Essay writing is an important part of academic life for students. Whether it is for a class assignment, admission to college or applying for scholarships, students have to write essays on a regular basis. While writing essays takes time and effort, technology has made the process easier with essay writing apps that are available on mobile devices. These apps provide features that help brainstorm ideas, structure essays, research topics and write drafts on the go. Here is an in-depth exploration of some of the top essay writing apps available currently:
Grammarly – One of the most popular and full-featured essay writing apps, Grammarly checks for grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, word choice and other writing issues in real-time as users type. It works across all word processors, browsers and other apps. Some premium features include plagiarism checking, advanced tone and style suggestions, vocabulary enhancement and readability scoring. Grammarly has a large database of thousands of grammatical and style rules which help writers create clear, concise and error-free content. It is a must have app for any student wanting to improve their writing skills.
Draft – Developed by Anthropic, Draft is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps plan, write and refine essays. It provides structure by allowing users to add sections like introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion. The app uses natural language processing to understand what a user writes and offers suggestions to improve organization, arguments and flow. It also checks for clarity, conciseness and repetition. Draft has some basic AI capabilities like summarizing long passages of text and generating outlines based on provided content. Its most useful feature is providing targeted feedback and revision suggestions in real-time.
Quill – Created by Anthropic specifically for educational use, Quill bot helps elementary, middle and high school students to plan, organize and write better essays and assignments. It uses AI and natural language processing under the hood to analyze a student’s writing and provide feedback. Some key features include automatically generated outlines based on essay prompts, tips on introductions and conclusions, flagging of unclear sentences, and suggestions on reorganizing content. Quill aims to be a supportive writing tool rather than just focus on error checking like Grammarly. It encourages planning and revising drafts with the goal of helping students become better writers over time.
StoryCharts – This app takes a novel approach to essay writing by allowing students to build storyboards and visually map out their ideas before writing begins. Users can drag and drop text blocks representing components like introduction, thesis, topic sentences, evidence and conclusion. Arrows are used to indicate connections and flow of arguments. StoryCharts makes the pre-writing process engaging by bringing a creative element. It helps focus the essay structure before words are put to paper. The visualized outlines and storyboards also allow rearranging content flexibly on the fly to achieve an ideal organization.
Zoho WorkDrive – part of the popular productivity suite from Zoho, this app offers online document editing and file storage capabilities. Along with basic word processing features, WorkDrive integrates AI writing assistance and reference tools. The DocSuggest AI scans documents and provides context-specific feedback and style edits on grammar, tone, clarity and formatting. Users can research topics directly within the app through an integrated bibliographic reference generator and citation manager. WorkDrive is a holistic cloud-based writing solution supporting all stages from planning to publishing final essays and papers.
Paper – Designed for academic use, this writing assistant from Anthropic focuses on high-level essay structure and argument coaching. Paper analyses written content to understand core claims and ideas. It then offers feedback on organization, logical flow and strength of arguments presented. The app utilizes dialogue-based interaction through which it discusses essay elements with the user to help improve analytical and thesis development skills over multiple drafts. While Paper lacks detailed grammatical checking like Grammarly, its conversational style of critique and discussion makes the revision process engaging for students seeking higher-level writing guidance.
Notability – Although more of a general note-taking app, Notability has features well-suited for various essay writing tasks. Handwritten and typed notes can be captured along with audio recordings, photos, sketches and web content. Tools like highlighting, shape drawing and document annotation allow building up outlines, definitions and ideas visually. The digital template gallery provides pre-made essay planning layouts like standard 5-paragraph format. Notability allows collaborating with others by sharing and commenting on individual notes or entire notebooks. The app is highly customizable and portable for keeping all essay related materials organized in one place.
Slick Write – This web app helps improve writing through clever gamification. Users can write and submit practice essays on different topics. Slick Write analyzes submissions and rates them on metrics like style, spelling, grammar, word count and readability. It then compares writing performance to AI and human essays to benchmark progress. Gamification elements keep exercises engaging through points, leaderboards and achievements. Custom practice quizzes help strengthen skills in identifying parts of speech, parallel structure, punctuation rules and more. Slick Write makes writing practice feel less like tedious homework and more like an enjoyable challenge.
Scribbr – Targeted at academic and research writing, Scribbr aids with manuscripts, proposals, theses and dissertations from idea to publication. Its citation generator supports over 9,000 styles and allows seamlessly integrating references into documents. Writing tools analyze structure, clarity and formality to help refine chapters. Templates are available for formatting common documents. Scribbr also provides writing guides and webinars on effective communicating in research papers. Its paper editor function crowdsources expert feedback to flag errors and recommend improvements. For experienced writers, Scribbr streamlines advanced tasks like keeping track of sources, formatting appendices and generating bibliographies.
Today, technology is making the essay writing process less intimidating for students through helpful apps that provide structure, feedback, research assistance and collaboration tools. By choosing options tailored to individual needs whether checking grammar or developing ideas, writers at any level can leverage technology supports to focus on content creation. These essay writing apps utilize AI and automation to lighten the editing burden while adding educational value through features like immediate feedback, templates and visualization techniques. With strategic integration into academic routines, digital writing tools can boost both the quality and quantity of student output.
Andrew Stroud