Paraphrasing regular prose is a solved problem. Paraphrasing text that contains code - a docstring, a README paragraph, a comment above a tricky function - is not, because a paraphraser that does not know what code is will "improve" your identifiers into prose. This post compares the three common approaches on that specific job.
Option 1: QuillBot
The market leader: 9 modes, free tier capped at 125 words per rewrite, Premium $8.33/mo (annual). On prose, strong. On a docstring, the free tier forces you to cut the code out first, and even then inline references like config.maxRetries may get reworded into "the maximum retries configuration". You paste back and re-verify by hand.
Option 2: Wordtune
Wordtune ($6.99-9.99/mo, 10 free rewrites/day) rewrites sentence-by-sentence, which fits comments well - you select one sentence, not the whole file. Code handling is still prose-first: select a line containing a command and it will offer rewrites that no longer parse.
Option 3: A Code-Aware Paraphraser
The third approach parses the input before rewriting: code spans, identifiers, and commands are marked untouchable; only the prose around them is rephrased. Lint's paraphraser works this way - paste a docstring whole, get a rephrase where cache_size is still cache_size. Free tier: 10 uses a day, no signup; BYOK mode free entirely with your own API key.
Which Fits Which Job
- Pure prose (blog posts, emails): any of the three; pick by price and interface
- Comments and docstrings: code-aware parsing saves the paste-out/paste-back cycle and the re-verification
- Long docs mixing both: code-aware, or split the document manually first
Try Lint's paraphraser on one of your own docstrings - free, no account, and your identifiers come back the same way they left.
Top comments (0)