I am less-than-impressed with many of the online tools available that are supposed to help students and everybody else improve their essays and other documents.

There are a few that I think have potential, and you can find them at The Best Online Tools That Can Help Students Write An Essay.

I’m now adding the free tool Textly to that list.

You paste text into their box and, like other web tools out there, it provides categorized critical feedback.

However, a fair number of tools seem to throw every correction and the kitchen sink at you, while Textly seems to be more narrow in its focus.  In this case, less is more, and make it less likely that students will feel overwhelmed and demoralized.

In addition, it provides simple and accessible explanations for the reason behind the suggested correction.

Textly certainly is not a magic bullet to improve writing, but I can see it definitely helping our students….