Regardless of whether you are a professional journalist, a well-respected fiction author, or an experienced SEO copywriter, chances that you might find academic writing tough are high. Although academic writing is largely standardized and formalized, it’s still not that easy to crack a college essay or a university research paper sometimes. In fact, because academic writing has so many formalities and required elements to include, most people simply get lost in them and forget what they have to write about. And the fewer formal aspects to consider there are the more focused you can stay. Thankfully, some of those formal elements can be handled by certain software tools.
Using Technology to Help You Out
If you think that your creativity and knowledge is everything that gets you to write a great academic paper, then you’re very far from the truth. Aside from knowing what to write about and how to organize it, there are many other aspects to consider. They include but are not limited to academic formatting, sources, organization of ideas, thesis statement, and many more. Only to keep those listed in mind along with all your ideas and thoughts requires a lot. Professional academic writers working at such platforms as Grab My Essay say that they use around a dozen instruments to help them work. That’s why using some helpful digital tools is totally worth it.
10 Useful Tools for Academic Writing
Here are some of the most recommended software, tools, and apps that make academic writing possible in the first place.
- Microsoft Word (and other text editors).
- Notepad (and similar text editors).
- Google Scholar.
- ResearchGate.
- Automatic citation generators.
- Speech recognition software.
- Essay sample platforms.
- Project management organizers.
- Grammarly.
- Cloud storage.
Academic writing in the 21st century happens only in digital format, so acquiring some kind of text editor is a must. Depending on the operating system you work in, these might be different, however, they must contain the preference of text formatting and organizing to allow you to have a full-scale paper manifested in digital form.
Now, there’s a huge difference between such editors as MS Word and Notepad. Whereas you must use Word to process your drafts and papers, Notepad is superb for taking notes as you make your research. When it comes to noting the important things to yourself, the simpler tool the better it is.
As you write your academic papers, you must refer to some sources. While Google Scholar is a very basic academic journal search engine, not many seem to know about it and use it for their works.
Although it’s somewhat similar to Google Scholar, ResearchGate’s major advantage is that you can share your research there, thus, becoming a credible author. Another great thing about this platform is that it contains full academic journal articles shared by researchers like you absolutely for free.
Whenever you write an academic piece, some of the most important things to consider are the sources. Not only you must include them but also format their list properly in accordance with one of the numerous standards. This is where such tools as CitationMachine or CiteThisForMe come into play.
Sometimes, you have to denote your ideas or even write a rough draft of your work very fast. This is where speech recognition tools, such as Dragon Naturally Speaking help you out. With them, you just speak out what you want to write, and these tools do all the dirty and slow work for you.
There’s nothing bad in learning how to organize your work by looking at how others have done it. That is why TopWritersReview exists in the first place. Such platforms post essay samples done professionally for free so that you could take a look and do something similar, yet original.
Yes, academic writing can just like real professional project management sometimes, especially when you work in a group. In order to organize even a handful of people, you need some serious skill and talent. Or just a project management system, such as GanttPRO, for instance.
While most text editors, such as MS Word or Pages for macOS contain a spellchecker, there’s no match for Grammarly. Known well for its nearly flawless error detection, Grammarly can also help you avoid stylistic mistakes and even define your style of writing.
Whenever you work on an academic project, you almost certainly deal with a number of different files, such as books, notes, drafts, images, and more. DropBox and other similar cloud storage tools, such as Google Drive are particularly great for storing and organizing your stuff with an option to access it whenever you have an internet connection.
Write Wisely
While creativity, organization, and time management skills are essentially everything you need to sit down and put your ideas on paper, software tools like the ones listed above will be of great help to boost or accelerate your process. As everything is done digitally today, why not take a small shortcut and complete your reference page automatically or take a peek at a similar work using an essay sample platform? There are many ways to optimize your working processes, yet technology seems to be the most successful in this regard so far.
BIO:
Looking back at his career paths as a journalist, author, and educator, Mark Blackwood only regrets that currently, he has too little time to take another turn. At the same time, he realizes that it’s never too late and, thus, looks at his future with confidence. Mark knows that while he learns and shares his experiences with others, he’ll never stop growing personally.