Essay writing is not everyone’s cup of tea but at some point in our lives, we’re asked to write about something. It’s an important exercise for students to practice critical thinking where they spend time examining an issue and come up with a solid conclusion. Students are forced to scrutinize arguments and position themselves by examining different perspectives and views.

Unfortunately, academic essays are known to be overwhelming by many students navigating through numerous assignments and school requirements. Fortunately, technology and the ingenuity of modern students found ways to help them comply with their submissions and make the process easier. Here are some of the tools that will help you make your writing better and effective:

1. Readability

Readability is an important component when writing an essay or any literary piece for that matter. Understanding the majority of your audience’s reading level will help you maximize your readership or make your piece more attractive. Developing this skill will take time but reading samples from proficient essay writers that you can source here or other online avenues can not only help you accomplish your tasks on time but you can also learn from their style and methods. The importance of readability comes from making your writing style and content to be demographically appropriate for your audience. For example, a medical journal must be written on the level where its contents are most likely to provide information that leaves out children and those who are less interested in the field. What you say might be less important than how you say it.

Tools like Read-able help writers to consistently at a certain grade-level especially if the topic is not your strong suit or if it’s not your style. It measures the contents against readability indicators like Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease, Gunning Fog Score, Automated Readability Index (ARI), Flesch Kincaid Grade Level, and SMOG Index. 

2. Grammar Tool

This is one of the most popular tools today as it’s a multi-purpose tool that proves to be useful for any type of writing piece including essays. Many of these tools don’t only check your work’s grammar and spelling, they can also help with your tone, engagement, delivery, check plagiarism, and many more. Although it can't write for you (tools can't do that), it can help you mold your work to something that can attract your intended readers and make your work stand out.

3. Thesis Tool

One of the most crucial parts of writing an essay is coming up with your thesis. It’s where many students struggle and it’s not something that’ll stand on its own without building strong arguments underneath it. There are tools available that can help you create an outline of your ideas such as The Thesis Builder and Topic-O-Rama. 

What these tools, basically do, is help you develop a thesis statement by providing you with guiding points. Users can state their idea or opinion about a topic, their main reason or argument supporting their idea, two supporting reasons, an opposing viewpoint, and perhaps a title. An outline will be generated to guide their essay and they will also get a statement that will help them understand the different aspects related to the paper. Additionally, it’ll tie up all of the aspects into a single statement that will cover the entire thesis.

4. Plagiarism Checkers

Many online tools (often free) will check your work’s integrity since, though unintentionally, we sometimes plagiarize other people’s work. It’s normal to reference ideas from reliable sources but that’s just where they stop - as a reference. Many students due to laziness or other reasons end up using other people’s literary work and pass them as their own. With plagiarism checkers, you’ll be confident that you’re submitting a paper that is born out of your own hard work and ingenuity. 

5. Vocabulary Building Tools

Utilizing your free time to improve your writing skills is an effective way to help you write better. This tool doesn’t really work on the essay per se, rather, it works with the writer in improving their skills to effectively churn out attractive essays. Vocabulary is an important part of our daily lives and it affects your essay in more ways than one. Many of the aspects of writing well derive from having a wide vocabulary. It only doesn’t help you understand the text’s meaning but it can also define ideas or concepts. Building your vocabulary comes in different degrees from “this is the first time I’ve heard this word” to “I know what it means and how to use it”. The latter allows you to strategically use words in appropriate contexts and allows the writer to be flexible in their styles but direct in delivering their ideas.

6. Bibliography Tools

Citing sources for facts stated in your essay serves to do three important things: give credit to the author or researchers that you used in your paper, allows your readers to follow up on your facts and ideas incorporated in your work, and it also helps you avoid plagiarism and enhances your credibility as a writer. Tools like BibMe help students formulate or document a source correctly for their papers. Using different formats, this type of tool can help you cite your sources properly using the defined format per your teacher’s requirements i.e. MLA, APA, and Chicago Formatting.

7. Writing Tutorial Tools

Aside from building your vocabulary, one thing that you might want to add to your tools is a tutorial to help you perfect or improve your writing style and techniques. These tools incorporate grammar, tenses, and consistency in your voice (active or passive). Quillpad and other tutorial sites help both students and teachers learn different writing styles and improve their skills. It also makes it a point to make writing easy and less intimidating especially when you get comments or correctional directives.

Essay writing is a medium that expresses the opinions and arguments of the writer about a specific topic. It is a formal way of writing that typically persuades the reader using research evidence and verified facts. No matter the merits of essay writing, it doesn’t hide the fact that it can be challenging for students and those who are new to it. These tools can help you reach your audience effectively, drive your arguments by skillfully presenting them through your work, and ultimately help you find a sense of appreciation for the art.