8 worst essay writing mistakes

One cannot even think about avoiding writing academic essays as part of your academic program. The ability to write well is probably the best skill one acquires during college years. Most of the students, before they finally learn the art of writing an academic essay, will commit many mistakes.

Our essay writing services team has put together these few common mistakes that can adversely impact your academic essay:

Writing a snapshot, not an analytical essay

The idea behind an essay is to build an argument and defend a thesis. If you’re writing about some literary work, it is always helpful if you clarify more about the background of the topic.

However, the larger part of your essay should be about your analysis based on sound research. Don’t just rewrite what is already there in the book, is what our essay writing services team says.

A weak thesis statement

Strong thesis statements are always crucial to writing good essays. It is the hook on which your essay will hang. The statement should be an opinion and must be as specific as possible.

Using too many quotes

According to our essay writing services team, an essay is supposed to convey your understanding of the topic and the research you have done to support your argument. Overusing quotes either from work you are analyzing or from the research you have done will erode your authority on the topic.

Quotes must be used sparingly and that too in cases where you are unable to make the same point in your words with the same force.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the practice of lifting parts of the writings and ideas of others and using them as your own. It is considered a serious issue.  Colleges and universities have very strict rules about plagiarism and use different tools to detect plagiarized content.

There is no chance you will be able to plagiarize without getting caught and with a consequence of being suspended. Professors are clever enough to identify whether whatever has been written has come from the student or if it has been sourced from somewhere.

Our essay writing services team has identified two kinds of plagiarism:

  • Plagiarism of the first kind happens when you take words directly from a source and include them in your paper without quotes or giving proper credit.

  • The second kind is more subtle and care must be taken that you don’t become guilty of practicing it. It involves rewriting in different words an entire article or sections of an article. In such cases, rather than writing your own ideas and analysis, you’re just restating the ideas of somebody else in different words including the order in which they have been presented.

Grammar, spelling, and pronoun mistakes

These can be broken down into:

  • Don’t goof up on contractions. You’re = you are. Your = second person is possessive. It’s = It is. It = the third person was possessive. They’re= They are. Their=third person plural is possessive.

  • Check that your subjects and verbs are in agreement.

  • Apply spell check.

  • Essays have to be written in the third person (he/she/it/they). Never ever make the mistake of using first or second person ( I/You/We) in an essay.

Too many long and confusing sentences

According to our essay writing services team, this mistake is when your sentences are so long and contain so many words and phrases that the point is difficult to follow. Someone reading your essay should find variety in your sentences.

One must strike a balance between simple, compound, and compound-complex sentences in an essay. Mixing up sentences makes it easy for the reader to understand your essay.

Usually, people write long-winded sentences with words and phrases that are unnecessary or could be said in fewer words with the intention of sounding ‘academic’.

Not Having a Good Bibliography

Bibliography for an academic essay in most cases is the MLA format unless your professor has instructed you to follow any other format. Our essay writing services team feels that losing points over the bibliography is foolish.

The difficult part of essay writing is to come up with an original analysis of the topic. The bibliography is routine and is easy to get right with just a small effort.

Using resources that are not authentic

In this age of the Internet, it is not a big deal to type a keyword and find scores of articles on it. But not all those articles are genuine and authoritative. Ensure that the resources you are using have been authored by academicians of repute.

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