If you could have dinner with George Clooney or Brad Pitt, who would you choose? Tough question, I know. It is like asking a kid if he wants a chocolate ice cream cone or a pistachio one. The wisest decision you can make is to get two-flavors ice cream, or the kid will make you feel the worst parent ever. And probably he would be right.

Imagine my struggle a few years ago when I took my first order. I had to make a choice between the most handsome actors alive. I made a list. The same list I had 7 years ago, when two basketball players asked me out for a date. Well, you know, the List. When you have a pros column and a cons column. Basketball player #1 had charisma but no sense of humor. Basketball player #2 was kind, yet there was not a day when he held a book in his hands. I was picky even when I was 20 years old. No wonder I am still single.

Before choosing Brad or George, I found out there was more than one type of academic papers. Essays, research papers, articles reviews, outlines, etc. With time, I got used to what is what. But before that, I googled each type just to see what it looks like. The structure, the content, the format. You need to write a paper according to APA, MLA, Harvard, or Chicago rules. Those are the most used formats in academic writing. What UvoCorp suggests and what I always use is the Purdue Owl writing lab https://owl.english.purdue.edu. I made a few templates for all the paper formats. It really saves time, especially when you are working on an urgent order or have more than one task in progress.

My first order was full of all the possible and impossible academic writing stereotypes. Long ten-sentence half-page paragraphs. The paper contained a lot of passive voice sentences, smart unknown words, participles, and gerund phrases. Back than I had no idea that the system of education would lead me to the point when I would have to retrain myself. If the XX century was the time of writing, XXI century is the time of communication. I faced the new demands of writing: the simpler the better.

I have a writer’s checklist. The things I learned while working for UvoСorp. I do not claim to be telling the ultimate truth of academic writing. There are minds much, much brighter than me (if you find them, let me know). Every paper has its own instructions and demands that we, writers, need to stick to no matter what. Yet my checklist of a perfect writer living in a perfect writing world (with unicorns and rainbows) looks like this:

• One idea per paragraph
• No clichés
• No stereotypes
• No beating around the bush
• If a sentence has more than three adjectives in a row, probably, it is a bad sentence
• Only facts (show, don’t tell)

There is a German saying der Appetit kommt beim Essen. Deep down I always knew I am an undervalued diamond in the world of words and printed letters. That was before I became a writer at Uvocorp. I thought I knew everything, yet there is still so much more to learn. This is exactly what makes our life so bright and beautiful, a never-ending thirst for knowledge.

By the way, I chose Clooney.