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beyond microsoft office [Apps for Diverse Writing Styles]

Contact Info Timothy Swiffen Access Technologist Office for Students with Disabilities

Why Switch From Microsoft Office? [And Other Word Processors]

Why Switch? Microsoft Word, Pages, and LibreOffice are all great programs for creating professional looking documents, but they have a number of disadvantages for the process of writing: Word Processors were designed to replace secretarial functions, not to help the writing process. Word encourages a linear writing format, yet many people write in a non-linear manner. Word struggles to keep track of numerous documents (notes, brainstorms) and long documents (theses, dissertations). Word has 100s of distracting features that are largely irrelevant to University writing (when was the last time you needed to do a mail merge?).

what are the alternatives?

Capture Your Ideas Write Distraction Free and Stay Motivated Revise, Revise, Revise

Capture Your Ideas Sometimes all you want to do is get that idea for your term paper written down the moment inspiration strikes you, whether it’s on the bus, at the cafeteria or right before you go to bed. Apps that are good for capturing your ideas don’t worry about your formatting or your prose but rather are easy to access, easy to search, and free of distractions. Evernote SimpleNote Mindmeister

Capture Your Ideas Evernote is the most popular note taking app. It has hundreds of features, can take audio notes, photo notes and sync with pretty much any device. Evernote SimpleNote Mindmeister Evernote lets you tag and quickly search your notes. If you use a LiveScribe pen, your class notes can be automatically uploaded to Evernote. Evernote can preform basic OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on pictures you take on your phone.

Capture Your Ideas SimpleNote is a plain text note taking program that on purpose has few features other than a very powerful search engine. Evernote SimpleNote Mindmeister SimpleNote keeps all of your notes backed up on a cloud server, so you’ll never lose your notes. SimpleNote is indexed so that as long as you remember at least one word that is contained within the entire note you will be able to find it again.

Capture Your Ideas While SimpleNote can be accessed on your web browser, there are numerous apps that can sync with your various devices. Evernote SimpleNote Mindmeister Windows: ResophNotes OSX: Notational Velocity iOS: SimpleNote Android: Notational Acceleration Windows Phone: Metro Note Blackberry: BerryNote

Capture Your Ideas MindMeister is a mind mapping web app with a number of great features for visualizing your ideas. Evernote SimpleNote Mindmeister With MindMeister you can visualize concepts in a variety of different ways, exposing relationships between ideas. For each node on your mind map you are able to add notes, images, files and due date.  This can help you organize your paper along with your ideas. MindMeister is a web app, though it also has native apps for iOS and Android. While there are premium versions, the free version is quite good.

Capture Your Ideas Evernote SimpleNote Mindmeister Evernote Very powerful with a number of features. Great for students who use audio and/or visual notes. Can be a bit overwhelming and distracting. SimpleNote Easy to search through thousands of notes. Simple to use and non-distracting interface. Text only, does not support visual learners. Mindmeister Let’s you visualize the relationship between ideas. The ability to assign due dates lets you stay organized while you are writing. Each mind map is separated from others.

Capture Your Ideas Write Distraction Free and Stay Motivated Revise, Revise, Revise

Eliminate Distractions Often, when we’re writing we have too much on the go, you have pdfs open, your web browser, your , your music player. More and more programs have distraction-free modes that force you to focus in on your current task only. Don’t worry about formatting until you are done with the important work of getting your paper written! Programs that aim for distraction-free writing also have the ability to track your writing progress so that you can give yourself daily goals.

Eliminate Distractions These programs can also work with the built in text to speech features of OSX and Windows 7 and the text files they export can be brought into any other writing program such as Wynn or Kurzweil. OSX and iOS: WriteRoom Windows: WriteMonkey Linux: Focus Writer

Capture Your Ideas Write Distraction Free and Stay Motivated Revise, Revise, Revise

Organize Academic writing is often a very convoluted process, where your ideas sometimes only become clear after you’ve written them down. Scrivener is a program that was developed by a novelist to be a set of tools to facilitate the creative process. Features: Move quickly between your brainstormed ideas, an outline, and your written text. Keep all of your related files in research in the same easy to access space. Set yourself a wide variety of writing targets, from daily writing goals to word to word limits for sections. Write in distraction free mode with a font that you are comfortable with and export it into a format that meets your course requirements.

Thank you for your time! Contact Info Timothy Swiffen Access Technologist Office for Students with Disabilities