PaperRater - Your Very Own Editor

Website: http://www.paperrater.com/

We've all typed up a piece of writing for school homework or for some other reason and as we're writing it, everything seems to fit into place.

But then, there's the editing.

There are not many people would get their work grammatically correct at the first try, and even when you've read over your work and hand it in, your teacher gives it back with one or two correction markings that you overlooked.

With PaperRater, you can solve these little mishaps of your own subconscious. PaperRater is a free, online program that finds the mistakes in your work and makes them noticeable to you without having to consult anyone. What's more is that an artificial intelligence also marks it to a teacher's standard, giving you a grade and a score on your writing just like a teacher would.

Features of PaperRater (Written on the website):

• Auto-Grader
• Readability Statistics
• Style and Word Choice
• Spelling and Grammar Check
• Plagiarism Check
• Title Validation
• Vocabulary Builder

What it also does is that it rates your work based on the type of Year that you're in and the type of work that you are writing. Simply enter your grade, type of paper, title and text to get your editing feedback. It also can detect plagiarism in your work from your research sites, which you can post into the "Work Cited" section.

Uses in Learning and Reasons for Recommendations:

PaperRater is a great program to use when you can't seem to find anymore problems in your work. The difference from an average word processor is that it not only points out the problems that you miss, but it forces you to change those problems yourself rather than auto-correcting it for you. Therefore, you learn to identify more problems and change it yourself. It also suggests using different words and phrases that you may have never thought of using, opening your mind to more ideas.

For those who are extremely lazy and are tempted to plagiarize, or perhaps are hard-working but have unintentionally plagiarized, PaperRater detects it and points it out. It's probably what your teacher would find out anyway. So basically, it's your online teacher/marker.

Of course, if you are confident with your skills in editing or don't want to take advice from a computer, you can always ignore what it says.

By: Michael Kang 9F

Quick Tip: Ads, and how to get rid of them

Are you tired of ads distracting you while you're doing research? Are you sick of having to click the "close ad" button on YouTube? Are you absolutely certain that, for the last time, you do not wish find out your credit score? Are you starting to think that this article is beginning to sound an ad itself? Well, by installing a simple add-on, you can eliminate 98%* of ads encountered in your everyday web browsing!

*Not based on actual figures.

Before you begin: It is recommended that as you follow these instructions, open the links in new tabs. That way you can still see this page after you download the relevant add-ons.

Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9

1. Download Adblock from http://simple-adblock.com/
2. Install
3. When you run Internet Explorer the first time after installing, follow the simple instructions to configure it.

Mozilla Firefox 3 and 4

1. Go to Tools > Add-ons
   
2. Search for Adblock Plus
   
3. Install the extension
4. Restart Firefox, and just click "Add Subscription" on the configuration screen.

Google Chrome 10

1. Go to https://chrome.google.com/webstore
2. Search for Adblock
3. Install Adblock (the one with 2 million users)

• Note: Currently causes issues when attempting to block ads in YouTube videos. Go into options and untick "Block ads inside YouTube videos."

Safari 4 and 5

1. Go to http://safariadblock.com/
   
2. Download
3. Double-click the funny-looking ".safariextz" file to install.
4. Optional: Enable automatic updates by going to Safari Preferences > Extensions > Updates > Install Updates Automatically.
   

• Note: Only tested on a Mac. Procedure should be same on PC. Please leave a comment if it works for you on PC.

Opera 10

1. Go to http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
   
2. Right-click the "Main List: urlfilter.ini" and select "Save target as"
   
3. Choose the correct folder based on your OS as given on the website
4. Optional: Follow instructions to install the "Optimised Element Filter".

• Warning: This has not been tested by me! Please leave comment if it works for you.
  

Final comments: The effectiveness and thoroughness of ad-blocking will vary between different operating systems and browsers. But in all cases, there should be a big improvement in the number of ads you see, namely, a lot less! If, for some bizarre reason, you actually enjoy seeing ads, then please ignore this post.