Editor’s Note: WhiteSmoke has been a sponsor of the blog for a while, and we often get emails from readers asking how good their software are. That is why we decided to review it. But keep in mind we did not get paid to do it. Ali Hale did the review for us, and I asked her to be completely transparent with it.
First Impressions
I found WhiteSmoke very easy to install and get started with. It checks the grammar, spelling and readability of everything that you write (it will do this whilst running in the background, or you can load up the program directly). It’s a bit like a very advanced and more intelligent version of Microsoft Word’s spelling and grammar checker.
I liked the way it automatically checked my typing in not only Microsoft Word but also in emails and when leaving comments using web forms. It caught a few potentially embarrassing typos before I had a chance to hit “send” or “submit”…
Testing WhiteSmoke
I tried running a few pieces of my regular writing through WhiteSmoke to see what it would say. This passage came from a piece I was writing for my blog The Office Diet:
Now you know what calories are and you know how to figure out how many are in your food … you just need to know how many you should be eating.
WhiteSmoke suggested putting a comma after the words “calories are”, and when I clicked to find out why, I was told:
Explanation: This sentence requires a comma to separate its clauses and improve clarity.
Definition: Two coordinated clauses should be divided by a comma.
So far so good: I agree that the sentence is improved when rewritten as:
Now you know what calories are, and you know how to figure out how many are in your food…
The next suggestion, however, was to put a full stop after “out” and before “how”, which would make the sentence:
Now you know what calories are and you know how to figure out. How many are in your food …
This time, when I asked why, WhiteSmoke explained “Two distinct sentences have to be divided by a full stop [period].” However, these were not two separate sentences, and putting a full stop here would lose meaning. I suspect the use of “figure out” (which is quite informal or colloquial) confused the software.
My frequent use of bullet points, rather than conventional paragraphs, also caused a few issues:
- It suggested putting a period after the first bullet, but not after others. (Conventional advice is that you do not need to use periods for bullets consisting of short phrases, but if you do use periods, you should be consistent.)
- WhiteSmoke believed that “Your weight” and “Your activity levels” should be “You’re weight” and “You’re activity levels” respectively. Again, I suspect the use of bullets and fragments rather than full sentences caused this confusion.
Sometimes, the software didn’t recognise what role a particular word was playing in a sentence. In the following example, the word “fast” is an adjective modifying “food”, but WhiteSmoke believed it was a verb:
They found that those who skipped breakfast tended to eat more fast food.
I was advised to “Change ‘more’ to ‘faster’”. I can understand where the confusion came – “more fast” would be poor grammar if the sentence was “I ran more fast than Billy.” But my sentence was correct as it stood.
Enrichment Suggestions
WhiteSmoke makes a number of enrichment suggestions which can help improve the flow or style of your writing. For example, one of these came up for me when it recommended changing “And” in:
And your muscle mass is also important
to “Furthermore”, “In addition”, or “Moreover”. I would probably have picked one of these if I’d been writing a more formal piece, but for a blog post, I don’t think starting with “And” is a problem.
Verdict
I enjoyed using the WhiteSmoke software, and found it was particularly good at spotting typos as I wrote. It could seem a little intrusive at times (a small window pops up in the right hand side of the screen as you type, when the software is running), so I usually turned it off when writing fiction or informal emails as I tended to get a lot of warnings about these!
There were a few occasional slips when the software didn’t understand the meaning of what I’d written, but so long as you don’t just accept every suggestion automatically, these infrequent mistakes shouldn’t cause too many problems.
I think it would be an excellent piece of software for:
- People learning English as a foreign language
- Students writing academic essays
- Anyone producing a formal business-related piece (perhaps a report, or a job application)
- Freelancers writing for print or traditional markets
You might find the WhiteSmoke software frustrating if:
- You mainly write fiction or poetry (especially if you use a lot of dialogue or your style involves breaking grammatical rules)
- Your emails and other non-fiction writing tend to be very informal
- You use a lot of bullet points or other sentence fragments
- You’re already very confident about your spelling and grammar
Overall, WhiteSmoke is a very easy to use, intuitive piece of software, and considerably cheaper than paying a proof-reader to check your work!
thank you
I purchased this software and it’s nothing! You can download a free software like this. They said “no questions ask” if filed a refund within 30 days, i filed mine in 2 days after purchased but they never replied! This is a scam! This would not help with your writing, better get the free software online, exactly how this software works! How does it help if you will end up constructing your sentences on your own!! But when they are trying to sell you this software, they will promise everything just to get you money! DO NOT BUY THIS!!!
I purchased this on July 21, 2011 . . . after ten seconds I wanted to return it. I even requested a return from the customer service person that I was chatting with at the time. The software couldn’t recognize the errors in a fourth grade sentence.
I requested an refund via [email protected] and was form-emailed that due to “maintenance work” it may take a little longer to respond. Having read this review and the comments I decided on the next day (the 22nd) to cancel the Paypal transaction. When I logged onto Paypal I noticed that there was a customer service number: 866-312-7733 I called this number and a refund was immediately processed.
Summary of my experience:
– the software is crap, especially if you are writing fiction that involves prose beyond a second grade level.
– customer service wasn’t as bad as I expected based on this comment stream.
-call don’t email. and if you can, call before 10:30 AM EST
This website is very dubious, it says “Offer ends: 07/25/2011”, just the day I visit it (07/24/2011). It also has fake links to review and recommendation sites like CNN, NBC; and security certification sites like Paypal, Mastercard (fake)… These are common signals of a fake site.
I had white smoke 2010, it was working fine. But I got this message to update to 2011 for only one dollar, so I did. I installed the new 2011 and used it for one day. The next day I get a message that my license expired. I removed it and tried to install the old one but they disable my old license because when you buy a new version you use the same activation number of the old one. I contacted white smoke and they gave me the run around. Don’t buy white smoke because it is a scam, I think now they start scamming their old customers, how pathetic?
I was about to purchase WhiteSmoke when I decided to check online for reviews. You guys saved me from making a bad mistake.
Thank you for the comments you have made to this Blog. I look forward to passing along your comments and refering others to this site.
Thank you all!
Whitesmoke is a scam. I purchsed it and am finding that it is no better than Mircrosoft word. Since I am unhappy I sent email to their payments department to refund the money and so far there is no response to them. Don’t buy whitesmoke it is waste of money, and in my working place, we have proxy, and inspite of setting proxy, it doesnot work. Support is horrible,
I appreciate all the reviews of WhiteSmoke and wish I had found this site before. I purchased W.S. Executive Version 2 days ago for $174. and spent most of last night installing it. Less than 5 minutes after talking with a rep. over the phone and placing my order over the phone, I received a call from some …manager?… a man with a thick accent, who tried to tough-talk me into getting an updated version that would let me take advantage of all the updates they had done. The price was almost $300 more. I told him I had not even had a chance to try it out yet and there was no way I could afford another program. However, today he called again and this time used very abusive language. I told him I had used it for less than an hour and was unimpressed. His answer was “I told you that you need an update!” MS Word and a grammar book work almost as well and with less mistakes. I would have given it a longer trial as some comments were very positive, but have stopped payment and uninstalled the program. I am a senior citizen and this man was frightening in his demands and manner of talking.
I finally got my money back . When you approach their support you get the standard reply that their website is under repair and there would be delay. Don’t buy that story. I guess this is their standard way. If you want to get your money back, write to Primus Support, it would be quick
Hey guys,
To all of you out there who were disappointed with the Whitesmoke program, I’d like to share a good alternative. It’s called Ginger software and I find it to be much better than Whitesmoke. It’s not perfect but it did some amazing things to my text. After trying out Whitesmoke I moved on to trying Ginger and ended up buying it as it managed to catch many more mistakes than Whitesmoke. Hope this helps some of you. Cheers.
@Tony,
Tony your one of the people I refer to a IT Dummies (IT meaning information technology, basically anything to do with computer technology). You think you know so much but what you write is so far from knowing exactly why Malware Bytes is giving you those results. First, you, yourself, stated what Malware Bytes “think’s” it has found. This being White Smoke Takeover. Since you’re computer illiterate, I will show you your mistake. The program we are reviewing is WhiteSmoke, notice no space or even Takeover added to the end? This is what is called a FALSE POSITIVE in a sense. Second, the reason MWB found so many is because it has flagged the WHOLE folder and registry node for ANYTHING that says WhiteSmoke, or White Smoke. You’ll also notice perfectly legit files in WhiteSmoke’s installed folder, but MWB is saying its dangerous. MWB hasn’t used a signature to make a 100% positive match, its using the heuristic scanning feature and believe me, these produce mass results of false positives.
So now that we have cleared that up and also cleared up that you didn’t even have the program in question pop-up and had White Smoke Takeover installing itself which you say you stopped it. Now either you had the program in question installed before or afterwards and what I said above was showing in MWB then I have solved your confusion. If MWB didn’t just show the folder and regnode of WhiteSmoke, but instead other named malware, then its most likely that rogue you had that day did all the damage. WhiteSmoke itself, the program reviewed today, had no part with infection your machine.
I suggest you do the following, take some classes on computers 101, read a book, do whatever you need to do so your not providing others with false information, as this is what damages a lot of companies. Try out Avast Internet Security, use Hitman Pro once a week and I also like to keep another scanner for weekly scans but doesn’t run all the time. This program I use is Emsisoft Anti-Malware, and again, no realtime scanning, only a weekly system scan with this. These are all good for set it and almost forget it for protecting your system, for people who are not educated in computer and software technology.
So lets just be clear again, the program reviewed today, WhiteSmoke (notice the capital S too!) is virus/malware FREE as of this date today.
Good luck Tony on your future cyber adventures.
Don’t download this program !!! You will spend many hours trying to remove it from your system. It’s listed as Malware and I believe it. A friend suggested I try whitesmoke but I didn’t care for it because I didn’t feel it was accurate enough. When I tried to uninstall the program it was impossible. I still am working on a solution and may have to re-format my hard drive. Do now download it.
It is not good! Many corrections are wrong! Get it if you want to embarrass yourself! The costumer service does not know how to deal with unusual questions… Advertisement of the software online is deceitful. Not trustworthy for serious writers.
BEWARE! This is the worst hyped software program ever. It will not do what it says it will do. It is supposed to automatically show up in MS Word and Outlook – sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it checks the whole document and sometimes only a paragraph in the document. It works half the time and the other half is junk. It misses misspelled words regularly. It is a nuisance to work with. Truly, it is a piece of garbage. BEWARE!
Whitesmoke is a piece of crap program that installed on my computer even after I clicked “Skip”.
Now I cannot get rid of it no matter what I try: Remove programs, system restore, malware removers, nothing has worked. I contacted their online chat who told me they are only their for sales and they recommended I use their support email which I did. No reply.
Google “Whitesmoke malware” if you don’t believe me. And I find it incredibly ironic that some of you paid for something I got for “free” that I do not want.
DO NOT TOUCH WHITESMOKE WITH A TEN-FOOT POLE!! Whatever it may once have been, it is now pure scam. My experience is like Mike’s. It was bundled with another program and installed itself even though I unchecked it in the installer. It took over most of my file associations so that no matter what I tried to open, all I got was Whitesmoke. It made itself my Homepage and default search engine in three different browsers. Took me several days to root it out, and I still find traces.
Hint: to get XP to recognize .exe files again, in any folder click Tools/Folder Options/File Types/New, type in “exe”, click “Advanced”, choose “Application”, “OK”, “OK”. For .lnk shortcuts do the same but choose “Shortcut.” Good luck!
I wouldn’t recommend even trying the trial version! Something strange is going on with this company.
If downloaded the trial version to use for a few days, it comes with advertisements to purchase the software. After the trial expired it would send an advertisement dropping the price. It finally hit 50% off the software so I purchased it.
The new software instructions tell you to un-install the trial version, but you cannot. I have spent 3 days attempting to un-install and their support department will not respond.
I purchased the One Time Payment option, and today I received a phone call from Whitesmoke asking if I would like to purchase the lifetime version (I thought I had since there are no options for a lifetime version) On their One Time Payment option there is a little icon, when you click it then it will tell you their One Time Payment is only good for six years. The salesman pointed this out. I told them that was deceptive advertising and he immediately hung up on me. Now their sales department will not answer my phone calls. Great Company!
I bought WhiteSmoke for the 50% off price of $39.99, yet they charged me $79.99 on my credit card. I have e-mailed them 5 times over the last month, talked to a rep (who told me to e-mail them) and tried to call them. After a ten minute wait, I was told that all mailboxes were full.
In addition, their product is NOT quality – It suggested that I use the word “doing’t” at one point. Now, I am out $80 bucks with no way to contact these people. DON’T FALL FOR IT!
Just curious: Have the people at this website made any apology or concession to the commentators, who overwhelmingly dislike this software? I am beginning to suspect that the positive reviews here and on other review sites are plants by the company. Yet the editors here say nothing. Loss of credibility for sure.
@ One Nut,
You are an idiot and a scammer. I cannot believe you have the balls to call Tony an IT dummie because he does not like your little malware. To anyone out there just google whitesmoke virus or malware and you will see that the program is impossible to uninstall using normal means.
I’m surprised that the comments end in May of 2012 because WhiteSmoke is still going strong.
I’m embarrassed to say that I too was ‘smoked’ by them. I purchased their full package for $99.95 in 2008 (transaction ID: 65L2280xxxxxxxx) and my problems began….
1) I paid an extra $19.99 for this English training course. I thought would be useful for my students (in ESL) but upon review, it was a terrible and poorly constructed on-line course, seemingly created by someone new to English. It took several emails but I did get my refund via PayPal.
2) WS was barely functional and crashed a lot! It mangled text (echoing what others have said) and eventually I dumped it after buying a new computer a few months later.
3) Sometime in late 2009, I attempted to re-install it and discovered that my license had expired! What? I was assured that I was purchasing a perpetual (forever) license.
4) When I wrote WS about this, I received two really odd phone calls from them,…implying that I lied that I was told that my license was supposed to be perpetual… the calls bordered on abusive or the very least, unprofessional.
5) Jumping ahead to 2013, I still receive WhiteSmoke emails (totally 293 – not including the deleted ones). TBF, some are useful – i.e. grammar and writing tips. Anyhow, I was considering an upgrade, thinking the product has improved after five years. For $99, I can purchase a real perpetual license (as stated on their website). Question is, can I trust them, is their product any use? I am a writer looking for a tool to catch errors before I proof read.
After reading the comments here, I am now doubtful. Thank you!
I purchased a lifetime license for v2012 (full package) and it was invaluable. I upgraded and purchased their new V8, also a life time license which was supposed to launch mid 2013, I only got it 3rd month of 2014.
Six months later September 2014, BOTH versions of WhiteSmoke stopped working after they revoked the licenses with the popup message saying my licenses have expired and I must purchase again.
Their support is NON EXISTENT, they do not answer their phone support, they do not respond to their online support and their online chat support is dead with the error message that it cannot be connected on ‘this’ server. (whatever that means)
DO NOT PURCHASE this software, is my warning to ALL. I am highly disappointed !!!
Whitesmoke language/grammar software provides terrible customer service, offers less than adequately functional versions of its software, and fails to keep supporting its “one-time” purchased licenses. Do not trust this company or buy its software. For example, it sold unending registrations for Version 2012, then canceled services after 12-24 months. After that it tried to force the purchase of a new version, perhaps again as another “one-time” endless agreement that will also will not be honored. The recent Version #8 was loaded with countless usage difficulties when released, including reporting of many non-errors that still continue after a year. While this software does a good job of catching many or even most mistakes in general, in practice V8 is almost more trouble than it’s worth in the final analysis. In reality, the company’s technical department can only be reached about problems by email. The sales department—the sole number that can be readily found – will almost never transfer calls to customer support. Initial messages to tech support are then auto-answered by email, promising that the company’s staff will get back to the customer soon. Nothing ever happens, and a few days later a second email arrives saying that, since the company has not heard from the customer again, “the case will be closed” unless the customer contacts the company within 48 or 72 hours. Replies to these auto emails are thereafter unanswered. Since there is no way to call tech-support directly, this “circle jerk” never ends, and is a tremendous waste of customer’s time, as well as incredibly frustrating and therefore, infuriating.
Dangerous software. STAY AWAY. Lifetime subscriptions works less than 6 months, no response to support tickets, malware warnings, very complicated to remove, a good firewall shows more than 20 warnings just to uninstall the software. A very serious scam. BE CAREFUL…
Two days ago I purchased the upgrade to my ‘Basic Lifetime’ subscription. Uncertain as to the actual cost when already running the program, I received no response to my emails and ph messages for over a week. and thenI finally got ‘Ariela’ on Live Chat. It seemed a bit suspicious when ‘she’ took another $50 off the ‘today only’ special when I said I’d have to wait a day. I kept her on the line while I followed her links to the download >> and then to the Mac version. The moment I asked if there’s an upgrade for the latest Yosemite Mac update — she disappeared. No response — no way, no how — from anyone, phones not answering, ‘live chat’ not responding. I’m calling my bank to cancel this payment. Argh!
Do not waste your time and money with WhiteSmoke. It is a scam.
The company is going to bankrupt. They cancel user accounts much earlier. You will find so many negative comments and reviews on Internet about scamming with user subscriptions.
I suggest you to use Grammarly or LanguageTool. The second one is free and really woks well.
The worst custom service in whitesmoke. I purchased the lifetime version and withing 10 months I got “Licesense expired” No one else used my copy. no help from customer service
I purchased a life-long license from Whitesmoke but it was expired for no reason after i used it for several months. Whitesmoke did not answer any emails and phone calls, so there is no solution so far. I am wondering is the company still exist since there is no any response from their customer service. However, I got 3-4 advertisement emails from Whitesmoke per week that promoting their products. What happened to the company?
Do not buy the software.. There is no lifetime license and will expired earlier than that.. You will waste your money..
I ordered a 2 year subscription to whitesmoke as part of a bundle I was only able to login once. It was annoying and inefficient. I didn’t bother again until near the end of my subscription to give them another chance to which I found there was no login and I had to contact customer DISSERVICE. The absolutely UNHELPFUL rep, Micaela, dragged out the ‘help’ process’ responding only once a day with further questions to ‘verify’ my subscription while prominently stating in each email “they’ll give me a 3 year subscription for only $99!”. Gee, your software stinks and I am not able to login into it and you’re doing NOTHING to fix that but you want me to spend $99?!?! How about you FIX MY PROBLEM! She did nothing to resolve the problem only extend the time until the next to last day saying ‘it’s expired now but BUY BUY BUY!’ I responded with I still have another day I paid for FIX IT! And again, she waited another day then replied with ‘we hope to have you back!’ Whitesmoke is aptly named because your money goes up in smoke and you get terrible service from a garbage product. Don’t let them blow smoke up your a$$ and avoid whitesmoke! I will never buy anything from this lousy company ever again and I suggest you don’t either. You’ll find numerous other reviews attesting to their lack of customer service and difficulty of logging in.