For many students, essay writing is the most difficult and demanding type of writing they will ever do. This is due to a number of factors, but most students would agree that it’s the rigid structure of the document as well as the requirements for accurately cited references that proves to be especially difficult. For students with learning disabilities, this process can be particularly daunting, since there are so many steps and processes to follow, and for students with mobility challenges who rely heavily on speech to text, having to worry about properly formatted citations could mean hours and hours of extra work.

Essayist is an essay-writing app that is designed to allow students to focus on content rather than format. The app is available for iOS only, but there are Android-based alternatives available.

Essayist features a distraction-free interface that doesn’t overdo it on options and extras, but still gives you everything you need to write a perfect essay. The app supports APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard style essays, and offers everything from in-text citations to footnotes.

Rather than writing citations by hand, Essayist uses an iCloud-based universal reference manager to store and manage references. You can even search within the reference manager, add or remove citations as needed, create separate folders, and more, and the app even integrates with Google Scholar for even quicker access to references.

The app also takes care of the formatting side of things with ease. Once you’ve specified the essay style you’ll be working with, the app will automatically format your document accordingly,  creating the proper margins, line spacing, alignment, and more. It will even properly format figures, tables, graphics, etc. Essayist also features a built-in spell check, auto-completion, and auto capitalization tools.

It’s also interesting to note what’s NOT included in the app, and that’s essentially anything that doesn’t belong in a proper essay. You can’t choose a paper size that’s not in line with your formatting, you can’t choose fonts that are not accepted, and you can’t use colors that aren’t allowed.

And while this app does a great job of taking the guess work out of essay-writing, we always recommend that you first learn the fundamentals of essay writing before you try using an essay-writing app such as Essayist.

Essayist is available to trial for free, or via subscription at a cost of $7.99 CDN per month. Click here to learn more.

This post originally appeared on the AT Help Desk website.

Tags: apps, assistive technology, AT HelpDesk, Atlantic Regional Office, education