haley’s top 3 editing resources

Haley Clapp July 20, 2025

Tags: #resources

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Even the best editors rely on tried-and-true tools to check our work, better our craft, and ensure perfection for our clients.

In this blog post, I discuss my three favorite favorite online editing resources that I’ve found over the years editing. I’ll be the first to admit it—I use these with almost every project I work on.

(I also want to note that I have not been compensated for any of these recommendations, and this is not an advertisement. These are my honest and true favorites!)

Without further ado, here are three must-saves for your Bookmarks bar:

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Power Thesaurus

Believe it or not, aside from the usual grammar corrections, a non-negligible part of my editing process involves optimizing word choice. This means that I’ve been around the block when it comes to thesauruses and similar resources.

So believe me when I tell you to forget thesaurus.com and the skimpy Synonyms feature in MS Word—Power Thesaurus is the heavy hitter you’re looking for when you need to find the perfect word. I would even go so far as to say (sorry fellow language lovers) that I’ve found Power Thesaurus to be infinitely more helpful than a dictionary.

When you search a term, Power Thesaurus populates lists of not only synonyms but also antonyms, definitions, and example sentences.

For synonyms specifically, it provides lists of similar words, phrases, and idioms, and it even creates lists of similar words in different parts of speech, e.g., nouns, adjectives, and verbs (a function a dictionary could only dream of).

Also, when you click on any synonym populated by your search, Power Thesaurus shows you not only the definition of that word but also ‘mutual’ and ‘unique’ synonyms, as shown below.

And the cherry on top: Power Thesaurus is free, and its free version populates all top-rated search results (which is more than enough to get you started).

It also offers a PRO version, which I use and love, which provides even more search results and other customization perks.

If your head is spinning with all this functionality, try it out yourself—you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

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Purdue OWL

I’m originally from Indiana, the home of Purdue University, which operates the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab). Growing up, the pride we Hoosiers have for this world-renowned resource was obvious—because it was mentioned in every English-related class I took through the end of high school.  

And truly, the Purdue OWL deserves the praise and attention it gets. It has a stunning amount of information on any and every topic in English grammar, writing, citation, and beyond. It also has specific resources for areas such as subject-specific writing, job search writing, and even multilingual/ESL English resources.

I could try to list all the resources and topics covered on the Purdue OWL website, but it would eat the rest of this blog post.

Some lesser-known highlights among the Purdue OWL resources are as follows:

Personally, I use the Purdue OWL primarily as a quick reference to double-check that I am accurately applying style guides, as it offers resources and concise summaries of central points of major style guides, including APA (6th and 7th eds.), MLA, Chicago, and AMA.

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Google NGram

You can’t imagine how many hours I’ve spent sitting in front of a single phrase wondering, “What is the best way to write this out of Options A, B, and C?” (This often comes down to prepositions—a common nemesis of writers and editors everywhere.)

Here is where NGram is a lifesaver: When you enter words or phrases into its search function, NGram displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the selected years. This is super useful for seeing which phrases are more common or frequently used.

An example I came across the other day: a paper I was editing interchangeably used the words “purchase intention” and “purchase intentions” to describe the same concept. As I wasn’t sure which was more correct/common to use, I ran a quick NGram search, which showed me the following:

Easy! So I chose “purchase intention” and used it throughout the paper.

NGram has also has about 100 other super useful functionalities. I won’t list them here, but for a comprehensive guide, see Google’s About NGram Viewer page and be astounded.

However, there is perhaps an obvious disclaimer: NGram only shows you which words/phrases are more commonly used, not necessarily which iteration is grammatically correct. To check grammatical correctness, it is probably better to run a separate search. Or hire an editor ;)

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So there you have it! These resources are unimaginably helpful to me on an everyday basis, and I hope that my humble summaries make you feel comfortable enough to give them a try for your next writing or editing project.

But these are not the only resources I use! I’ve got an arsenal that I’ll continue to reveal to you in further blog posts. Keep an eye on my blog for future posts on other helpful resources I’ve found in my years editing. Thanks for reading!