7 Essential Tools For Effective College Writing

By Alex Strike on March 13, 2014

Campus life brings you a lot of entertainment and interesting pastimes, but every student still remembers about college writing and the many assignments from different professors they have to finish in time. And when you have to write several papers at the same time, time management becomes your must-have skill to accomplish all tasks successfully.

Being a student, I always considered the Internet the #1 distraction from the process of studying. All these social networks to check, dozens of photos to like, hundreds of movies to watch, many articles to read, etc. But I’ve learned how to use my online environment in the right way to deal with essays and other academic papers.

You must agree that it would be silly not to use all of these cool tools or applications for writing your assignments better. Traditional ways of education are still a must-use of course, but I would like to share some essential tools with you that could help every student make his college writing more effective.

1. WriteRoom

write-room

Photo via http://images.macworld.com

Every student is afraid of losing everything he’s written and that is why we try to save our documents every minute while writing. If you are one of these students, it is high time to use WriteRoom – a really cool environment for writing, which includes such options as synchronization and backup, as well as keeping all distractions away to help a student stay focused on his work.

2. Omm Writer

omm-writer

Photo via http://www.technologytell.com

A friend of mine advised me about this cool tool, and it is my #1 helper when I want to concentrate on my college writings and avoid different kinds of distractions. No matter what types of papers you need to write, Omm Writer will be useful for you. You can start from a free version of this tool, as it is quite enough (a paid version gives you almost nothing but more theme alternatives).

3. Write Monkey

write-monkey

Photo via http://www.mawista.com

This tool will help you if you have a lack of time for writing your paper. You can increase the speed of your writing, as you will not have to use the computer mouse and move your hands away from writing itself. Different keyboard shortcuts help you speed your writing up, so there will be no need to worry about deadlines anymore. Moreover, such tools can help you change your learning style completely and improve the process of your studying as well.

4. Writing House

writing-house

Photo via http://lh4.ggpht.com

Many students are fed up with all of these citation styles, when you need to choose and implement MLA, APA, Chicago, etc. Thanks to Writinghouse.org, we can use a citation generator and save our time and energy. This tool is completely free to use, and it helps you stay focused on the writing itself instead of worrying about the reference style.

5. iaWriter

ia-writer

Photo via http://nsa33.casimages.com

This tool will become your best helper when you need to format your piece of writing for HTML. You must agree that this process may be quite time-consuming, but iaWriter will do it for you automatically. Certainly, this tool looks good only when you write for some online resources, but if you work on some offline projects, there will be no need to use HTML formatting for sure.

6. Scrivener

scrivener

Photo via http://origin.arstechnica.com

All students know how important the structure is for their academic papers and all other types of college writing. So, if you need to organize your essay, get a chance to see all of its sections at once, and be able to rearrange them when needed, Scrivener will help you. This tool lets you see all sections of your writing at once, and it saves you time, as you do not have to look back every time when you want to check what statements have been already written by you, and which ones you still need to recover.

7. Google Docs

google-docs

Photo via http://www.google.com

What can be easier to use for writing than Google Docs? This tool helped me when I needed an editor for my writings as well as some collaborators to share my work with. I do not know why, but many students forget about Google Docs when it comes to writing, though it gives them many features to use: real-time updates, editing, sharing, etc. Moreover, you need nothing to start using this tool, except your Google account (I am sure that every student has one today).

The more papers you write, the better your skills become. Get ready to check out and use more cool apps for students to improve your campus life and become a better student. All tools described above will not write your essays of course, but they will definitely help you make this process easier, faster and more effective.

When all assignments are done, it’s much more pleasant to live your college life in full, isn’t it?

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