Review: I Write Like

04 Mar, 2026

I recently stumbled across a writing tool, which has somewhat changed the way I write — for the better.

I Write Like is a web based app, describing itself as "a writer-focused text processor equipped with a suite of tools to analyse and enhance your writing".

When you visit the website - iwl.me - you're immediately presented with a no nonsense blank page to start writing.

For me, I have been using it to write some recent blog posts. In fact, the last several were entirely written in IWL; one while offline in a hotel lounge. I then copied the text into my blog and published.

You write using markdown. If you are not familiar, it is a brilliant way to get on with the writing job and add markers for the formatting. No jumping around tool bars, or ctrl-keys. My blog is written entirely in markdown. My note taking app, which I use every day, is also markdown.

Beyond the blank page it has many other gems.

Offline access

Being a modern web page, it can operate as a PWA. In simple speak, even if you are offline you can use it. Your text is stored within your web browser's local storage as you type, and it has a simple file-manager built-in if you have several files on the go at once.

Local files are not designed to be permanently stored within the browser, but are handy for offline working.

The IWL team have also added optional connectivity to DropBox. Your files will automatically store within DropBox keeping them safe, and available in your other connected devices.

Previewing and exporting

There's an excellent previewer built in. You can see your markdown text with formatting side-by-side, live as you type. The preview can be on or off.

My typing is on the left. The right shows a preview with formatting applied.

When ready, there's a button to quickly download the file(s) to your computer, or you can copy & paste the text and delete the offline files.

Your text can also be printed, exported to a Word document, PDF, or HTML file.

Information

There are plenty of features to help analyse your writing.

• The obligatory word count feature is as expected, with various counts on words, sentences, paragraphs, etc. (I will post my stats for this blog post at the end.)
• There's a Readability analysis to determine how well your content reads — based on the standards of the Flesch readability tests
• Word frequency offers a great insight into over-used words in your text. Along with Highlights to focus your attention on specific parts of speech and style issues.
• You will also find Sentence Ranking, Outlines, Links, and Comment highlighting.

There's an excellent set of tools to manipulate your text. From the simple: such as Upper, Lower or Title case selected text. Also, fixing quotation marks, spelling out numbers, dropping trailing spaces or blank lines, and many more. All to keep you focused on the writing rather than too much time on the fixing.

Thankfully you can undo! During my testing I managed to shuffle all my sentences. That would be quite a confusing read!

Dictionaries

Along with spellchecking, courtesy of your own browser, you can lookup a variety of dictionaries.

One of the dictionaries offers some synonyms. It would be nice to have a Thesaurus added to the feature list.

Read aloud

This is one of my wow features. I've blogged in the past about my writing style: the final task before publishing is to ask my computer to read aloud to me. I then listen to the text, which helps me find typos and grammatical errors that have passed me by when I am reading it for the tenth time. I consider a read-aloud feature my very own proof-reader of sort!

IWL has one built in. Imagine my excitement.

I had some issues with Read Aloud in my Linux setup as I could not select a voice. If I fired up a Windows machine, or used my Android phone/tablet, it worked.

I had to install Pied for Linux to get some voices, as they are not installed by default.

Style Analysis

One of the 'features' of IWL, and it seems to be where the product name comes from, is the ability to analyse your writing style.

Based on your word choices and style, it will tell you who you "write like".

Apparently this blog post (i.e. my writing style) is that of Cory Doctorow (born 1971) — Canadian-British author, journalist, and technology activist, known for his science fiction works and advocacy for digital rights.

"ok"! He's a year younger than me, I'm British (Scottish), a technologist, but I'm so far detached from Sci-fi. Maybe a new genre for me to write in!!

I'm not really sure what use this is to me, but it's a bit of fun I guess.

There's also an AI tool to help with your grammar, etc. If you know me, or have read some of my other ramblings, you will know that I am anti-AI for any kind of writing or creativity. Needless to say I did not click on the AI option to explore the devil's work.

The Cost

Yes, it's time to discuss the vulgarity of coinage. How much lighter will my wallet be?

Did I mention all of the above is entirely free? Really. It's amazingly good value.

There's a premium version available with some modest extras. Importantly if you plan to use 'I Write Like' for Professional and commercial use you need a premium licence. Which is very fair.

Summary

I truly believe I've found a tool to enhance my writing process. Importantly for me, I can write offline, in a simple and efficient web app. I can then edit and proof-read via my robotic-sally (that's what I've called her), and then copy & paste into my blog.

I actually feel I will fork out some notes and pay for this. I don't need the premium features but I believe in paying for good, fair work. The price is a one-off of around £23 here in the UK, plus tax. If you're over the pond paying in that all-the-same-colour-and-size money, that's around $30 I guess.

The team behind IWL also do a great set of similar on-line tools to help manipulate your text outwith IWL: iwl.me/tools

Stats for this post

According to IWL, this article has:

Reading time is 4 minutes 16 seconds, and the Readability score is 74 (Fairly easy to read). Robotic-Sally took 7 minutes 38 seconds to read it! She was tired.

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Disclaimer

To be entirely open, and clear, I have not been asked to write this review by anyone. Nor have I been provided any special access to the product. All views are my own; the IWL team have not seen/endorsed this article. (they may well find it on my blog afterwards!)

#reviews