Here is a list of tools that helps me write. It is ranging from simple note-taking to writing for my blog. What is common to them is that they are simple to use and are free tools( Since I am a cheap person 🙂) Most of them also work across devices.
OneNote
I love to take notes. I take notes for all sorts of things like the TO-DO list, for some information, for planning, organizing. Taking notes helps me in planning, decision making. Also useful for a quick lookup when the information is needed. This is my go-to application for note-taking. It is simple to use and since it syncs to the cloud, I can access my notes everywhere. I use it mostly as an android application on my smartphone. Since it is always with me, It helps me keep useful information available to me all the time.
Notepad++
Being a Windows guy, I used to use notepad a lot for short note-taking. Now I use this application instead. I use it basically for taking rough notes, so no fancy formatting needed, only just plain texts will do. It does provide me with certain extra features that notepad did not like: multiple tabs for taking different notes. It is also helpful when I need to do a small edit of HTML, code files as it supports multiple languages. I just like this because the application is lightweight and simple to use.
Google Docs
I used to use Office Word a lot earlier, but ever since I discovered this, I use this mostly. Firstly it is free, secondly, for my purpose, this is more than sufficient. It has all the main features that I require, like simple formatting, spelling, and grammar checking. It lets you download the document as Word file or as PDF.
I use this extensively for all my writings, like for documentation for any projects, notes, information details for various stuff. Study notes on various topics. My usual flow when writing a blog would be to first write it here, it provides me the basic spelling checks, grammatical checks, and suggestions.
This has also become my repository of all notes, documentations. Since I can access it any place across any device that becomes very useful.
Grammarly
This is a great tool to help you write better, it provides you with all the basic spell checking and grammatical checking. Additionally, it provides you helpful tips/suggestions to a written sentence. Though Google docs is pretty good, this application is even better in helping you with better writings. This has become my go-to now, whenever I need to write something important. I would put the text here and just verify what needs to be changed, and in general, I find I need to correct many mistakes.