By Alice Clarke
Writing may appear to be hard for many and even impossible to do for some. A good piece of writing has a tantalizing title, an interesting introduction, an informative body and an engaging conclusion. If you ever get stuck in any of these areas, your writing stops and you may experience a writer’s block.
It is grateful to be present in this digital era where any help you need is now available at a click or touch of a button. This holds truer than true for writing as well. You now have many tools available either online or via an app to make your writing life that much simpler. Gone are the days when you need a paper and a red pen to proofread and edit your writing. You don’t need to spend those extra few minutes manually counting the number of words required on a piece of content either.
Besides, if you are stuck, you end up procrastinating, wasting precious time and perhaps, losing great opportunities to move forward. Here are five powerful tools to help your writing spark and fuel your writing process.
Grammarly
We all know how embarrassing typos and grammatical errors can be. If it is your school paper then it becomes a little more than embarrassing. It is a matter of your grades! So if you want a tool that checks your grammar, writing style and helps you proofread your content quickly, then Grammarly is just what you need.
Grammarly has a free browser extension. This extension can help you detect errors on emails or any other online platform. You can even get the extension to check your Google docs, however, that is a paid feature. Each error acts as a study aid as well. It prompts the reason and samples to improve it. It has a plagiarism checker which can be of great help if you were working on any academic paper or reviewing one. A premium upgrade gets you more features and even more detailed feedback on errors.
Polishmywriting
This is a web-based tool. All you have to do is copy your content and paste in a textbox on the website. After the upload, it takes a few minutes for it to process and it gives you an in-depth analysis of your work. The summary report prompts errors from about 26 problem areas including grammar, diction, writing style, sentence length and many others. The pro-version gives you access to all features, yet, all the popular features are available to you in the free version anyway.
The writing style check feature is, perhaps, the best feature that this site has to offer. It not only identifies paragraphs that need improvement, but it also offers suggestions to replace phrases. This can help you make your sentences more concise and to the point, removing all the fluff. The premium version allows you to edit with suggestions. Or else you end up spending extra time in manually editing your content.
CitationMachine
This is one of the great online citation tools for students. It is especially handy when you write your assignment or research paper. You can choose between the citation styles such as APA, MLA etc. You then select the source type, for example, book, website etc. Once you have filled up all the required fields, you get a bibliography with all the citation requirements. Just like that!
Well, as a responsible student, you must never submit a bibliography created by a tool, as is. Since students are ultimately responsible and accountable for their work, it is wise to proofread the bibliography for accuracy, as much as possible.
Wordcounter
Writing every day is a good habit. If you are a writer and are going through a writer’s block, here is a powerful tool to help your writing spark! This is not the usual word counting tool, as you think. This is a web-based tool where you start typing your content and you get the word count and character count as you type!
You can scroll down and this tool will give you more details at a glance. These details include words, characters, the number of sentences, paragraphs, reading time, reading level and even the speaking time. There is an activity box that keeps you accountable on your writing goals, and the auto save options. These are some of the awesome features this online tool has to offer to you.
ReadWriteThink
ReadWriteThink is a website where you get ready access to the best resources for paper writing. ReadWriteThink compiles and gives access to high-quality instructions for educators, teachers and parents. They have lots of free materials as well. You get access to classroom resources, the best apps to use, student interactives, calendar plans and more. There is even a professional development section where you get the information about events, strategy guides and more!