Top 6 Tools to Help You Write College Essays

If it’s not the first time you’re faced with the need to write a paper, you surely know about Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, Copyscape, and other well-known tools that help writers improve their work. However, there are a number of other apps and websites designed to make studying, and particularly doing writing assignments, easier for students. These include:

Best Tools to Help You Write Your Essay

• Voice Assistant
• RefME
• Write or Die
• EditMinion
• Twinword Writer
• Thesaurus

Read on to figure out what each of them serves for.

Voice Assistant

If your typing speed leaves a lot to be desired while the speed of thoughts and ideas running through your mind is too fast, this app will come in handy. It allows you to convert your recordings into a text. So, you just speak your thoughts out and see them written down. 

It’s a very useful tool for writing outlines and recording essay ideas that may strike you when you’re away from your computer. Besides, there’s a built-in grammar checker. When you’re done with recording and transcribing the text, you can quickly send the transcription to a printer or another app, e.g. Google Search, which allows you to save time on extra clicks. With Voice Assistant, you can write essays lying in your bed or on your way to college. 

RefME

Is there anything harder than formatting your paper according to style standards, be it MLA, Harvard, or APA style? To some students, it’s the scariest part of writing. RefME was designed to help young people and alleviate their stress connected with fears of citing sources and creating a bibliography improperly. The database of citation styles is impressive – more than 7,000 of them. 

The way this app works depends on the citation style you choose. Although it may take you some time to understand how to use RefMe, it will save you more time, having done all the referencing for you, and ensure your grade won’t be affected by improper citing format. By the way, this app is available not only on iOS but also on Android and the Web.

Write or Die

This one is intended to help students cope with the most common essay writing problems – writer’s block. You must know what procrastination is like – you just stare at a blank page, having no idea of how to start, being unable to focus, and thinking that you’d rather watch another episode of Game of Thrones now. But the deadline is coming. Write or Die is an application that will teach you to stay focused. 

There are a few modes – the one where you get punished for distracting and stopping to write, the one where you get rewarded for completing the milestones you have previously set, and the one where you are encouraged to keep writing to maintain the pleasant atmosphere created by the app. All the effects are customizable, so you can choose what works best exactly for you. For example, you can set an unpleasant noise as a punishment in the first mode or a picture of your celebrity crush that will pop up as a reward in the second mode. 

EditMinion

Before you submit your writing to your professor, you must check it and make final edits. Use editMinion for that. It’s an online analyzer that points out weak parts of your text. These may include the use of passive voice, pernicious adverbs, clichés, etc. 

One of the most useful features of this tool is that it also seeks out homonyms, which are most frequently confused, such as “it’s” and “its” or “than” and “then”. Such misprints look really annoying and catchy, but most proofreading tools don’t have such an option. EditMinion also gives you the list of the most frequently used words along with the number of their occurrences in the text so that you could replace some of them if overused.

Twinword Writer

This is another tool to improve the quality of your text. Twinword Writer is an online word processor and editor. Its main feature is suggesting you synonyms to the last written word once you stop typing. Thus, if you have trouble choosing the best word to match the context, this app will give you a few ideas. You can also get a list of synonyms to whatever word you want just by clicking on this word. 

Twinword Writer is especially useful when you feel like you’ve been repeating a certain phrase or word too many times. You can check the number of repetitions via the semantic highlighter option. You surely know that the more versatile your vocabulary is, the better essays you will be able to write. So, this tool helps you make your texts more intelligent. Over time, you may expect real improvements in your vocabulary if you continue using it. 

Thesaurus

This list would be incomplete without a good dictionary. Thesaurus is a dictionary consisting of more than 3 million of synonyms and antonyms. If you were using someone’s essay as an example, this tool will be especially useful for you as you may need to ensure that your own piece of writing doesn’t copy that one, even if it’s a single sentence.

Thesaurus will help you use different words to express the same idea. This can make your text much more interesting and original. Besides, you may want to check for synonyms of a particular word if you’re not sure about its meaning. 

The number of helpful tools grows with the development of technology. Today, apart from the variety of mobile, desktop and online applications that can help you in writing, there are numerous Web resources where you can find effective tips on improving your skills, download sample essays, and even get cheap custom papers written by writers with extensive experience. Essay assignments are easy to deal with if you know where to look for help. Keep this in mind.