You teach the writing. PERRLA handles the formatting.

When your program licenses PERRLA, students write with every APA, MLA, and Turabian rule handled as they go, and your own account is free, for life. Here is what to know before the first paper lands.

How a site license works What students submit

Faculty and staff accounts are free at programs that license PERRLA, and stay yours if the license ends.

Faculty accountAt a program that licenses PERRLA
Price
Free, for life
If the license ends
An account you've activated stays yours
Getting one
Your program sends us the faculty list, and each of you gets an email invitation
Works in
PERRLA Online, Word, Google Docs, and the Chrome extension, in APA, MLA, and Turabian
Writing Timeline
Open a student's timeline from the link on the paper, at schools that turn it on
Support
[email protected], every day until 10 PM Central

Before the first paper lands: what students turn in.

Students turn in the paper itself. Before they do, I'm Finished reads it against the format's rules, so formatting slips can be fixed before the paper reaches you.

The same page in Word: a citation after the period, found by Check my paper, and the same sentence after one click on Fix.

In Word, a student opens I'm Finished and clicks Check my paper. Each finding comes with Go to, which jumps to the spot, and most come with Fix, which corrects it in one click. PERRLA Online and Google Docs run the same check at I'm Finished.

The check never stops a student from finishing. When the paper looks right, they turn in the paper itself, in one of the forms below.

One line for your assignment instructions: Before you submit, click I'm Finished in PERRLA and work through what it finds.

Written in Word

The Word document itself, after I'm Finished has checked it.

Written in PERRLA Online

The Word document or PDF the student downloads at the end of I'm Finished.

Written in Google Docs

The Google Doc itself, or a Word file or PDF downloaded from it.

A discussion post

Pasted straight into your discussion board with Copy paper to clipboard, the citations and references included. How discussion posts work

Before they submit: I'm Finished reads the whole paper.

Here is what the check looks for. It's the same step in PERRLA Online, Word, and Google Docs.

It looks for citations typed by hand, citations after the period, direct quotes missing a page number, quotes long enough to be block quotes, references never cited, and reference titles that need sentence case, along with contractions and ampersands in the prose. Each finding has Go to, and many have a one-click fix, like Move period or Make block quote. It never blocks the download, so the student decides what to change.

Check
I'm Finished reads the whole paper

Citation typed by handConnect

Citation after the periodMove period

Quote needs a page numberGo to

Reference never citedRemove

Reference title needs sentence caseEdit

The checks run in PERRLA Online, Word, and Google Docs, with one-click fixes fullest in PERRLA Online. Shown as in PERRLA Online.

When your school turns it on: the Writing Timeline.

Students already write in PERRLA. The Writing Timeline turns the saves PERRLA already makes into a summary you open from the paper, so when a question comes up about how a paper was written, you have somewhere to start the conversation that isn't a guess about the finished text.

A sample Writing Timeline for the paper Bigfoot: The Truth Revealed, by Serena Sparkles: 3 hours 48 minutes of writing in 6 sessions over five days, a chart of the paper growing to 1,694 words, about 425 words removed while revising, and 5 references and 14 citations added along the way.
What you open from a paper's title page: a sample Writing Timeline. The student and the paper are made up.

What you see

  • Writing sessions and time worked
  • How the paper grew, including words cut while revising
  • Sources added and cited along the way

What it never shows

  • The paper's text or earlier drafts
  • Dates or times of day: it reads Day 1, Day 3
  • A label of AI or human on any writing

How you open it

  • The View Writing Timeline link on a paper's title page, or the last line of the references on a discussion post
  • Sign in to your free faculty account
  • Links stay open for 60 days after a paper's last save

It covers research papers and discussion posts written in PERRLA Online and the PERRLA add-in for Word. Papers written in Google Docs aren't included, and text pasted in from somewhere else shows only as a jump in word count. Students can turn the link off, and turning it off deletes nothing. A timeline is a good place to start a question about a paper and a poor place to end one. The Writing Timeline, explained for students and faculty

Teaching the format: APA 101 and PERRLA 101, both free.

PERRLA handles the mechanics as students write. These two cover the rest: the format itself, and how to use PERRLA well.

APA 101

Eighteen short lessons on the APA format: why and what to cite, the title page, headings, in-text citations, the references page, block quotes, writing with sources, academic tone, and final checks. Every lesson is free. Link one before a paper is due, or the whole course in your syllabus.

Open APA 101 · the one-page APA 7 checklist

PERRLA 101

A free live walkthrough of PERRLA with our support team, then questions: Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7 PM Central, Saturdays and Sundays at 4 PM Central, 30 to 45 minutes, no signup. Point students to it in week one, or join one yourself to see what they see.

The PERRLA 101 schedule

For doctoral cohorts

Advanced Papers (PERRLA 201) is a recorded session on multi-section papers, for dissertations and theses. When your program starts, we also send guides for your faculty and your students.

Advanced Papers (PERRLA 201) on YouTube

No tool replaces learning APA. Students still need to understand why they cite sources and how scholarly writing works. But removing unnecessary formatting friction has allowed us to focus on the purpose of evidence-based writing rather than the mechanics alone.

Whitnie Willis, MSN, RN, Assistant Clinical Professor, Auburn University College of Nursing

At Western Washington University

Faculty stopped teaching citation formatting in class. On an annotated bibliography, students using PERRLA earned 9.5 out of 10 on APA, against 7.5 without it.

Read the case studies

Questions faculty ask

Is my faculty account really free?
Yes. At a program that licenses PERRLA, faculty and staff accounts are free, for life, and an account you've activated stays yours even if the program's license ends. Your program sends us the faculty list, and each of you gets an email invitation.
Does PERRLA write any of the paper?
No. PERRLA formats the paper the student writes and, when the student looks up a source, builds the reference from the real record. AI reads, never writes: the one place it's used is reading the first pages of a PDF the student uploads to help fill in its reference, and the paper is never sent to it.
How do I open a student's Writing Timeline?
At a school that has turned it on, click View Writing Timeline on the paper's title page, or on the last line of the references on a discussion post, and sign in to your free PERRLA account. It shows writing sessions, time worked, how the paper grew, and the sources added. It never shows the paper's text, dates, or times of day. Students can turn the link off, and links stay open for 60 days after a paper's last save.
Do students still need to learn APA?
Yes. PERRLA handles the mechanics as students write and includes guidance on the rules along the way, and the free APA 101 course teaches the format itself in eighteen short lessons. That leaves more class time for why scholars cite and how to write from sources.
Who helps students when they get stuck?
PERRLA Support at [email protected], Monday to Friday 10 AM to 10 PM Central and Saturday and Sunday 1 to 10 PM Central, plus live PERRLA 101 sessions four times a week. Your school's helpdesk handles only school accounts and the roster.

Not licensed yet? Bring PERRLA to your program.

A site license is $9.95 per student per year, with free accounts for faculty and staff. Associate-degree nursing programs (ADN and ASN) get PERRLA free, permanently, and programs can start with a free pilot semester.

How a site license works Read the case studies
Site licenseFor your program
Per student
$9.95 a year, 10-seat minimum
Faculty and staff
Free, for life
Writing Timeline
Included at no extra cost
Rosters
A CSV of names and school email addresses
Pilot
A free semester in exchange for a two-page case study