7 Writing Tools Not Many Students Know About

One of the essential things that have happened to students is the advancement of technology. With the help of technology, we are provided with a wide pool of information, a possibility to balance studies and other tasks, and the ability to do almost everything from the comfort of our homes. Along with plenty of tools designed to simplify our lives, a wide range of services were developed to help students with their academic performance. 

For instance, one can boost grades with preparation apps, learn how to write a perfect paper with the help of a professional essay writer, or discover proper planning with the help of time-management tools. Academic writing is one of the most difficult tasks, and that’s why students always have problems with accomplishing this assignment. This article will guide you on writing tools that were designed to assist you with academic papers and boost your writing skills. 

Jamboard

Among all the cool Google extensions, Jamboard is the one that will be useful for your academic writing. Its main idea is to help you plan out and develop your writing ideas. Besides, with the help of “sticky notes,” you can brainstorm and organize your thoughts. This makes this tool perfect for prewriting. In general, there are two ways Jamboard can assist you.

First, it helps you to come up with fresh and bright ideas. Writing papers is hard work and can lead to burnout and a dead end. That’s why this platform was developed. When opening this tool, you start with any open-ended question. Then, depending on what the question was, you have to type every idea that comes to your mind on a sticky note. Also, it’s up to your preferences which color and size of the notes to choose and in which order to place them.

Second, Jamboard helps you to develop ideas on a specific topic. The first step is to define the main idea. Then you need to create sticky notes for the main idea using one specific color. Third, you write down the details which support the main idea on sticky notes of a different color. 

Calmly Writer

This tool was designed to help people who can’t concentrate on writing and stop editing. Calmly Writer doesn’t have a range of tools like Google Docs or MS Word. However, it will only benefit you as you will not be frustrated with complicated buttons that highlight any mistakes. 

When writing, flow is the key. But if you constantly edit and correct the mistakes, you will lose the flow of ideas. Hence, Calmly Writer will help you to focus on composing without any irritants. Before you start, you can set up the font size, light or dark background, and even noise (a kind of ASMR) which is none or a sound of a typewriter). 

As you change paragraphs, you will notice that the previous ones are fading. Hence, you will focus on the upcoming ideas and move forward in your writing. When you are finished, you can save it in Google Drive and download the documents in the following formats:

• Text
• HTML
• Word Document

Write More

Another app that helps you to concentrate, keeps you on track, and blocks distraction is Write More. At the beginning of the work, this brand new tool will ask you questions about your preferences like theme, font size, style, background color, etc. Another cool feature – it offers you creative writing prompts and email or text reminders at certain times of the day.

Write More has similar features as Google Docs, like a word count tracker and autosave. Each piece of writing is saved as a page so you can go back to it whenever you open a tool. The unique feature of this tool is analytics. When you are finished composing, you can discover how much you have written within days. By tracking the process, you will learn how to remain concentrated and be motivated to keep writing. 

Visuwords

When writing an enormous amount of text, it is very easy to lose creativity and even forget simple word combinations. Besides, sometimes it is even hard to find the right word that will suit the sentence. Visuwords is an app designed to boost your creativity and help you to come up with the words that will fit in. 

This app is free of charge but accepts donations. Consider making a small donation if this tool comes in handy.

When you type any word into the search bar, Visuwords provides you with meaning and usage examples of this term. Also, it shows the connection of this term with other terms and concepts. Each is color-coded:

• blue stands for a noun
• orange stands for an adjective
• green stands for a verb
• red stands for an adverb

Synonyms branch off from the original term in a tree-like diagram. With the help of dotted and solid lines, we can determine verb group connections. 

The Hemingway App

If you want to submit a perfect essay that is also easy to read, it’s the right time to use The Hemingway app. It was developed to scan your text and determine a readability grade. The lower the graded number, the more readable your essay is. In addition, it flags the excessive use of the following things: 

• adjectives (in case there are too many of them, it makes your paper appear weaker)
• hard-to-read sentences
• passive voice (it’s recommended to use active voice as it gives your message more authority)
• adverbs
• very hard-to-read sentences

In addition, it shows you simple alternatives for difficult phrases you have used. Two more good things about this tool – it’s user-friendly and absolutely free. You can access the tool from any device, which makes The Hemingway App a perfect resource for students.

Grammarly

As we have mentioned above – the flow of thoughts and ideas is the key. Nevertheless, grammar also matters. Editing and proofreading usually take a lot of time and are very complex processes. After spending so much time and effort on composing, later, you need to spend even more time finding mistakes and ensuring that the punctuation is correct. 

When we are in the flow and get carried away, we make plenty of punctuation, spelling, and clarity errors. Unfortunately, Google Docs or MS Word’s autocorrect is not as multifunctional as Grammarly. With the help of this tool, within a click, you will identify all the mistakes you have made. With the premium version, you will absolutely elevate your writing as you will be provided with: 

• Full-sentence rewrites
• Word choice
• Tone suggestions
• Plagiarism detection

To Wrap It Up

With the help of the tools listed above, you no longer have to go through all of the stress caused by writing a paper. Instead, you will fall in love with the process and might end up creating a masterpiece.