Introduction
Writing essays can be a time-consuming process that involves researching, drafting, editing, and finalizing content. There are now many useful apps available that can help streamline parts of the essay writing process. Apps can assist with brainstorming ideas, outlining content, drafting text, writing collaboratively, citing sources, and editing. Here are some of the top essay writing apps for students:
Google Docs
Google Docs is one of the most widely used free apps for writing essays on mobile devices and computers. It allows users to create, edit, and collaboratively work on documents in real-time with other users. Documents are automatically saved, and prior versions can be accessed. Google Docs makes it easy to concentrate on writing content without having to worry about formatting or file management. It also integrates seamlessly with other Google products like Gmail and Drive for sharing documents.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is the most popular desktop application for writing essays. It provides powerful writing and formatting tools found in other word processors. Word makes it easy to insert citations, footnotes, tables of contents, images, and other elements into written work. It has advanced features like word counting, grammar checking, outline viewing, and change tracking. Documents can be saved in a variety of file formats and easily shared through email or cloud services. The mobile Word app allows writing on the go and syncing content across devices.
Evernote
Evernote is useful for organizing notes, research materials, and early brainstorming relating to an essay topic. Notes captured on mobile devices are synced across all platforms through Evernote’s cloud. Handwritten notes can be captured using the app. Notes and notebooks are fully searchable, and related images, web pages and other content can be attached. Collaborators can easily be shared notebooks with. Evernote generates clean formatted documents from captured research.
Scrivener
Scrivener excels at helping writers plan, outline and structure longer writing projects like essays and dissertations. It moves away from the linear writing model of word processors by allowing flexible organization of content into customizable sections. Researchers can compile related notes, sources and drafts in a single project file. Scrivener includes features like corkboards for freeform brainstorming, split-screen outlining, automatic formatting of compiled files and distraction-free writing modes.
Simplenote
Simplenote is a basic but effective note-taking app optimized for writing plain-text style notes across devices. It focuses on syncing text notes through a clean minimal interface. Notes can be organized into folders and edited from any internet-connected device. Simplenote is best for capturing quick research findings, quotes and ideas without formatting distractions. It allows concentrating on the writing process and does not have advanced editing tools.
Anthropic
Anthropic offers an AI-assisted writing assistant capable of providing draft content, feedback and edits for any type of written work including essays. It uses natural language processing to understand context and prompts to generate grammatically correct responses. The writing assistant can help brainstorm essay topics, provide initial drafts and analyses on the development of ideas. Users can accept AI suggestions to quickly populate essay outlines or reject and modify them. The tool aims to reduce writing time without sacrificing quality.
FastDraft
FastDraft helps speed up drafting essay content by offering topic-specific essay templates. Users choose a customized template based on essay type (argumentative, compare/contrast etc.) and subject. The template provides a fill-in-the-blank style outline with paragraph headers, topic sentences and other structural scaffolding. Writers fill in details and examples to quickly generate a rough draft for refinement. Templates can also be customized for specific assignment requirements.
Grammarly
Grammarly is a powerful all-purpose writing assistant app that focuses on catching and correcting grammatical errors, flawed sentence structures, inconsistencies, passive voice, word choices and more. It works across all types of written documents from emails to essays and reports. Grammarly plug-ins are available for desktop word processors and browsers. The mobile app allows on-the-go spelling and grammar checks of partial or full drafts. It aims to polish written work and help write clearly and concisely for any audience or assessment criteria.
Citationsy
Managing citations and bibliographies manually in essays is time-consuming but Citationsy streamlines the process. It connects to Google Sheets or Microsoft Word to automatically generate properly formatted citations and bibliographies as users enter source details. Citationsy supports all major citation styles like APA, MLA, Chicago and more. With a single click, in-text citations can be created from the reference list or changes made consistently everywhere. Sources synced between devices stay up-to-date across writing projects.
Zotero
Zotero is a free and powerful citation manager optimized for academic research projects and paper writing. It helps organize PDFs, webpages, images and other research information as well as capture citation details. As writing proceeds, in-text citations are automatically generated and formatted correctly per the selected style. At any point, a fully formatted bibliography can be produced. Zotero works across all major platforms as both a standalone app and browser extension to seamlessly manage sources during the research and writing process.
Conclusion
With the right writing tools and essay apps, drafting and polishing written work can be a smoother experience. Apps offer features ranging from initial brainstorming and structuring to managing sources, checking grammar, collaborating on group projects and getting instant feedback. Many are free to use or offer generous free tiers. By utilizing flexible, cloud-synced writing apps alongside established desktop word processors, students can more conveniently focus on producing high-quality essays meeting various assessment criteria.
Andrew Stroud