Academic writing can be difficult and time-consuming, and researchers need to use some supporting tools. Fortunately, we live in the information age, and many tools exist to make our tasks more manageable. Even more impressive is that most of these tools are for free. Though they have premium versions, one can also achieve good results using their free versions.
Most of these tools will make writing a breeze. Some tools will help prevent grammar and spelling mistakes; others will help enrich your writing. These tools can also take out all the complexities involved in various referencing styles. Overall, they can enhance the quality of your manuscripts and make article writing simpler. In addition, they allow you to focus on your manuscripts.
Let’s analyze 10 tools and resources that will help you write your research paper and improve it.
Grammarly
It is a cloud-based typing assistant. It helps review spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Also, it is a good tool for correcting errors in English text and detecting plagiarism. Grammarly suggests a replacement for the identified errors. In addition, it helps improve the style and context-specific language. Moreover, it also has an add-on available for Microsoft word. Thus, you can check your text while writing. Of course, any office suite, including Microsoft’s, has built-in spell and grammar checkers, but Grammarly does a much better job.
Hemingway
It is an interactive text editor. The tool checks the article’s quality and identifies its stylistic, grammar, or logical errors in marks them in different colors. Red shows long and complicated sentences that can be difficult for a reader to understand. Yellow is used for complex sentences and common errors. Purple marks the words that can be changed with shorter ones. Blue shows the words that need omitting. Green is used to showing passive voice.
Mendeley
Every fact in manuscripts must be cited and authors credited. Mendeley is a freely available referencing software that makes referencing a breeze. It also has an add-on for Microsoft Word. It is also suitable for keeping all your research well organized.
Zotero
It is one of the best freely available referencing software. It also provides an add-on for web browsers allowing adding any article to your collection with a single click. In addition, its Microsoft Word add-on allows adding references to your manuscript as a simple task. If you write a lot, it is one of the free tools that must be in your arsenal.
Ref-n-Write
It is an instrument possessing a large base (about 20,000) of phrases used in academic writing. The phrases are organized into the following section: Introduction; Problem, Solution & Difficulties; Literature Review; Previous Evidence and Findings; Research Gap; Your Work; Section Intro and Scope; Materials and Methods; Measurements and Calculations; Technical Statements; Data Collection and Processing; Data Analysis & Presentation; Statistics; Errors and Discrepancies; Results; Discussion and Acknowledgements. In addition, there are some categories that include phrases for the description of figures and tables. Ref-n-Write helps choose the correct phrase and cross-reference your previous works. Also, the tool suggests new ideas for paraphrasing the text.
Scrivener
It is a word-processing program that allows one to manage a long document like a thesis with many chapters, sections, and subsections. It organizes the text notes and concepts and provides easy access and reference within the documents with a lot of images, audio or video files, web pages, etc. Besides, Scrivener offers templates for different types of texts, including non-fiction and academic manuscripts. When the text is ready, a writer may export it for final formatting into a wide variety of formats.
https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview
Trinka
It is a grammar and plagiarism checker. It also can be used as a language enrichment writing assistant. Trinka is specially made for academic and technical writing. It corrects 3000+ contextual spelling problems and complex grammar errors, including subject-verb, pronoun-antecedent disagreements; syntax, word choice; pronouns and article usage, and spelling of technical terms. Trinka helps academics and professionals in ensuring that their writing is clear, concise, and interesting.
LaTeX
It is a high-quality typesetting system. It includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. Actually, LaTeX is the standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. The tool is used to arrange journal articles, technical reports, books, and slide presentations; control over large documents containing sectioning, cross-references, tables, and figures; typeset complex mathematical formulas; generate bibliographies and indexes automatically; include artwork and process colorful images.
CoShedule
It is a tool used to organize your marketing in one place, but it can be very helpful for academic writers as it is an effective headline analyzer. CoShedule studies the headlines and suggests which types of changes will strengthen the phrase on the basis of 4+ million headlines. Also, the tool accesses a history of your past headlines and helps make the headline that will present your research the best.https://coschedule.com
BuzzSumo
It is software that helps researchers to prepare competitive reports, discover what people are sharing online, analyze what topics are popular, and get content alerts. BuzzSumo discovers the content by browsing topics, trends, and forums. Also, it searches for new ideas for new topics and creates effective content.
Thus, a researcher may choose a tool depending on the preferences. However, to be an effective academic writer, it is important to set priorities for how you want to spend your time – in the library searching for the necessary document or in the comfortable office using contemporary instruments.
But don’t forget, today’s computer technologies can make your writing better and stress-free.
