Writing well is a critical skill for students to master. With the rise of technology, there are now many writing tools available to help students at all levels improve their writing abilities. Whether you're looking for inspiration, grammar and spelling checkers, citation generators, or apps to help with research and organization, this list has the top 20 best writing tools for students in 2023.
Online writing tools provide easy access to resources that can assist with every part of the writing process. Here are some of the top online tools for students:
Grammarly is an online grammar, spell checker, and plagiarism detection tool. It reviews writing for grammar, punctuation, word choice, style, tone, and plagiarism issues. Grammarly offers a free version and a premium version with more advanced features. It's one of the top writing tools for improving English grammar and catching mistakes.
ProWritingAid is an online editing tool designed to help writers improve their writing style and grammar. It offers grammar and spelling checking along with more advanced writing style reports. Students can use it to ensure readability, check for repetition, verify grammar rules, and enhance vocabulary.
EasyBib is one of the top citation and bibliography tools online. It allows students to easily create citations and bibliographies in APA, MLA, Chicago, and other formats. Simply search for the book, journal, website, or other source, and EasyBib will auto-generate a correctly formatted citation.
QuillBot is an AI-powered paraphrasing and summarizing tool. Students can use it to rewrite and rephrase content in their own words, avoiding plagiarism issues. QuillBot is useful for improving vocabulary and paraphrasing abilities. The free version makes it accessible to all students.
Canva provides design and graphic creation tools to help students create stunning visuals to enhance their work. Easy drag-and-drop features allow anyone to make beautiful infographics, charts, posters, book covers, and more for essays and projects.
Students can access writing support right from their smartphones and tablets with these useful writing apps:
Evernote is one of the top apps for organizing research and gathering notes while working on essays and projects. Students can clip web content, add attachments, organize notes into notebooks, and sync everything across devices.
Dragon Dictation allows students to easily dictate papers, notes, and essays using voice commands instead of typing. The app will transcribe speeches into text quickly and accurately. This helps students get ideas out faster.
The EasyBib app allows students to scan book barcodes to instantly create citations. It also lets users manually enter citation info, has a grammar checker, and offers format guides for APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.
Microsoft Word is the top word-processing software and is used by students worldwide. The mobile app provides the essential writing features of Word on smartphones and tablets for drafting, editing, and polishing school papers on the go.
Google Docs is a free alternative to Word and is excellent for collaboration. Students can compose, edit, view revision history, and share documents for peer editing. The mobile app enables access and editing from any device.
Chromebooks are popular in many schools due to their affordability and cloud-based functionality. Here are great Chromebook-compatible writing tools for students:
As mentioned above, Google Docs works seamlessly on Chromebooks. Students can draft, revise, cite sources, collaborate with peers, use built-in dictation tools, and more.
Squibler is an online novel and story-writing tool made for Chromebooks. It provides helpful writing templates, storyboards for planning, and tools for tracking characters, locations, and timelines. Useful for creative writing!
Wave Writer is a distraction-free online word processor designed for focus and concentration. Students can block out distractions to stay centered on writing. It auto-saves so work is never lost.
The QuillBot Chrome extension allows students to rewrite content in their own words to avoid plagiarism, right within Chrome. Simply highlight text on a webpage and click rewrite!
This Chrome extension converts text into speech for listening comprehension and includes tools like picture dictionaries to boost vocabulary acquisition. Helpful for ESL students!
Top Writing Tools for High School Students
High school students have demanding writing assignments and can benefit from these useful tools:
Citation Machine lets students generate citations in APA, MLA, and Chicago formats for books, journals, websites, and other sources. Easily create bibliographies and in-text citations to correctly credit sources.
Timeline Creator helps students build visually appealing and customizable timelines to enhance history and research papers. Choose different styles, and colors, add multimedia, and export options.
Turnitin is used by many schools to check student work for plagiarism. Students can submit papers to Turnitin to check originality reports and ensure proper attribution of sources. Useful for maintaining academic integrity.
ReadWriteThink is a comprehensive website created by IRA and NCTE to improve reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. It provides lesson plans, interactive tools, printouts, templates, and more to build writing abilities.
This website contains step-by-step guides, workshops, examples, and brainstorming tools to assist high school students with every part of the college essay and application process.
No matter what grade level, all students can boost their writing skills with technology. With this list of the top 20 best writing tools for students, every learner can access resources to help them compose high-quality essays, research papers, creative writing, and more. Just find the online tools, apps, and software that align with your needs and get writing!
A: Writing tools provide many benefits for students such as grammar and spelling check, plagiarism detection, citations and bibliography generation, vocabulary enhancement, readability improvements, research assistance, collaboration features, and more!
A: Many excellent writing tools are completely free for students, like Google Docs, Canva, EasyBib Mobile, and ReadWriteThink. Others offer free versions with limited features and paid upgrades for more functionality.
A: Writing tools help students evaluate and strengthen their grammar, word choice, sentence structure, style, citations, and overall quality. This leads to improved writing habits and enhanced academic writing abilities over time.
A: Absolutely! Tools like Canva, Squibler, and Timeline Creator can aid creative writing projects. Dragon Dictation assists with generating ideas quickly. Hemingway Editor helps strengthen narrative flow and readability.
A: For essay writing, students will benefit from tools like Grammarly, Turnitin, Read&Write for Google Chrome, Outline Creator, College Essay Organizer, citation generators, grammar checkers, and Microsoft Word/Google Docs for drafting.
Writing well is critical to students' success in high school, college, and beyond. Thankfully, there are now more tools than ever to provide writing support to students of all ages and skill levels. Whether it's brainstorming essay ideas, organizing research, checking grammar and spelling, generating citations, or reviewing essays for plagiarism, students have access to technology to help them improve their writing abilities.
The best writing tools enable students to write with clarity, accuracy, and credibility. While every student and grade level has different needs, this list of the top 20 writing tools for students covers all the bases.
Try out a few online writing aids to find the ones that work best with your personal writing style and needs. With practice over time, these tools can help any student become a stronger and more confident writer.
