Essay Hero

As high schoolers, we know how much of a pain it is to write essays. Essay hero puts all the tools you need, from grammar checking to word count reminders, in one place.

Comment 2

Inspiration

As high schoolers, we know how much of a pain it is to write essays (one of us is even writing college apps right now). Part of it is the pain of sitting down for a couple hours to write and research, but part of it is that existing text editors (Google Docs, Word, etc) do a bad job at providing all the tools necessary in one window. Essay Hero integrates all these tools into one environment, making it easy to stay focused on the task at hand.

What it does

Essay Hero is an advanced text editor that provides all of the tools needed to write an essay in one place:

  • Plagiarism and grammar checking through an API
  • Citation formatting through BibMe (without leaving Essay Hero)
  • Easy source finding and referencing through a built in search bar and 'source file'
  • Clear visual to show current word count and how close the writer is to the word limit
  • Space to store the prompt or assignment details separate from the main essay
  • And more features, some of which are coming soon :)

How we built it

The front end was built using primarily JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, with CKEditor helping provide basic text editing functionality.

The back end was built using PHP in a microservices approach, allowing many different APIs, etc, to be networked together.

Challenges we ran into

We had significant trouble connecting the back end and front end, which was probably our biggest challenge and why multiple planned features are missing/incomplete. We discussed the situation with a mentor but were not able to resolve the issue by the end of the hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of/what we learned

While we definitely ran out of time, the idea and the implementation of parts of the front end worked out pretty well. We enjoyed working together as a team, and hope to continue working on it post-hackathon.

What's next for Essay Hero

In an ideal world, we'd have added more features, like math formatting, pre-designed templates (e.g., MLA style paper), and a cleaner version control system (allowing 'pinned' versions to be pulled up for easy reference). The more features are available, the closer Essay Hero comes to its goal of being a 'one stop shop' for essay writing, so this is the clear next step. We also want to work on making Essay Hero work better on smaller screens, especially phones. Being able to import files from other systems (like google docs and word) would also be nice.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates