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The software catches those disposable words that clutter my first draft, for which I’m grateful! Here are a few examples from an early draft of this post: In my experience, the suggestions are excellent. WordRake looks and feels like a native part of the Word experience. You can either accept or reject each suggestion. If you’ve ever collaborated with people using change tracking, you’ll be familiar with how this works. The suggestions appear in Word’s familiar track changes style. Then wait a moment while the editor ponders your words. Once you have drafted the document and are ready to polish it, select the WordRake menu and click the Rake icon. I’m basing my review on the Word integration, but there is also a version for Outlook.Īfter the software installation, a new entry appears on the top menu of your Word screen, next to the Review menu: WordRake. Raking unnecessary words is so much more fun than raking leaves Several years and many patents later, the WordRake software has loyal fans in the legal profession and other industries where precision and clarity are essential. The company’s origin story appeals to me: New York Times best-selling author Gary Kinder noticed persistent patterns when coaching his writing students, which led to the origin of this company. Rather, it edits for clarity and brevity. WordRake isn’t a grammar checker or a spell checker you can find those features already integrated into Microsoft Word. It’s designed for professional writers-not novelists or journalists, necessarily, but professionals who write as part of their jobs.

WordRake is editing software that integrates into Microsoft Word and Outlook.

It’s perfect for a someone like myself, who works in Microsoft Word and who values clarity and brevity. There are many software options on the market. The right software, however, can take you far.

While nothing beats a human editor, no one wants to hire an editor for every email and memo. For that, we need a nuanced editorial eye.

But those features can’t help with subtler but critical writing issues: excess wordiness or terminology that might confuse the reader. Technology has moved us in this direction by integrating spelling and grammar checking into our writing environments. Why not embed careful revision into your writing process for everything? So we send out our work with imperfections, excess words, remnants of messy thought processes-small glitches that add to the reader’s cognitive load.Įven if your writing doesn’t have glaring errors, why pass up an opportunity to present your ideas with crystal clarity? We realize that revision is important, but we’re in a hurry.Īs long as we think of revision as an ‘extra’ process outside of writing, we’re tempted to skip it. Most of us understand that great writing happens through revision.