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9 free tools you can use for academic writing

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We want to write the best academic pieces, and we want it easy. But the million-dollar question is, is this possible? First, it’s important to understand that no matter how seemingly easy it is, writing a single piece requires following certain standards. But the best part is, there are several tools today that make it all easy.

 

For academic writing in where, for instance, scientific theories are analyzed and backed with robust reference bodies, writers and students are often oblivious of simple and fast tools that will help them write authoritative and top-grade academic writeups.

 

So, below we have curated these tools to help boost your academic writing.

  1. GogoPDF

What better tool for academic writing than one that allows you total access to other academic works? This is what you stand to gain when you use GogoPDF. It is an online suite that allows you to edit, create and scan PDF files. It has 20 cutting-edge tools to improve your productivity and speed. With GogoPDF, you can convert Word doc to PDF, compress, rotate, split, and merge PDF.

  1. Grammarly

This tool helps the writer with real-time grammar correction and prompt. This tool can save your time and is accurate and easy to use. It provides citation suggestions, detects plagiarism, provides vocabulary enhancement suggestions. It is also quite useful for non-fictional writing, as well as blog posts and technical writing. It improves the clarity, engagement, and delivery of your article by flagging contextual errors and offering real-time suggestions.

 

What’s more, it finds and fixes more writing errors than traditional proofreading and grammar checkers. It makes your writing mistake-free with its spell-check tool.

 

It also serves as a tool for self-edit by providing insights about your sentence length and readability score. Grammarly can be useful to both English native speakers and second speakers. It is easily one of the smartest digital editing tools around.

  1. Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a great tool for typing. There are templates for any document and mail and allows you to easily send out the files to multiple people at a time.

 

Mistakes made can be corrected easily. It can save multiple versions of files, and can easily sort them back to the previous versions of the same document. It offers an easy-to-use navigation pane at the top.

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Microsoft Word has several formatting styles and font styles that match diverse specifications – funny, serious, upbeat, and formal. When you misspell a word, Microsoft Word underlines it, and you can click on the word and get suggested spellings. If you type a sentence that has poor grammar, It will underline the sentence for you and you can change the document while still working on it. There’s also an inbuilt Thesaurus that offers synonyms and antonyms suggestions.

  1. Google Docs

Google Docs bring your documents to life with smart editing and styling tools to help you format text and paragraphs. All your changes are automatically saved as you type. One of the benefits of using this tool is that you can work offline. So you can still use it offline if you lose an internet connection.

 

Another benefit it offers is that you get to share the link to others and grant access in real-time.

 

It allows you to store your documents on Google drive, which gives you access to your files anywhere in the world. Its collaboration and organization features can help you write a draft of your short story and share it with a few friends for comments and feedback.

  1. Evernote

It helps you capture and arrange information and ideas as a writer. It is adaptable to anyone’s writing process. It makes it easy to collect images, links, almost anything.

 

Also, GPS information can be captured along the notes you take because of its atlas features.

  1. Twords

This writing tool helps, especially upcoming writers to track their works. It is more like a tool that functions in tracking words and sentences. It makes writing better and simple. It helps you communicate with clarity, build a structure and simplify complex ideas more effectively.

 

Using this tool to express yourself will help you gain and build confidence in your writing. It will also help in the assimilation and consolidation of information that one can easily.

  1. Ref-n-write

This tool is an academy writing software that helps you polish your writing through consistent practice. With Ref-n-write, you can embark on a search for sentences and statements having a similar style, tone, and type in existing documents. These documents boast a rare capacity to build your mastery of registers and relevant academic terminologies. This is called initiative learning.

 

By dragging and dropping top-grade articles and searching for a given vocabulary or language, you will have a great time using this tool, while broadening your knowledge of that particular academic field.

  1. Hemingway Editor

This is an editing tool you can freely access online, without downloading. It helps create a comprehensive and clear academic paper. Academic writing is essentially technical, so Hemingway Editor will offer guides on maintaining clarity and flow. It does this by identifying and highlighting passive voices, difficult sentences, and adverbs.

  1. FocusWriter

FocusWriter is an online tool that helps you block away distractions, while handling your academic writing. It has a design that allows you to block out distractions, inhibiting your focus on academic exercise. FocusWriter hides tools and apps that could potentially distract you and allows you to design your screen to fit your specifications per time. It also helps to monitor the progress of your writing in real-time.

In Conclusion

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have an academic writing task and you’re not sure how to go about it, be rest assured that there are several online tools to help you through the process. From research to writing, to referencing, this article discusses the best of these tools. Such tools as Hemingway Editor, Ref-n-write, Grammarly, Twords, Google Docs, and GogoPDF when optimized can combine to help you create excellent academic papers.

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