5 ways ChatGPT can help you write essays

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ChatGPT is capable of doing many different things very well. One of the biggest standout features is its ability to compose all sorts of text within seconds, including lighthearted requests, such as songs, poems, and bedtime stories, and higher-level requirements, like essays. reports, and papers. 

The chatbot's writing abilities are fun to experiment with but can provide tangible assistance with everyday tasks, boosting productivity and cutting time wasted on lower-level tasks. Whether you are a student, a working professional, or just trying to get stuff done, we constantly take time to compose emails, texts, reports, and more. ChatGPT can help you claim some of that time back by helping you brainstorm, outline, and even compose any text you need. 

Contrary to popular belief, ChatGPT can do much more than write an essay for you from scratch (which would be considered plagiarism). A more practical and helpful way to use the chatbot is to have it guide your writing process and improve your text. Think about it as having an editor on command. 

Below, we show you how to use ChatGPT for writing assistance and include other helpful tips. 

If you want to use ChatGPT to support your writing, here are five techniques to explore. 

It is also worth noting that other AI chatbots can output the same results as ChatGPT or are even better, depending on your needs. 

For example, Copilot, Perplexity, and Gemini also have access to the internet and include footnotes linking back to the source for all their responses, making the chatbots solid alternatives if you'd rather skip out on ChatGPT. 

Regardless of which AI chatbot you pick, you can use the tips below to get the most out of your prompts and AI assistance.

Now that you know exactly what you want to write, it's time to find reputable sources for your information. If you don't know where to start, you can ask ChatGPT.

All you need to do is ask the AI to find sources for your essay topic. The biggest thing to remember is to include the type of source you want, whether web pages, books, PDFs, research papers, or something else. 

Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

These details are necessary because when you specify web pages, ChatGPT will activate the web-browsing feature and include web links in its article. If you use a very general prompt, however, it will likely default to generating its answer from its database, which isn't up to date. 

For example, I asked the following: 

"Can you help me find web links that I could use as sources for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Abraham Lincoln through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid?"

If you are signed in but have a free account, the chatbot outputs links, accessible right at the top of the answer under the dropdown that says "Searched # of sites". Then, within the response, it will answer your prompt conversationally, including sources with site names and links in parathesis. 

If you are signed in to a ChatGPT Plus account, the chatbot will automatically activate ChatGPT Search. This feature lets users search the web directly within ChatGPT for timely, up-to-date information, complete with citations linked to sources. 

The answers include in-line citations, a "sources" button, which, when clicked, populates a long list of links on the right-hand bar, and, in some cases, a few relevant web links beneath the answer, as seen in the photo below. 

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