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What tools do you use for writing?

Damien Cosset on October 29, 2018

A lot of you probably write blog posts and articles here, and to a variety of others places. What tools do you use to write your articles? Are ther...
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Ali Spittel

I use my text editor setup for drafts -- I have some markdown plugins and stuff to make that easier. Then I run through grammarly before posting!

Here's my full process!

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Carly Ho 🌈

I honestly just tend to write them in the apple Notes app, organized into a folder, and then paste it into the dev.to editor—I know Markdown well enough to not really need a previewer.

As far as other writing tools, though, I have a bunch I'm happy to recommend—Marked 2 is my favorite Markdown previewer, and Mou is my favorite full Markdown editor. I also sometimes give my work a cursory run through Hemingway to make sure I'm not overusing adverbs or have any other obvious readability problems.

For a more robust writing environment, I really like Scrivener, which I use for my longer freelance writing projects (I like adding checkmarks to the names of documents in the sidebar when the section is complete), but honestly I think the best writing app or environment is the one that reduces the friction the most between you and getting a thing written.

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Florimond Manca • Edited

Great idea to share each other's setup! As for me, I use :

  • MacDown as a Markdown editor/previewer (free and open source, but only available on Mac, sadly).
  • Trello to keep track of blog posts ideas and the publishing pipeline as a whole (sounds kinda serious put this way 😎)
  • draw.io when I have to make drawings and illustrations.

Although I could do without a Markdown previewer, the live rendering is a big plus and MacDown is so simple to use and minimal in design that I don't think writing would be so enjoyable without it.

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Jose Gonzalez • Edited

Good suggestions here.

Lately, I use dev.to's editor.

  • Awesome markdown support
  • Super simple (minimalist)
  • Store all my drafts and post in one place
  • Can access just using a browser

Steps

  1. Open browser
  2. Log into dev.to
  3. Click WRITE A POST button
  4. Press F11 (full screen mode)
  5. Write!

It works for me right now.

Hmmm, would be nice if dev.to could provide a dark theme for its website. Ahem... @bendhalpern 😉

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Silvestar Bistrović

Great question.
I am using Grammarly, Dropbox Paper and VS Code.
Recently I am writing drafts directly in dev.to website, since it works great on my mobile device. If I have an idea, I could write it down within minutes. And I am using Markdown on my blog website, so it very easy to copy the post there.

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Adnan Rahić

Typora does the job for me. I like the minimal feel and absence of possible distractions.

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Jose Gonzalez

Sweet! I have been looking for a super simple Markdown editor (that finally works).

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Glenn Stovall

I keep all of my research and drafts in Evernote. Then I use Grammarly and Hemmingway to edit drafts. For images, I use both Unsplash and Canva. I keep my content calendar in Trello. For longer form pieces (like book level) I like Ulysses for Mac, though others have recommended Scrivener.

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Casey Brooks

When I first started blogging back in college, I fell in love with OmmWriter. It was nearly perfect for a distraction-free writing environment, I just wish it had some level of Markdown support.

Nowadays, I use Quiver because it has good Markdown support and makes it easy to organize stuff without being too overwhelming. Plus, if I'm feeling particularly lazy, it does have basic WYSIWYG editing as well.

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Ivo Culic • Edited

I do not write blog posts, but I write my notes, ideas, and plans with the following:

  • Agenda - simple, I write everything personally or not work-related with this app, it is very effective and I like it because has like a timeline display of your notes.
  • Boostnote - markdown editor, I use it for work, first I write the concept of the project, then I cut the project in smaller tasks, I can add code snippets related to separate projects, supports syntax highlight, it's awesome.

In the past, I used Bear but I switched to Agenda :)

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Rafal Pienkowski

I'm using VS Code which has excellent support for the Markdown:

Like other folks, I use draw.io and Grammarly. Last, but not the least I use Github and Github's Gist as storage for code and code snippets as well.

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Adrian B.G.

Trello - to write down ideas and manage blog series
Gramarlly - to avoid common mistakes
Google docs or medium for drafts

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Edvin Dunaway

I mainly use Vim and Atom

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Paweł Świątkowski
  • Boostnote when writing technical post requiring code snippets
  • Typora otherwise
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Mohammad Alahmadi

I either use Dropbox paper. Pretty nice and clean. plus you can export to markdown.

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d.s.e

Usually I'm creating my articles with vim, written in Markdown or RST.

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Jan Wedel • Edited

I love Sublime Tex, so I use it :)
Together with markdown package (highlighting and preview), distraction free mode and spell checking, it’s just a beautiful and great writing experience.