Ways to Make Your Essay Writing Skills Effective

Whether you are writing a personal essay or academic thesis, you can improve your writing skills by learning the basics of essay, its format, and the rules. Even the idea of writing an academic essay makes the student feel overwhelmed. Sure, writing an essay is not a piece of cake. But, you can definitely improve this skill if you practice it regularly.

Who doesn’t make mistakes? Let alone students, even professional writers make errors when it comes to writing high-quality and flawless content. But that doesn't mean you cannot improve essay writing skills. Whether you get an essay as an assignment from your professor or you enjoy writing a thesis, the following tips will help you to write better content.

1. Use Active Voice

Passive voice is not restricted for essay write-ups, but active voice adds life to your content. Not only it makes your essay engaging but improves its readability. In short, it allows the readers to quickly understand what your essay is about.

For those who are confused with the active and passive voice, open your school's grammar book and search for the difference between these voices. In active voice, the subject carries out a specific action rather than receiving the same. For example;

- Riya found the book

- The book was found by Riya

The sentences with am, being, been, were, be, and was fall in the category of passive voice. Though converting all the sentences into active voice isn’t necessary, it can make your piece look super engaging and easy-to-read.

2. Avoid Repetition

Nothing can be more annoying than getting a 5-page long essay writing assignment. If you have written a lengthy essay, you know how much effort and time it takes to complete. No matter how long the essay is, you have to completely avoid using repeated words or phrases.

Sometimes, students prefer to use the same phrases and words, again and again, to increase the word length and complete the task. Believe it or not, repeated phrases and words is a major turn off for your readers. It clearly suggests a sign of laziness. Here are some tips for avoiding words repetition:

- Manually search for the repeated words and remove them from the essay

- Replace the repetitive words with their synonyms or similar words that convey the same meaning. For example, if you are writing an essay on a special character (say John), you should make sure that the name of the character isn't repeated too many times. You can replace the word john with "He" and other alternatives. Let's say; john has won Oscar this year. You can use his profession or achievements to refer to him such as "the Oscar winner" instead of John.

- Though using a dictionary is a good idea, you should never rely on it to find synonyms for the words. This is because the underlying meaning of some words is different and may not fit your sentence. So, it’s better to write what you know.

3. Use Limited Idioms and Phrases

Idioms sound cool when they are added properly. But, adding too many phrases and slangs can hurt the readability of your essay. You don’t want to make it difficult for your audience to understand your essay. As not a lot of people are familiar with all the idioms, it is better to write using your own words than decorating the content with phrasal verbs and slangs.

For example, use the word “maybe” instead of “perhaps” and the word “scared” instead of “Chicken”. However, these words are considered an important element of a personal essay, speech, and other informal write-ups. However, academic essays should be as simple and clear as possible. In short, you must consider the type of essay you are writing to decide how many slangs or idioms can be used.

4. Try to Keep your Content in Present Tense

Nowadays, a lot of writers use this technique to not only increase the readability score of their content but make it super engaging. If you want to draw the attention of your readers, you must write the entire essay in the literally present tense. Let's understand this with an example:

"The lady went to her friend's place and ate a cupcake there."

If you convert this sentence into the literally present, it should read as:

“The lady goes to her friend’s place and eats cupcake there.”

If you are searching for the easiest way of improving your essay writing skills, then literally the present tense is your pick. No matter how many months or years ago the incident took place, you can write as if it is happening right now. Your readers feel more engaged when your essay makes them feel as if the characters exist today and they are performing certain acts right at the moment.

5. Always Check for Grammar and Spelling Errors

When we said no one is perfect, we meant it! No matter how experienced essay writer you are, your essay can be full of spelling errors if you do not check them. There are many confusing words that we cannot correct until the grammar suggestion tool highlights the mistake and provides the right suggestion. For example, some people write you’re instead of your.

In today’s internet-driven world, you can check your essay on Grammarly. The tool is free to use and will highlight all the punctuation, spelling, and other grammar mistakes. It will also suggest the right word.

6. Get Professional Help

When you are trying to improve your essay writing skills, taking a professional's assistance is always a good option. A professional can check your content for errors, hard-to-read texts, the way of writing, and other such factors. On the basis of this assessment, they can share the right tips to write a high-quality essay without committing errors.

Writing an informative and flawless essay can be a daunting task. But these tips will help you remove the errors and come up with perfect essay work. All the best!