Useful Writing & Bibliography Tools for Computer or Devices

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  • The start of this topic does contain a reply to the original thread. The following replies are all related to the Writing & Bibliography sites that are helpful for use when using a computer or other devices either through browsers or apps ~ Susurrus

That’s so rough. :people_hugging:

I know it’s forever an ongoing journey, but, like Georgia said, you’re doing well. And we’ll wade through the muddy waters together. :black_heart:

I sure don’t realise until I write it all out and then look back at how much I’ve written! :joy:

I use Grammarly all the time because I’m still not confident in writing. Because of that, I can also see that my weekly writing has been increasing from ~200k words to this new record of mine:

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Wow! That’s fantastic!

Do you retain all that? How much of it is repetitive?

Mom taught me that repetition helps solidify new things in the mind. She’d make me repeat a spelling or vocabulary word 10 times and really focus on it. By the time she tried to use the same technique on my math homework, I was sick of repeats!:laughing: It did help, though.

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First of all, my disclaimer: I spend most of my day with my hands on a keyboard and mouse. I work and play on the same computer, so my lifestyle affects this a lot. I beat Stephen King in writing words per day by miles, but the guy probably does a lot more other things in his day. My scenario is quite… not the usual. :joy:

Anyway, I use the browser extension on my desktop, so Grammarly is catching everything I write in a browser, including me writing here on the forum. :witch_hat: (Except for right now. I’m immersed in water and using my phone right now. :joy:)

I do a lot in the browser version of Notion, too. I’ve been trying to write a fiction book on and off there, so it gets that. I also type up witchy research, recipes, computer-related learnings, game design analyses and ideas, blog posts, etc. And I’ve been slowly turning some of my meditations into pretty PDFs. :black_heart:

It also includes work stuff I do, like writing out tasks that need to be done, documenting things, commenting on other people’s code, etc. :nerd_face:

But my amount of writing skyrocketed when I started doing tarot readings. Now I usually do about one full page per card, one or two pages of summary, one to two pages about the path ahead, and a full page of journalling questions based on the cards. :sweat_smile:

So you can imagine how much I wrote that Friday night/Saturday morning when I did 7 readings in a row and one of them was a 10 card spread. I think I mentioned to Celestia at one point that I was taking a break to quickly eat a bunch of third eye supporting food, to help me continue with the last 3. :joy:

There is a little repetition in that, if I get the same card in multiple readings, I’ll start with similar words. But they’re not similar enough to set off a plagiarism alarm against myself, if that makes sense. :thinking:

That being said, I feel like every reading I do is a learning experience for me as well. I’m learning alongside everyone I do a reading for. So it’s been great. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

Oh, interesting thought… I should pay more attention to this when it happens to my partner and I. We get separate smells every so often, but we’ve never known what to make of them.

Maybe I’ll grab a little notebook of mine and keep it by my side so I can jot them down quickly. Along with any other sense things. :thinking:

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You are amazing!

That’s ok. I heard the water fountain, this morning before I turned it on. We’ve been having 3 days of rain, and I just ran the water distiller, last night. I didn’t need humidity in here! But if my guides want it, they got it! Best part? I was finally able to sign my new lease, today! It was supposed to go into effect 11/1, but the office staff lost paperwork and made a mess of things. Now I know I’m safe, here for another year.:sweat_smile:

The phone was finally fixed, yesterday, after 12 days of no dial tone. I feel like things are finally getting up to snuff in my life for a change! I guess it helps to bring the dragon out once in a while, when boundaries are broken. I hate doing it but if I’m pushed, I can fight for my right to survive.

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:laughing: @georgia yes I do that too. I will type things & then not think that it took very long or that the actual writing is very long only to find out that it is in fact, pretty lengthy. Then I realize all the things that I had mentioned & that I have more knowledge about something or information than I actually thought I did when I started :rofl:

I also have Grammarly on my computer & phone. It’s within my browser, windows programs, a keyboard for my phone… I didn’t even know it was a thing until I was using it in College a handful of years ago. It has a plagiarism checker, grammar, punctuation, clarity, whether it was a run-on sentence, all kinds of things. You can upload papers to it to be checked for spelling, accuracy, plagiarism, clarity & then it also has the different trackers of your results & kind of benchmarks or when you reach milestones or exceed your previous “scores” or how you’ve done since you started using it.

There is a another site :thinking: that will create citations for you… you can either type in a site, ISBN, books, newspapers, journals, videos, using whatever information you have on what you’re creating the citation for & in the format of the citation you are using. It will also create in text citations if you use direct quotes from that source. I’m going to have to look through my bookmarks for that one :laughing: I haven’t used it too much since school & I believe without an account it defaults to one type of citation format.

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Nice! Some wins! :sparkles: :black_heart: I’m glad these things have been sorted out.

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Grammarly sounds great. I’ll have to look that one up.

The other one sounds good, too. I have a nasty habit of paraphrasing and not knowing how close I come to quoting just because my memory isn’t as clear as it used to be. I’d rather use the quotes, but I have so much in this noggin that the rocks rattle around and get things mixed up!:dizzy_face::confounded:

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The downside is the price to get all of those features – $144.00 USD/year ($12.00 USD/month). But you can use it without all the extra stuff for free.

The quality of their suggestions has also gone down a bit. I think it happened when they switched to more AI checking, I’m not sure.

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Yes, price is an issue. Thanks for the foreign exchange rates.

Interesting that AI info suffers in quality. A basic web crawler from the 1990’s could give that much, though it would take more time, since the web has grown so much since then. Maybe there’s a temporary glitch somewhere. Could it be that we are finding a limit to computers and/or AI already?

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Aww bummer. Grammarly uses an app from the Google app store. I’m on an Amazon Fire, running a Silk browser. Not compatable. Silk sux!

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I’m not sure what they’ve done, but the issue is in the tone-related features. Sometimes it wants to change the entire meaning of the sentence.

If we ever find a limit to computers and/or AI, it’s on us – the designers and developers of these things. Just like if AI goes all terminator, it’s on the people who gave it all the data that makes that outcome make sense.

Technically, we don’t have true AI at the moment at all, but that’s a totally different discussion. :sweat_smile:

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That’s not right. Then again writers have been fighting for centuries against publishers who attempt to do the same thing.

We need to retain the right to express our own thoughts and feelings and find them valuable.

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Oh, sorry, I shouldn’t have been so short in my description. I didn’t mean to make it sound like it’s forcing something on people. In those scenarios, it just means I have to ignore the suggestion. There’s a “dismiss” button on each suggestion which can make it go away “permanently,” too.

Here’s where you can see the “dismiss” button, highlighted in grey because my mouse is over it:

Inline:
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In the website:

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Hmmm… this part I didn’t realize & the price seems to have increased! Originally I had a free Premium account… (I’m sorry that I didn’t mention that some of those features are a paid subscription, I was excited someone else knew about Grammarly. I thought I was the only one that used it :laughing:) I had a monthly subscription, but now I use the free account. It still gives me spelling, punctuation, clarity of sentences & not plagiarism. I think there is almost a limit to what it will suggest though. Rewriting a sentence can create a popup that says “Premium suggestions available”

I have had it want to change a word that makes the entire sentence something else too. I only get the yellow, red, & blue suggestions now. I no longer get the purple ones.

I don’t have an app on my phone though :thinking: I do have it on my laptop & then from there linked to my phone… Then there’s a keyboard plugin that you can use instead of the standard keyboard on the device or another one. Hmmm… I wonder if there was a way to use it without the app previously & that’s how I have it on my phone. Maybe go to Grammarly on the web?

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@georgia the citation site is - Easy Bib

With the free version, you put in the information for it to search & then create or you can manually enter information & it will then create it for you that way. It will default to MLA9 format & then a popup will ask if you want to check your entire paper… Since I last used it, it has changed a little bit. You can store your citations by subject, paper, or however you want to do it. You can export or copy the citations & it looks like now if you want to copy an in-text citation you have to upgrade it also.

(the amount of things that have changed so much & gone behind a paywall where there wasn’t one before is crazy to me)

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Thank you. This looks doable. A bibliography is usually a lot more than citing a quote, so I have avoided a proper bibliography since leaving college. This program seems to help a lot. I’ll do more checking after the holidays or after I get more typed… whenever that is.

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I have an annual one that I just cancelled and, in doing so, saw all my past payments. My first year, in April 2019, was $49 USD! (Compared to the $144 USD they want for the next year.) :cold_sweat:

I’ll see how I go with the free one. It’s been really good for catching obvious spelling and grammar mistakes in my tarot readings. Maybe the free version will be enough for that, based off what you’re saying. :smile:

And if it’s not, they’ll likely try to bribe me back to premium with a 50% off code, anyway. :joy:

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@georgia yes, its mainly used for creating bibliography type citations of writing. The “in-text” citations are very useful though too.

For clarity within the forum, when citing sources here in posts, replies, etc… it is not necessary to use a bibliography format in any way. I have in the past when I’ve created posts on different topics. However, that is my own preference when creating content & have used the in-text citing for different things as well.

@starborn I had the Premium version through a school affiliation at 1st & for a year after graduating. I did keep the Premium subscription for a while when my son was in college. At that time it was monthly & under $25 a month.

For what I do on my laptop :computer: & phone, the basic version is okay for me. I have thought about upgrading again, but that idea stemmed from an email :e-mail: I received for 55% off the annual subscription. So, youre right… they most likely will wind up reaching out with a similar offer.

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Oh sorry, I thought you knew. It’s hard to remember with whom all I’ve connected over what subjects. Sometimes it’s easier to assume everyone reads everything available; but I haven’t been able to reach that proficiency, so I shouldn’t assume anyone else has.

I’m a writer. I’ve written 46 books. Only 3 are typed so far. I’ve been posting my books of shadows as parts of challenges, when they fit. Not all of my books will need bibliographies, but some would be half of what they are without one.

Listening to you young pups talking about the wonderful things you had in school makes me a bit jealous. We had none of this stuff! I feel old.:older_woman::smile:

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@georgia oh no! I knew that you were a writer, however, I didn’t want anyone who may be reading the thread to think that within the forum when citing a source of something it needed be cited in a bibliography format. :blush:

When I was in high school & had gone to college when I had my first son, Grammarly, EasyBib, Chegg, TurnItIn… those types of sites used by students… weren’t a thing. There was no such thing as online schools & the internet… was still relatively new :laughing: I had gone to school later in life though for the field that I was working in at the time. Anything since 2020 that I have taken as courses has been more practice-related.

My daughter now has a Chromebook for school with online assignment submissions & things, that have become more of a part of the school since 2020. When my boys were in school it was still relatively new for them to have Chromebooks at all, never mind that came home with them. :joy:

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