Top 10 Online Tools to Help You Write the Perfect Essay

Top 10 Online Tools to Help You Write the Perfect Essay Top 10 Online Tools to Help You Write the Perfect Essay Top 10 Online Tools to Help You Write the Perfect Essay By Ali Hale Writing essays can be tough and sometimes you need all the help you can get. The great news is that there are plenty of online tools that can help you write the best essay you can – and I’m going to be running through ten of the best. Before we get into the list, though, here’s a huge caveat. DO NOT use websites that write your essay for you. When I researched this blog post, I found (to my horror) lots of lists of â€Å"essay-writing tools† that linked to essay mills as if those were legitimate writing tools. These essay mills are websites that sell essays for $200 $500 each. Let’s be very clear: if you pay someone else for an essay and hand it in as your own work, that’s cheating. You could get into serious trouble – maybe even thrown off your course. Plus, you might get horribly ripped off. None of the tools in this post will help you cheat. All of them will help you write the best essay you can. Of course, there are times when all the online tools in the world can’t help: when you’re taking your exams. If that’s the case, check out 7 Essay Writing Tips To Ace Your Next Exam to help you. Here are ten tools that could help you with your next essay. I’ve split them into different categories of tools to help with planning and research, with writing, and with editing. Tools to Help You Plan and Research Your Essay Before you start to write an essay, you need to plan it (and probably do some research, unless you’re writing about a topic that you’ve already learned about extensively in lectures or in class). These tools will help you with the planning stage of the writing process. #1: Essay Map (free), from ReadWriteThink I’m a big fan of planning in advance – and this tool walks you through the process of planning an essay. You’re a bit limited by the format (three main ideas, each with three subpoints) – but if you’re new to planning, it could be a great place to begin. You can save your finished map onto the computer, If you prefer to work on paper, you can also print a blank map to fill in. Tip: This basic structure: introduction, conclusion, and three key points, each with supporting evidence, could work for other forms of writing too – like a blog post or article. #2: Evernote (free), from Evernote Corporation Evernote is like a set of online notebooks – where you can keep anything you like, from written notes to photos to videos. I keep all my work-related notes there, plus lots of administrative bits and pieces – it makes it really easy to find what I need. Because you can login and access it from any computer or device, Evernote could be a great place to keep ideas and rough plans for your upcoming essays. You can search all your notes for a particular word or phrase, so it’s easy to find things that you wrote weeks or even years ago. Tip: You can save whole webpages into Evernote at the click of a button if you use the Evernote Chrome extension. #3: JSTOR (paid), from ITHAKA JSTOR is an online archive of lots of different academic journals and books. Most universities have a paid subscription to it, so you can access it for free using your university credentials. You can search JSTOR by author, subject (keyword), or title. You can see a screenshot above of the first couple of results for my search for â€Å"Samuel Richardson† (my favourite 18th century novelist). Tip: If you don’t have access through your institution, you can sill access public domain resources on JSTOR for free, plus up to six articles per month – or you can pay for a â€Å"JPASS† for $19.50/month. Tools to Help You Write Your Essay Once you’ve got a plan for your essay, and you’ve gathered some useful books or journal articles to reference, it’s time to write. These tools will help you get that first draft down. #4: Freedom (paid), from Freedom This app and website blocker lets you block specific websites – great for when you want to focus but keep getting distracted. If you need access to the internet for other tools, that’s no problem: with Freedom, you can block specific sites (like Facebook and Twitter) or apps on your phone. You can also block the whole internet, if you want to. Once you’re running a Freedom session, if you try to visit a blocked site, it simply won’t show up. Freedom costs $6.99/month or $29/year: there’s a trial version available so you can give it a go before you buy, and there’s also a money-back guarantee. You can use Freedom on multiple devices at no extra cost. Tip: If you want a free alternative to Freedom, Cold Turkey is a good option (as is StayFocusd, but that only works on Chrome). #5: EndNote Basic (free), from Clarivate Analytics EndNote is one of the best-known reference managing tools and you can use it online for free. You can search online databases / library catalogues (the free version only gives access to ones from the British Library, the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, and PubMed) or you can create a reference manually by filling in a form. If you have a number of different essays on the go, you might want to organise your references into different groups. Other students can also share their groups of references with you – useful if you want to collaborate with coursemates. Tip: You can pay for a full version of EndNote (or your university may provide it) if you want to use advanced features, like accessing far more research database and attaching the full text of PDF sources to your reference database. #6: The Oxford English Dictionary (paid), from Oxford University If you study literature, linguistics, or any subject where you want an authoritative take on the origin of words, the Oxford English Dictionary is a fantastic tool. You need to login and access it online – which you can usually do through your university or local library. Otherwise, you can purchase a monthly subscription as an individual – but it’s pretty pricy ($29.95 in the US, or  £56+VAT for three months in the UK). So definitely check with your university or local library first, to see if you can access it through them. Tip: The OED provides a lot more information than a standard dictionary, and entries might look a bit overwhelming at first. You can â€Å"Hide all† quotations, which makes them a bit more manageable if you don’t need the quotations or if you’re hunting through a few different words to figure out which one you want! #7: Google Timer, from Google It can be really tough to stay focused when you’re writing, even with distracting websites blocked. Sitting down and planning to write for a whole morning or afternoon doesn’t work well for most people – you simply can’t concentrate on an essay for that long at a stretch. I like to use timers when I’m writing, to keep me focused and to break my writing session into short chunks. Around 30 – 45 minutes works well. (If you’re on a roll, you can always set the timer for another writing burst straightaway). While the timer’s running you’re writing! To set a timer in Google, simply search for â€Å"set a timer for X minutes† – e.g. â€Å"set a timer for 10 minutes†. The timer will appear on the screen and start automatically. WriteToDone has a bunch more tips on time management for writers. Tools to Help You Edit Your Essay Once your essay is written, you’re not done you still need to edit. It’s a very good idea to separate the drafting process from the editing process, and if you’ve done that, your first draft may well be a little rough and ready in places. These tools will all help you get it into shape. #8: Grammarly (free), from Grammarly Grammarly uses artificial intelligence to help you with grammar, spelling and style. You can turn it on and use it as you write – which can be very helpful for things like emails – but if you’re writing an essay, you might prefer to draft first then use Grammarly afterwards. It’s available as a Chrome plugin, and as a download for MS Office, so you can use it online or offline. Grammarly will flag up mistakes (like typos) but it’ll also spot places where you’ve used more words than you need or where you’ve used vague language. As you can see above, you can click on an underlined work to see Grammarly’s recommendation for fixing it – clicking the â€Å"See more in Grammarly† link gives you more details about what’s wrong, helping you to get things right next time.   #9: Hemingway (free), from Hemingway App The Hemingway app works in a similar way to Grammarly, though with a focus on style and readability rather than on spotting typos and misused words. It’s named after the American novelist Ernest Hemingway, who was known for his clear, concise writing. You can access the app without logging in, simply by going to the website: copy or type in your chosen text. It encourages you to avoid overly complex words and sentence structures: don’t feel that you need to change all of these (particularly in an academic essay, where a certain level of complexity is desirable!) – but do check any flagged words or sentences to make sure you’re happy with them, and that you don’t want to switch to a simpler alternative. Tip: You can download the Hemingway app for PC or Mac, rather than using it online – but it’ll cost you $19.99. #10: Thesaurus.com (free), from Dictionary.com Do you ever struggle to find quite the right word? It happens to me a lot: I know what I want to say, but I can’t think of the very best way to say it. Or, I’ll have used a particular word already and I want to avoid using it too often (the principle of elegant variation). A great way to broaden your vocabulary is to use a thesaurus to look up words with a similar meaning to the not-quite-right one that you’ve already got. Do make sure, of course, that you don’t simply pick a different word that you like the sound of: you want to get the one that precisely conveys your thoughts. Tip: If you want to find some options for the opposite of a word, Thesaurus.com can do that too – scroll down past the list of synonyms to the antonyms. What tools do you use to help you write better essays? Have I missed something off the list that you’d highly recommend? Pop a comment below to tell us about it. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Writing Basics category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Grammar Test 1Try to vs. Try andHow Verbs Become Adjectives

101 Exam Review Professor Ramos Blog

101 Exam Review Prejudice Quick Write What have we learned about Diversity? Prejudice Exam Review In small groups, come up with 3-4 lessons, readings, activities, etc. that helped you improve the most as a writer. Also, one reading that we should get rid of, if any. Questions to answer for exam review. What was the best lesson? What was the best reading? What was the hardest essay? What lesson helped you learn the most? What reading taught you something new? What was the worst lesson? What was the worst reading? What was the hardest reading? What was your favorite part of the class? What was your least favorite part of the class? Final Exam The final exam will be posted tonight on Canvas. You can take it in class on Wednesday or anytime before that on Canvas.

History of African Americans Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

History of African Americans - Essay Example In order to represent the black population, a number of terms have used in the history of United States such as Blacks, Africans, Afro- American, colored, Negro and the African American. Actually the accurate proportion of these African Americans is not known in the existing population of United States. During past three centuries a remarkable racial mixture took place in United States, not only with the people having African ancestry but with other ethnic backgrounds as well such as Europeans and Indian descents. In times gone by, the major approach about ethnic group association within the United States was that people bearing some colored African descent were believed to beAfricanAmerican. Laws have also been formulated in some parts of United States just like in antebellum South, in order to define ethnic association in this regard, by and large, to the disadvantage of non- Caucasian. Notably, though, those physical traits and descent backgrounds are merely a fraction of actual r easons that have placed African Americans separately as a diverse group. (Gilbert, 2009) Over a period of about 350 years, from the early 1500's to the mid-1800, slave traders forcibly transported approximately 12 million Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas. Of this number, about 8 percent, or approximately 1 million, were brought to North America (after 1619). The rest went to the islands of the Caribbean and the shores of Central and South America. European slave traders working out of western Africa collected the slaves. They took millions of Africans in exchange for guns, iron, beads, silks and other cloths, knives, basins, mirrors, and the like. The slaves were sold to colonial plantation owners in the Americas. (Baldwin, 2008) Outcomes The outcome of this phase was that even without the legitimate status and negative impacts of the local trade of slaves, the African American Families managed somehow to retain the conventional aspects of the ways which arranged the relationships between the elders and children. The influences of the African religious beliefs, customs and traditions were quite obvious, which were reflected by a prominent level of religious activities among the slaves, this also helped to distinguish their point of view about themselves from their owner's. These deep rooted relations with the religion enabled the blacks to establish a number of churches outside the South and later created the black Baptist churches due to the further divisions within Protestantism. Apart from the above the another significant quantifiable measure was the African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by Richard Allen in Philadelphia and 1787, which was previously referred to as the Free African Society. (Baldwin, 2008) Religious Intolerance The religion in 17th century was a comprehensive power that assisted community to suffer the adversities and forfeits of everyday living in community. Moreover, colonial religiosity

Microsoft and its investment in Ireland Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Microsoft and its investment in Ireland - Essay Example A lot of work is done in Ireland unit of Microsoft which ranges from software development to operations, finance to localization, marketing etc (Microsoft, 2011). The first significant investment done by Microsoft since its inception in Ireland was the establishment of the EMEA Operation Centre. The European development centre which is the research and development centre for entire Microsoft Europe was established in 1988. The research and development work for the large range of products like windows, MS Office, Windows Live, Forefront, XBOX, MSN etc. About five hundred people are employed in this centre. This centre provides a vast variety of activities which ranges from customer support to providing business services, manufacturing to financial activities, billing, supply chain management activities etc. This is one of the important investments made by Microsoft in Ireland. The second significant investment done by Microsoft Ireland during the early nineties was setting up the â₠¬ËœSales, Marketing and Service Group’. The group offering sales, marketing and other related services are operating in Microsoft Ireland since 1991. The main activity of this group is to do the total sales and market the products and the services to all the customers and other business partners across Ireland. The customer group ranges from small personal computer user to business enterprises. This group comprises of a varied group of professional such as sales professionals, marketing professionals, technicians, and finance professionals etc who with their special skills and experience add value to the organization and its products and services. This was a very special and... It is evident from the study that globalization has paved the way for companies to invest and expand across the international frontiers. Companies generally expand to various countries to tap the favourable business condition of the foreign land. Foreign investments not only influence the business prospects of the foreign company but also have a strong impact on the overall economic, social and technological performance of the host country. In other words foreign direct investments influence the performance of the company as well as the performance of the country too. Foreign investments are generally made in that country which has good business prospects in other words where the company can expect good returns and where the business is hassle free. On the other hand a country also encourages foreign direct investments in those sectors which is expected to support and promote the overall development of the economy as well as the generation of employment. From the year 1985 Microsoft has started its business in Ireland and after then the country becomes an important base for Microsoft. Microsoft has continued to invest more and more in the country as the revenue from the country also increased. In the 1990s Ireland becomes an attractive country for the multinational companies for doing business especially the information technology based companies as the Irish government has started many policies, as a result of which the population become more educated and the education was more industry oriented.

Caris Story Essay Example for Free

Caris Story Essay How could an infection in Cari’s nasal passage and pharynx spread into her sinuses? The pharynx connects to the nasal meatuses, which can in turn cause an infection. Which structures found in the terminal bronchioles and alveoli normally would protect Cari’s lungs from infectious pathogens and particulate matter? Macrophages in the terminal bronchioles and alveoli protect Cari’s lungs. How would Cari’s lung compliance (the effort required to expand the lungs) be altered as her alveoli fill with fluid due to pneumonia? Her lung compliance will increase because of trying to force gases in and out of the alveoli. The lungs are filled with fluid due to pneumonia. How does the elevation of Cari’s respiratory rate alter her minute ventilation? Her respiratory rate would rise due to shallow breaths. Normal blood oxygen saturation levels are greater than 94 percent; Cari’s blood oxygen saturation level was 90 percent at the time of her exam and initial arterial blood gas analysis done when she was admitted to the hospital revealed her arterial PO2 was 55mmHG. How do these clinical findings relate to the internal respiration in Cari’s body? The arteries have too much oxygen. A normal resting level should be around 94% without any additional oxygen. How would you have expected Cari’s decreased PCO2 and alkaline blood pH to have affected her breathing? Her rate of breathing would also decrease. Which anatomical structures in Cari’s respiratory system were initially involved? Nasal cavity, external/internal nares, nasopharynx, pharynx, and sinuses. Which damaging effects of tobacco smoke led to Cari’s impaired respiratory defense mechanisms? The cilia and villi begin to become hardened and die; they wouldn’t be able to filter particles through the nasal cavity, which would lead to the mucosal membrane drying out from the cigarette smoke. The lungs would then lose elasticity from over inflation of the lungs trying to supply enough air to the rest of the body.

Definition Essay - Defining Professionalism -- Expository Definition E

Defining Professionalism Academics believe that professional occupations are those that are full-time occupations, have a commitment to a calling, have formalized organization, are based on specialized education of exceptional duration and difficulty, exhibit a service orientation, and are autonomous. Students feel that a professional is anyone who acts in a professional way and has creditable knowledge of their field. The two are vying for increased recognition in the elite group known as professionals. The academic community wishes to restrict the values of professionalism’s definition. Society wishes to let itself into the professional community by broadening those values. Each side seeks its own best interests in an eternal power struggle. What exactly is the proper definition of professionalism? Also, once a definition is found, how is it enforced? The academic community seems to have settled on a definition, however it differs largely from that of the college students surveyed. The college students, though they are pre-professionals, have a view that is very relaxed, allowing more fields to be considered professional. According to Wilbert E. Moore, The Professions: Rules and Roles, professionalism entails these six values: Full-time occupation, a commitment to a calling, has a formalized organization, is based on specialized education of exceptional duration and difficulty, exhibits a service orientation, and is autonomous. Because of this, occupations such as doctors and lawyers would be considered professional, however, computer programmers would not be professional since they do not have a formal organization overseeing the occupation, or a corporate CEO is also not ... ...and training, it should be deemed professional. Though the academic community attempts to regulate the standards of professionalism, it is the general public who has the last say. Academics may be professionals, but they are not autonomous with regards to the interpretation of the language. Society disagrees with the definition of professionalism; they disagree with the community that regulates professionalism. The academic definition goes against society’s best interest. Because of this, there will always be a disagreement. A compromise will not be reached. Academics will always support values that limit the membership of the elite group they will always be a part of. Society seeks broad values that will provide membership for all. Until the two can agree it is simply disputed territory, like two countries in an relentless struggle for power.

The Effects of Cyber Bullying

Cyberbullying is defined as deliberately attempting to upset someone; cyberbullying can happen via a number numerous ways. With all different forms of social media, whether it be Twitter, Facebook, or even, Instagram, cyberbullying can occur. Bullying effects our communities. Kids that are bullied appear likely to experience anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness, and sleep deprivation. Yet, while the victim might appear passive, it stands imperative that the parent may not. When a parent takes part in his or her child’s social media, it makes it harder for his or her child to be made fun of because their parents watch over them.A parent can stand as the ultimate counselor a child needs when getting bullied. Real life bullying stops when that final bell rings, but cyberbullying continues outside of the classroom. People will bully someone because they want to lower another person’s self-esteem. But bullying can do more than that! Bully victims appear two to nine t imes more likely to consider suicide. Victims go through this depression where they cannot feel anything except worthlessness. Actions of cyberbullying does not only happen on the social media, it happens through texting as well.More than likely, another student harasses and bashes another student just for their own self amusement. The person never stops to consider the thoughts of his or her victims. Cyberbullying causes depression, school phobia, social anxiety, not wanting to leave the house, and, even thoughts of suicide. Most often cyberbullying may appear as a touchy subject that students must learn how to properly handle and get the help they need. Kids going though this harassment can feel at their lowest then have the harassment to pile on to it.When it comes to cyberbullying, they often are motivated by anger, revenge, or frustration. Sometimes they do it for entertainment or because they appear bored and have too much time on their hands. Many do it for laughs, or to get a reaction, but some do it by accident, that person sends a message to the wrong recipient, or he or she do not think before he or she acts. Power-hungry people do it to torment others and social popularity. Revenge of the nerd may start out as defending themself from traditional bullying only to find that he or she enjoys being the tough guy.Mean girls do it to help bolster, or remind people, of their own social standing. Some think they are justifying the wrong and standing up for others. In general, cyberbullies have their own motives on why they are involved in cyberbullying. Some of their intentions have been identified as anonymity, power, attention, retaliation, boredom, jealousy, and the pleasure of inflicting pain. Numerous people who participate in cyber bullying do it to make themselves feel better. Bullies tend to have much insecurity, but they hide them through insulting others. There are many ways to overcome cyberbullying.He, or she, may just want to click â€Å"dele te† on every hateful email, text, or IM. However, this may not appear as the right motive because there may come a time when this bully needs to get reported, and he or she will need all the evidence right there in front of him or her. To prevent bullying one must save and print each and every mean thing they send. The day will come, when he or she will need this evidence. If the person receives a â€Å"bully† message, never get more involved than needed. Replying to that hurtful comment will only worsen the problem. When all else fails, get others involved.Let Parents or teachers know about the situation. Most likely, they can track the IP address, and get the exact location of the attacker. A cyberbully stands as nothing when they do not behind their internet mask. Talking to them about it upfront, might even scare them away. If this person seems not to be intimidated, or issues more violent or humiliating threats, contact an adult to intervene. Bullying of any kind a ppears illegal in most states. After letting a parent into the situation, allow them to contact the bully's parents. Cyberbullying can happen to anyone and anyone can overcome it as well.