Academic writing is a bit different and more difficult as compared to other types of writing since it requires more effort in research, the writing process itself, and the post-writing routines.
Using online tools can be a great way to enhance the efficiency of academic writing. For almost every process and step in the writing process, you can find an online tool that either takes over the job completely or makes it a lot easier.
If you don’t know about these tools, you can’t use them to enhance your writing efficiency. In this post, we’re going to talk about some tools in specific as well as the stuff they can help with in the writing process.
Table of Contents
1. Online AI assistants can help with research and planning
Perhaps no other type of writing requires as much research and planning as academic writing. You have to learn about the topic that you’re writing on, garner facts and figures, and plan everything out according to a pre-defined format (depending on the exact type of content it is).
Doing everything on your own can be time-consuming and arduous. You can get help from online AI assistants (like ChatGPT) to make things a bit easier.
You can, for one:
- Get specifically tailored explanations and expositions on certain topics to understand them better
- Get specific facts about the topic (not stats because stats have to be garnered from live and reliable sources)
- Create outlines for your content according to your specific needs and requirements
And so on.
Here is an example of ChatGPT to show you exactly what we mean:
2. Paraphrasing tools for smoother and better writing quality
When you’re writing academic content, it is recommended to do the actual writing yourself – despite the fact that there are online tools that can generate content for you in a matter of seconds.
If you write the content yourself, it turns out to be much better in terms of not being generic and carrying a personal/engaging touch.
However, even if you write the stuff yourself, it does not mean that you’re beyond the help of online tools, i.e., in the writing process. You can use paraphrasing tools instead. Paraphrasing tools can just improve the quality of your content rather than churning out swathes of text for you to mindlessly utilize.
You can basically start writing your content, and while writing it, you can simply keep an eye out for any sentence you write that may be hard to read, or that may be a bit clunkily formed. When you come across any such term, you can simply paraphrase it with the tool and make it better.
There are a couple of things that have to exist in a paraphrasing tool before you can trust it for this purpose. For example,
- It should be from a reliable source/website
- It should be AI-driven
And so on. Here is what this type of improvement can look like in action:
The tool that we’ve used in the image above is Paraphraseonline.io.
3. Grammar checkers for grammatically perfect academic content
Grammatical perfection is important in academic writing more than it is in any other type of writing. That is because academic content is more critically evaluated, and errors in grammar and spelling can cause excessive damage to the way it appears.
There are specific online tools available on the Internet that you can use to make your academic content grammatically perfect. You can use these tools while you are writing the content and/or once you’re done with it.
The thing to remember about these tools is that since they are automated and since they ultimately run on lines of code, they don’t have the spontaneity and intelligence of a human being. They can slip up at times – due to which they have to be used in a specific, careful way.
- For starters, these tools have to be used in tandem with the traditional proofreading process. You should not solely rely on them.
- Other than that, even when actively using them, you should be careful of the errors they point out and the suggestions you utilize. They can occasionally misfire and point out something completely fine as erroneous.
When it comes to grammar checkers, Grammarly is a popular name. It has been around for quite some time now, and it has a reputation for being reliable and accurate. Here is how it detects errors and provides the right suggestions for them:
Considerations of Using Online Tools When Writing Academic Content
While the process of academic writing can be streamlined with the help of online tools, there are some considerations that you have to keep in mind regarding them.
- Using online tools should never step into unethical bounds. For example, you should not use content generators in situations where there are express prohibitions on it. You should likewise not use any tools to misappropriate existing content.
- There is a consideration that you have to specifically keep in mind with regard to paraphrasing tools. You should not use paraphrasing tools to plagiarize content, i.e., by taking it from a source and lightly altering it so that it looks different.
- When using these tools, regardless of which purpose, you should always use them in an assistive capacity and with a wary eye. In other words, you should not fully and blindly hand over an entire task to the tools and use it without any sort of checking.
Conclusion
Using online tools can be a great way to enhance the efficiency of the academic writing process. There are many tasks that these tools can make easy, such as checking for grammar issues and improving the flow of the content. However, along with using these tools, you have to keep in mind certain considerations. We have mentioned them in the last part of the post above. If you keep in mind all of those, you will be able to get the most of these tools.
