new app to write essays

Best free writing app of 2024

Bring your words to life with the best free writing apps

Best overall

Best for markup, best word alternative, best word processor, best for mac, best online.

• How we test

The best free writing apps serve up more than just text tools - they also offer betters ways to manage and organize all your ideas, outlines, and projects. 

1. Best overall 2. Best for markup 3. Best Word alternative 4. Best word processor 5. Best for Mac 6. Best online 7. FAQs 8. How we test

Like the best free word processors , writing apps help you get your thoughts on the page without breaking the bank (or your train of thought). But we’ve also made sure they’ll make it easier to save, share, and sync all your documents and keep them safe, whether you need a desktop writing app for work, school, or play. 

If you struggle to stay focused, we’ve tested some of the best free writing apps come with distraction-free layouts or gamification challenges to keep you in the zone. We’ve also reviewed those built for professional document creation, with advanced business features such as speech-to-text transcription and online collaboration tools. 

Our picks cover the best apps for writing on the web, Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS - so you’re always ready whenever and wherever creativity strikes. 

<a href="https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/" data-link-merchant="literatureandlatte.com"" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Scrivener: best writing software for authors Scrivener is packed with all the features a novelist needs, helping you track plot threads, store notes on characters and locations, structure your work and (most importantly) get some serious work done. It's not a free writing app like the tools below, but it's well worth the investment if your budget will allow it.

The best free writing app of 2024 in full:

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

1. FocusWriter

Our expert review:

Specifications

Reasons to buy, reasons to avoid.

FocusWriter helps writers combat one of their biggest challenges: distractions. One of the best free writing software tools out there, it's specifically designed to let you just concentrate on your writing. 

The stripped-back interface is deliciously sparse - ideal for when you just need to get your head down and write - and not dissimilar to a moderately powerful version of Notepad, featuring support for TXT, basic, RTF, and ODT files. 

Even the toolbar is hidden until you actually need it. Just swoop your cursor to the top on the screen to reveal a barren menu, from basic formatting to themes and timers.

Features are light within the software, but FocusWriter isn’t made for heavy editing sessions. It’s designed to make the act of writing flow seamlessly onto the page. 

Elsewhere, the writing app boasts the ability to add themes and your own background images, which can help you stay motivated. 

The Daily Progress tool is a sweet extra, adding Duolingo-style gamification that lets you track your daily writing streak. For when it’s oh-so-easy to slip onto social media when you can’t find the perfect word, it’s a nice way to keep you within the app. 

Available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, the writing software also comes as a portable download, no installation required. So, you can pop it on a USB stick and plug it into any computer you’re working on. 

Read our full FocusWriter review .

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2. WriteMonkey

WriteMonkey is another piece of free writing software that cuts down on the clutter to deliver uninterrupted writing sessions. 

The free word processor, cleverly described as zenware, is unbelievably pared back compared to more traditional writing apps. 

There’s very little in the way of distracting ‘screen furniture’, which means you’re better positioned to concentrate on the writing process. And absolutely nothing else. 

But don’t let that stripped-back approach fool you. As one of the best free writing apps, WriteMonkey is still rich with the sort of core features that matter to writers. 

However, most options are hidden in a context menu (so you’ll need to right-click to view it). It also only supports TXT files, which may limit those looking to read, write, or edit across multiple formats. It is, at least, a portable download, letting you take it wherever you need.

If you’ve enjoyed Markdown, the simplified text-editing language that lets you format, annotate, classify, and link as you type, then great. WriteMonkey’s inner workings will instantly chime. 

First-timers should spend a little time with this free writing software, to uncover that intuitive simplicity. 

Read our full WriteMonkey review .

3. LibreOffice Writer

Writer, the open-source, free writing software, serves almost all general writing needs.

LibreOffice is a near-perfect example of free office software - a familiar, feature-rich take on the office suite. What the veteran software package lacks in Microsoft polish (its interface is undeniably old-fashioned, for starters), it makes up for in its price-point: free. For that, you get access to six tools: Calc, Impress, Draw, Base, Math, and Writer. 

Earning it a slot on our list of best free writing apps is the fact that LibreOffice Writer packs the full editing toolbox. 

This isn’t just a note-taking app for staving off distractions when you’re deep in the zone; it’s for when you’re in pure writer-mode. 

If you’re at all proficient with Microsoft Word, you won’t have any problems using the Writer software. Layouts and functions are almost identical, and there’s support for DOC and DOCX file types, making it efficient to switch out of the Microsoft garden.

This free writing app is ideal if you’re hunting for a tool that almost perfectly replicates the Word experience without the cost. 

Read our full LibreOffice review .

4. Microsoft Word

When it comes to word processors, Microsoft Word is probably the baseline against which all others are compared. It’s the one most of us use at school, home, and work. It’s familiar, comfortable - and it’s available free on the web and mobile devices. 

That may not be the best way to write your masterpiece (unless you’ve hooked up a Bluetooth keyboard). But it’s a great way to jot down ideas on-the-go. When we tested the browser-based version we found it could be a bit slow at first, and we were typing faster than the words appeared on screen. This settles down (mostly) after a minute or so. 

Microsoft’s free writing apps on Android and iPhone had no such issues. Using these was velvety smooth. We especially appreciated the option to switch between mobile view and desktop view, so we could gauge how the document would appear in full-screen. 

As with Google Docs, you’ll need to sign up with a Microsoft account. And, like Google, that also lets you use free versions of PowerPoint, Excel, and the like. While Word offers one of the best free writing app experiences, there’s no denying that the paid-for upgrade is superior, offering more tools, and a true desktop app. 

Read our full Microsoft Word review .

Author promises to make it easier to ‘think, write, and cite’. It’s a promise capably delivered, with a clean interface and bags of writing features designed to make it easy to go from first draft to final copy. 

If you're an Apple user in search of the best free writing apps on macOS, this one demands your attention. 

Concept Maps is one of the best features. It’s a great mind-mapping tool to visualize and lay down all your thoughts while they’re fresh in your head without constraint. You can worry about whipping them into shape later. 

Students and report writers will appreciate Author’s ‘fast citing’ tools - speeding up assignment-writing by correctly adding and formatting citations, references, and contents. 

A paid-for upgrade of the writing software that offers exporting options is available. However, unless you need automatic formatting on export, you can stick with the free version. 

6. Google Docs

Google Docs is a great free writing platform for any writer. It’s an extremely clean, quick word processor available in the browser, on desktop, and phone and tablet apps. So, you can take notes wherever inspiration strikes. 

Docs is more or less Google’s spin on Microsoft Word. The interface is a bit more simple than the professional office software - although it’s no less powerful. 

You’ll find heaps of writing tools, including a pretty accurate speech-to-text transcription tool (just enunciate and don’t talk too fast). Keyboard shortcuts are very well-supported. 

For best results, you’ll need an internet connection, though documents can be used offline. They’ll be synced, and in our experience, that happens swiftly behind the scenes. 

To take advantage of the free writing app, you’ll need a Google account, which may be a deal-breaker for some - but that also opens up the rest of the Google-stuff in the Google-sphere, such as Sheets, Slides, and . With a free account, you get 15GB of storage, which should be more than enough for word documents. A Google One subscription upgrades your storage space, amongst other things. 

Additionally, Google Docs is great if you want to collaborate with one or more other writers. Just be warned to stay in Google Docs for that, because exporting the data into Word or other writing applications can result formatting errors.

Read our full Google Docs review .

Best free writing app: FAQs

What's the difference between a writing app and an ai writer.

AI writers vs writing apps - what's the real difference?

Artificial intelligence is growing in a big way - and when it comes to writing, it's ChatGPT that's been snatching all the headlines of late, with its ability to generate short- and long-form content based on user prompts.

Generally, an AI writer will write your content for you, based on its current learning (although often without 'understanding' the context). A writing app simply lets you write your way, in your own voice. 

Some platforms, such as Canva , have even integrated AI into its Canva Docs and Canva PDF Editor services. However. its Magic Write tool acts as a writing assistant, serving up suggestions and ideas, leaving real writers to work their magic on the content. Though usually hiding in the back-end, you can also find AI integrated in other ways across other the best PDF editor apps (and even the best free PDF editor apps, too).

As always with AI-generated content, whether it's the written word or an artwork masterpiece, human involvement is usually necessary and always desirable. Even if you're using the best AI writers out there, editing and proofreading is essential to give the content accuracy and emotional resonance.

How to choose the best free writing app for you

When deciding which free writing app is best, start by figuring out what sort of writing you want to do. 

Do you need a handy tool for quick scribbles and jotting down ideas here and there, or are you using the writing software to write and edit an epic novel? Tools like FocusWriter and Write Monkey are great for getting thoughts on the page without friction.

It’s also worth considering if you need a writing app with a distraction-free design, so you can concentrate on what really matters to you. Again, FocusWriter performs admirably here, but as a result, you lose core typography and editing functions. Unlike LibreOffice, this isn’t the best Microsoft Office alternative if you need those tools. In that scenario, it may be worth considering looking at some of the best free office software , which includes MS Word-style apps, alongside other tools similar to Excel, PowerPoint, and so on. 

Access is an important factor when using your writing software. A tool like Scribus needs to be downloaded to your machine. Lightweight apps like FocusWriter, however, offer a portable download that can be downloaded to a USB and carried with you. 

Check what file formats your chosen writing app supports, too. While some let you create and edit the common DOC and DOCX files, others only allow TXT or RTF documents.

But most of all, it’s important to choose the best free writing app for your unique creative flow. 

How we test the best free writing apps

Testing the best free writing apps and software, we assess how easy it is to get your words down on the page with the least amount of friction. Portable writing apps rank high, because they let you use the program on whatever computer or laptop you’re using. 

We also look at performance for its intended audience. For distraction-free writing apps, do they really foster focus? For word processor-style software, does it offer good formatting and editing options? 

Most importantly, we expect to see free writing apps that are genuinely cost-free - no-one wants to stumble across hidden fees and charges in the contracts. 

We've listed the best laptops for writers .

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Steve is TechRadar Pro’s B2B Editor for Creative & Hardware. He explores the apps and devices for individuals and organizations that thrive on design and innovation. A former journalist at Web User magazine, he's covered software and hardware news, reviews, features, and guides. He's previously worked on content for Microsoft, Sony, and countless SaaS & product design firms. Once upon a time, he wrote commercials and movie trailers. Relentless champion of the Oxford comma.

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Top 10 Apps That Write Essays for You in 2024 (Free & Paid)

Senior Content Marketing Manager

February 13, 2024

You have a big research paper or essay due soon, and you’re looking for a way to save time and energy or enhance the way you write. You’re tired of staring at a blank page, hoping it’ll magically become your best assignment yet.

What you need is an app that writes essays for you.

There are lots of essay writing tools available for every possible use. Whether you need an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that helps you draft the outline, generate text for different sections, or improve your essay to make it sound better overall, you’re in luck.

In this guide, we’re sharing with you the 10 best essay-writing apps available today. Each one offers writers, students, and other essay writers of all kinds a better way to get started or finish your assignment.

Let’s explore the options for apps that write essays for you, and let’s start writing better essays together. ✔️

What Should You Look for in Apps That Write Essays for You?

3. writesonic, 4. essayailab, 6. sudowrite, 8. hyperwrite.ai, 9. ai-writer , 10. storylab.ai.

Like any type of essay writing service or product, not all of these apps are built the same. Some AI content tools are designed for research and outlining, while others excel at transforming your words into compelling thought pieces, arguments, or statements. 

As you consider which essay writing app is best for you, think about the following. 

• Use case: Is this app designed for essay writing? Or is it a more generic AI writing tool? 
• Features: Does the app have the research, writing, or proofreading features you need? Does it offer you even more options?
• Ease of use: Is the app easy to use? What’s the user experience like?
• Ratings and reviews: What do real-world users think of the app? 
• Language: Does the app only work in English? Can I write in another language or translate my essay?
• Pricing: Is there a free version of the app? Does it have an affordable or expensive monthly subscription cost?

These questions should lead you closer to the best app that writes essays or academic papers for you. Consider what matters most to you, which features you can live without, and what’s your number one priority for this app—then use our top 10 list to find your ideal match. 🔗

The 10 Best Apps That Write Essays for You to Use in 2024

With an ever-increasing number of AI writing tools coming into existence, it can be overwhelming to figure out which ones are worth trying. That’s why we’ve brought you our shortlist of the 10 best essay-writing apps for 2024. 

There’s something here for everyone—whether you want a dedicated essay writing tool, an AI tool that can assist with all types of writing or an all-in-one app that lets you do so much more than just improve your writing skills or optimize your assignment.

ClickUp may be known as a productivity and project management tool for businesses, but it’s also a great place for writers and students of any level. ClickUp provides you with a destination to store and work on your ideas, research, and writing—and features to prioritize your work throughout the process.

One of the best features for essay writing is ClickUp AI . Our new user-friendly AI writing assistant is tailored to your role, with a huge variety of use cases, tasks, and features, depending on how you want to use the app. Use ClickUp to assist with brainstorming essay or research paper topic ideas, summarizing your essay to write an impactful conclusion, or rewriting paragraphs so you sound more professional.

All the ideas and words you generate with our AI assistant live inside ClickUp Docs . Not only is this Microsoft Word and Google Docs alternative a great place to store notes and ideas, but it can become your personal wiki or repository for all your essay writing needs—one of our favorite productivity hacks . 

Store ideas, notes, citations, essay drafts, and interview notes in one place. Format your Docs, add images and colors, and personalize the experience so writing your essay is more fun.

If you’re not sure where to start, the Writing Guidelines Template by ClickUp is your go-to place to get clarity on how to write the best content. The template includes advice on being consistent across language, tone, and formatting so you can produce error-free, cohesive, and accurate content every time. 

With ClickUp AI, ClickUp Docs, and our comprehensive Template Library , ClickUp has everything you need to start writing your best essays yet. 🤩

ClickUp best features

• Store all your essay or assignment notes, drafts, and files in one place
• Invite mentors to collaborate with you or share real-time feedback within your Docs
• Use ClickUp AI to generate high-quality ideas, rephrase sentences, and create text for your essay
• Streamline your process and get inspiration with relevant templates
• Save time and work faster by using ClickUp to assist with research, writing, and as a focus app while you work

ClickUp limitations 

• With so many features and use cases, some users may need a while to explore all the possibilities of using ClickUp
• ClickUp AI is a new feature, so the functionality will grow and develop over time

ClickUp pricing

• Free Forever
• Unlimited: $5/month per user
• Business: $12/month per user
• Business Plus: $19/month per user
• Enterprise: Contact for pricing
• ClickUp AI is available on all paid plans for $5 per Workspace member per month

ClickUp ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (8,700+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (3,800+ reviews) 

Frase is an AI content creation tool that combines writing and SEO research to create copy that’s easy to read and designed to rank in search engines. This AI writing software can pull background research and stats from search results, and the outlining tool makes organizing your thoughts into a coherent essay easier. 📝

Frase best features

• Source stats, research, and background information directly from search engines
• Create an outline with structured headings and sections
• Use AI to generate introductions, FAQs, headings, and more
• Write, edit, and share documents easily within Frase

Frase limitations 

• Frase is designed for individuals and agencies working on SEO copy, so some of the features may not be relevant for essay writing or academic writing
• Some users report that sometimes the text output can be repetitive on the essay-writing app

Frase pricing

• Solo: $14.99/month per user
• Basic: $44.99/month per user
• Team: $114.99/month for three users

Frase ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.9/5 (200+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.8/5 (300+ reviews) 

Bonus: Check out 7 Free Content Writing Templates for Faster Content Creation

Writesonic is a comprehensive copywriting and paraphrasing tool that gives you the features to write, edit, optimize, and improve your content writing—including essays. Writesonic’s feature list includes an AI writer, paraphrasing tool, text expander, article summarizer, and idea generator. 💡

Writesonic best features

• Get factual content with data pulled from top search results to help find the best essay and academic papers
• Upload documents to guide the tool on your unique style for a more personalized writing style
• Paraphrase your text or get a summary of your essay in one click
• Check your essay before you submit with a built-in spell checker, grammar checker, and plagiarism checker

Writesonic limitations

• Some users may run into issues with word count limits, especially for writing essays and longer assignments
• You may need to prompt multiple times to get longer responses, some users suggest

Writesonic pricing

• Unlimited: $20/month per user
• Business: From $19/month per user

Writesonic ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.8/5 (1,800+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.8/5 (1,800+ reviews) 

EssayAiLab is a free AI essay writer app that helps users find ideas, write essays, and edit for grammar before they submit. This dedicated app that writes essays for you has a range of niche features including Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association (APA) citations and a hypersensitive plagiarism checker. 🔍

EssayAiLab best features

• Search through millions of credible results to surface the most relevant information when writing essays
• Find new ways to compose sentences with automated suggestions to speed up the writing process
• Check for issues with the built-in grammar checker and plagiarism checker
• Automatically generate MLA and APA citations in one click across the entire essay

EssayAiLab limitations 

• There aren’t many user reviews of EssayAiLab, so it’s hard to get an idea of what other users think about this free app
• This essay writer app is designed specifically for essay writing, so you may wish to explore other essay apps for other types of academic writing

EssayAiLab pricing

Essayailab ratings and reviews.

• Capterra: N/A

Jasper is one of the most well-known AI content writing tools available today. This popular tool specializes in generating short-form and long-form copy that’s aligned with your brand—which is a plus point for users who want to compose multiple essays that sound like them.

Jasper’s features include an AI writer, a chatbot, and a template library. Easily make suggestions for word count or for optimizing academic writing in a specific style or tone.

Jasper best features

• Share documents to train the AI on your personal paper writing skills and style
• Access recent search data to check facts and add credibility
• Edit and optimize your essays so that they read professionally
• Check for any issues with a built-in plagiarism checker

Jasper limitations 

• Some users, especially students, may find the pricing model unaffordable
• Sometimes the outputs don’t always feel relevant, some users suggest
• No real free version compared to some other AI essay writer apps

Jasper pricing

• Creator: $39/month per user
• Teams: $99/month for three users
• Business: Contact for pricing

Jasper ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (1,200+ reviews)

Sudowrite is an AI writing tool that bills itself as a writing companion. This tool is designed for creative writers and authors working on stories and scripts, but many of its features—like autocomplete and rewrite—translate well to academic writing.

This essay-writing software also helps you hone in on your specific writing style for more clarity and readability—so you produce the best essay possible.

Sudowrite best features

• Automatically complete sentences and paragraphs i the writing app
• Use rewrite to add variety to your essay language and improve readability
• Get suggestions on replacement words to enhance the impact of your sentences
• Get feedback on how to improve your essay within the app

Sudowrite limitations 

• Sudowrite is built with creative writing in mind, so it may not be the best option for professional essay writers or business users
• As it’s a relatively new tool, there aren’t many reviews from real-world users yet
• Writing app has no real free version

Sudowrite pricing

• Hobby & Student: $10/month for 30,000 words
• Professional: $25/month for 90,000 words
• Max: $100/month for 300,000 words

Sudowrite ratings and reviews

Rytr is an AI-powered content writer and writing assistant that’s ideal for a variety of uses including business ideas, emails, cover letters, and essays. The platform asks you to choose a use case and add context, and it’ll create content based on your goals and prompts. ✏️

Rytr best features

• Choose from 40+ built-in use cases and templates
• Use scientific copywriting formulas to make your essays more persuasive
• Expand, reword, and polish sentences to make them read better
• Submit your essays without worry thanks to the built-in plagiarism checker

Rytr limitations 

• Some users report that the facts given can feel basic or repetitive compared to other apps that write essays
• The AI writer can cut off mid-sentence if you run out of credits, which can happen unexpectedly

Rytr pricing

• Saver: $9/month per user
• Unlimited: $29/month per user

Rytr ratings and reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (700+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.6/5 (10+ reviews) 

HyperWrite.ai is an AI copywriting tool that blends research, writing, and personal AI assistance to create a useful tool for writers. Its features include a summarizing tool, an intro generator, a speech writer, and a universal translator. 💬

HyperWrite.ai best features

• Use AI to help you write an essay on any topic
• Generate a list of essay topic ideas before you start writing
• Rewrite content so that it sounds more powerful in enhances your writing ability
• Summarize text to automatically create summaries and conclusions

HyperWrite.ai limitations 

• There’s no built-in plagiarism checker, so you’ll need to use another app for this
• As a relatively new tool, there’s little social proof and few reviews about HyperWrite

HyperWrite.ai pricing

• Premium: $19.99/month per user
• Ultra: $44.99/month per user

HyperWrite.ai ratings and reviews

• G2: 5/5 (2 reviews)
• Capterra: N/A 

AI-Writer is a new AI writing tool that bills itself as “the only AI text generator built to be trusted.” This app focuses heavily on citation and transparency, which is a bonus for those writing essays or assignments. AI-Writer’s features include research, AI writing, verifiable citations, and text rewording. 📚

AI-Writer best features

• Automatically generate a full article draft or an entire essay draft in minutes
• Get citations for every source that AI-Writer pulls data or facts from
• Reword your text so that it sounds more professional or persuasive
• Automatically generate a list of references that you can include when you submit your essay

AI-Writer limitations 

• Like many AI essay writing apps, this one is designed with SEO copy in mind so the workflow may not feel relevant for essay writers
• Those with longer assignments may find the per-article word cap too small (especially for those who write essays regularly)

AI-Writer pricing

• Basic: $29/month per user
• Standard: $49/month for three users
• Power: $375/month for 10 users

AI-Writer ratings and reviews

• Capterra: 5/5 (1 review) 

StoryLab.ai is a comprehensive AI content marketing toolkit designed for marketing teams and agencies that want to boost engagement and revenue by creating content at volume for their content calendar . As part of this, the platform has a range of copy generators that can help you create a strong essay title, essay copy, and more. 📣

StoryLab.ai best features

• Generate introductions, titles, content ideas, and more
• Get unique outputs every time you run the generator
• Experiment with 13 different writing styles
• Available in 17+ languages

StoryLab.ai limitations 

• StoryLab.ai is designed for marketing teams, so essay and assignment writers may find the range of features distracting or unnecessary
• The product isn’t explained in as much detail as other AI writers, but there is a free plan you can experiment with

StoryLab.ai pricing

• Pro: $15/month per user
• Unlimited: $19/month per user

StoryLab.ai ratings and reviews

Ace your next assignment with the best essay writing apps.

There are lots of essay writing apps out there that claim to be the best, but we believe those in our shortlist live up to the title. Explore these apps that write essays for you, test some out, and find a new way to make your essay-writing process easier.

As you explore the apps above, we recommend prioritizing ClickUp. Our all-in-one app doesn’t just come with an AI writing tool—it’s a destination for all your notes, drafts, tasks, interviews, and files throughout the essay writing process.

Gather your thoughts, write your essay, make improvements, and more—all within one app.

Try ClickUp for free today to understand why it’s appreciated by so many writers and students. ✨

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Step into the future of the academic writing with Yomu

Never get stuck at writing your essay

Use an intelligent Document Assistant to help write entire sections and give you feedback.

Your personal essay copilot

Elevate your essay writing with an AI autocomplete that completes your sentences and paragraphs.

Edit your paper like a pro

Leverage AI to brainstorm and refine your paper: paraphrase, expand, shorten, summarize, and transform bullet points into detailed text.

Cite papers with ease

Easily find, include, and format citations in your paper with our AI-powered citation tool powered by Sourcely .

Ensure your work is original and uphold academic integrity.

Evaluate your work with an advanced plagiarism checker and gain insights on how to maintain originality and authenticity ( Ethics Statement ).

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Power your academic writing with yomu ai.

Save time writing your next essay or research paper with Yomu

Still thinking? There's even more

Authentic, original, genuine.

Get ahead of AI detectors and ensure your work is original and authentic.

Powerful AI commands

Edit, brainstorm, and write with our powerful AI commands.

Yomu lets you easily add, caption and reference figures in the text.

Grammar & text improvements

Write flawlessly with the help of our grammar & text improvement checker.

Yomu lets you easily create, modify, caption and reference tables in the text.

Submit desired features

We are not stopping here, review our roadmap, frequently asked questions.

Yomu is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps you write better essays, papers, and academic writing. Simply start typing and Yomu will generate suggestions for you to use in your writing. You can also use Yomu to generate entire paragraphs or sections. Yomu also helps find citations, references, and sources for you to use in your writing. You can make sure that your writing is plagiarism-free by using Yomu's plagiarism checker.

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Best Essay Writing Apps in 2024

Showing 62 writing apps that match your search.

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Platforms: Online

Best for: Editing, Proofreading, Blog, Essay, and Free

Website: https://linguix.com/

Base price:

Premium price:

★★★ Performance

★★★ Features

★★ Accessibility

Also rated 4.6 ★ on Capterra

A tool for thoughtful writing. See your work in new ways, think with an integrated concept map, and export with an automatic reference section, all in a distraction free environment.

Platforms: Mac

Best for: Drafting, Book, Story, Essay, and Free

Website: https://www.augmentedtext.info/author

★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Features

Also rated 4.4 ★ on TechRadar

The human brain is non-linear: we jump from idea to idea, all the time. Your second brain should work the same. In Obsidian, making and following connections is frictionless. Tend to your notes like a gardener; at the end of the day, sit back and marvel at your own knowledge graph.

Platforms: Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, PC

Best for: Note-taking, Outlining, Journal, Book, Story, Essay, Poetry, Blog, and Free

Website: https://obsidian.md/

★★★★★ Performance

★★★★ Accessibility

Also rated 4.5 ★ on TechRadar

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Compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with Grammarly. Work with an AI writing partner that helps you find the words you need⁠—⁠to write that tricky email, to get your point across, to keep your work moving.

Platforms: Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, Online, PC

Best for: Editing, Proofreading, Book, Essay, Story, Blog, and Free

Website: https://www.grammarly.com/

★★★★★ Accessibility

Also rated 4.4 ★ on the App Store

QuillBot offers you top-notch tools for perfecting your writing, from our Paraphraser and Summarizer to our Plagiarism Checker. At QuillBot, we’re committed to making writing painless by building the most robust writing and research platform in the world.

Best for: Editing, Proofreading, Essay, and Free

Website: https://quillbot.com/

★★★ Accessibility

You have a story to tell, article to publish, or class notes to take. Scrivo Pro can help you organize your writing, research, generate ideas, and remove distractions so you can focus on the most important thing: writing.

Platforms: Mac, iPhone, iPad

Best for: Outlining, Drafting, Journal, Book, Story, Essay, Poetry, and Blog

Website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrivo-pro-for-scriveners-a...

A minimalist writing zone, where you can block out all distractions and get to what's important. The writing! To get started, all you need to do is delete this text (seriously, just highlight it and hit delete), and fill the page with your own fantastic words. You can even change the title!

Platforms: Online, Chrome

Best for: Drafting, Book, Story, Poetry, Journal, Essay, and Free

Website: https://zenpen.io/

SSuite Wordgraph Editor

SSuite WordGraph is a free and very useful alternative to Microsoft's Word, OpenOffice's Writer, or anything else out there claiming to be the latest and greatest. You don't even have a need for .NET or even JAVA to be installed. This will save you a lot of hard drive space and precious computer resources.

Platforms: Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Chrome, Android, PC

Best for: Drafting, Story, Book, Essay, and Free

Website: https://www.ssuiteoffice.com/software/wordgraph.htm

Microsoft Word

Elevate your writing, create beautiful documents, and collaborate with others—anywhere, anytime.

Platforms: Online, Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Chrome, PC

Best for: Drafting, Essay, Journal, Book, Story, Poetry, and Blog

Website: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/word

★★★★★ Features

Guided Essay Writer

Step-by-step guided essay-writing directions written by a college English professor and includes explanations and examples to help you write a college-level essay including the following: introduction paragraph, supporting paragraphs, and conclusion paragraph.

Best for: Outlining, Drafting, and Essay

Website: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guided-essay-writer/id11731...

Also rated 5.0 ★ on the App Store

OmniOutliner

OmniOutliner is a powerful tool for organizing (and reorganizing) information, so you can see the full picture and structure your information effortlessly.

Best for: Outlining, Essay, and Blog

Website: https://www.omnigroup.com/omnioutliner/

Also rated 3.2 ★ on the App Store

Apple Pages

Pages is a powerful word processor that lets you create stunning documents, and comes included with most Apple devices. And with real-time collaboration, your team can work together from anywhere, whether they’re on Mac, iPad, iPhone, or a PC.

Platforms: iPad, Mac, iPhone

Best for: Drafting, Book, Essay, Journal, Poetry, Story, Blog, and Free

Website: https://www.apple.com/pages/

Also rated 3.6 ★ on the App Store

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10 apps that help you write essays.

Writing essays can be hours of long work reading and writing. To help you hand your paper in faster, we’ve compiled the top 10 apps that write essays for you.

Published on Jan 19, 2022

By Dave Rogenmoser

Writing essays is a skill you need to pass many high school classes and even college or university courses. However, not everyone has the greatest writing skills, and even then, great writers sometimes don’t have the time to write everything. 

Plagiarism is another common concern when in school and should be taken seriously, considering it can get you kicked out of education. Instead of paying a hefty fee for essay writing services, take advantage of the best essay writing apps available to help you score your next A+. 

10 top apps that write essays for you

We’ve found the top online apps and websites to help you decide on your thesis, collect your research, and help you through the paper writing process. Some of these apps are AI-based and can help you with the writing process, while others will help you improve your productivity and ability to gather information effectively.

• Wordtune Read
• Essay AI Lab
• My Assignment Help Essay Typer
• Paper Typer

Jasper is an AI writing tool with the power to write essays for you. The Long-Form Assistant template allows you to start typing and let Jasper fill in the rest. 

In the word processor, you can tell Jasper what tone you want to write in and any keywords you want to include. This is key for optimizing academic writing that will be published online. 

In the screenshot below, we asked Jasper for help on an essay about writing A+ essays. We shared some content information as well as our desired tone. Jasper delivered

• Optimizes written content for ranking on Google
• Finishes your sentences for you
• Has a Bootcamp to learn even better ways to use Jasper
• Includes over 50+ templates for different writing needs
• Rated 5/5 stars in over 1000 reviews
• Paid membership required

Pricing: Jasper offers several flexible pricing plans ranging from the $39/mo Creator plan to custom Business plans for an enterprise-level solution.

2. Papers Owl

This quick thesis statement generator makes the most out of the first few sentences of your essay. Add in your information and the AI generates a paragraph to introduce your essay.

• Online website tool
• No registration required
• Receive three outputs each time
• Requires that you know your thesis already — which requires prior research
• You need one to two supporting statements already

Pricing: Free

Coggle is a mind mapping app. These visual diagrams help you decide on your essay topic, organize all your points, and know which ideas are linked to each other. Coggle is available for iOS and Android devices and as a Google Chrome extension.

• Available as an online website tool, browser extension, or app
• Collaborate with up to three other people
• Make unlimited mind maps
• Download your map as a PDF or image
• Most maps will be public
• Requires registration
• The free version has no custom line paths

Pricing: Free forever. Paid plans start at $5/month.

4.  Wordtune Read

Wordtune’s app Wordtune Read reduces your reading time by summarizing paragraphs in long articles and essays. This example shows how Wordtune Read turns a long academic research paper into a three-minute read by summarizing essential points on the right.

• Summarizes long articles and documents
• Allows users to upload a document or link to a research article
• Users can export the summarized points as a Word document
• Available as a Google Chrome extension
• Can only export as a Word document

Pricing: Basic version is free, but there are options to upgrade. Paid plans start at $9.99/month.

5. Essay AI Lab

Essay AI Lab searches the internet for relevant information for you and conveniently puts it all together in an essay. All you have to do is provide the guiding title and prompt. 

Essay AI Lab’s writing process allows you to choose each paragraph in your essay from tens of samples. This word processing tool is excellent for finding resources while writing your essay.

• Includes citations and research references in APA or MLA format
• You choose each paragraph for your essay
• Paraphrases to eliminate any plagiarism concerns
• Completely free to use
• Requires registration to save or download your work
• Rephrasing can change word meaning
• Some citations come from blogs and news sources

6. My Assignment Help Essay Typer

This word processing tool is very similar to Essay AI Lab but has a few more benefits. In addition to providing pre-written paragraphs on your topic, you can hire an expert at any point to jump in and help you finish your paper.

• Includes other free tools like a summary generator and paraphrasing tool
• App available for iPhone or iPad and Android devices
• Works best as a research tool
• Reviews claim they do not give refunds for failed services

Pricing: Free 

7. Paper Typer

Paper Typer writes you an entire essay in seconds after you tell it the subject of your paper. This AI essay writer app creates appropriate formatting for your essay as well. It offers headers and subheaders to write the best essay possible.

• Entire paper in seconds
• Unlimited sessions and edits
• You can edit citations on the same site
• Covers a wide range of information on the topic
• Only works for simple subject topics
• Fact-check needed to ensure proper citations
• Edits required to prevent plagiarism

Pricing: Free for students.

8. Wordtune

Wordtune upgrades your academic papers with professional writing using AI algorithms. This text editor uses AI to rewrite sentences and paragraphs up to 280 characters long. 

This tool works best to polish introductory or concluding sentences or summarize a long point. You can upgrade to the Premium plan to make your sentences more formal, more casual, longer, or shorter. 

• Designed to improve the quality of your essays
• Free version available
• Has extensive customer support
• Limited free membership
• Won’t write essays for you; only improves pre-written text

Pricing: Free online. Premium plans start at $9.99/month for unlimited use.

9. AI Writer

AI Writer is another fully AI essay writer. Write your title or headline on the homepage, sign-up, and receive access to an original draft, citations, and relevant SEO-friendly content. 

• Free 1-week trial
• Optimizes content for SEO
• Has a 2-minute turn-around time
• Saves up to 50% of your time compared to starting from scratch
• Writes in English only
• Membership required
• Does not use all-academic sources
• Reviewers say the essays are not high-quality

Pricing: Paid plans start at $29 per month.

10. Readable

Readable is a web-based text analyzer that helps to improve your writing’s readability score. Readability refers to how complex your writing is. For example, college essays typically have a higher readability score than high school essays. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level is the academic standard for determining readability, which Readable uses in their analysis.

Improving your readability score can lead to clearer writing and higher grades.  

• Offers a 7-day trial of ContentPro version
• Grades your paper
• Shares your word count as you write
• Analyzes the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level
• Free version is very limited
• Requires an account to download your work

Pricing: There’s a free version. Paid plans start at $8/month.

Write A+ essays with Jasper

While there are several apps that write essays for you available in the market, Jasper stands out for several reasons. 

Our AI writing assistant was designed to be your writing partner. Instead of generating content from a template, Jasper is a “thinking” app. It draws on its knowledge of 10% of the internet and writes naturally — almost like a human would.

You can use Jasper’s Blog Post Outline template for outlining and the Long-Form Assistant for essay writing. You can also take advantage of the Blog Post Introduction and Blog Post Conclusion templates for starting and finishing strong. 

You will get 100% unique content with Jasper — zero plagiarism. You only have to think about proofreading, using a spell-checker, or any final revisions.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for Jasper today.

Meet The Author:

Dave Rogenmoser

Dave is the Co-Founder Jasper , a Y Combinator-backed tech company based in Austin, Texas. He is also a husband and father of 3 boys.

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Alex Birkett

11 Apps That Write Essays for You (and Improve Quality)

Last Updated on February 28, 2023 by Alex Birkett

Writing essays is a time-consuming task.

It requires research, structuring, formatting, and plenty of editing. As such, it’s no wonder that students often seek out help from external sources.

One of the most popular solutions in recent years are essay writing apps.

But what exactly are they? And do they work as advertised? Let’s dive into the details.

What Are Essay Writing Apps?

Essay writing apps are digital tools that help you to write better essays.

They typically come with features like spellcheckers, grammar checkers, and idea generators to help spur your writing process forward.

Some also offer pre-written content that you can use as a starting point for your own essay.

The idea is that these tools save you time and energy so you can focus on crafting great ideas instead of getting bogged down with tedious tasks like proofreading or finding research materials.

Do Essay Writing Apps Really Work?

The short answer is yes – but with some caveats.

While these apps can certainly be helpful in terms of providing assistance with proofreading and idea generation, they won’t be able to write entire essays for you from scratch like some people may believe.

Moreover, while some apps offer pre-written content that could be useful as a starting point for your essay, it’s important to remember that this isn’t an excuse to plagiarize or copy other people’s work without crediting them properly; if caught doing so, it could have serious consequences for your academic career.

What Are the Best Essay Writing Apps Available?

The best essay writing apps will have some of the following abilities:

• They generate net new content
• They help you format and ideate the structure of your essay
• They improve your writing style
• They have grammar, spelling, plagiarism, and style detection
• They can help you research factual information about the topic
• They’re “multi-purpose tools” that allow for custom functionalities
• They’re affordable.

I’ll judge the following of the best essay apps below on the above characteristics.

Editor’s note: I’m going to use some affiliate links when possible to try to earn some revenue from my content. These don’t change the opinions espoused in the content nor the style in which they are written. If I think a product sucks, I’m not going to say otherwise. This is just a bonus and a way to fund the whole operation. Anyway, enjoy the article!

11 Apps That Write Essays for You

• ProWritingAid
• Hypotenuse AI

Jasper  is an AI-powered essay writing app that helps you organize, write, and format your essays faster.

It’s functionally an all-purpose AI text generator , with a Google Docs / MS Word style editor you can use in conjunction with custom commands.

You can also hook it up with Grammarly to find spelling mistakes, punctuation mistakes, run on sentences, and other grammatical mistakes in real time.

They’ve got a few different modes (as part of their broader Boss Mode plan):

Focus mode is for pure writing, a simple word processor (but with an AI assistant attached). The focus writer is where I spend a lot of my time in this tool.

Chat mode is just like ChatGPT (more on that later)

SEO mode hooks up with Surfer SEO  to give you keyword suggestions in addition to your regular spell checking and generative essay writer functionality.

And power mode unlocks all of their use case templates, recipes, and commands.

Overall, Jasper is hands down the most powerful AI writing software. Premium features like SEO mode, Chat mode, and Power mode are only available on their Boss Mode plan, so I’d opt for that one.

It does seem to struggle with research papers and reference materials, so make sure you’ve got your citations on lock before you start writing. They also lack a web clipper tool, but their browser extension tool does give you the ability to write content everywhere.

They also have drawing tools and art generation capabilities , by the way.

Price : Starts at $24/mo. Boss Mode plan begins at $49/month

G2 Score:  4.8/5

Frase is a web-based writing tool that uses AI to help writers create high-quality essays quickly.

They’ve got a whole suite of SEO tools , including a content brief and content research tool, content optimization software, and generative AI  tools to help you write content.

Their content brief and research tool is of particular interest here.

Most of the best essay writing app options on this list focus only on text generation or rewriting; few focus on actually helping you format your piece in the first place, which is often where the hard work is.

Then, for their AI writing tool, they feature a ton of helpful templates, including “explain why,” “bullets to paragraphs,” and a metaphor / analogy tool:

Price:  Only $14.99/mo ($12 per month when paid annually).

ChatGPT  was launched in 2022 by OpenAI (the creators of GPT-3, which powers most of the writing software on this list).

It has brought generative AI to the mainstream, and it’s already one of the best writing apps for all purposes.

It acts as a chat interface, so it’s much more intuitive than many of the dedicated AI writing software out there.

Basically, you can ask it or prompt it to write…anything. I’ve used it to generate creative stories, write love poems, make me ideas for essays, improve my writing skills, and build outlines for SEO-focused content.

Let’s walk through a use case. I took a history class in college called “US history from 1945 to the present.” I’ll ask ChatGPT to create me some topic ideas:

Pretty good! I like the cold war idea, so I’ll ask it to create an outline for me:

Okay, maybe I’d want to change up a few pieces of this, but let’s go with it. Here’s the full essay:

Crazy! And that’s just a first pass. I could further tweak the outputs with better instructions.

This stuff is getting scary good.

Price:  Free

G2 Score:  NA

4. Writesonic

Writesonic  is a YC-backed startup that makes generative AI tools capable of writing essays.

I’m a big fan of this product.

They’ve got a ton of ready-made templates to get you started out (including a few that are great for writing essays). They’ve also got a few templates that can help you improve your writing style or even rewrite content so its better formatted.

Finally, they’ve got a Google Docs style editor for long form writers so you can use commands and write alongside the AI.

G2 Score: 4.8/5

Copy AI  is another AI copywriting tool  built on top of GPT-3.

It primarily writes essays through use case templates. A few that are popular for the writing process include:

• Essay intro
• Essay outline
• Explain like I’m 5
• Sentence rewriter
• Analogy generator

For example, look at this need little essay writer app that lets you build an outline for your essay:

The sentence rewriter and analogy generator are two examples that can help you improve your writing style.

Copy AI doesn’t have the same flexibility and power that Jasper and ChatGPT have, but it’s much easier to use. The templates are well set up and foolproof. And they have many that actually help you format text and design the scope of your piece, not just write it.

Overall, I’m a big fan of this tool.

Price:  Free for up to 2000 words and then $49/mo for unlimited word counts.

6. ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid  is a cool professional writing software that uses AI to generate content.

It’s great for academic papers and academic writing. Unlike many other essay writing services, this one incorporates grammar checking, spell check, style checking, plagiarism checking, and word count into the content they produce.

They’ve built custom solutions for higher education, teachers, non-native English speakers, and creatives.

I like this one because it lets users create content from scratch, but it’s also got features to improve your writing (this is powerful for college students especially).

Got some handwritten notes that you want to whip up into a good essay? This one is great at processing hand written notes and producing great content.

Pro Writing Aid works via browser, but they’ve got integrations that allow for offline access and desktop software as well – such as a Scrivener integration and an MS Word integration.

Overall, a great product with a free app that allows for up to 500 words.

Price: Completely free for up to 500 words, and then $10 per month for unlimited use.

G2 Score: 4.5/5

7. Speedwrite

Speedwrite  is one of the most popular writing applications out there. It helps you write essays from scratch as well as rephrasing your existing content.

How’s it work? Basically, through “predictions.” You just enter text and hit the “predict” button (they call their text generations “predictions”). This then takes your content and paraphrases it using their artificial intelligence.

This makes it useful for everything from writing notes to polishing up existing texts.

They’ve got tons of users (roughly 500k+). They claim to have written millions of lines of text, and all of this is fresh, original content with good style and grammar.

While Speedwrite has some downsides (it’s not great with structured diagrams or starting with a blank page), it’s still popular. Anyway, there are a ton of great Speedwrite alternatives  you can check out.

One cool thing is you can use this tool completely free.

Here’s an example of a “prediction” based on the above text.

Price:  Free and the only $19.99 per month

Lex is a new AI writer that I’ve just started trying out. I love it so far.

It’s different from the others. It’s aimed at writers. Many of the other tools help non-writers produce content. This one is no-frills, just a Google Docs / Microsoft Word style editor and an auto complete functionality.

And to be honest: the outputs are pretty darn good. I only write the first two sentences here and then let Lex finish it:

Lex can also be used on both ios devices as well as android devices (instructions in the app).

As far as I know, the tool is free, but I’m sure they’ll introduce a standard pricing model soon. You have to get on a waitlist to get access.

Price : Free

G2 Score: NA

Rytr  is a similar tool to Jasper, Copy AI, and Writesonic. It was also built on GPT-3 technology, so it’s got many of the same outputs and templates as these tools.

The biggest difference with Rytr is its price. They’re one of the most affordable apps that write essays for you, starting at just $9/mo (plus a free plan).

This is a great starter app.

Price: free, and then $9/mo

G2 Score: 4.7/5

10. Hypotenuse AI

Hypotenuse AI  started out as an ecommerce-focused AI tool, but it has since expanded.

Like other tools on this list, they’ve got one of the best essay writing capabilities out there.

The reason I’m adding them to this list, though, is their content detective feature. This allows you to research content with citations. Most tools suffer from factual inaccuracies, which is obviously a huge problem when it comes to academic writing.

Hypotenuse is working to solve that, and for that, I applaud them.

Price: Starts at $24/mo

G2 Score: 4.4/5

11. Word AI

Word AI  is a sweet tool built for two things: content rewriting, and scale.

You can essentially do like 1000 rewrites based on your initial content. This is helpful for SEO folks hoping to do link building and guest posting at scale.

For the essay writers among us? It’s great for coming up with clear copy and rewriting your piece to enrich your text, split sentences, and improve the clarity of your writing.

I will say, transparently, this is not one of my favorite tools out there. I think it’s a little clunky for most use cases and it’s best for spinning up a ton of content for SEO.

However, I wanted to include it on the list because it’s one of the best at content production at scale.

Price:  $57/month

G2 Score: 3.9/5

At the end of the day, essay writing apps can be incredibly useful resources if used correctly by students or writers who need assistance crafting their stories or arguments more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

However, it’s important to remember that these tools don’t replace actual human effort – they’re meant to supplement it – so make sure not to rely too heavily on them or allow them to take away from the creativity in your own work!

In that way, “apps that write essays for you” is sort of a myth. You’ll still need to provide the human intelligence 🙂

With all this in mind, don’t forget to do your own research into which app is right for you before committing – good luck!

When You Write

Best Essay Writing Software: 16 Apps That Can Help You Write Perfect Essays

Nowadays, we have apps for almost anything. Writing apps though, are really unique and serve several practical purposes, such as essay writing for example.

Writing an essay isn’t as simple as typing a bunch of words and arranging them as paragraphs. Writing a perfect essay entails planning, maintaining structure, writing clear and impactful sentences, and using good grammar.

That’s why we have writing apps. So in this post, I’m going to cover all the best essay writing software tools that are available now.

Okay, let’s get into it!

Our Top 3 Essay Writing Software at a Glance

Prowritingaid, the 16 best essay writing apps.

Best Book Writing Software.

Scrivener is a book-writing software program developed—13 years ago—by an aspiring writer Keith Blount.

Scrivener is what you get when you combine a typewriter, ring binder, and a scrapbook and make a book writing software tool.

It has so many useful features that take your book or any other writing project from the outline to a finished draft. We’re talking of features like corkboards, pre-set formatting, templates, file importing, metatags, automated document listing, and a bunch of other important capabilities.

Scrivener can be used by novelists, scriptwriters, academics, lawyers, translators, journalists, and students.

Pricing: Scrivener for macOS costs $49, iOS is $19.99 , and Scrivener for Windows costs $45.

Best Grammar Checker.

As far as grammar checkers go, there’s no app better than this.

It’s perfect for checking your text for typos, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. 

But it goes further than that; it has several editing features that tackle issues such as passive voice, lengthy or complex sentences, offers broader vocabulary options, et cetera. It also has a plagiarism checker and furnishes you with writing stats and readability scores.

Grammarly has a free version but reserves the best features for its premium plans.

Pricing: Free and Paid. Grammarly Premium starts at $11.66, and Grammarly Business starts at $12.50.

Excellent Tool for Self-editing

ProWritingAid is one of Grammarly’s fiercest competitors and pretty much gives you what Grammarly gives you.

Just itty-bitty shallower, BUT way more affordable.

If you want a proofreading and grammar checker writing app that has the potential of helping you improve the overall quality of your writing, this is it!

ProWritingAid refines your writing by checking important elements of your writing such as ambiguous sentences, grammar, transitions, abstract words, overused words, etc.

Over time, you start to notice improvements in your writing, especially the way it flows.

Pricing: Free and Paid.

• Monthly – $20
• Yearly – $79
• Lifetime – $399 

Best note-taking tool for Students

Evernote is a simple but excellent writing app that uses the idea of virtual notes. The virtual notes can be used in several ways: making book shopping lists, writing down essay ideas, and making notes on researched information.

The notes are backed up on Evernote’s servers, and you get about 60MB of storage space per account.

Pricing :  Free and Paid. The Premium plan costs $7.99 / month, and the Business costs $14.99/person/month.

Focus Writer

Free Alternative to MS Word.

I haven’t used this free word-processing app yet, but I’d seriously consider replacing my beloved MS Word with it.

It’s a very good alternative to MS Word; in fact, not only is it free and sufficient, it is available on almost all major platforms— Windows, Mac, and Android.

If you’re a student, I’d recommend this software, and you won’t have problems using the documents from this app because they’re saved in Rich Text Format so that most word processors can read them.

Pricing: Free.

Excellent for the Creative Stage of Writing

Before you write a good essay, you need to build the idea behind the essay first.

You need to add fresh to the bones before bringing the beast (of an essay) to life.

This tool helps you expand your original ideas into sub-ideas and construct full-fledged essays by using expressive, powerful flowcharts, process maps, and other diagrams.

Pricing: Free and Paid. The Awesome Plan costs $5/month, and the Organisation Plan is at $8/member/month.

Top-Notch Open-Source Tool

Manuskript is a tool perfect for organizing and planning stages of writing. It’s an open-source tool—for writers including novelists, journos, and academicians—that uses the snowflake method of writing to help you build your idea into a finished book; by helping you create the story step by step.

It has features for helping you keep track of notes on characters, plot, event,  and place in your story. Manuskript’s features include:

• The Outliner, which lets you organize your ideas and little pieces of your story hierarchically; 
• The Distraction-free mode gets rid of all distractions; 
• Personal goal-setting features;
• The Novel assistant utilizes the snowflake method to help you develop your basic ideas into a coherent plotline or a full-fledged story.

Pricing: Free

LivingWriter

Fast Developing Tool

This is a different writing app altogether. It has a lot of features that are excellent for both fiction nonfiction writers. It has features that help with story elements, general notes, goals and targets, doc sharing, and stats.

Plus, you can also switch LivingWriter in and out of Dark Mode and focus mode.

One thing I like about LivingWriter is that it started with a single platform (web) but is now expanding rapidly.

It has iOS and Android applications, Full integration with Grammarly, Canva integration, and its desktop apps are 90% complete (according to the Living Writer Roadmap )

Yearly Plan – $96 billed once a year

Monthly Plan – $9.99 per month

Best Writing Tool for Apple Products

I don’t know about now, but Ulysses was big back then (like a dozen years ago or so).

The app is rich with features similar to the other word processing software. It comes with a Markup-Based Text Editor, a library for organizing notes and documents, features for setting writing goals, publishing capabilities, and many others.

Ulysses is perfect for both small essays and large academic ones.

Pricing : Ulysses has different pricing options for different regions but using the US plan, it costs $5.99 per month and $49.99 per year.

Hemingway Editor

An App Most Impactful Writing

The Hemingway Editor AKA Hemingway App is a simple tool for writers who want to write content that is easier to read but bold.

Hemingway does this by looking at elements of your writing such as adverbs, passive voice, phrases and words with simpler alternatives, hard-to-read sentences, very-hard-to-read sentences, and other “lexical atrocities.”

The web-based version is free, but the downloadable version (for Mac and Windows) is a paid tool.

Pricing: $19.99

Excellent Mind Mapping Tool

They used to call this app IMindMap. Ayoa is an essential tool in the planning stages of your essay writing.

You can create mind maps for your essays which help give direction when you start fleshing out your essay.

This mapping tool helps increase productivity because everything you need to write is already outlined. The fact every step is already planned and you know exactly what to write can also increase your daily word count.

Pricing : The Ayoa PRO plan costs $10/month and is billed annually. The Ultimate Plan costs $13/month and is also billed annually.

Best App for Multi-Lingual Essays

This is another incredible alternative to Grammarly.

For non-native English speakers, this is a pot of gold right here. It can check your text for grammar errors and translate Spanish, French, German. And many other languages.

As a grammar checker, the tool mainly looks at aspects such as verbs, adverbs, confused words, commonly misspelled words, etc.

Here’s a funny story about Ginger (Just happened today.) As I was using the web-based editor, I copied some texts on Ginger’s website and pasted them into the editor and the tool found one misspelled word. Their content writers must not have used Ginger.

I felt like Ginger’s content writers were like Drug dealers, you know, they followed rule number one of drug dealing. “ never get high on your own product.”   

• Monthly Plan – $9.99
• Yearly Plan – $74.88
• Two-Year Plan: $119.76

Write Or Die

Best for Productivity Purposes.

This app has a name that sums up life for some of us.

Write or Die!

Write Or Die gives rewards, stimuli, and punishments if users set goals. This is what you need if you are a sloth like myself.

It gives you that needed push because the punishments—which include erasing current texts—can really scare the hell out of you and make you put an extra gear.

Pricing : Free and paid. $10 for macOS and Windows, and $1 for iOS.

Simplest Writing App

IA Writer is a distraction-free writing app that is more than perfect for writing short essays.

It has a very basic interface and uses plain text. As I said, there are no distractions because the IA writer also has a full-screen mode that fades out everything else but the line you are currently typing.

This minimalist writing app is available on Windows, Android, iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.

Pricing : Paid (offers free trials).

macOS- $29.99. has a 14-day trial

iOS &iPadOS – $29.99. No Free Trial.

Android – $4.99 /year or $29.99 once. Has a 30-day trial.

Windows – $29.99. Has a 14-day trial.

Hubspot Topic Generator

Best for Generating Topic Ideas.

This is a whole different menu right here.

It’s very different from the tools that I’ve listed in this post. This is why… you’re not going to use it to write. Instead, you use it to automatically generate writing ideas.

It’s a very simple tool; you input three words, and it provides you with nouns to generate a topic idea that you can use on your next writing project.

If you’re going to use this tool, it’s going to be during the very first stages of your writing project.

Manuscripts

Best App for Academic Assignments

Manuscript (not to be confused with Manuskript from above) is an app for students and academics. This is a convenient tool that works with popular word processing apps, including Microsoft Word.

The reason why it’s perfect for academic writing is it excels at the referencing aspect of writing—citations, abbreviations, etc.

So, for class writing assignments and larger tasks like dissertations, this is the tool I’d recommend.

Pricing : Free

Simplenote is a note-taking tool that helps you keep all your notes in one place but accessible everywhere.

You can back up your notes, add tags, share the notes with collaborators, and publish your notes in Markdown format.

Supported Systems: Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, Linux.

Guide to the Best Essay Writing Apps in 2021

Things to consider when choosing essay writing software.

A good essay writing software has to do things that make your essay look delectable and sound convincing.

Here are some of the things that an essay writing software need to be able to help you with:

Organization

I already talked about organization at the beginning, so you already know how important it is. The essay writing app has to help you arrange your essay and ensure that it flows nicely. It needs to clear the chaos that would have existed had you not used that specific tool.

Grammatical correctness

This is crucial in any writing project. The essay writing software has to help you correct your grammatical and spelling errors.

Proofreading

The proofreading capabilities of a good essay writing app go beyond checking for grammar and spelling mistakes. It also has to excel at checking other aspects like overuse of adverbs, passive voice, run-on sentences, weak writing , and readability.

Writing software doesn’t have to cost an arm. Most of these apps have similar features and pretty much do the same things. A higher price doesn’t necessarily mean the app is good but in some circumstances, apps are pricey for a good reason.

What Features Should an Essay Writing App Have

So, to achieve the above requirements, what features does a writing software need to have?

Below are the most important features that a good essay writing software program MUST have.

Grammar and Spelling checker

To achieve the overall grammatical correctness of your essay, a writing app needs to have a grammar checking feature. If it doesn’t, being integrable with an efficient grammar checking tool is also convenient.

Sentence structure and flow reports

Again, I cannot overemphasize the importance of structure in essay writing. The structure should start from your sentences to your paragraphs and the whole essay. A good essay writing app needs to have features that check aspects of structure and flow.

Punctuation checker

We can’t have an essay littered with semicolons, commas, and hyphens looking like they’re lost. Punctuation might be one of the most underrated features but make no mistake, it’s essential for professional writing.

Plagiarism checker

A good essay has to be unique and original. Therefore, essay writing software has to make sure that the body of the essay does not contain any plagiarized content.

Writing Metrics

Stats like word count, words per minute, or the number of pages are important for tracking progress. School essays usually have a word or page count requirements, and writing software must be equipped with writing metrics so that the user is kept abreast of the distance covered.

Sentence quality checker

In the writing profession, Quality matters.  It doesn’t matter if you have reached the minimum word count but the essay is of poor quality.

Writing apps must be able to pick out sentences that need improving or deleting due to poor quality writing.

Why Should You Use Writing Software to Write Essays?

Writing software won’t write your essay for you, but the writing process is hard to manage and that’s what these tools do.

Here are the benefits of using writing software:

1. Planning and Outlining

Planning is an important element of a good essay writing process. Writing software tools come with features that help you plan before you start writing.

For example, Scrivener has a feature called corkboard, which is a good planning tool. It’s like a set of digital index cards, and each represents a section of writing.

With writing software, you can plan and outline before the actual writing starts, and you can go back to the outlines and notes while writing.

2. Productivity

Productivity is a big problem for most writers. Writers like myself just write without setting a lot of writing goals, so when we feel like writing, we need to be at our most productive levels.

For those that set daily goals, maintaining a daily word count is not easy.

For both kinds of writers, writing software can help increase productivity.

The software tools come with writing stats to help you keep track of your progress. They also have features for distraction-free writing.

Templates also help increase productivity. The templates make things easier and save you a lot of time (which would have been used setting things up).

3. Editing and Formatting

Writing software tools come with features that can flag spelling & grammar mistakes and other errors. They also offer solutions to these errors.

This is very important for your editing process—it makes the editing stage easier and faster.

This also helps in increasing productivity since editing is less laborious and speedy.

Usually when we write essays (especially academic ones), some formatting requirements come with them. Writing apps are furnished with most of the formatting rules and styles that essays (academic or otherwise) may require.

4. Organizing

Writing can be a messy process.

Most often than not, essays also require a lot of research. And again, we’re not saying that writing software will help you research.

But when you get all the bits of info needed for your essay, the apps will help you keep the researched content organized.

With these writing apps, you can have all of your research organized and easily accessible.

The thing about a disorganized writing process is that it is reflected in the flow and structure of the essay.

How to Effectively Use Essay Writing Software

Let me reiterate, essay writing apps won’t write your essays for you, neither will they be correct all the time.

To get the best out of them, you need to treat them as writing tutors or co-writers. If they suggest something useful, take it on board, and if you feel like the suggestion is a bit off point, disregard it.

What Is a Perfect Essay?

A perfect essay convincingly speaks to the reader. An essay is like an argument or a speech, and it has to have a readable flow or show direction.

Perfect essays must contain arguments, supporting ideas, and most importantly, evidence.  

To write a perfect essay, you need to:

• Thoroughly plan the whole essay before you start writing.
• Start writing your arguments using a clear structure.
• Back up your points and refer to relevant sources if necessary.
• Make sure that you infuse the information with creativity. There’s nothing exciting about a bunch of truths thrown into an essay using bland sentences.
• Before you finish your draft, ensure that you’ve answered the question in your introduction and conclusion.

How can I write an essay on my phone?

Well, most of the apps listed here are available as mobile apps. If you feel it’d be okay to write on your phone, try out a couple of the apps on this list and see which one works better on mobile platforms.

I’d recommend using tablet computers as they have bigger screens than regular smartphones.

Final Words

There are just so many essay writing software tools nowadays that even though Scrivener and Grammarly top the list, stumbling on the best one for you is almost 1/1000 probable.

You have to try out these tools before purchasing them.

Just to say it for the one-thousandth time, essay writing apps won’t write your essays for you; YOU WILL.

Recommended Reading...

Best dictation software in 2024, scrivener vs word: which is the better book writing software, vellum vs scrivener: which is better for writing and formatting your book, write app review 2024: the best distraction-free writing app.

Keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our reviews and comparisons. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

© 2024 When You Write

Best Essay Writing Apps: Exploring the Top Choices

Did you know that the average person spends about 23 days per year on their phones? With the prevalence of mobile devices, integrating essay-writing apps into your routine allows you to make the most of your time and boost productivity. So, if you're a student seeking to enhance your composition skills, search no more! This article serves as your ultimate resource for exploring exceptional apps for essay writing that will simplify your academic life.

Our essay service experts will present a curated assortment of user-friendly apps that can assist you with grammar, spelling, plagiarism detection, and even citation generation. You will encounter well-known examples such as Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, and EssayPro and discover how mobile apps enable you to work on your essays from anywhere.

Criteria for Assessing Essay Apps

Here are the criteria we used to evaluate the best essay writing apps:

• User-Friendly: Is the app easy to navigate and use with different tools?
• Writing Metrics: Does the app have essential features like spell-check, proofreading tools, and word count?
• Features: Can you write and edit in Cloud systems like Dropbox? Is there an offline mode? Or can you place ‘ write my essay ’ orders quickly?
• User Interface: Does the app offer customizable UI, language settings, themes, styles, and formatting?
• Compatibility: Can you easily export your work and share it on platforms like WordPress?
• Ratings: What are the app's ratings on Google Play and the App Store? What's our own rating?
• Price Structure: Is the app download worth the fee it charges for writing?

Top Essay Writing Apps

With a plethora of essay apps to choose from, catering to various needs like note-taking, planning, and grammar checking, selecting the perfect app can be overwhelming. To simplify your decision-making process, we have curated a comprehensive list of the best essay apps for you.

EssayPro App

Available on Android and iOS , Essaypro an app that writes essays for you, stands out as one of the best apps for essay writing. It simplifies essay creation, organization, and formatting. With access to a vast collection of essay samples, students can easily tackle any assignment, from argumentative to persuasive essays.

Users can save time with this pocket-sized software. Orders can be placed quickly, generating pricing offers in no time. On average, customers spend 22 minutes using the app.

To cater to user requests, Essaypro introduced a dark theme as a new feature. Additionally, users can respond to writer inquiries via the chat tool, ensuring they don't have to pause their activities, even while taking care of their children. For a comprehensive mobile solution to excel in academic tasks, you can confidently choose the EssayPro App.

• The app offers advice on improving current writing and using better editing techniques. It even features a plagiarism detection tool, guiding you on how to avoid plagiarism .
• Users get access to an author's biography, his areas of expertise, and - most crucially - reviews of the writer.
• ‍Users can top up their own accounts, making it easy to subsequently order fresh works.
• ‍100% plagiarism-free papers - Each task is unique.
• ‍Timely delivery - Get your paper as soon as you need it.
• ‍Unlimited revisions - In case you need to add any info or you want us to rewrite some paragraphs - you are free to ask us!‍
• Top quality - We have a team of top-notch writers who will definitely deliver exceptional tasks for you.‍
• 100% money-back guarantee - You can get your money back if you don't like the paper.

Grammarly is an ideal app for catching grammar mistakes in essays. It even detects errors in complex sentences. It works on all systems and devices - PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. While the interface can be crowded, and it may not be as effective for long-form writing, Grammarly remains one of the top options.

• Enables you to work in your preferred writing style, including academic papers.
• Helps you avoid automatic writing mistakes, including misspellings, improper punctuation, and other issues.
• Enhances your writing skills
• Congested user interface and a lack of effectiveness for long-form composing

Streamlining the writing process, this essay helper app simplifies the crucial task of editing. Utilizing a range of colors and accents assists in eliminating unnecessary words and achieving sentence conciseness. Available for download on both Mac and Windows desktop platforms, it offers convenient accessibility for users.

• Automatically catches errors like misused words or awkward sentences so you can spend more time perfecting your essay
• Develops pieces that are compelling and simple to read
• Serves as a digital editor and suggests suitable types of tone in writing .
• Pricey desktop and distracting colors for visitors

ProWritingAid

ProWritingAid may assist you in identifying formatting errors, fixing bugs, and correcting punctuation in writing. With the premium edition of this paper writing app, you can improve sentence length and choice of words and eliminate clichés.

Meanwhile, if you're searching for an excellent essay topic for students , make sure to explore our comprehensive list!

• Simple to use UI
• There are several integrations offered
• There are almost twenty writing analysis reports available
• Just a few hundred words may be read at once in the free plan
• Adjusting to the number of functions might take a while

Focus Writer

Focus Writer is among the few free word processors that are compatible with all the leading operating systems. With the help of this paper writing app, you may obtain a wide range of data, such as the number of words and characters. Moreover, the application uses RTF to save its information. Most other word processors can accept this, so you may edit your writing on different platforms as needed.

In the meantime, you might be intrigued to explore an excellent AI detection tool that assists in creating content free from Artificial Intelligence.

• Provides you with key text analytics while you type
• Powerful word processor for those on a budget
• No advanced features are offered

Cold Turkey Writer

Cold Turkey Writer is one of the ideal essay apps since it prevents interruptions. It also provides several layouts, structuring, and flow choices. This essay-writing tool effectively transforms your desktop into a typewriter, leaving you with no option other than to write your essay topics .

• You can track time and word count by using the progression indicator at the top
• Provides an environment without interruptions
• Encourages the usage of other programs once more
• Not available in offline mode

Ulysses is an excellent distraction-free writing app available for iOS users only. It's a perfect choice for both short articles and long research papers. In addition, it allows sharing your work instantly on WordPress and Medium and quickly converts words into PDFs.

• It has a text editor with markup support and a library for arranging notes, writing goals, and publishing choices
• It's among the best user-friendly essay writing applications
• Ulysses can transform your texts into beautiful PDFs, Word documents, ebooks, and even blog posts
• Not as good for outlining as other programs

Being one of the best essay writing apps, Scribus is a free, accessible digital production tool that aids in creating aesthetically pleasing structures. It includes a lot of capabilities, like the ability to modify an item at several levels of a document, excellent painting options, node editing techniques, and more.

• Best suited for papers with innovative visuals
• Strong sketching tools 
• Doesn't come as a mobile app

Trello is a versatile and intuitive project management application that allows individuals and teams to effectively organize and collaborate on tasks and projects. It offers a visual and customizable interface that utilizes boards, lists, and cards to streamline project workflows and track progress.

Even if you're on the hunt for summer jobs for college student , Trello can streamline project workflows, making it easier for you to track your progress and manage your summer job applications efficiently.

• The User-friendly interface makes it simple for individuals of all technical abilities to start using the app immediately.
• Trello excels in fostering collaboration within teams. Real-time updates ensure everyone stays informed and aligned on project progress.
• It may not fulfill the needs of more complex projects
• The steep learning curve for larger projects

LivingWriter

LivingWriter is a versatile writing application designed to streamline the writing process for authors and content creators. With a user-friendly interface and a host of features, it aims to enhance the overall writing experience.

• Collaborative writing capabilities.
• Innovative story planning tools.
• Cloud-based accessibility for flexibility.
• Subscription-based model.
• The learning curve for advanced features.

Novlr is a dedicated writing application designed to meet the needs of novelists and long-form writers. It provides a distraction-free environment with features tailored to enhance the novel-writing process.

• Offers a distraction-free writing space.
• Enables seamless work synchronization across devices.
• Provides diverse export formats for easy file transfer.
• Operates on a subscription model.
• Some users may find features limited compared to other platforms.

Readable is among the top essay writing apps designed to enhance the readability and clarity of written content. It incorporates features aimed at improving the overall quality and comprehension of text.

• Enhances content clarity.
• Provides guidance on writing style.
• Easy navigation and use.
• Requires subscription for full access.
• Functionality affected without a stable connection.

Is Writing Not Your Best Quality?

Then Essaypro’s professional writers are the best choice who are available for assistance 24/7

Writer Plus

Writer Plus is a mobile writing app designed for simplicity and convenience, providing essential features for on-the-go writing and note-taking.

• Offers a straightforward and easy-to-use interface.
• Ideal for quick writing and note-taking on mobile devices.
• Allows writing even without an internet connection.
• May lack advanced features compared to more comprehensive writing applications.
• Primarily designed for mobile use, with limited desktop functionality.

ByWord is an AI-powered article-generation tool. It focuses on efficiently generating large volumes of high-quality, SEO-ready content. Users can input a few words, click a button, and within minutes, have a fully formed article with an accompanying image ready for publication on their site. This tool adapts to the changing world of SEO with the help of artificial intelligence and offers a feature to stay unnoticed by any AI detection tool .

• ByWord swiftly creates SEO-ready content.
• A comprehensive tool for efficient long-form content creation.
• Enables rapid publication of fully-formed articles and images.
• May have fewer customization options for a streamlined process.

Coggle is a web-based mind-mapping tool that allows users to create visually engaging diagrams to organize and represent their ideas.

• Facilitates the creation of visually appealing mind maps and diagrams.
• Supports real-time collaboration for team brainstorming and planning.
• Features an intuitive design for easy navigation and diagram creation.
• Some advanced features may be restricted in the free version.
• Requires a stable internet connection for seamless collaboration and saving.

Wrapping Up

Whether you're just starting with academic writing service or already have advanced skills, these college student applications are here to make the process easier and better. From Essaypro's free writing software, where you can even buy an essay , to Grammarly's essay editing apps, there's a tool for everyone. By adding these platforms to your toolkit, you can create high-quality papers more efficiently and with confidence. So, try them out and see which ones work best for you!

Do You Easily Get Weary From Writing?

Hire experienced writers for your upcoming assignments and focus on what matters most to you!

What Are Some Good Essay Writing Apps for Students?

How can i choose the right essay writing app for my needs and academic level, what are the benefits of using an essay-writing app, is there an app that can create essays for students, related articles.

What are you writing about today?

Write better essays, in less time, with your ai writing assistant.

Free writing software: 24 tools to help you create better content, faster

Find the best brainstorming, researching, writing, and editing tools.

As a freelance writer, I try to keep my app costs lean, so I'm a sucker for free writing tools. But with so many writing apps on the market, it's hard to tell which free options are actually valuable.

I've done some of the legwork for you by bringing together some of the best free writing apps on the internet. All of the options listed here are tools the Zapier team or I have used and enjoyed.

For this roundup, I prioritized completely free tools and freemium apps with a forever free plan that was sufficient for actual regular use. Many of the options have paid plans, but those plans are generally geared toward power users.

Researching and note-taking software

Writing software

Editing software

Proofreading software

The best free writing software at a glance

Free writing tools for brainstorming and organizing your thoughts, best free writing software for expanding your ideas.

MindMeister (Web, iOS, Android)

If you like to perform mind mapping to get your thoughts on paper and connect them, MindMeister gives you a virtual space to do it. It includes templates for the traditional mind map as well as more specific layouts for frameworks like SMART goals, case studies, and content plans.

Want to learn more about mind mapping? Check out Zapier's list of the best mind mapping apps , or discover nine ways to use mind maps to jumpstart your projects.

MindMeister pricing: Free for up to 3 mind maps; from $5.99/month for premium plans , including features like unlimited mind maps, advanced exporting, and group sharing

Best free writing software for creating content outlines

Workflowy (Web, macOS, Windows, Chrome, iOS, Android)

Outlines are a writer's best friend , and Workflowy lets you go as deep or shallow as you want. This tool organizes your outline into bullet points that you can click to nest and expand however you want.

Workflowy pricing: Free for up to 250 bullets a month ; from $4.99/month for the Workflowy Pro plan with expanded features like unlimited bullets and uploads

Best free writing software for brainstorming together

When you need to write something in collaboration with others, the brainstorming process is one of the trickiest to facilitate with technology. Miro lets you plot out ideas with mind maps, Kanban boards, virtual sticky notes, and whatever strategy you use to get your thoughts down. The free plan allows for unlimited team members to brainstorm with at the same time.

If whiteboards aren't your preferred brainstorming method, explore Zapier's picks for the top brainstorming tools for more collaborative and solo apps.

You can even use Miro with Zapier (also free), so you can automate your brainstorming workflows. Here are a couple of ideas to get you started.

Create Miro widgets with new Trello cards

Add Miro cards from new rows on Google Sheets

Miro pricing: Free for 3 whiteboards with unlimited team members; from $8/user/month for plans with unlimited whiteboards and advanced collaboration features

Best free writing software for brainstorming topics

Ryan Robinson's Keyword Research Tool (Web)

Go to the Ideas tab of Ryan Robinson's Keyword Research Tool , and it'll provide ideas related to your query. Since it's a keyword tool first and foremost, these ideas are designed to be less competitive on search results, too.

If you're looking for keyword research tools specifically for their main purpose, check out Zapier's roundup of the best free keyword research tools .  

Keyword Research Tool pricing: Free

Best free writing software for brainstorming ideas with AI

ChatGPT (Web)

With the rise of AI , some writers use GPT-based apps to brainstorm ideas and build the base for an outline. ChatGPT is the best free option—and the one you know and love—or you can check out even more GPT-powered writing apps in Zapier's list of the best AI writing generators . 

You can also combine GPT with Zapier to send ideas to your favorite project management tool.

ChatGPT pricing: Free; ChatGPT Plus is $20/month

Best free writing software for brainstorming out loud

Your computer's dictation software (MacOS, Windows)

If you process your thoughts best through speaking, there's a brainstorming app already on your computer. Boot up Windows 10 Speech Recognition on Windows or Apple Dictation on Mac to record your thoughts as you brainstorm out loud.

For mobile and premium dictation app options, check out Zapier's list of the best text dictation software .

Windows 10 Speech Recognition and Apple Dictation pricing: Free

Free writing tools for research and note-taking

Best free writing software for keeping everything in one place.

Notion (Web, MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android)

Notion's balance of organization and spontaneity make it a great place to hold your notes, links, social media posts, transcriptions, and any other resources you need to write that draft. Plus, depending on your writing preferences, you can then write the draft itself in Notion—all for free. 

Add Zapier integrations to the mix to bring even more of your writing life together. Here are some pre-made workflows to get you started.

Save new tasks in Google Tasks in Notion databases

Add new Microsoft Outlook calendar events to Notion databases

If Notion doesn't meet your needs, try one of these Notion alternatives . Zapier also has a list of the best note-taking apps for you to browse.

Notion pricing: Free plan available; from $8/user/month for team plans

Best free writing software for finding free copies of paywalled research

Unpaywall (Web)

Have you ever come across a search result for the perfect research article, only to discover it's behind a paywall? Unpaywall gets you across those paywalls ethically by looking for legitimate free versions of paywalled academic research. It looks at sources like journals' open-access repositories and university and government databases, so you're never infringing copyright.

Unpaywall pricing: Free

Best free writing software for transcribing interview and video content

oTranscribe (Web)

oTranscribe simplifies the manual transcription process by placing your audio controls and a word processor on the same screen. This tool has keyboard controls and speed adjustment, so you can seamlessly transition between your audio and transcript.

If you're willing to pay a bit, here's Zapier's list of the best transcription apps and services .

oTranscribe pricing: Free

Best free writing software for collecting research from other people

Google Forms (Web, iOS, Android)

When you need original quotes or data from other people, a free survey tool or form builder will help you organize it all. Google Forms is an accessible choice for most people because it's completely free and works with the rest of Google Workspace.

Turn your form responses into Trello cards, Notion database entries, or any other nugget of info that serves you well with Google Forms' Zapier integrations .

Create Trello cards from new Google Forms responses

Share Google Forms responses in a Slack channel

Google Forms pricing: Free

Free writing tools for solo and collaborative writing

Best free writing software for collaborative writing.

Google Docs (Web, Chrome, iOS, Android)

Google Docs' straightforward interface and ease of use make it a great tool for writing solo, but this app really shines through its collaborative features . Its suggestion, sharing, and version history features put it on par with its paid alternatives at no cost to you.

You can connect Google Docs to all the other tools you use with its Zapier integration . Here are some ideas for free automations you might set up.

Create new Google Docs from text with new rows in Google Sheets

Create new Google Docs when Trint transcripts are ready

Not a fan of Google Docs or don't want to create a Google account? Find another great option in Zapier's guide to the best collaborative writing apps .

Google Docs pricing: Free

Best free writing software for messages and blurbs

WordCounter (Web)

Sometimes you need to write a small amount of text, such as a message or a blurb, without the pressure of accidentally hitting the Enter button too early. WordCounter acts as a combination clipboard and editor with a word count that saves your work in your browser cache for the next time you visit.

WordCounter pricing: Free

Free writing tools for editing

Best free writing software for finding the perfect word.

OneLook Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus (Web)

OneLook Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus offers all the synonyms you could dream of like a regular thesaurus, but it stands out in its reverse dictionary capabilities. Enter a phrase—or even a full sentence—to get words that match that meaning. This feature comes in handy when you want to write more concisely or find that word that's on the tip of your tongue.

OneLook Reverse Dictionary and Thesaurus pricing: Free

Best free writing software for finding the right word—anywhere

Power Thesaurus (Web, Chrome, iOS, Android)

As a freelance writer, I find myself needing to switch up words when I write on various platforms across the internet. Power Thesaurus gives me synonyms, antonyms, definitions, and other forms of word assistance wherever I like to write. It can do the same for you—put it to use on its website, in your browser, on your phone, in Google Docs, in Word, and in Gmail.

Power Thesaurus pricing: Free for fundamental features; starting from $2.49/month for Power Thesaurus PRO , featuring filters and a wider selection of synonyms

Best free writing software for rewording what you write

Wordtune (Web, Chrome, iOS)

When you just can't get phrasing right in your writing, you might turn to a friend or editor to help you sort it out. Wordtune acts as that person by offering suggestions to reword, expand, and shorten your content using AI. It doesn't have as robust of a free plan as some of the other options on this list, but it provides enough if you need assistance here and there.

If you want more features and are willing to pay a monthly fee, you can put AI to work in your editing process with Zapier's list of the best AI rewording and grammar-checking tools .

Wordtune pricing: Free for up to 10 rewrites, three AI prompts, and three summaries a day; from $9.99/month for advanced plans featuring more rewrites, AI prompts, and summaries

Best free writing software for clear and concise writing

Hemingway Editor (Web, macOS, Windows)

Inspired by Ernest Hemingway's concise writing style, the Hemingway Editor points out opportunities to sharpen your writing. This tool highlights passive voice, complex sentences, and adverbs that make your work harder to understand. It also supplies a readability score to estimate how accessible your writing is to a broad audience.

Hemingway Editor pricing: Free for editing in the Hemingway web app; $19.99 for the Mac or Windows desktop app

Best free writing software for creating compelling headlines

CoSchedule Headline Studio (Web, Chrome)

CoSchedule Headline Studio helps you write compelling headlines by analyzing the sentiment and word balance in your titles. Type in a headline to get a score and test different variations based on the suggestions you get. The Google Chrome extension and WordPress plugin let you analyze headlines wherever you go.

CoSchedule Headline Studio pricing: Free for basic features; from $8/month to buy "Premium Headline" credits that give you access to an SEO score, AI writing features, headline suggestions, and word banks for a certain number of headlines

Best free writing software for finding and removing cliches

Cliche Finder (Web)

Cut cliches out of your writing using Cliche Finder . After you paste your text into the textbox and click the Find Cliches button, the tool will highlight any cliches in bold, red text. It's up to you from there, but the tool is 100% free.

Cliche Finder pricing: Free

Best free writing software for finding jargon in your text

De-Jargonizer (Web)

Another writing mechanism that gets in the way of clarity is jargon—terms that only people in a specific role will understand. The De-Jargonizer highlights potential jargon in your writing in orange in red for you to consider rephrasing.

Once you identify jargon in your text with the De-Jargonizer, you can get suggestions for rewriting it from Zapier's Corporate Jargon Translator , built using Zapier's free AI chatbot builder .

De-Jargonizer pricing: Free

Best free writing software for varying your wording and sentence length

Expresso (Web)

Two of the best ways to amp up your writing are to switch up your words and sentence length. Expresso helps you achieve both of these goals by breaking your writing down into metrics based on word usage and sentence length, such as frequently repeated words and average sentence word count.

Expresso pricing: Free

Best free writing software for comparing your writing to AI content

GPTZero (Web, Chrome)

Due to the complexity of the AI situation, it can be tricky to truly detect AI writing with an AI content detector . But, as one writer discovered in our guide to standing out from AI , these tools work well for picking out human content that sounds like AI due to repetitive phrases and generic writing. GPTZero is a free option that judges text based on perplexity (complexity) and burstiness (sentence variation).

GPTZero pricing: Free for documents up to 5,000 words and batch uploads of up to 3 files; from $9.99/month for plans with higher word and batch limits

Free writing tools for proofreading

Best free writing software for catching spelling and grammar mistakes.

Grammarly (Web, macOS, Windows, Android iOS, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)

Check for spelling and grammar mistakes everywhere you write with Grammarly . It looks for even the nit-pickiest details, like missing dashes and incorrect prepositions. Stick to its web editor, add it to your favorite writing tool, or add the browser extension to check your writing wherever you go.

Grammarly pricing: Free for the basic spell- and grammar-checker; from $12/month for plans with advanced features like tone, vocabulary, and rewrite suggestions

Best free writing tool for proofreading short-form content

ProWritingAid (Web, macOS, Windows, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)

ProWritingAid's free plan can analyze less text at a time than Grammarly , but it includes a word explorer, thesaurus, and rephrasing tool on top of its grammar-checking features. These capabilities make it a better fit for writers who like to get really granular with their improvement. ProWritingAid's free plan could be a better option for you than Grammarly if your total word count usually clocks at 500 words or fewer.

ProWritingAid pricing: Free for a 500 word count limit and 10 rephrases per day; from $10/month for a Premium plan with no word count limit, unlimited rephrases, and advanced grammar improvement features like in-depth analytics of your writing

Best free writing tool for making MLA citations

EasyBib (Web)

This one's for the academics out there. Enter your paper's sources into EasyBib , and it'll organize them into an MLA bibliography for you. I had to give everything a once-over and make minor changes, but EasyBib helped me win my college library's bibliography contest back in the day by getting it all together.

EasyBib pricing: Free

Free writing software FAQ

Here are some questions lots of people have about writing apps and how to choose the right one.

What's a good free writing tool?

Tools like Google Docs and WordCounter are free forever and very functional. Other apps, like Grammarly or ProWritingAid, have free plans that offer basic features, with more advanced features available via a paid plan.

But there are a lot of free writing tools available that perform a wide variety of functions—everything from brainstorming to research and note-taking to writing to editing to proofreading.

What writing tool do most writers use?

There's a wide variety of writing tools out there, and which one a writer uses really comes down to preference. A lot of writers use Google Docs to write because they already use Google for so many other things—but some may prefer a tool like Notion, where they can combine writing with project management.

What makes a good writing tool?

In short, whatever helps you write! If a blank page and no distraction is what helps you actually get words down, then open a new Google Doc and go at it. If you need to organize your thoughts before you even think about writing, consider adding a brainstorming tool to the mix. Each writer's process is different, and it's all about finding tools that enable your writing, not add another roadblock to your process.

Sharpen your craft with your new toolkit

As is the case with many skills, it can be easy to focus too much on improving your writing through tools alone. You'll maximize the results you'll get from your apps with a solid foundation in writing techniques. Grab the tools that appeal to you on this page, then brush up on your core writing skills to become a killer prose machine.

Related reading:

The best journal apps

How to capitalize or change the case of your text in any app

How to write great copy: 11 copywriting tips

Copywriting vs. content writing: How to do each one well

How to write a business letter: Formatting + template

This article was originally published in June 2015 by Jane Callahan and has also had contributions from Jessica Greene. The most recent update was in August 2023.

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Melissa King

Melissa King is a freelance writer who helps B2B SaaS companies spread the word about their products through engaging content. Outside of the content marketing world, she sometimes writes about video games. Check out her work at melissakingfreelance.com.

• Content marketing
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7 Best Essay Writing Apps For Students And Academics

In a rush? One of the best essay writing apps is Grammarly . Learn how these apps can help you with research paper writing!

To write a strong essay, you must follow a logical order when you organize your writing . If you omit this feature, your reader will become confused. Fortunately, there are numerous essay writing applications that can help you stay focused and organized. The best essay writing app for students should help you with grammar, proofreading, and writing style.

As you try to ease your writing load, you need to find applications that can help you with analytics, argumentative, narrative, expository, and critical writing. Whether you are looking for an essay writing app for PC, Mac, iPhone, or iPad, there are plenty of options out there. Take a look at the best essay writing apps, and find the right one to meet your needs.

1. ProWritingAid

2. grammarly, 3. hemingway, 4. ulysses, 5. evernote, 6. focus writer , 7. freemind, how we evaluated the applications, why trust our opinions, final word on the best essay writing apps, how does a writer app or writing software compare to a professional essay writing service, is there an automated tool that writes essays for you, can a brainstorming tool really help your writing process, essay writing resources.

Pricing: $79.00 per year or $20.00 per month. 

ProWritingAid  is a cloud-based editing tool for essay writing, copywriting, and blogging. This software can help you identify proofreading issues, eliminate mistakes, and correct punctuation in essays.

You have access to both a free version and a paid version. You can try the premium version for 14 days to decide whether you want access to the premium features. Premium features include optimizing word choice, avoiding cliches, and fixing sentence length issues.

ProWritingAid helps you improve your readability and writing style while also picking up grammar issues You can use ProWritingAid in Microsoft Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, and Chrome. Free users can only run 500 words at a time through the program.

• The interface is easy to use.
• There are numerous integrations available.
• You can access more than two dozen writing analysis reports.
• The free version is limited to only a few hundred words at a time.
• It can also take a long time to get used to the myriad features available.

ProWritingAid is a powerful, accurate grammar checker and style editor. It's suitable for non-fiction and fiction writers and doesn't require a monthly subscription. Save 20% per month or year.

Pricing: $139.95 billed annually or $25 per member per month. You may be able to negotiate a lower rate if you need multiple users for your business.

Grammarly is one of the strongest essay-writing apps available today. Grammarly helps you correct spelling mistakes, fix stylistic issues, and catches punctuation.

Grammarly has a free version and a premium version available. The free version can help you correct basic grammar , spelling, and punctuation issues. It can also help you optimize long sentences. 

The premium version gives you access to word choice issues, stylistic corrections, and even a plagiarism checker. The premium version can also automatically fix many of these mistakes, helping you save time during the editing process. There is no premium trial available. Grammarly is available as a browser extension and as a separate window into which you can upload documents. 

• Free version relatively powerful
• Contains built-in plagiarism checker
• Works everywhere
• Less suitable for longer essays
• Plagiarism checker is premium only

We tested dozens of grammar checkers, and Grammarly is the best tool on the market today. It'll help you write and edit your work much faster. Grammarly provides a powerful AI writing assistant and plagiarism checker.

Pricing: The web application is free, but the desktop version is $20.

Hemingway is known as a tool that can help you improve your readability score, but it is also a comprehensive proofreading tool.

Hemingway can point out sentences that are too complex for readers, helping you streamline your thoughts. As a virtual proofreader, it can make your sentences clear, concise, and bold.

As you write your essay , the editor will mark sentences that are deemed too complex. Then, you can let Hemingway go to work, picking up passive voice , comma splices, and even run-on sentences. By keeping your sentences short, you hold the attention of the reader. 

• Easy to use
• Ideal for copyediting
• No plagiarism checker
• No specific tools or checks for essays

Pricing: $4.99 per month of $39.99 for the year, following a 14-day free trial.

Ulysses  has been dubbed as the top writing app for Apple products such as Mac, iPad, and iPhone; however, the program is not compatible outside of Apple products. What sets Ulysses apart is that it can sync your files directly to the iCloud. Even if the original file is destroyed, you will not lose your work.

Ulysses uses something called markdown language. This helps you apply styles to your writing without having to worry about a formatting menu.

You can also take advantage of “focus mode,” which helps you streamline your writing to a single line and reduces on-screen distractions. Then, when you finish, you can export your files in a variety of formats to make it easier to finalize your work.

• You will store all of your writing in one place, eliminating the annoying back and forth between multiple folders and files.
• You can store older images of your files, reverting to them if you do not like your work.
• You can use the distraction-free interface to improve your productivity.
• The customer support team is exceptional.
• Ulysses is not available for Windows or Android.
• You do not have access to any pre-designed templates.

Pricing:  Evernote has a free tier, a plus tier at $34.99 per year, and a premium tier at $69.99 per year.

Evernote  is another application that can help with essay writing. The program is a cross-platform, note-taking application that is ideal for processing hand-written notes, such as the outline of a potential essay, or articles from the web, which can be helpful for a research paper. 

Evernote can store just about everything you would ever need, ranging from a simple typed note to an article you came across. That way, you never have to worry about losing your essay ideas. 

While Evernote is most popular among Mac users, it works on multiple devices. Evernote is available for Windows and Mac users, giving people offline access. Evernote also has a convenient Android and iPhone app. 

• Great for research
• Powerful note-taking features
• Fast, reliable sync
• Less enjoyable to write with
• Large libraries get clunky
• Not purpose-built for essays

Pricing: Free, but donations to the maker are encouraged.

Focus Writer  is a free word processor that is available across all major operating systems. This word processor is largely seen as an alternative to Microsoft Word.

Because Microsoft products can be expensive, a lot of students cannot afford them. Therefore, Focus Writer is growing in popularity. 

This tool will give you access to a wide variety of statistics including word count and character count. Furthermore, the program stores its files in an RTF format. This is read by most other word processors, so you can open your essays on other platforms when required.

• The tool is compatible with Mac, Windows, and Android products.
• It gives you access to important text statistics as you write.
• It is a strong word processor for students and writers on a tight budget.
• The program does not give you access to advanced proofreading or editing features.

Pricing: Free

FreeMind is a mind-mapping program that helps users create structured diagrams. If you have recently finished conducting your research and need to organize it before you start biting, this is the perfect program to help you.

You can also use this program to keep track of projects, tasks, and time. It is possible for you to brainstorm an essay, using different colors to show which parts of the essay you are referring to. Then, you can use these color-coding features to keep track of your essay as you write. 

Furthermore, the program comes with advanced DES encryption to help you protect your work. You can protect your work from accidental loss as you finish your project.

• The program is completely free to use.
• The diagram process is versatile for those writing essays in a variety of fields.
• There is DES encryption that protects your work from being lost.
• The diagram process can be challenging for people to use for the first time.
• It does not have a very flashy visual appearance, lacking numerous advanced features.

Because there are so many essay writing applications available, we used a variety of criteria to evaluate each program. Our testing criteria include: 

• The availability of each application across multiple platforms
• The ease of use of each individual application
• The variety of features available
• The price of the program in comparison to the features offered
• The security of each program

After testing the individual features of each program, we developed a ranking system designed for students, essayists, and research paper writers. 

There are several reasons why you should trust our opinions regarding essay writing applications. These include:

• We have written essays for a variety of reasons across multiple platforms.
• We have thoroughly tested all of these applications.
• We have paid close attention to the reviews, ratings, criticisms, and features of each individual application.

Even though everyone has slightly different needs when it comes to essay writing applications for academic papers, we are confident that one or more of these applications will meet your needs. 

Whether you are in high school, college, or working on your Ph.D., there are essay writing apps that can help you along the way. If you compare the benefits and drawbacks of each tool, you can find the right application to help you with your essays and research papers.

FAQs About The Best Essay Writing Apps

A professional service could be a stronger option than an automatic writing tool, but professional services will be more expensive.

Yes, there are tools that can write custom essays and short stories for you, but these programs often produce incoherent babble that will not improve your writing skills or make a good impression on your reader.

Yes. If you want to write a quality paper, you need to use a high-quality brainstorming process to get all of your ideas on the page. A strong writing software program can help you with that.

What is a Personal Essay?

Essay Writing Tips

Great Essay Writing Topics

The Difference Between Grammar and Punctuation

Using an AI Grammar Checker

PaperRater Vs Grammarly

Transition Words For Essays

Bryan Collins is the owner of Become a Writer Today. He's an author from Ireland who helps writers build authority and earn a living from their creative work. He's also a former Forbes columnist and his work has appeared in publications like Lifehacker and Fast Company.

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The 10 Best Writing Apps of 2024

Useful tools for novelists, playwrights, editors, and other wordy types

• The University of Phoenix
• Payment Services

If you're serious about writing, consider getting serious about your writing tools. These writing apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS , and Android put your words into the right format, adding polish and professionalism to your creations.

Best Word Processor for All Genres: Microsoft Word

Hundreds of templates make creating any document simple and fast.

Easily add charts, graphs, and images.

Built-in translation tools.

Overwhelming interface.

Full app is expensive.

Only one person can edit shared documents at a time.

No writing tool list is complete without Microsoft Word. This word processor is the best option for all genres, complete with hundreds of templates to choose from, endless formatting tools, and a robust online support system. From a poem to an e-book to a novel, Word can help you do it all. You can even create your own Word templates .

Word is available for macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android devices. You can start with a free trial of Microsoft 365, which includes other Microsoft applications as well. If you choose to purchase, packages range from $69.99 a year to a one-time payment of $149.99. If those prices are too high for you, you can also use Word for free .

Download For:

Best Tool for Long-Form Content: Scrivener

Keyboard shortcuts make writing a breeze.

Templates are ready-made to jumpstart your creativity.

Easy to manage and rearrange pages and chapters.

Has a learning curve.

Spelling and grammar check are not enabled by default.

Intended for users who have an intermediate understanding of word processing.

Do you write long-form works like novels or non-fiction books? If so, you need a tool that performs some of the low-level tasks for you. Scrivener offers ready-made templates that eliminate the need to spend time on tedious formatting tasks.

This application also includes features for storing details about your characters and other critical background information, writing sections and placing them in your manuscript later, and viewing a detailed outline built from synopses that you write for each chapter. If you don't like the flow, you can move chapters around. When you're ready to publish, Scrivener makes it simple to compile and export a completed manuscript.

Scrivener is available for macOS, Windows, and iOS. You can try it free for 30 days. After the trial, a standard license costs $59.99 or $50.99 for students.

Best Screenwriting Application: Final Draft

It has everything professional screenwriters need to meet industry standards.

Powerful story mapping tools.

Integrates with Storyboard Pro.

May not be great for beginners due to the hefty price and steep learning curve.

You must sign in to the platform each time you use it.

No support for real-time collaboration.

Final Draft is used by 95 percent of film and television productions. Why? There are hundreds of templates to choose from and Final Draft automatically paginates and formats your script to the industry standard, allowing you to focus on writing.

With advanced tools, the program allows you to easily brainstorm and collaborate as well as plan set pieces or store character research with customized visualizations.

Final Draft offers a free 30-day trial. After that, the cost is $199.99. The program works with both macOS and Windows and also offers a mobile app for iOS devices.

Best Organizational Companion: Evernote

Add photos, audio snippets, and more.

Robust collaboration tools.

Search for text in PDFs, images, scanned documents, and handwritten notes.

Only 60 MB of monthly upload space is available for free.

May include more features than you need for simple note taking.

Free version limits you to two devices.

To electronically capture ideas on the fly, use a text-based note app on your device. For an enhanced organizational experience, we recommend Evernote. It enables you to collect many types of input, including whiteboard photos, website screenshots, different document formats, audio recordings, and your handwriting. You can separate items into different notebooks for multiple projects.

Evernote is free to download for both Android and iOS devices, or you can use it online. Users can upgrade to Evernote Premium for $7.99 per month or Evernote Business for $14.99 per user per month.

Best Application for Distracted Writers: FocusWriter

The tool is easy start using as soon as it downloads.

Free with no catches.

Simple, intuitive interface.

There are no editing functions outside of cut and paste.

Need another word processor for editing purposes.

No mobile version.

Given all the distractions in the world and especially online, it's easy to get off track during your writing time. FocusWriter allows you to focus and get your work done. The interface is basic, with all the tools hidden beyond a screen until you need them, so it's just you and the document in front of you. Hidden timers and alarms alert you when it's time to stop.

Best Writing Software for Bloggers: Google Docs

Changes to your documents save automatically, so no more lost work.

View the history of edits and track changes.

Collaborate in real time.

The Google Docs app for mobile devices is slower than the desktop version.

Limited options for adding charts and other visuals.

Fewer formatting features than premium word processors.

One of the best things about Google Docs is how easy the program makes it to collaborate with others. No more "version shuffle" as you send drafts and revisions back and forth in email.

When you share a document with your blog editor, they can insert suggestions, comments, and changes right there. Then, when it's time to implement the changes, accept the revisions and close comments about issues you resolved. You can even use Google to work on Microsoft Word documents.

Google Docs is a free online tool that's also available as an app for Android and iOS devices.

Best Writing App for Novelists: Werdsmith

Keeps track of your writing goals and tells you how close you are to reaching them.

Lots of helpful templates and formatting options.

Publish your writing to the web from the app.

Must purchase a membership to use the novel and screenplay features.

Text formatting tools could be more intuitive.

Not worth the price if you don't regularly use all the features.

Werdsmith is a portable writing studio, complete with instant formatting for novels and screenplays. You can even use it to publish your online writing portfolio. Werdsmith features a clean design, it's easy to use, and it's the perfect place for keeping your notes and finished work. The goals and stats function helps keep you motivated.

Werdsmith is free to download and use for iOS devices. In-app purchases are offered through a membership for $4.99 per month. Members receive four new themes, novel and screenplay writing tools, hundreds of writing prompts, and more.

Best App for Journalists: Dictation

It's designed for one thing: dictation. This simplicity makes it an easy tool to use on the go.

Accurate transcriptions.

Helps prevents strain on your joints and back.

Without the pro version, you'll see an ad after each dictation you create.

Doesn't integrate with word processing apps, so it can be tedious to use.

No word counter.

For journalists who interview individuals for news stories and features, a good dictation tool is a must-have. Dictation is a speech-to-text app that translates voice to text for mobile devices. It can also be used to dictate any voice while on the go. It's perfect for capturing your brilliant ideas as well.

Dictation is free to download for iOS devices. Dictation Pro, which costs $44.99 per year, removes ads and allows you unlimited app usage.

Best Application for Editors: TextEdit

When the full-scale capabilities of a word processing program are unnecessary, TextEdit fills in the gap.

HTML and JavaScript support.

Save files in various formats (.DOCX, ODF, and others).

Only available for macOS devices.

No third-party plugins.

Formatting issues when you copy-and-paste.

This simple tool is perfect for editing documents, including Word files, on the fly and converting them into other formats seamlessly. Need to change a Rich Text Format (RTF) document to another format quickly? TextEdit is the perfect app for that. You can also easily create and edit HTML documents for the web.

TextEdit comes standard with macOS.

Best App for Song Writers: Lyric Notepad

Record yourself performing and attach the file to your song.

Counts syllables and tracks rhyme schemes to help you maintain your flow.

Inexpensive pro version.

The interface is a bit clunky.

No way to back up your lyrics to the cloud.

No search tool.

For poets, rappers, songwriters, and lyricists, inspiration can strike at any moment. That's why it's important to have a tool available at your fingertips. Lyric Notepad goes beyond typical word processing tasks to track rhyme and syllable schemes, help you find new words, and record your lyrics, all in one app. The built-in notepad allows you to add notes about your songs as you write and the metronome helps you easily keep time.

Lyric Notepad is free to download for both iOS and Android devices.

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15 Best Essay Writing Apps For Students And Academics

Table of contents

Essays are an important part of every academic life. Whether you are trying to get into the college of your dreams or finishing a project report, a well-written essay can be the difference between success and failure for students. 

In this blog, we have compiled a list of 15 best essay writing apps for students and academics. 

How did we assess the essay writing apps? 

There are many AI writing apps out there, and it can get very confusing to choose the right one for all your essay-related needs. In order to pick the best from all of them, we evaluated these apps that write essays for you based on the following criteria:

• How easy is it to use and navigate the essay writing service's many tools and features?
• If the program offers fundamental functions like spell-check, tools for proofreading, word count, etc.
• The essay writing app's ability to customize language options, themes, styles, formatting, etc.
• If the essay writing applications allow you to effortlessly export your work and publish it on other sites like WordPress.
• If the essay-writing software has positive reviews and comments from users. 
• Whether investing in the app’s subscription is worthwhile, given the cost of producing essays through it.

It is based on these factors that we have created the following list of paid and free apps that write essays for you. Let’s look at some of the best AI writing apps that can help you craft insightful and impactful essays.

Cruise Mode AI Writer by Scalenut 

Cruise Mode AI Writer by Scalenut is an amazing app that will write essays for you. It helps students create in-depth and insightful essays. You simply have to give a few basic inputs, and the Cruise Mode AI Writer will generate high-quality first drafts of your essay for you. 

Once you have the first draft, you can export your essay to the AI editor and refine your essay by referring to an in-depth competitive analysis of the top sources of information on that topic.

Individual: $29/month

Growth: $79/month

Pro: $149/month

• The tool is user-friendly with a very short learning curve, so practically anybody can start using its features instantly. 
• The streamlined writing process of the Cruise Mode AI Writer ensures students can follow a step-by-step process to create impactful essays within minutes. 
• It comes with an integrated SEO editor for finetuning your essays with inbuilt features for research, planning, and content creation. 
• The WordPress integration of the Scalenut platform allows you to publish your work on WordPress directly.
• The AI writer may produce average-quality content at times, but all you have to do is hit the refresh button to generate new content.

Paper Owl is an easy-to-use and free paper writing app. For example, it takes the first few sentences of your essay and turns them into a strong thesis statement. Other Paper Owl writing tools you can use are the plagiarism checker, citation generator, conclusion generator, essay title generator, and paraphrasing tool. The Paper Owl platform also offers students a talented pool of academic writers that can help with their essays.

• No registration is required, meaning no sign-ups and constant promotional emails for Paper Owl in your inbox. 
• The tool produces three outputs every time, giving students options for the kind of content they want in their essays.
• You must already know your thesis, which means you must have done some research before.
• You need to input one or two sentences for the AI to generate entire paragraphs, introductions, conclusions, or thesis statements.

Coggle is a mind-mapping tool that can help you choose a topic for your essay, organize your ideas, and see how your ideas connect. Coggle can be used on iOS and Android devices and as an extension on Google Chrome.

Free forever: $0/month

Awesome: $5/month

Organization: $8/month

• It can be used as a website tool, a browser add-on, or an app.
• Work with as many as three other students and create the best essays for your team.
• Make unlimited mind maps to strategize and create well-researched essays.
• You can get a PDF or picture of your map to share with your peers, friends, or teachers.
• Coggle has a public library of mind maps to inspire new users. Therefore, most of your mind maps will be available to the public.

Hemingway acts as a digital proofreader by highlighting words that are hard to understand. This makes it easier for you to write an English essay that is clear, simple, and powerful.

Desktop app: $19.99/-

• Hemingway looks at your homework in detail and makes suggestions about spelling, grammar, punctuation, adverbs, passive voice, and word choice.
• The software uses different colors and accents to help you get rid of unnecessary words and keep sentences short.
• Does not offer AI content generation features.
• Costs a lot for the desktop version.
• Users may find the colors too much.

Focus Writer 

You may use FocusWriter, a free and open-source writing program, to write, take notes in class, generate texts, and create essays on whatever device you choose. This isn’t an app that writes essays, but it will help you focus on your essays.

• Word counts are updated in real-time, so you don't have to run word counts manually to monitor your progress constantly.
• It's a terrific alternative if you require a blank page to concentrate on your work because of its interface, real-time statistics, spell-checking, and document tabs.
• As far as formatting goes, it doesn't provide anything.
• The tool does not offer AI content generation as a feature.

Essay AI Lab 

The Essay AI Lab will scour the web for you, compiling all the pertinent data into a coherent essay. Provide a title and a prompt, and it will figure out the rest.

• References and citations in MLA or APA format are available to use in your essays.
• You can use the paraphrase function to avoid plagiarism completely.
• To save or download your work, you must register.
• Word meanings can be altered by rephrasing.

My Assignment Help Essay Typer

My Assignment Help Essay Typer generates unique plagiarism-free paragraphs for your essay with just a few basic inputs. Apart from generating the content, you can also hire a professional essay writer at any time to help you with your writing.

• Users can create citations in MLA or APA format.
• Free summary and paraphrase generators are also included.
• The content generated by the essay typer is average at times.

Simplenote 

Simplenote is a free, streamlined, and sophisticated note-taking app to help you with the research for your essay. It's a fast and convenient method to take notes. Users can search through all their notes archives to find insightful info, written months or even years ago, to use in their essays.

Basic: Free

Premium: $19.99/month

• The program enables you to tag notes, facilitating easy searching and grouping of related ideas.
• You cannot add photos and to-do lists in your notes. 
• When it comes to text formatting, there is just one option: markdown.

Cold Turkey Writer

The Cold Turkey Writer is a simple and unique essay writing app that locks you into writing, preventing you from doing anything else on the computer while you're trying to compose an essay. 

Writer free: $0/month

Writer pro, lifetime access: $4.90/-

• The remaining time/words shown on the top is a great way of motivating yourself and committing undivided attention for a specific time to your essay writing.
• It provides a wide range of customization possibilities in terms of the structure and presentation of your essay.
• No offline functionality is available.
• It does not offer research capabilities. 
• It does not offer content generation features. 

Living Writer 

Living Writer is a one-of-a-kind piece of software that may be used by authors of fiction and nonfiction alike. Writing an essay is not a simple task; it requires a lot of note management and research. Living Writer helps users by providing an easy-to-use platform for arranging all your essay-related research and drafts in one place.

Monthly: $9.99/month

Yearly:  $96/year

• The tool has some useful features, such as a progress graph, simple annotations, shared documents, and data visualization to track your progress.
• The program offers several modes to facilitate writing, including Dark Mode, Focus Mode, the ability to drag and drop, and a sidebar where one may jot down notes.
• The tools it offers are not enough for scholarly work.
• There are no content generation features that many other tools have. 

Paper Typer 

After you provide Paper Typer with the topic for your paper, it will create the entire essay for you. This AI essay writer tool also adds the necessary formatting to your content. To ensure that you are covering everything in your essay, it provides suggestions for headings and subheadings to include in your essay.

• Create an entire essay in a few seconds
• There is no need to register.
• Sessions and edits are limitless
• The citation generator by Paper Typer supports APA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, MLA, and Turabian citations.
• The tool is only effective in creating high-quality content for simple topics.
• To ensure accurate citations, a fact-check is necessary.
• Edits are necessary to avoid plagiarism.

Wordtune uses AI algorithms to improve your academic papers with expert writing. With this text editor, phrases and paragraphs up to 280 characters in length may be rewritten using AI. The ideal uses for this technique are to strengthen opening or closing phrases or to state a complex idea succinctly.

Free: 10 rewrites/day

Premium: $24.99/month

• Accessible as a Google Chrome plugin with a free version.
• The customer support team of WordTune is very responsive and quick with resolving user issues.
• Restricted free membership; only offers 10 rewrites/day, which isn’t enough.
• Essays won't be produced for you; merely enhances previously written content

Readable can help you raise the readability rating of your writing with its proprietary content readability analyzer. Your writing's readability reflects its complexity. For instance, college essays frequently have readability ratings greater than those written for high school. 

Content pro: $8/month

Commerce pro: $48/month

Agency pro: $138/month

• The tool shares your word count as you write and grades your essay based on the ease of understanding for the readers.
• Assess your essays on the Flesch-Kincaid grade level (a reliability scoring method that indicates how difficult or easy your essays are to understand.)
• The free version has extremely few features
• A user account is necessary to download your work

AIWriter is another essay writing app that can generate entire paragraphs based on your input. It helps users create the best essays with a competitive analysis of the top content on the internet related to the topic of the essay.

Basic: $29/month

Standard: $59/month

Power: $375/month

• It has a two-minute turnaround, which makes it an ideal tool for finishing your essays quickly.
• Compared to starting from scratch and writing the entire essay all by yourself, AIWriter helps you reduce the time by 50% with its content generation capabilities. 
• Supports only English
• Membership is required for generating content and using the platform.
• The writing, according to reviews, is of poor quality.

Writer Plus 

WriterPlus is another popular essay writing mobile app that helps users create content on the go. This is much like SimpleNote and helps users jot down inspirations as and when they strike.

• The app's robust folder support gives users the ability to store and organize their work.
• To make writing more convenient, it supports a variety of keyboard shortcuts.
• You can write in several languages with Writer Plus.
• There are no productivity or goal-tracking features in this app.

Write the best essays with Scalenut 

As a student, our lives revolve around finding the most credible sources of information and writing essays that showcase our learning. 

Scalenut AI Writer is an ideal partner in all your academic endeavors. From finding the best sources of the latest facts and figures and generating thought-provoking essays, to editing and formatting your work to the highest academic writing standards, you can create some amazing essays with Scalenut.

Here are a few free tools that can help you with your essays:

• Blog introduction generator for creating a compelling introduction to your essay. 
• Paragraph generator for generating engaging paragraphs of text on a topic. 
• Blog conclusion generator for giving your essays the best possible endings.

It's not just essays. AI-enabled content tools are changing the way we market products and services online. From product descriptions and blogs to in-depth ebooks, there are many AI content marketing tools that can help you with every aspect of content creation and SEO. 

Whether you are looking to build your personal brand or market your start-up, there is an AI tool for all your needs. 

If you are looking to find the best AI writing tool in the market, we have an in-depth Scalenut blog on the 15 best content marketing tools you should use in 2023 .

About Scalenut

Scalenut is an all-in-one AI-powered SEO and content marketing platform that helps marketers worldwide create high-quality and competitive content at scale. From research, planning, and outlines to ensuring quality, Scalenut helps you do your best at everything. 

Elevate your content optimization game with us. Sign up on Scalenut and climb the search engine ladder today.

ABout the AUTHOR

Suman Samal is a Asst. Marketing Manager at Scalenut. She is a technology enthusiast with a keen interest in content marketing and SEO. She truly believes that with the right set of tools every organization can improve the ROI of their content marketing campaigns. She spends her time managing content operations at Scalenut and ensuring that everything we publish is of the highest quality.

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Writing > How AI can help proofread and edit your essays

How AI can help proofread and edit your essays

Don’t let little mistakes hold you back from getting a better grade. Learn how you can use AI to help you proofread and edit your essays.

Before submitting your essay, having a second set of eyes to catch any typos or grammatical errors is invaluable. If human help isn’t available, AI can step in to proofread or edit your work, offering instant feedback even under tight deadlines . Take a look at the different ways you can use AI for essay editing.

Ask AI to help you identify typos or grammatical errors

It’s easy for the human mind to skim over obvious typos and grammar errors. AI can help you identify these spelling mistakes and grammar issues so you can put some professional polish on your paper. If you’re aware of a specific issue that you struggle with in your essays, you can ask AI to proofread specifically on those errors. Copy and paste your essay into your favorite AI platform and try one of these prompts:

• Can you identify any typos in this paper and explain why they are incorrect?
• I often put commas in the wrong place. Can you identify any incorrect commas in my essay and tell me why they’re incorrect?
• Can you help me identify any incorrect homophones in my essay?

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Ask AI to help you refine your sentences

Writing clearly is important for all forms of writing, but it’s especially important for academic works. AI can help you edit your essays so that your sentences are easy to understand. Copy and paste your essay into an AI platform and try these prompts to refine its sentences:

• Can you find passive sentences in my essay and explain how to rewrite them actively?
• My teacher is a stickler for dangling modifiers . Can you point out any dangling modifiers in my essay?
• Are there any sentence fragments in my essay?

Ask AI for style guide assistance

If your instructor has asked you to follow a specific style guide , they may deduct points if your essay doesn’t follow it. Try these prompts to get some essay editing help:

• Can you review if book titles are correctly italicized according to the Chicago Manual of Style, and check for other style-specific issues?
• My essay is supposed to follow MLA format. Can you identify any parts of my essay that don’t follow MLA format ?
• How should I format quotes in APA format ?

Ask AI to fact-check your work

AI can help you identify incorrect facts that could impact your final grade. AI can also provide sources that you can use to back up your work. Try these prompts in your preferred AI platform to fact-check your work:

• Are the biographical facts I included about Jane Austen in my essay correct?
• Can you make sure all the dates that I listed in my essay are accurate?
• Can you confirm that the citations in my essay are from peer-reviewed and reputable sources ?

Getting the best proofreading and editing results from AI

When you use AI to proofread an essay, you’ll get better results when you provide it with as much context about the essay as possible. For example, you should include your teacher’s essay instructions so that the AI tool knows what to look for. If the teacher gave you their grading rubric, you should also give it to the AI tool so that it can provide even stronger proofreading and editing recommendations.

While AI can significantly aid in proofreading and editing, remember to use it responsibly, especially in academic settings. If you’re interested in learning more about AI, see if you can use AI to draft an essay for you .

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What's a paraphrasing tool?

This AI-powered paraphraser lets you rewrite text in your own words. Use it to  paraphrase articles, essays, and other pieces of text. You can also use it to rephrase sentences and find synonyms for individual words. And the best part? It’s all 100% free!

What's paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing involves expressing someone else’s ideas or thoughts in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Paraphrasing tools can help you quickly reword text by replacing certain words with synonyms or restructuring sentences. They can also make your text more concise, clear, and suitable for a specific audience. Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic writing and professional communication. 

Why use this paraphrasing tool?

• Save time: Gone are the days when you had to reword sentences yourself; now you can rewrite a text or a complete text with one click.
•  Improve your writing: Your writing will always be clear and easy to understand. Automatically ensure consistent language throughout. 
• Preserve original meaning: Paraphrase without fear of losing the point of your text.
• No annoying ads: We care about the user experience, so we don’t run any ads.
• Accurate: Reliable and grammatically correct paraphrasing.
• No sign-up required: We don’t need your data for you to use our paraphrasing tool.
• Super simple to use: A simple interface even your grandma could use.
• It’s 100% free: No hidden costs, just unlimited use of a free paraphrasing tool.

Features of the paraphrasing tool

Rephrase individual sentences

With the Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool, you can easily reformulate individual sentences.

• Write varied headlines
• Rephrase the subject line of an email
• Create unique image captions

Paraphrase a whole text

Our paraphraser can also help with longer passages (up to 125 words per input). Upload your document or copy your text into the input field.

With one click, you can reformulate the entire text.

Find synonyms with ease

Simply click on any word to open the interactive thesaurus.

• Choose from a list of suggested synonyms
• Find the synonym with the most appropriate meaning
• Replace the word with a single click

Paraphrase in two ways

• Standard: Offers a compromise between modifying and preserving the meaning of the original text
• Fluency: Improves language and corrects grammatical mistakes.

Upload different types of documents

Upload any Microsoft Word document, Google Doc, or PDF into the paraphrasing tool.

Download or copy your results

After you’re done, you can easily download or copy your text to use somewhere else.

Powered by AI

The paraphrasing tool uses natural language processing to rewrite any text you give it. This way, you can paraphrase any text within seconds.

Avoid accidental plagiarism

Want to make sure your document is plagiarism-free? In addition to our paraphrasing tool, which will help you rephrase sentences, quotations, or paragraphs correctly, you can also use our anti-plagiarism software to make sure your document is unique and not plagiarized.

Scribbr’s anti-plagiarism software enables you to:

• Detect plagiarism more accurately than other tools
• Ensure that your paraphrased text is valid
• Highlight the sources that are most similar to your text

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How does this paraphrasing tool work?

1. put your text into the paraphraser, 2. select your method of paraphrasing, 3. select the quantity of synonyms you want, 4. edit your text where needed, who can use this paraphrasing tool.

Paraphrasing tools can help students to understand texts and improve the quality of their writing. 

Create original lesson plans, presentations, or other educational materials.

Researchers

Explain complex concepts or ideas to a wider audience. 

Journalists

Quickly and easily rephrase text to avoid repetitive language.

Copywriters

By using a paraphrasing tool, you can quickly and easily rework existing content to create something new and unique.

Bloggers can rewrite existing content to make it their own.

Writers who need to rewrite content, such as adapting an article for a different context or writing content for a different audience.

A paraphrasing tool lets you quickly rewrite your original content for each medium, ensuring you reach the right audience on each platform.

The all-purpose paraphrasing tool

The Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool is the perfect assistant in a variety of contexts.

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Writer’s block? Use our paraphraser to get some inspiration.

Professional communication

Produce creative headings for your blog posts or PowerPoint slides.

Academic writing

Paraphrase sources smoothly in your thesis or research paper.

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Craft memorable captions and content for your social media posts.

Paraphrase text online, for free

The Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool lets you rewrite as many sentences as you want—for free.

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Frequently asked questions

The act of putting someone else’s ideas or words into your own words is called paraphrasing, rephrasing, or rewording. Even though they are often used interchangeably, the terms can mean slightly different things:

Paraphrasing is restating someone else’s ideas or words in your own words while retaining their meaning. Paraphrasing changes sentence structure, word choice, and sentence length to convey the same meaning.

Rephrasing may involve more substantial changes to the original text, including changing the order of sentences or the overall structure of the text.

Rewording is changing individual words in a text without changing its meaning or structure, often using synonyms.

It can. One of the two methods of paraphrasing is called “Fluency.” This will improve the language and fix grammatical errors in the text you’re paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing and using a paraphrasing tool aren’t cheating. It’s a great tool for saving time and coming up with new ways to express yourself in writing.  However, always be sure to credit your sources. Avoid plagiarism.  

If you don’t properly cite text paraphrased from another source, you’re plagiarizing. If you use someone else’s text and paraphrase it, you need to credit the original source. You can do that by using citations. There are different styles, like APA, MLA, Harvard, and Chicago. Find more information about citing sources here.

Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly cite the source . This means including an in-text citation and a full reference, formatted according to your required citation style .

As well as citing, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas in your own words.

So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?

• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
• Paraphrasing  is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely in your own words and properly cite the source .

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10 Mac Writing Apps That Will Level Up Your Writing

B ack in the early '90s, a study was conducted on how personal computing machines would impact student writing. On IBM, 50% of students produced "complex sentences" compared to Macintosh's 30%. In an analysis of the study, The San Jose Mercury News said, "The same icons, mouse, fonts, and graphics that make the [Macintosh] easy to use may well turn off the brain's creative-writing abilities" (via Human Progress ). How ironic then that today's Mac is widely regarded as the machine for writing. Author J.K. Rowling claimed the "MacBook Air changed my life," and Stephen King is known to have used both the iMac and the MacBook Pro to craft some of his legendary works. Chris Cleave -- author of "Gold" -- says it plainly: "I use a MacBook... same as every other writer."

It's impossible to choose just one reason writers love working on a Mac, so take your pick. They have lots of built-in features to help you to be more productive , and 97% of office users who make the switch claim that they feel like they get more done. It has surprisingly good voice dictation out of the box, a single-button "Do Not Disturb," and unparalleled battery life so there's no low-battery anxiety getting in the way of your next great American novel. But where the Mac really smashes the competition is with its many writer-focused software suites. If you're still in search of that end-game writing daily driver, then let us present some great options to choose from.

Read more: The 20 Best Mac Apps That Will Improve Your Apple Experience

Ulysses easily takes the cake as Mac's best writing app for any project of any size. It's a Markdown editor -- Markdown being a formatting language you should use instead of Microsoft Word's RTF  -- so you can do virtually everything without your fingers leaving the keyboard. Writing, thanks to Ulysses' clean interface and Markdown formatting, is simple and distraction-free, without skimping on features like letting you open documents side-by-side. Everything -- including research material like images -- can be kept within the program, and it offers intuitive ways to cut up documents, merge them together, and bundle them into relevant groups. You can organize projects into nested folder structures and sync them via iCloud. Periodic, automatic backups even let you go back and restore previous document versions straight from the app.

That's just the beginning. Ulysses helps you polish up your prose with a proofreader, and export it in one click to your blog or your editor. It also has built-in goal tracking, to help you monitor your growing word count and better meet your deadlines. We could honestly write a dozen articles and still fail to chart the depths of Ulysses' features -- which makes the trim 40 MB size all the more surprising. Ulysses is available only on Apple devices and costs $39.99 per year. It's not cheap, but it does support Ulysses' continued development, which has been going strong since 2003.

For those with devices outside the Apple ecosystem -- and who are tired of feeling like everything charges a subscription fee -- Scrivener is a breath of fresh air. You pay $59.99 one time and keep that version for life with all its future updates. Scrivener is a rich text editor, so unlike Ulysses, you're not forced to use Markdown if you find it unsightly. It also has much of the same functionality as Ulysses, letting you organize large projects like manuscripts into "ring binders" of nested folders and documents that you can stitch together or break up as needed. It even has a couple unique features, like a corkboard for planning and organization.

As wonderful as Scrivener can be, it's got one very noteworthy downside: cloud syncing issues. Scrivener has no built-in syncing feature, instead requiring you to do so via your own cloud storage service. Sadly, Scrivener's non-typical file structure doesn't play nice with most cloud clients. The devs are very open about the fact that using OneDrive, Box, Google Drive, and iCloud could cause data loss. Dropbox is the only recommended option, and even then you have to use it in a very specific way — speaking from personal experience, this still leads to frequent file corruption. We only recommend Scrivener for those who keep their files on a flash drive or a single computer.

One of  the best Mac notetaking apps  is Bear . The app has three main goals: to be lightweight and minimalist, beautiful, and support Markdown. It also comes with a unique "Hide Markdown" feature so you get the benefits without even knowing it's there. Despite being a primarily note-taking app, Bear is excellent for writers working on smaller projects who want a clean, simple interface. It uses an uncommon note organization feature -- tags -- ideal for those who want to write first and organize later. All you have to do is create a hashtag with a keyword anywhere in the document. That tag then appears in the sidebar and groups all notes with it, effectively creating a "folder" in Bear. You can even create nested tags (the Bear version of subfolders) for deeper organization.

Bear may not be for power users who require the deep customization and functionality of Ulysses and Scrivener, but it punches above its weight with its feature set. It lets you add tables and footnotes, insert all kinds of attachments, clip web pages, provide link previews, and more. The pro version lets you sync via iCloud, get access to more themes, and even search inside PDFs for text. Bear will likely be a bit pricey for some at $29.99 a year, but thankfully the free version -- something Ulysses and Scrivener lack -- is plenty capable. The only major downside we can think of is that there's no folder-only alternative to the tag organization feature.

Like Bear, UpNote is a notetaking app with enough features to easily make it a writer's cornerstone, and it's much cheaper than the competition -- $0.99 per month or $29.99 for life. It's very similar to Bear with a focus on simplicity while still offering nested notebooks and folders for those who weren't sold on Bear's tag system. The note editor window works with Markdown and supports practically any text editing function: attachments, code blocks, text highlighting, you name it. Writers will especially love the automatically enabled file syncing, focus mode, and version history, among other things. There are a handful of features you won't find on other apps in this list, such as a sticky note window that always stays on top and collapsible lists.

Where UpNote really smokes the competition is its cross-platform compatibility. You can find it on all your Apple devices, plus Windows, Android, and Linux. That said, there are some downsides. There is no support for external cloud services, which could be problematic since UpNote does not and will not support end-to-end encryption -- a must-have feature in things like encrypted messaging apps that makes it virtually impossible for unauthorized people to read your notes. Further, UpNote has potential sustainability concerns due to its uncharacteristically low price and lifetime plan for a live service. To be fair to the devs, they claim to have very lean operating costs and will raise prices and discontinue the lifetime subscription if necessary.

Every app on this list has some flavor of distraction-free writing mode, but none do it like iA Writer's marquee Focus Mode. It works by highlighting only the active sentence or paragraph you're working on. The philosophy, it seems, is to prevent writer procrastination, the sort where you compulsively proofread other sections of text after hitting writer's block. The app supports Markdown, too, so you can keep your hands on the keyboard as much as possible. Somewhat similar to Scrivener, iA Writer uses .txt files that you store in your regular documents folder, then organize and edit inside iA Writer -- there are no proprietary file formats to hold your work hostage in a single app. iCloud is supported by default, but the app lets you source files from popular cloud storage providers like Dropbox and OneDrive.

iA Writer's features go plenty deep, same as Markdown apps like Ulysses and Bear, letting you customize all the typography bells and whistles you could want. And there's one new feature that's going to be incredibly useful in our AI-enabled world: authorship. In a nutshell, iA Writer Authorship grays out pasted-in text that originates from other writers or -- importantly -- from ChatGPT. Useful, since with OpenAI's next ChatGPT-5 release , it's going to become even more difficult for writers to remember what they wrote, and what was written by a bot. iA Writer is a one-time, $49.99 purchase on Mac, and supports all other major platforms.

Cold Turkey Writer

iA Writer does an admirable job of keeping you on track, but at the end of the day, you can easily exit fullscreen and get sucked into internet distractions. Short of unplugging your router, there's not much you can do to prevent that, which is where Cold Turkey Writer comes to your aid. It's a sister app to Cold Turkey Blocker, a program capable of denying you access to specific web pages and apps during focus sessions. Cold Turkey Writer takes this approach one step further. Once opened and enabled, it prevents you from leaving the editor until a certain amount of time has elapsed, or you've written a certain number of words.

If you trust yourself not to get distracted enough to exit the app, but need something that stops you from casually glancing at Dock or Menu bar notifications, you can use it as the ultimate distraction-free editor without setting a time limit or word count. It's a small, portable executable file you can run off a thumbstick, and the free version gives you all the most important functionality with no strings attached. Getting Pro for $9.00 unlocks "productivity hacks," like the option to disable the backspace and arrow keys to prevent yourself from compulsive editing. Pro also gives you access to dark mode, extra formatting options, and background soundtracks. Writer saves your work to a .txt file for you to do with what you will when finished.

The  Drafts  app takes the idea of managing local .txt files seen in Scrivener and iA Writer and jacks it up to eleven. It describes itself as a "launching-off point for text," or a "Swiss Army knife for text" rather than a text editor. Think of it as an overlay that grabs text from all your other apps so you can edit and organize it from a single location. It pulls from your email, your messages, and even your tweets, and lets you organize it all via Tags, Flags, or the built-in Archive. Similar to Bear, there's a "write first, organize later" mentality at play here. For writers who have hands in all sorts of cookie jars -- that is, all sorts of apps --  Drafts may be the thing you've been looking for.

All this power may seem like it comes at a steep price, but that's where Drafts defies your expectations: it's totally free on Mac, iPhone, iPad, and even watchOS. Subscribing to Drafts Pro for $19.99 a year unlocks the feature set even further. You'll be able to customize actions and integrations with third-party apps, change themes and syntax, automate some of your processes, and set up a special Drafts email address to send text directly to the application. Our only complaint about Drafts is that there's a bit of a learning curve for new users.

So far, every app we've mentioned is either paid or has some of its best features locked behind a paywall. A brief, weeklong trial may not be enough for someone who wants to give novel writing a shot -- especially those on a tight budget. Manuskript mimics the functionality of greats like Ulysses and Scrivener for the low, low price of $0.00, and includes many features they don't. In addition to the same folder organization and distraction-free editor mode common to Mac writing apps, Manuskript adds things like character-building sheets, plot outlines, a world-building item tracker, and a word frequency analyzer to avoid overusing certain words. Manuskript markets itself toward fiction writers, particularly planners rather than pantsers. It incorporates the "snowflake method" that allows writers to additively build up small ideas into a full-blown novel.

The app isn't just free, it's open-source, letting you use, modify, and distribute the code if you so choose. That said, there are some caveats. Manuskript, per its own words, is in the "early development stages." The devs recommend creating frequent backups since it's unstable, beta software -- though you should always back up your Mac to iCloud as a matter of principle. If you use Manuskript and want it to continue improving, please donate to the developer.

iWriter Pro

Not to be confused with iA Writer, iWriter Pro is yet another Markdown-focused app -- seeing a theme here? This app aims for a balance between simplicity and power in a subscription-free package. Same as Scrivener and iA Writer, iWriter Pro uses your local on-device .txt and .md files,and syncs them via iCloud. Other cloud storage services work too, but be warned that you may lose out on some iCloud-specific functionality. iWriter Pro includes many expected features such as Markdown syntax highlighting, typewriter mode, and split-view mode for working on two files at once. Many of the baseline backend components seen in competitors are found here, too, such as autosave and file versioning. Preview mode appears as a split screen inside the text editor, unlike most on this list, so you can see a more aesthetically pleasing view of your Markdown document as you write without having to open a separate export window.

Long story short, iWriter Pro keeps things clean and uncluttered without shortchanging you on the most important fare. It's one of the cheapest non-subscription options on this list at $9.99 for macOS. For an extra $2.99, you can get iWriter on your iPhone and iPad to take that writing on the go -- though it appears there have been no updates for the latter two platforms since September 2021.

Obsidian has been making waves primarily among notetakers, but we think it offers something special to writers -- especially fiction authors. Big shots like Brandon Sanderson, who need to keep track of dozens of characters and world-building details, often rely on a personal Wiki as their fictional world's concept database. Wikis take time to get used to, but Obsidian takes far less. The basic principle underpinning every aspect of the app is that you can link text in one document to other notes simply by adding double square brackets. It's that simple. Over time, as you link more and more notes together, you begin to create "Maps of Content" or MOCs. Then, you can see a visual representation (not unlike neurons in the brain, hence Obsidian's marketing about being your "second brain") and better understand how the information links together.

For writers who need to link character descriptions to character sheets, items to worldbuilding sheets, and lingo to fictional slang lists, Obsidian is a game-changer. It could, if you're willing to invest the time, be your Wiki and writing app all in one. Obsidian is free on Mac. Paying for the Sync version lets you sync it cross-platform for $8 a month. The app supports syncing via your preferred cloud storage, such as iCloud, but you'll have to set that up yourself.

How We Chose The Apps For This List

The primary deciding factor for this list was how strongly each app supports the Mac platform, with bonus points for cross-platform options on iPad and iOS. The writer has personal experience with many of these choices and gave special preference to the ones that proved to be the most intuitive and capable of delivering on their marketing promises. Markdown was also given special consideration, as it's a vital tool for transferring your writing to other platforms and easily exporting to other formats.

At SlashGear, we believe in monetarily supporting developers to keep their projects alive in the long term. That said, we tried to keep a balance between free, one-time payment, and subscription options to avoid alienating readers on tighter budgets. This list is not comprehensive, and many more apps exist -- or will exist -- that may better scratch your writing itch than these.

Read the original article on SlashGear

Don Winslow's book 'City in Ruins' will be his last. He is retiring to fight MAGA

Don Winslow has written more than 25 novels and is considered to be one of the world's best crime writers. His latest series was adapted to film by Sony Pictures and will star Austin Butler. This week’s publication of the third installment in Winslow’s Danny Ryan trilogy, “City in Ruins,” will not only finish the series but also his writing career. 

At 70, Winslow will now shift his main focus to political activism as he looks to combat the MAGA political movement through advocacy and making videos. He’s spent the past few years writing novels – and fighting for democracy, including making viral videos with Bruce Springsteen and Jeff Daniels.

Winslow labels Donald Trump and his followers “a severe threat to our democracy.” He says that with his completion of the trilogy as well as the current political situation he thought “yeah, this is the time to let it go, and focus on the activism.” 

He also believes the timing was right to retire from writing given the current political climate, as well as this final series taking him “thirty years to write, on and off.” Winslow drew influence from Greek and Latin classics, "The Iliad," "The Aeneid," and "The Odyssey," mentioning that he read “three or four translations” of each, as well as taking “online college courses on each of those works."

However, this should not discourage any potential readers as Winslow says, “I tried to write a crime epic that you could read with no knowledge of or reference to the classics at all.”

Check out: USA TODAY's weekly Best-selling Booklist

The Danny Ryan trilogy

The last installment in Winslow’s Danny Ryan series “City in Ruins” (HarperCollins, 400 pp., out Tuesday) is largely set in Las Vegas, detailing a power struggle among major players on the Las Vegas strip. Funnily enough, from his office in southern California, Winslow tells USA TODAY: “By the way I don’t gamble. It bores the hell out of me.”

The trilogy follows Ryan through the majority of his life, from union dock worker to Irish mob soldier and later boss, to Hollywood investor using stolen drug money and later multimillionaire casino owner.  

It follows book two, "City of Dreams" and the first, "City on Fire."

“City in Ruins” starts with Ryan in a much easier place than in the previous novels: he is not fighting a mob war, fleeing from the FBI or hitmen, nor is he ripping off a psychopathic cartel leader’s safehouses. Ryan is a casino and hotel mogul in Las Vegas. His main problems include “the bonus 10 pounds he’s gained from living a mostly sedentary life at a desk” and planning his son’s 10th birthday party. 

Ryan is one of the three most powerful men in the Vegas casino industry and knows he doesn’t have to work another day in his life, but for the ex-longshoreman and someone described by his business associates as a “chowderhead," this idea is no less than nauseating. 

With a business opportunity arising on the strip with land becoming available for another hotel casino, Ryan must decide if he wants to sit back and let his business rival become the most powerful man in Vegas, or gamble his future by striking at this casino opportunity at the last minute. 

The struggle for the new casino is more trouble than Ryan could have imagined, bringing up old mob ties, unknown family history, backstabbings, battles of ego, and plenty of misunderstandings from the rumor mill among Vegas’s major players. 

Winslow admits this final conflict contributed to the series being a work in progress spanning essentially his entire writing career. The first novel in the series, “City on Fire” came out in 2022, but he started it in the ’90s.

Winslow felt another romantic conflict would be “repetitive both with the Illiad and what I’d written in the first book,” but he admits he struggled to figure out a final conflict for this novel. Winslow says that it finally occurred to him that the final conflict should be over a piece of property, and that revelation took him “an embarrassingly long time to realize.”

“City in Ruins” also follows Chris Palumbo in his cross-country journey brought on by losing mobsters' money, and later returning to Rhode Island in an attempt to regain his throne, and was inspired by Odysseus. Peter Morretti Jr., also returns and faces trial in Rhode Island for the alleged murder of his mother and her lover, mirroring "The Oresteia" by Aeschylus. When asked what prompted him to be influenced by the Oresteia cycle, he says, “I couldn’t resist, it feels like a noir film."

Winslow’s final series ending in Providence feels ideal as he grew up in Providence, where “the New England gang wars were in the newspapers, and topics of conversations, you know, you knew about it.”

Looking back on Winslow's career

It's a long way from where he started. Winslow’s first novel was published in 1991, written over 3 ½ years while traveling for work and studies. He told USA TODAY his first book was rejected by 15 publishes before “St. Martins press bought it and the next one for a total of $15,000” and says, while chuckling, that after years of work on those two, he would “hate to calculate how much he made hourly”. 

Find your next read Check out USA TODAY's bestselling bookslist

Winslow went on to publish over 20 more novels and won countless awards.

He has written for television shows and video games, had two novels adapted to the screen, and has four more novels in the process of being adapted to film. Even considering all this, Winslow remains humble, saying he can still worry: “I read Richard Russo and I think ‘Why do I bother to write?’”

Winslow says that beyond monetary figures, he will personally deem his novel a success, “if it has authenticity, if the characters and story ring true, and make an emotional connection to the readers.”

Throughout the interview, authenticity and connection seem to be part of Winslow’s entire being, exemplified by his extensive research for this final series.

Before we hang up, Winslow starts on his next chapter. He encourages Americans to get out and vote in city, state, and federal elections, make contributions if possible, and probably most importantly: "get out and talk to your friends and your neighbors." 

The shame of LinkedIn

Why posting on the site feels so embarrassing — and how to overcome the cringe factor

The other day, a friend of mine liked one of my LinkedIn posts. I was mortified. I quickly sent him a text explaining that posting there was a function of my job, not for funsies. While my frantic embarrassment was perhaps a tad of an overcorrection (OK, a lot of an overcorrection), I nonetheless feel deeply self-conscious about what I post on the work-focused website. I don't want to come off as overly earnest, too self-promotional, or dare I say it, cringe.

That LinkedIn is a cringey space is well established. The issue has been dissected on Reddit, in the media , and even on LinkedIn itself . LinkedIn is just a weird place to be in the first place. It's a jobs board with a social network layered on top of it. It's an artificial space where everyone is trying to put on their best face, but one that leaves people feeling quite exposed.

Why does LinkedIn feel so cringe? And is it possible to post there without being cringe yourself? I decided to reach out to some experts to try to find out, which was an embarrassing endeavor on its own.

Why LinkedIn feels so cringe

As much as LinkedIn is a professional platform, something about it feels really personal . Even when you're posting with your real name, other social-media sites like Instagram, Twitter/X, or TikTok have an air of anonymity to them, a sense of removal. A tweet is more fleeting, and Instagram is more private, even if your profile is public. On a lot of these platforms, everyone's sort of doing a bit. On LinkedIn, you wind up putting a lot of yourself out there: your picture, your work history, your education, your professional past, your aspirations. You're there for a specific reason — to advance your career and network. You have a specific audience in mind — prospective employers, potential business leads . That all requires you to be your best, most workiest self.

"The way people position themselves and kind of discuss really anything is filtered through that lens of etiquette and knowing that all eyes are on you all the time," Nathan Allebach, a social-media strategist and creative director, said. "It's just almost like an omni-surveillance state."

On LinkedIn, people face a case of "context collapse," where they communicate with disparate groups of people all at once. In most places, you know exactly who you're talking to — friends in a group chat or your work colleagues on email — but LinkedIn folds all of them together. That leads to a self-presentation conundrum: Which you do you want to be?

"It's hard to think about how to post, what to post, when you have, for example, your bosses there, your former bosses there, maybe your high-school friends are there, with your current colleagues or interns," Sunny Xun Liu, the director of research at the Stanford Social Media Lab, said. "We usually behave differently based on who we talk to. When all those people are there, it's very challenging to find a way that we feel comfortable."

LinkedIn users are trapped in a culture of professionalism and all that comes with it. The person you are with your boss or a client is probably not your truest self. This setting makes posting — or even just creating and maintaining a profile — feel extra high-stakes and, in turn, contrived. On LinkedIn, there is no dancing like no one's watching.

This high-wire performance has helped foster LinkedIn's reputation as a space for content that's a little extra, grimace-inducing, and often insincere. It's known for guys spouting broetry and CEOs crying and wannabe thinkfluencers posing as experts in areas nobody needs their expertise in. There's a reason social-media accounts like Best of LinkedIn , which pokes fun at over-the-top LinkedIn posts, exist. Even the people who run LinkedIn know that when something goes viral there, it's often not a good sign.

LinkedIn has made some efforts to change things — it's adjusted its algorithm to try to elevate more quality content and show people stuff from their networks. And while there are fewer "pure meaningless platitudes" on the platform, as Brendan Gahan, the cofounder of Creator Authority, a LinkedIn influencer marketing agency told me, there's still a "hangover" from how LinkedIn is perceived.

LinkedIn might not be as cringe as it used to be, but it's still awkward. Posting and interacting there, for most people, entails a level of forced positivity and performative professionalism that isn't really matched anywhere else online.

"LinkedIn is an echo chamber," John Hickey, the creator of Best of LinkedIn and a freelance creative director, said. "Everyone's on their best behavior, but in some ways that best behavior is also their worst behavior because they're not being their true selves."

How to be less cringe on LinkedIn

OK, so if LinkedIn comes with a bit of cringe baked in, what's the best way to minimize that impulse as much as possible? LinkedIn declined to comment for this story, but it sent over a couple of links, one to a blog post about how its users want "knowledge-based content" and another to a guide on becoming a LinkedIn creator that includes a fair amount of content but is a little hard to wade through. I am not among the 3,224 people apparently interested in an hourlong webinar on "nailing your niche," nor do I really want to see people share their posts and ask others why they think they underperformed. The goal for most people on LinkedIn is not to be a creator, anyway, it's just to live to fight another day in the working world. Given the weakness of the official advice, I decided to ask a bunch of people for tips on how to post in a non-cringe way on LinkedIn.

Brandon Smithwick, a LinkedIn creator and the head of content at Kickstarter, said it's generally a good idea to keep it short. "A post that's a huge dissertation or paragraphs, I'm scrolling past it, I'm going to bounce, I'm not reading that," he said. Memes do well, but it's also fine to just engage casually — share a blog post you like, comment on other people's posts, or just keep up a decent-looking profile. He schedules his posts and suggests others do the same, especially if it feels daunting to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and come up with ideas. It may also be helpful for people who dread hitting the "post" button and seeing a message immediately go up.

Natalie Marshall, who goes by Corporate Natalie on social media, told me that since posting anywhere is by its nature cringey, the best approach is just to try to make content that isn't too forced. She tries to add some personal narrative or anecdotes to her posts and will ask followers about their experiences and feedback, but she's cognizant of length. "We're not storytellers here," she told me. She feels like she can "hide behind the written word" on LinkedIn more than on platforms where she's posting videos. It's a tough balancing act — she suggests people use a personal flair on the platform, but at one point in our conversation, she thought I accused her posts of being cringe.

Also, people should remember they can opt out of posting altogether. "If you don't want to post, don't," Marshall said. "Why is there this pressure to build your personal brand and build your LinkedIn and do these things?"

I also asked a pair of social-media managers — one at Business Insider and one at a different company — for their thoughts on LinkedIn posting. They offered up some tips: Try to ask a question at the end of a post, include some extra detail, maybe toss in some hashtags. Both also came to the same conclusion: There's no way to get around the cringe. "I have thought of it as part of the job, but doesn't make it any less cringe!" one told me. "I would say to embrace the cringe," the other said.

None of this is to dunk on LinkedIn as a platform — I like it very much! Of all of the social-media websites, I find it the most useful for my job. I just feel like a complete idiot being there sometimes. A lot of people do. Those are just the rules of the road.

"Eventually, you just kind of give in," Allebach said. "I'll do my best to write this how I would say it in real life, but ultimately I know I'm going to be still using certain line breaks and certain hooks and certain bulleted points or whatever it might be that I know the algorithm and my audience is going to favor, because ultimately I want to get some type of lead through this platform. I'm not just posting for my enjoyment on LinkedIn."

Nor am I. But I'll still be there, posting my stories (including this one), hoping people won't judge me.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

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English Department to Launch New Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies Concentration for Fall 2024

The Department of English will continue the rollout of its new undergraduate curriculum in fall 2024, highlighted by a new concentration in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies (WRLS) for English majors and a revamped Letter of Specialization for non-majors. This exciting new curriculum prepares students to enter a variety of professional fields, including publishing, education, legal studies, writing for nonprofit organizations, digital content strategy, and more.

The WRLS concentration leads students through a sequence of five introductory, intermediate and advanced courses taught by leading scholars of writing, rhetoric and literacy studies. Students develop skills in public writing, community research, drafting and revision, editing and publication, audience analysis, digital rhetoric, and multimodal composition. WRLS students can choose from among a variety of electives to design their own course path in pursuit of a wide range of careers or graduate programs.

Through this program, students will gain experience analyzing and crafting writing for different audiences and with a view to the public good. They will practice writing across a range of genres, from grant proposals and policy statements to digital essays. This curriculum equips students with valuable skills in verbal and written communication, qualities prized among employers across professions and applicable in any career.

“The English Department at UMass Amherst has long been known for its strengths in composition and rhetoric, providing leadership for the university’s groundbreaking College Writing and Junior Year Writing courses since 1980,” said David Fleming, professor of English, who teaches courses in rhetoric. “But in the last decade or so, we’ve seen a growing demand from students for more courses in writing. We’re excited to now unveil this new five-course concentration within the English major in Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies , as well as a letter of specialization for non-majors. With a new 200-level introductory course and a more encompassing view of the field of writing studies, the new program brings together an exciting range of scholarly, practical, and professional topics. It also recognizes one of the fastest growing and most vibrant areas of study within English studies–both nationally and here at UMass.”

The concentration has been approved by the UMass Faculty Senate, and students can begin enrolling for courses for the 2024-25 academic year. A listing of fall 2024 courses counting toward the concentration and specialization is available on the Department of English website .

For more information, contact Dr. Janine Solberg, director of the Writing, Rhetoric, and Literacy Studies (WRLS) Concentration: @email .

Students wishing to add English with a WRLS concentration as a second major should contact the English Undergraduate Advising Office (E345 South College, email @email ).

E445 South College 150 Hicks Way Amherst, MA 01003 (413) 545-5456

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Working With Your Hands Is Good for Your Brain

Activities like writing, gardening and knitting can improve your cognition and mood. Tapping, typing and scrolling? Less so.

By Markham Heid

The human hand is a marvel of nature. No other creature on Earth, not even our closest primate relatives , has hands structured quite like ours, capable of such precise grasping and manipulation.

But we’re doing less intricate hands-on work than we used to. A lot of modern life involves simple movements, such as tapping screens and pushing buttons, and some experts believe our shift away from more complex hand activities could have consequences for how we think and feel.

“When you look at the brain’s real estate — how it’s divided up, and where its resources are invested — a huge portion of it is devoted to movement, and especially to voluntary movement of the hands,” said Kelly Lambert, a professor of behavioral neuroscience at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Dr. Lambert, who studies effort-based rewards, said that she is interested in “the connection between the effort we put into something and the reward we get from it” and that she believes working with our hands might be uniquely gratifying.

In some of her research on animals , Dr. Lambert and her colleagues found that rats that used their paws to dig up food had healthier stress hormone profiles and were better at problem solving compared with rats that were given food without having to dig.

She sees some similarities in studies on people, which have found that a whole range of hands-on activities — such as knitting , gardening and coloring — are associated with cognitive and emotional benefits, including improvements in memory and attention, as well as reductions in anxiety and depression symptoms.

These studies haven’t determined that hand involvement, specifically, deserves the credit. The researchers who looked at coloring, for example, speculated that it might promote mindfulness, which could be beneficial for mental health. Those who have studied knitting said something similar. “The rhythm and repetition of knitting a familiar or established pattern was calming, like meditation,” said Catherine Backman, a professor emeritus of occupational therapy at the University of British Columbia in Canada who has examined the link between knitting and well-being.

However, Dr. Backman said the idea that working with one’s hands could benefit a person’s mind and wellness seems plausible. Hands-on tasks that fully engage our attention — and even mildly challenge us — can support learning, she added.

Dr. Lambert has another hypothesis. “With depression, people experience something called learned helplessness, where they feel like it doesn’t matter what they do, nothing ever works,” she said. She believes that working with one’s hands is stimulating to the brain, and that it could even help counteract this learned helplessness. “When you put in effort and can see the product of that, like a scarf you knitted, I think that builds up a sense of accomplishment and control over your world,” she said.

Some researchers have zeroed in on the possible repercussions of replacing relatively complicated hand tasks with more basic ones.

In a small study of university students published in January, Norwegian researchers compared the neurological effects of writing by hand with typing on a keyboard. Handwriting was associated with “far more elaborate” brain activity than keyboard writing, the researchers found.

“With handwriting, you have to form these intricate letters by making finely controlled hand and finger movements,” said Audrey van der Meer, one of the authors of that study and a professor of psychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Each letter is different, she explained, and requires a different hand action.

Dr. Van der Meer said that the act of forming a letter activates distinctive memories and brain pathways tied to what that letter represents (such as the sound it makes and the words that include it). “But when you type, every letter is produced by the same very simple finger movement, and as a result you use your whole brain much less than when writing by hand,” she added.

Dr. Van der Meer’s study is the latest in a series of research efforts in which she and her colleagues have found that writing and drawing seem to engage and exercise the brain more than typing on a keyboard. “Skills involving fine motor control of the hands are excellent training and superstimulation for the brain,” she said. “The brain is like a muscle, and if we continue to take away these complex movements from our daily lives — especially fine motor movements — I think that muscle will weaken.” While more research is needed, Dr. Van der Meer posits that understimulation of the brain could ultimately lead to deficits in attention, memory formation and problem solving.

But as with knitting and coloring, some experts question the underlying mechanisms at play.

“With some of this research, I think it’s hard to dissociate whether it’s the physical movement of the hands that’s producing a benefit, or whether it’s the concentration or novelty or cognitive challenge involved,” said Rusty Gage, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego.

Dr. Gage studies how certain activities can stimulate the growth of new cells in the brain. “I think if you’re doing complex work that involves making decisions and planning, that may matter more than whether you’re using your hands,” he said.

That said, the benefits of many hands-on activities aren’t in doubt. Along with gardening and handicrafts, research has found that pursuits like making art and playing a musical instrument also seem to do us some good.

“You know, we evolved in a three-dimensional world, and we evolved to interact with that world through our hands,” Dr. Lambert said. “I think there are a lot of reasons why working with our hands may be prosperous for our brains.”

Cash advance app fees skyrocketing, research finds

Some cash advance apps charge a fee as high as $14.99 per month in addition to loan fees.

(InvestigateTV) — New research from the finance guide company Overdraft Apps reports fees to borrow money from some cash advance apps have increased by 24%.

Mitchel Harad, publisher of Overdraftapps.com has been tracking the fee increases.

“We’ve been tracking the cost of these apps for the past year,” Harad said. “We took a reading early in 2023 and then in late 2023 and we did find the average fees increased by a pretty healthy amount during the year for two reasons: increased regulation and two a lot of the new apps and less popular ones so far are charging much higher fees.”

Harad said they found borrowing $100 ranges anywhere from $6 in fees, all the way up to $35 in fees.

“There’s certainly some great value up there for people who need to access quick cash,” Harad noted. “But it’s really important that you both shop around and understand the fees that you’re going to pay.”

He said many of these apps promise a little more than a new customer is going to find. Consumers may see a lot of promises that they can borrow up to $500 dollars and in a few cases $1,000.

Harad said while that can be true, new customers don’t necessarily qualify for that amount right out of the gate. He said more often loans for new customers range between $50 and $100.

He said to get to a higher amount users need to use the apps regularly and establish a track record of paying back the loans.

Harad also said it’s really important to understand the fees that you will be paid, and while they may not charge interest or late fees, these cash advance apps often do charge an express fee, and many have a monthly subscription fee.

Copyright 2024 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

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