Proper grammar and functional vocabulary in a sentence light it up like Christmas lights on an otherwise regular pine tree. Not only does it make a sentence look good, but also makes it understandable to the reader. No wonder your primary school teachers put so much more extra stress on learning your verbs! The key to proper communication is that the thoughts of the speaker reach the person who is being delivered the message as clearly and accurately as possible. (This is a WhiteSmoke vs. Grammarly Review)

To achieve that, not only is it essential to know enough words to state what you intend to say clearly but also to use proper grammar and punctuations to string those words into meaningful sentences.

Moreover, a poorly constructed sentence does not always deliver the message we intend it to. I mean, you get the difference between “Let’s eat, Dad” and “Let’s eat Dad.” While in the former, the speaker shares with his/her Dad their desire to eat, while the latter is, well, just scary, to be honest! All that because of a comma!

Now that we have established the importance of proper grammar, it is often not possible for a person to get all his grammar correct, either due to a lack of adequate knowledge or some time constraint.

Big companies often issue essential information daily via notices or emails. It is not always possible to hire a writer just for that. Likewise, a student needs to submit their assignments with proper grammar and punctuation to get an advantage over others.

To make our daily lives easier, various grammar-checking software has been developed to help us write appropriate sentences with perfect grammar.

Of the various tools available in the market, the two most popular grammar checkers used are WhiteSmoke and Grammarly. Though having mostly the same set of features, a more in-depth inspection led us to notice some minute differences in the two.

Here’s a brief about the differences and similarities between WhiteSmoke and Grammarly software.

What is White Smoke?

Started in 2009 by WhiteSmoke Inc., this grammar-checking tool was specially designed for dyslexic people and ones who had difficulty writing even the elemental correspondences. This tool gained tremendous popularity within ten years and secured its place among its contemporaries like Grammarly and Ginger. Notably, White Smoke is now ranked as one of the world’s top spelling and plagiarism checker.

We have previously discussed the Differences and Similarities Between Ginger Software and Grammarly.

White Smoke Features

Let us glance through WhiteSmoke’s various features.

Grammar Checker

This is the primary function of the tool. WhiteSmoke significantly improves the grammar of any article submitted with about 80% accuracy.

It has an extensive database consisting of an impressive amount of information on the various grammar mistakes by users worldwide. Using a sophisticated algorithm, they find out the problems within a particular text, and compare them with errors worldwide, and give the best possible corrections.

Spell Checker

Often, without realizing, we misspell very commonly used words when writing a long article.

The spell checker in WhiteSmoke is used to not only check for wrongly-spelt words, but also for the ones which may have the correct spelling but is used in the wrong context. Thus it is an essential tool for every writer who wants to deliver a perfectly-spelled passage.

Style Checker

Not only is it vital to write properly-constructed sentences, but an article should also have a proper “flow” of words to make it enjoyable to read. Stylistic errors in a report submitted are underlined to make it more easy-going. Examples of stylistic errors include monotonous same length sentences throughout the article, or maybe using different tenses in the same sentence.

This feature is fundamentally crucial for non-English speakers, who are perhaps not so familiar with the intricacies of sentence constructions.

Punctuation Checker

Even the best of the English writers sometimes get confused between were to use a colon or a semi-colon. WhiteSmoke makes sure that not only do you write proper spellings in your text but also that you do not misplace a comma or a full-stop. The advantage of this is that, with continued use, it has been noticed that there has been an improvement in our usage of various punctuations, like a comma, apostrophe, or a semi-colon.

Most recruiters pay special attention to the proper usage of punctuations in your CV, or maybe even in your term paper in college.

Multilingual Translator

Considering that the majority of people in the world have English as their second language, the translator is especially useful for increasing the global usage of the tool. One can write a piece in a language they are comfortable in and translate it into English in the WhiteSmoke text editor online. Not only does it accurately translate the text, but it also makes sure to change the sentence construction according to the language used.

WhiteSmoke allows users to use as many as 55 different languages, which gives it an edge over its competitors.

Plagiarism Checker

WhiteSmoke has an impressive plagiarism checker to check for copied content in your text. This is an essential tool for students writing their thesis, which they need to submit with the maximum percentage of originality possible; otherwise, they have a chance to be rejected.

Premium Desktop Software and Mobile Application

WhiteSmoke integrates with Window and Mac users to help correct mistakes while writing in their text editors. This is useful because it saves time on writing an article separately, and then copy-pasting it in the browser to check for mistakes.

Another feature that makes WhiteSmoke popular with users is their Android and iOS version, which lets users use it on their mobile devices.

Read-Made Templates

There are in-built templates available in the tool which lets users select a particular template for their use, saving them the extra time to incorporate their required template manually.

Tutorials

Tutorials available on their website teach people to write proper grammar while focusing on their mistakes. This not only is useful for correcting your grammar but makes it an essential tool for non-English speaking individuals to get the benefits of an English-learning course along with a grammar checker all packed in one place.

Cost

WhiteSmoke offers three different price plans which people can avail according to their needs. The ESSENTIAL plan comes with $9.95/month; the PREMIUM plan costs $14.95/month, while the MOBILE APP is available at $2.50/month. Also,

quotes are available for purchase in bulk for institutions or office places.

Grammarly Features

Let’s look at the key features of Grammarly.

Mistake corrections

The primary function of this software, Grammarly corrects the punctuation, grammar, and sentence constructions of sentences with the maximum efficiency. It corrects all contextual errors, making it even more useful for casual writers, professional writers, and students alike.

Also, before you start giving a passage to check, it asks for specifics about the tone of the reading for more efficient checking.

For example, some terms are valid only in specific contexts. Therefore, while writing a legal document, it needs to be strictly formal, whereas writing for a blog, maybe informal. Grammarly takes these into account and changes its stringency level accordingly.

Improvement of writing style

Different passages are targeted towards different audience and domains. Grammarly tailors the editing experience based on whether the audience is general or a subject expert, or if the adoption is meant for academic, casual, business, technical, etc. in particular. This specific form of editing is an added advantage for people from different fields.

Grammarly Edu

Grammarly has video tutorials which help students prepare for college-level writing. It can be integrated into your Windows or Mac which would show you your mistakes, as you type.

Not only does Grammarly correct your grammar, but it is also instrumental in the long-term improvement of your writing skills!

Easy-to-use platform

Grammarly has free browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, that checks for mistakes as you write. Also, it has an add-on for Microsoft Office and Outlook, which is a bonus over their default grammar-checker.

Free, upgradable software

The Grammarly software is available for free for casual users for an unlimited amount of time. They can open the web page in their browsers and use its basic features.

For those who want to upgrade the software to unlock its features, various price plans are available according to one’s needs packaged into Grammarly Premium

Not to forget to read our Grammarly Premium Comprehensive Review.

Handbook

Not only does Grammarly provides instructions on how to use the website, but Grammarly also has handbooks for the different parts of grammar which can be used as an educational tool by students and non-English speaking people to improve their writing skills.

The website also provides daily funny anecdotes on grammar to make studying it more enjoyable.

Due to its immense popularity, it is the recipient of the “Great User Experience” Award by Finances Online in 2018.

Cost

Grammarly comes for free for casual users with the necessary features for serious grammar and spellchecks. But there are three premium plans that users can get, and each of them comes with special features, which include the MONTHLY plan of $29.95/month, QUARTERLY plan of $19.98/month (billed as one payment of $59.95) and ANNUAL plan of $11.66/month (billed as one payment of $139.95).

Not to forget to read our Grammarly Premium Comprehensive Review.

WhiteSmoke vs. Grammarly Review – The Verdict

It is understandable that while choosing a grammar checker to invest in, not only do we need the maximum accuracy in its primary job, but we also look for other features like user reviews and efficiency of its customer support team.

Grammarly provides a number of features than WhiteSmoke. Not only does it point out basic mistakes, but it also offers genre-specific checking for enhanced efficacy. This makes it more coveted than WhiteSmoke to high-end users. However, the translator feature in WhiteSmoke makes it more usable by global non-English speaking users.

Also, the presence of a personal dictionary in Grammarly gives it an edge over WhiteSmoke, which allows fictional writers to save some imaginary words in the dictionary which won’t be counted as a mistake by the software. This provides personalized checking of the text, useful to writers who need to use words in their daily writings, which may not be present in the English Dictionary.

Customer support for Grammarly is available via Email, live support, and tickets. WhiteSmoke, though provides support via both Email and phone, does not have the same reputation as Grammarly in its promptness of reply. While Grammarly support always gets back to you within 24 hours, some users reported it to be a lot more in case of WhiteSmoke, which lowers its ratings slightly.

While Grammarly provides checking for unlimited characters, WhiteSmoke has limited that to 10,000 characters per run. This feature is essentially one of the major disadvantages of WhiteSmoke for people who write daily because it needs multiple runs to check the entire document, which is both laborious and time-consuming. However, this does not create much of a problem if the aim of the user is only to check emails or small writings.

Grammarly does not provide an MS Office add-on for Mac users, which may be counted as one of its disadvantages since many are regular Apple product users.

Another coveted feature that gives Grammarly an edge over WhiteSmoke is the fact that it allows for human proofreaders with an extra cost. No computer-based software can be as good as a real human editor. So for the serious writers who want a second opinion regarding their writings, they can opt for this service. However, this is quite expensive, therefore not easily affordable by regular users.

The cost factor comes into play while purchasing any product. Grammarly is more expensive than WhiteSmoke, which makes it slightly inconvenient for quite a few users.

Not that it is a determining factor, followers determine a product’s popularity among its users. It is interesting to note that while the WhiteSmoke Twitter profile has currently a few thousands of followers, Grammarly Twitter is followed by over 150 thousand users.

Thus, in conclusion, while Grammarly is preferable for high-end users, those who do not require a lot of features and need to work in foreign languages or mobile devices and within a lower budget can opt for WhiteSmoke for their daily grammar-checker.