Tools for Bloggers Who suck at Grammar

Growing up, I was more of a creator than a meticulous person. I'm a butterfly chaser and it took me a while to embrace that. Several people made me feel terrible about it and I felt pretty ashamed.

I mean sure, it's 'just a mistake' but when you work in social media that can cost you your pride and sometimes your job. It's ok to be a bad speller, it doesn't mean you're not as smart as everyone else, it means you're smart about other things.

Here are the tools I use to trick people into thinking I'm good at spelling and grammar.

Hemmingway App

I love the Hemmingway App. Insert an entire blog post into this tool and watch it pick it apart faster than America's Next Top Model judges. It helped me shirk my use of passive voice and overuse of adverbs. And run-on sentences...I'm using to write this post it right now!

Grammarly

LIFE SAVER! I love using Grammarly in my day-to-day. Emails, blog posts, tweets...it all gets corrected. The only issue is the Google Chrome plug-in doesn't work in Google Docs. Instead, I've started writing my posts in the Hemmingway App or Squarespace. My friends text me less about little mistakes in my posts and it's a breath of fresh air.

Capitalize My Title

I totally forgot how to capitalize titles. Which nouns to capitalize and words to drop to lower case eluded me after I graduated middle school. I used to use Titlecapitalization.com but it disappeared so now I use this one. If I ever have a title in the middle of a blog post or even for titling full posts I always double check.

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UpWork

If you have the budget, hire a copyeditor! You can hire a copy editor to help you take your posts to the next level. Several of your favourite bloggers don't even write their posts anymore. Instead, they have copywriters and editors who piece them together. For a fraction of a cost you can too. I've used UpWork in the past to help me develop my own team for photos and graphics. Next up for me will be copyediting.

Did I miss anything? Comment down below with your favourite tricks and tools to show off your spelling skills. 

4 Ways you Can Make Your Blog Inclusive

I've been sitting on this post for a while. In the wake of the Marc Jacobs criticisms, I think this is the perfect time to publish it.

When I started to blog, I noticed that content from bloggers and influencers seemed very segregated. I didn’t write this post to dive into the politics of why the blogging world isn’t inclusive (read up on the difference between inclusivity and diversity). Instead, I want to give actionable advice to bloggers so they could develop content that is more inclusive!

Read Different Blogs For some, it all starts with making a point of reading blogs written by people who sit at different intersections as them (here is a 2-minute read on intersectionality). Subscribe to new people on Bloglovin’! Follow different users on Instagram. Really read through and take the time to comment on their posts. Look out for my post featuring my favourite black bloggers soon!

Guest Posts Did you notice that all of the guest bloggers you received submissions from were all white? Instead of requesting guest posts from your audience, try reaching out to bloggers-of-colour you may not have worked with before.

Stay in your Lane How-to beauty and fashion posts that appropriate other cultures are a big no-no. Influencers and Bloggers who get defensive instead of listening to rightfully offended groups about appropriated fashion and beauty practices lose the chance to engage with an awesome audience. Not sure what counts as appropriation? Read this.

Add a ‘lil Colour to your Content When I noticed my Pinterest featured mostly white women, I changed it up. I filled my entire ‘Style Goals’ board with only women of colour and started a natural hair board. It took extra time to find many women of colour in street style roundups and features. However, it was worth it since those were my most popular boards on my Pinterest!

Let’s keep the comments section constructive! If you have questions or suggestions please do share.