Top Essay Writing Mistakes to Avoid

Essays, be it academic or personal, are one of the most crucial aspects of education. As much as essay writing is important in your academic years, they are difficult. Students are supposed to write a clear and impressive essay that looks original and is free of grammar errors. But is that enough?

Well, only students who have written essay assignment in their college or school years know the real struggle this paper takes to complete. But no need to worry now! If you want to write an impressive and precise essay, you have come to the right place! To write well, you need to make yourself familiar with the most common essay mistakes that students tend to make. In this post, we'll discuss the mistakes every student should avoid while writing their essay assignments. Let's begin.

Repeating Words Throughout

No one wants to read any blog or essay that looks unprofessional and boring. Word repetition is a major turn off for your audience and professor. Sure, you may need to write the same nouns or verbs again and again if the theme of the essay demands. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any other choice. You can use synonyms and other noun substitutes.

Let’s say; you are requested to write an essay on India’s famous cricketer “Virat Kohli”. While mentioning his name a few times throughout the write-up will be okay, you cannot stuff his name everywhere. How would your essay look if you started every sentence with Virat Kohli? Of course, it will look as if a child has written it. So instead of his name, you can use substitutes like "India's top cricketer" or "the cricketer with the best run rate” and etc.

Writing in Overly Professional or Unprofessional Tone

When you are writing an academic essay, you are supposed to use a medium tone i.e. neither too professional nor too casual. Depending on the type of essay you are assigned, you can choose the right vocabulary to craft the essay perfectly.

For example, a personal essay requires basic vocabulary skills i.e. the language you speak every day. On the contrary, an academic essay must be written in a bit of formal language with advanced vocabulary. Either way, you should never use words like wanna, gotta, lemme, and etc.

Excessive Use of Passive Voice

Students have this misconception that passive voice can make their essays look professional. Although passive voice does look objective as well as impersonal, they involve long sentences. Besides, these sentences are pretty hard to read. When you write the entire or most of the content in the passive voice, it seems poorly written work. Other than that, your audience will not like to read something that's way too complicated to be understood.

Active voice is direct, easy-to-read, and looks professional. Besides, it involves shot and easy sentence construction. Even writers do not have to struggle to create the right sentences. You should prefer the rule of thumb for writing an academic essay. For example, only 20% of your content should be written in passive voice whereas the rest must be in the active voice.

Example: Instead of writing “The room is occupied by students” you must write “Students occupy the room”.

Too Long or Too Short Sentences

No one wants to read an essay with too long sentences. First of all, when you attempt to write longer sentences, you are likely to commit too many punctuation and grammar errors. Secondly, long sentences are hard-to-read and difficult to interpret. On the contrary, writing too short sentences can hurt your essay's structure. Your aim should be to write medium-length sentences.

For example, each sentence should be somewhere between 10 and 15 words.

Plagiarism Issues

There isn’t a bigger offense for writers than plagiarism. For those who don’t know, plagiarism refers to the practice of copying someone’s thoughts or writing style to craft your write-up. Colleges and universities assign essay writing projects to develop the thinking and creative skills of students. That’s the reason why plagiarism is strictly prohibited.

Institutions run your essays on plagiarism checking tools to ascertain if the content is plagiarized. The first and foremost aim of every student should be to write 100% original copy. That doesn’t mean you cannot take references from other sources. But, never steal the idea or the entire write-up from the Internet. There are basically two types of plagiarism problems that students are likely to commit.

1. Copying the entire content or a particular section of the essay without giving credits to its owner.

2. Copying the ideas of the other writer and rewording it into your own sentences so that plagiarism remains undetected.

If you want your essay to look original, you must avoid any type of plagiarism. You must use a unique and your own thesis statement and thoughts that are supported by proper evidence from the sources. Even if you are copying an idea or paragraph, you must mention the real owners of the content and give necessary credits.

Grammar, Pronouns, and Spelling Mistakes

One of the major reasons why your professor assigns the essay writing project is to develop your writing, vocabulary, and grammar skills. Hence, you must double-check the essay for grammar, pronouns, spelling, punctuation, sentence fragments, and other such language problems. If you think your grammar skills are not that good, take professional help. You can use online grammar checking or proofreading tools to ensure that your content is free of grammar issues.

Make sure that academic essays are written in the third person. No one wants to read texts like "I think", "According to my opinion", and etc. You must stick to the third person i.e. he, she, and they.

A Poor Thesis Statement

Your entire essay is based on the thesis statement. So don’t you think it is important to write a thesis statement that’s strong and seems interesting? Your assignment grades depend on the strength of your thesis statement and how well you prove it. So, make sure to make it an interesting one.