper in this area.
Snippets
Writer also offers Snippets, which are sections of often used text that should be consistent, both from asset to asset, and writer to writer. You can add shortcuts to Snippets that allow you to easily drop in the text wherever you need it. Snippets are great for copyright statements, confidentiality statements, mission statements, and all those other statements that your organization requires.
Does Writer Stack Up to Grammarly?
How does it work compared to Grammarly? About the same, with just a few exceptions.
Some of the suggestions in Writer don't seem to be as polished as they are in Grammarly. That might be because I've been using Grammarly for years and have a familiarity with the type of feedback it provides.
I found that I often accept the rewriting suggestions found in Grammarly without editing. I tend to take a little extra time to manually rewrite the text in Writer. With the AI and machine learning elements of this tool, I expect that to improve and get better over time.
Jasper-like Functionality
Let's talk about the AI elements found in Writer, because this is the area where it moves beyond Grammarly. Writer has a feature called CoWrite that approximates the functionality of Jasper.
It features templates, similar to Jasper's Recipes, that analyze text you enter and create suggestions for blog post titles. It can summarize text into bullet points. It can even write copy for you based on the inputs you give it, or rewrite existing copy to simplify it and make it better.
Pictured: CoWrite — Writer’s take on Jasper’s Recipes functionality.
The Bottom Line on Writer
It all works together pretty well. It's an interesting platform, particularly for teams of writers or content creators. It's always hard to make sure that every writer in an organization has a consistent, unified voice. Features found in Writer could help teams with that brand consistency.
I'd also say that if anybody from my old employer is looking for a new platform for corporate information, proposal database or RFP response tools, etc. — it might be worth a look. I'd probably be pitching it right now if I were still there. I feel like it solves a lot of issues that I've had over my career.
With all that in mind, would I recommend Writer? Maybe. As I said, Grammarly has most of these features and more people have familiarity with that platform, making onboarding faster. Jasper has been doing the AI content generation game longer, and their recipes seem to work a little better at this point than Writer's templates do. But it's also more expensive.
If you're in a sizable organization, you very well might have Microsoft 365. While they don't have all of these features yet, Microsoft's grammar and spelling checker is a lot better than it used to be — rivaling tools like Writer and Grammarly. You may have seen the news recently that Microsoft is now a multi-billion dollar investor in the OpenAi project. They, of course, make tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E. It seems likely that we'll start to see features like these incorporated into the Office suite sooner rather than later.
What should you do? I don't know. This review is totally unsolicited and unpaid — I pay full price for Writer like everyone else. I can just tell you what I am doing. I'm using Writer to create, enhance, and validate all the copy that I create across every platform where I produce media. It's replaced Grammarly Premium and Jasper in my content workflow. It's working for me so far, and I like it.
The robots are done and now it's time for rock and roll.
Remembering David Crosby
Speaking of writers, I want to pay tribute this week to one of the great songwriters in the world of popular music over the last 50 years. David Crosby passed away last week at the age of 81.
Crosby was a huge part of two highly successful and influential bands: The Byrds and Crosby, Stills, and Nash — along with all its variations, including Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. David Crosby had a great voice and was a talented songwriter and musician.
David Crosby Music Recommendations
Here are some of my recommendations if you want to check out some of Crosby's best work.
The Byrds — Turn, Turn Turn (1965): The second album from The Byrds is a great starting point to hear some of Crosby’s early work. You pick up Crosby's distinct vocal harmonies on this record that would continue to be a staple of his recorded music for decades to come. Apple Music | Spotify
Crosby, Stills, and Nash (1969): The first album from the rock and roll supergroup featured tracks like Suite: Judy Blue Eyes, Marrakesh Express, Wooden Ships, and many more. Apple Music | Spotify
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young — Deja Vu (1970): a year after their debut, CSN added a Y to their name with the entrance of Neil Young, who would continue to collaborate with band off and on for years to come. Tracks on this wonderful record include Woodstock, Our House, Helpless, Teach Your Children, and so many more. Apple Music | Spotify
In addition to listening to the record, I recommend checking out Abby Devoe's video on the album from her outstanding Woodstock series on YouTube. She thoroughly researched Deja Vu and it's very well done. I'll link that for you in the show notes.
David Crosby — If I Could Only Remember My Name (1971): David Crosby recorded more than a dozen solo records throughout his career. I simply haven’t listened to all of them, so I’ll recommend his first, which features some wonderful tracks, including my favorites, Cowboy Movie and Laughing. Apple Music | Spotify
Send me a message or reach out on social media if you have a favorite that I didn't name today.
Thanks, David, for everything you brought to rock & roll, and creativity.