PaperToolsPro™ is a web service available using any internet browser on either a Mac or PC which provides high school students, college students, or anyone engaged in research with a tool to assist in writing term papers or research papers. Use the service to

• collect quotations, notes, and sources (text, visual, and audio) to create note cards
• manage class notes for school courses and exams
• save interpretations of quoted material to avoid plagiarism
• append new or previous in-text citations to note cards
• query the database of quotations and notes to organize information
• transfer query results to a word processing page to write a rough draft
• create citations and a bibliography or works cited list in MLA, APA, ACS, CBE, AAAS and Chicago styles

For problems concerning the actual operation of the website or database, contact us at m3designs@msn.com. For information about website content, plagiarism, citations and bibliographies contact us at epenandinc@mac.com. You may also click the Contact Us link on the menu bar of www.PaperToolsPro.net.

PaperToolsPro™ offers you the opportunity to try a free demonstration subscription of the software.  You can use the free demo to create up to 10 notes with citations for a period of one month. Find out about PaperToolsPro™ by accessing other functions in the side bar on the main page of the website. To get a free demo subscription: Click Free Demo to access the login screen described below.  Fill in the three textboxes and click Login to PaperToolsPro or Free Demo (Values you enter for ID/school, password, student/contact, and contact person are all case sensitive). Then click Demo Registration, No Payment.

Four different subscriptions to PaperToolsPro™ are available:

1.    single user at a yearly fee of $20

2.    single lifetime user at a one-time fee of $55

3.    teacher at a yearly fee of $75 plus $1/student (limit 150)

4.    school at a yearly fee of $200 plus $1/student

To purchase an individual subscription:

Follow these steps if you are enrolling for the first time or re-enrolling after one or more years.

Step 1:  Click Login to access the login screen described below.  Fill in the three textboxes and click Login to PaperToolsPro or Free Demo.  Values you enter for ID/school, password, student/contact, and contact person are all case sensitive.

Step 2:  Click Full Registration, Payment Required:

Step 3:  Read the page that comes up and fill in the requested information.  Click Check Entries and continue with the credit card process.

To purchase a teacher/student subscription: 

Please contact epenandinc@mac.com for instructions on paying by purchase order and check.

To purchase online with a credit card, follow the above 3 steps using the following modifications:

The teacher must first enroll by entering an ID (usually the school name), password (usually class name or school mascot), and the name of a contact person in the three text fields as shown in the above picture for Step 1. Then continue to submit credit card information for a one-year payment.

Any number of teachers can enroll from a school using the same school name as ID, but each teacher must enroll and pay for his/her class with a different class password and different contact name.

After teachers have enrolled themselves and entered the expected number of students, they must distribute to each student the ID, password and contact they used when they enrolled. Each student in that class then enrolls using that ID and password and his/her own name or student ID# in the User name textbox. However, when students enroll for the first time, they will get the following screen, which will ask for the contact person's name, which is the name entered by the teacher in the User name textbox.  This screen will appear only when students enroll for the first time.

To purchase a school subscription: 

Please contact epenandinc@mac.com for instructions on paying by purchase order and check.

To purchase online with a credit card, follow the directions for purchasing a teacher/student subscription. Choose School Subscription if you have more than 150 students to enroll.

After logging in, this screen allows you to enter a new project or select a previous project.

Name project: enter name in top textbox.

Thesis for new project: enter thesis in second textbox; a thesis statement can also be entered on the Note Editor screen.

Bibliography style: select style (MLA, APA, ACS, CBE, AAAS, Chicago Manual Humanities, or Chicago Manual Science) with the dropdown menu.

Background color:  use dropdown menu to select a background color or image different from the default color on the screen.

Balloon help [MSIE, Safari, Firefox browsers]:  check to show balloon help when cursor is over specific text fields on the Note Editor and other screens.

Existing project: to access a project already created, pull the bottom dropdown menu for a list of Existing project name-s and select the one you want.

Click Continue.

After entering or selecting a project, the Note Editor screen appears. It is the control panel for PaperToolsPro™ on which you may enter notes, update your thesis statement, maintain a progress report and future plans on the ideas page, enter and import sources, view and print the bibliography, organize your notes for the final writing of the reseach paper, and more.

All of the functions described in subsequent sections of Quick Start refer to the Note Editor screen shown here.

The Tutorial tab at the top of the Note Editor screen accesses the Tutorial, shown below, which provides detailed documentation on how to write a research paper using PaperToolsPro™.

The Resources tab at the top of the Note Editor screen provides access to information on four broad categories:

• Avoiding Plagiarism-its seriousness, definition, ways to avoid it
• MLA, APA References-online and paper references for more information about the bibliography and citations for MLA, APA, legal sources, ACS, CBE, AAAS, and Chicago Manual of Style Humanities and Science styles
• Citation Formats-correct formatting of citations in the final draft (PaperToolsPro™ may provide more information in the citation than necessary in the final draft so adjustments may be necessary.)
• Evaluating Sources-questions that should be asked about the accuracy, quality of information, authority, objectivity, currency, and/or audience before using a source

The Note Editor screen provides you with two text fields, Thesis Statement and Ideas Page, which help you maintain focus on the purpose of your work.

Thesis Statement:

The thesis statement you entered when creating the project will appear in the Thesis Statement textbox.  If you did not enter a thesis at the start of the project or wish to revise the thesis, click into the box, type your new text, and click Save Thesis.

Ideas Page:

The Ideas page, the large textbox in the upper right column, provides a note pad for such information as listing questions or topics to research, main ideas found while researching, and sharing ideas with collaborators on the project.  The list of main ideas can help generate keywords and provide a scaffold for information from which an outline can emerge.

To enter text into the Ideas Page, click into the textbox, add or revise text, and click SAVE Ideas Page. Similarly, to maintain an outline of your work, click VIEW Outline Page which will switch from the Ideas page to the Outline.

Once you understand your notes and see patterns of information through your keyword, select the main ideas listed on the Ideas Page that will become the main ideas of your paper.

Below the Ideas Page click VIEW Outline Page where you will see a textbox with a model or template for the beginnings of an outline.  Click Outline Instructions for directions to make Roman numeral and capital letter entries.

First, type in main ideas as complete sentences that explain the thesis statement.  Put them in the order you think they will appear in the paper.  Rearrange the ideas as you see a better organizational pattern.  Enter as many main ideas as you think are necessary; add more Roman numerals as needed.  Do all Roman numeral sentence entries before thinking about capital letter entries.

Next, after each A. and B. enter complete sentences that explain or break down each Roman numeral into component parts.  Make sure every A. has a B. entry.  Add more developing points by adding more capital letters.  Each capital letter entry may be broken down with 1., 2., etc. full sentence entries. Click <SAVE Outline Page> to save entries.

Begin a draft by copy/pasting the outline to a word processing page. 

Place notes into appropriate place in the outline by copy/pasting the note as a quotation or paraphrase with its citation.

You can find a specific note by searching through individual notes, scrolling through the entire list of notes, or sorting notes using the search query from the Organize Notes tab.

Once all the notes you want to use are placed into your outline, you can write your draft using the sentence entries as topic sentences for paragraphs and using the notes as the details to support the topic sentence.  Writing a draft will mean elaborating on the information you have with explanations, analysis, and examples.  Writing a draft will no longer mean starting with a blank screen.

At the top of the center column, Current Style gives the style you chose for this project (MLA, APA, ACS, CBE, AAAS, CMS-Hum or CMS-Sci).  Change to style dropdown list will change the style of citations and bibliography entries at any time.

Note taking is a three-step process.  All three steps must be completed before beginning the next note.

Step 1: Enter quotation, summary, and paraphrase

• Click the NEW button and the quotation/paraphrase screen appears
• Type, copy/paste, or drag/drop your quotation into the top textbox
• Type summary of the quotation in your own words into the bottom textbox
• Click Return to Note Editor screen

Step 2:  Identify the note's content

• Enter a Slug/Descriptor to identify the unique content of the note
• Enter one or more Keywords by typing into the three textboxes provided. Keywords identify the group or cluster of information to which this note can be assigned (See Insert Keywords for entering previously used keyword/s)
• Click the UPDATE

Step 3:  Identify the source of the note

To append a citation of the source to the note, do one of the following:

• If no bibliography entry has been made for this source, click Enter Bibliography above the Keywords list in the middle column.  (See Enter Bibliography for further instructions)

• If a bibliography entry has been made earlier and the source is listed in the Previous Citations box in the lower right column, click the source and then Insert Citation.  (See Insert Citation)

Step 4: (When to Use UPDATE Button) Click the UPDATE button only after entering any data (slug, keywords, quotation and summary) manually from the keyboard. Clicking Insert Keywords or clicking Insert Citation updates the note automatically.

Do not use double quotes (") while entering any text in any field. Single quotes (') may be used instead of double quotes in all instances including when they are used as apostrophes. All text beyond the double quote will not be saved.

Notes are never physically removed from the database because later you may want that information again. However, a note marked as deleted will be ignored while using any of the functions in Organize Notes.

To mark a note as deleted, click on the dropdown list next to the UPDATE button in the upper left column and choose Remove, then click the UPDATE.

The Keywords 1-3 list boxes just below the Enter Bibliography button list all the keywords entered with the notes.

To reuse any of these keywords listed in the middle column, click the keyword or keywords and click Insert Keywords.

If you are in the process of entering a new note, the ability to insert keywords from these list boxes is disabled until you click the UPDATE button to save the new note.

The Citation textbox at the bottom of the left hand column displays the citation information for the current note: bibliography category and note number when it was first entered, and citation.

Importance of note number: to edit a bibliography entry, you must go to the note from which the first bibliography entry was made as indicated by the note number.

After entering a new note and clicking the UPDATE button, you must document the source of that information.  If this is the first time you have used this source and have not made a bibliography entry for it, click Enter Bibliography.  (If you have already created a bibliography entry for it, see instructions for Insert Citations.)

Clicking Enter Bibliography will bring you the screen listing four reference types. Click the button under the column that contains the reference category you want.

Then on the screen that follows, click the category itself from the dropdown list to begin data entry.  The example below is for the "Book" category.

The window for each reference category (Books, Periodicals, Media, and Legal/Court) provides textboxes to enter information relevant to creating a bibliography for that category. Below is the window for entering bibliography information for a Scholarly Journal from the "Periodicals" Category.  A particular reference can be designated a primary source and thus will be listed in the bibliography separate from secondary sources. If your source is missing information, like an author's name or a volume number, enter only what you have.  PaperToolsPro™ will create the bibliography from whatever you enter.

Accessing Media Files

The source of all media files (documents, jpgs, sound files, movie clips, web pages) used in your research project must be identified and included in your final bibliography or in a caption.  Each bibliography entry screen contains a textbox for recording the names of media files and the ability to identify where it is saved on your computer.  When you enter the bibliographic reference, find USING THE BROWSE BUTTON toward the bottom of the window and click Choose File, (Browse in Windows) which will let you browse to this file. Click on the file and save its fully qualified path name along with the reference. Do not manually enter the path. 

Go to the note from which you originally made the first bibliography entry.  The number of that note is included in the citation found in the Citation textbox and in the list of Previous Citations. If you attempt to edit a reference from the wrong note, a screen will appear asking you to go to the correct note to edit the reference and it will give you the note number.

Edit a Bibliography Entry

Delete a Bibliography Entry

Click Delete from the dropdown list, click Update/Delete (you will see the bibliography entry you made), and Submit.

Note: deleting an entry is usually associated with also deleting the note to which it referred. Therefore, remember to mark that note as deleted as well after marking the entry as deleted.

Replace the Current Entry with One from a Different Category

Choose the new category and the individual reference type to display the appropriate screen to make your new entries.

Click the Bibliography tab at the top of the Note Editor screen. The alphabetized bibliography will be displayed in the style you have assigned to the project.

This bibliography can be saved as an HTML document on your desktop by going to your Internet browser's File>Save As menu.  All or parts of the list can be copy/pasted or drag/dropped into a word processing page to create the bibliography, works cited, or reference page of the final paper.

If you are taking notes from a source for which you have already entered a bibliography, you will not have to enter it again.  A list of the sources you have already used, whether entered through PaperToolsPro^TM or imported from a citation management program, appears in a textbox at the bottom of the right column.

The sources are not listed alphabetically, but chronologically as they are entered.  The type of source is given so that you can tell the kinds and variety of sources you have used.  The number indicates the note number through which the bibliography information was entered.

Select the source for your note from the list and click Insert Citation for that citation to appear with the note.  A textbox will appear enabling you to enter a page number if the source has one.

To scan through your notes or go to a specific note, go to the bottom of the left column where the current note number is displayed as well as the total number of notes taken.  In the textbox, you can enter a note number and click Find or toggle back and forth with the arrow keys.

There are four ways to view your notes:

1.  A few words of a note

The two text fields directly below the Enter Quotation, Paraphrase button give the first few words of the quotation and summary you entered.  This can be helpful while scanning through your list of notes. 

2.  The entire quotation and summary entered

Go to the note you want to view and click Enter Quotation, Paraphrase.  The full note entry will appear.  From here you can edit a note by clicking into the textbox and typing a revision.

3.  The entire note entry

Click here to view entire note will give all entered information for the selected note.

4.  A list of all the notes entered

For a complete listing of all of your notes, click the View Notes button at the bottom of the left hand column of the Note Editor screen. Then click the View Notes And Internet References button to get a listing of the notes.

All the notes are listed in chronological order.  Each note will include the descriptor, keywords, quotation, summary, and citation.  If the source came from online, the URL is included for quick access to the source.  The list of notes will include all notes entered, even those that were marked as deleted.  This lets you change your mind should a note contain information you realized was of value after you deleted it.

To save these complete notes and references as an HTML file, go to your Internet browser's File>Save As menu; or copy/paste or drag/drop part or the entire list of notes into a word processing file.

To find a word or phrase in the notes, go to Edit>Find menu at the top of your browser, enter your search, and click. Below shows the browser finding the name “Crane” in the list of notes.

To backup the entire project as an HTML file, click View Notes at the bottom of the left column.

Then click the Backup Project With References button to get a complete listing of your entire set of entries for each note. To save these complete notes and references to an html file on your desktop, go to your Internet browser's File>Save As menu; or copy/paste or drag/drop part or the entire list of notes into a word processing file.  If necessary, you may use this html listing to re-enter your notes and references should your PaperToolsPro™ database ever become corrupted.

Top Buttons  

Projects: to choose another project to work on. You can have as many different research projects going at the same time as you can stand!

Bibliography: to see the bibliography of entered sources listed alphabetically in the correct format. You may save this page of bibliography entries as an HTML file by going to your Internet browser's File>Save As menu. This will save your bibliography as a file to be included in the draft of your paper.

Help Files: to learn to use PaperToolsPro™

Tutorial: to learn how to write a paper using PaperToolsPro™.

Resources: to access information about avoiding plagiarism. various style formats, final citation formats, evaluating sources.

Internet: to access your personal screen for maintaining and updating favorite URLs.

Import Sources: to accept citation and bibliography entries from external citation manager programs.

Organize Notes: to sort and organize notes by quotations, summaries, descriptors, or keywords while working on an outline or draft.

View/Delete: to view all notes and data entered for the project, delete all notes for the project, or delete an entire project when finished.

Click Organize Notes tab at the top of the Note Editor screen. At the top of the window are lists of all slugs/descriptors, keywords 1-3, quotations, summaries and citations you entered when taking notes.  Review them to choose the criteria for organizing your notes.  You will be able to sort your notes based on the words/phrases you choose from these lists. Enter a paragraph or section heading for the notes you are sorting.

The small dropdown lists on the left allow you to choose AND or OR as logical connectives between entries in the fields on the right. For the example below, all the notes that have Keyword1 as "Buddhism" and Keyword2 as "definition" will be culled-in other words, all the definitions of Buddhist terms that were entered in the notes. Click Display Listing to see the group of notes generated by this request.

PaperToolsPro™ provides a textbox to create a list of the URLs of websites used to research the paper. Click the Internet tab at the top of the Note Editor screen. The following screen appears from which you can access, add, or delete a website listed.  Directions are on the screen.

PaperToolsPro™ enables the importation of citations and bibliography from certain citation manager programs (CMP). 

After you enter quotation, summary/paraphrase, slug/descriptor, and keywords, and click Update, click Import Sources tab on the Note Editor screen to open a window with two textboxes for importing sources.

1.    Make sure the bibliographic format in the citation manager program is the same as you designated in PaperToolsPro™. 

2.    Select the kind of source you are importing from the drop-down menu at the bottom.

3.    Copy/paste or drag/drop the bibliographical reference from your CMP into the top Bibliography textbox. To transfer the bibliographic entry, experiment with the method that works for your computer and for the CMP you are using. You may need to hold down the Control or the Option key to make this work. 

4.    Copy/paste or drag/drop a citation from your CMP into the second textbox.

5.    Formatting (italic, bold, underline) is not maintained during this transfer. Directions are on the window to add this formatting.

6.    Click Submit.

If you want to

• view the entire database of information entered
• delete all entered data but keep the project
• delete entire project,

click View/Delete All tab at the top of the Note Editor screen.  You will enter your password and make a choice.  Allowing the user to view database tables is an aid in debugging the database should it become corrupted or unusable in some fashion. Please use the contact information provided at the top of this file or click Contact Us on the menu bar to relay any problems.

The following screenshot shows an example of some of the database tables accessed by PaperToolsPro™.