5 Must Have Google Docs Add Ons for Writers

There are many reasons why Google Docs is my go-to document creation tool. I can fully control it with shortcuts, easily navigate documents, merge files, real-time collaborate, and much more. However, what really intrigues me is its amazing support for third-party add-ons. There are a plethora of Google Docs add-ons to make you more productive or even do things it doesn’t natively support; like signing a document.

If you are a blog writer or a student looking to improve your writing, then I know a few Google Docs add-ons for writers that will surely help you. I have personally used most of them for years. They have really helped me improve my writing, I am sure you’ll find them useful as well.

1. SAS Writing Reviser

You must have basic English and grammar knowledge to use this tool, I won’t recommend it to a newbie looking for a magic wand to correct all the mistakes. It’s basically a tool to improve your writing, not to fix mistakes. There are dozens of tools in it to identify different writing errors and manually fix them.

The problems it can detect include, passive voice, repeated words, run-on sentences, transitions, weak verbs, vague words, misplaced modifiers, long sentences, and many more. It will highlight the text needing improvement and you can replace it as needed.

Tip: The add-on has many tools to fix your writing, but if you will use all of them; it will take a lot of time. I’ll recommend you only use it to improve the areas where you are weak. Try starting with passive voice, wordiness, vague words, repeated words, and weak verbs.

2. Writing Tips from Irregardless.ly (No Longer Available)

It’s an open-source add-on that non-native English writers will surely love. The goal of the add-on is to help you identify an unidiomatic phrase that is usually considered unrequired or even offensive. In simple words, it makes your write-up feel original without nagging phrases. If you particularly write reviews, then you will definitely find this useful. Best of all, it works in the background to automatically identify mistakes as you type.

3. Pupil Pref (No longer Available)

Based on Professor Arnold Wilkins research, Pupil Pref is an add-on to change the background color of your document to make it easy on the eyes. There are a total of 16 types of colors to choose from that are known to lessen fatigue and eye strain. I don’t use this add-on all the time. But if I need to work late at night or I am already feeling a little tired, then it definitely makes writing less stressful.

I personally like the colors number 8 and 12, you can pick any color you like as they all serve the same purpose.

4. GradeProof: Proofreading with AI

Coming to the proofreading add-on that almost every writer needs. I personally like GradeProof for proofreading my documents as it works great even with the free version and lets you automatically fix mistakes with ease. Apart from advanced word structuring and plagiarism checker, all the required tools are available for free. Just run GradeProof and it will let you automatically fix mistakes in its own editor and apply them in Google Docs.

In my experience, its accuracy is comparable to the popular proofreading tool Grammarly. You can also try out ProWritingAid if GradeProof seems a little basic. However, I find ProWritingAid a bit complicated and very limited without the premium version.

5. WordPress.com for Google Docs

A must-have add-on for any blogger who has a WordPress website. Google Docs is great for creating the document, but it doesn’t work well with the WordPress editor.  When you copy/paste the content, all the formatting and images are removed in the process.

With this add-on, you can directly import your Google Docs document in WordPress with most of the formatting and all the images intact. It does require an initial setup, but you can check this thorough guide to getting started.

Bonus

If you constantly need to borrow a lot of computation information from the web, then try Wolfram|Alpha for Docs. It’s a computation-based search engine that only shows computable information about a query, such as earth mass, nutritional information, and even complex math problems. I personally don’t need it often in my tech writing, but I am always amazed by the capabilities of this search engine. Here is a quick tour of Wolfram|Alpha to get you started.

Ending thoughts

You should definitely have a proofreading add-on even if you are a professional writer. However, a tool like SAS Writing Reviser would be a great addition to improve your writing even further. These are my favorite Google Docs add-ons for writers, which Google Docs add-ons do you use to write better?