Are you a freshman or a graduate student? No matter which year of studies you are at, you definitely know how important it is to master your writing skills—especially when each professor has his or her own demands and each type of paper has its own requirements. You can be afraid to make even a tiny mistake that can impact your grade.
So, we’ll share a list of the most common flaws one can find in a writing assignment.
Weak introduction (or its absence)
Though you may think that academic texts don’t look like an ordinary blog post or whatever, any paper you have to complete should have an introduction. Here’s why: you need to let your readers know (even if it’s only your professor) what you are going to cover in your essay, research paper, coursework, etc.
What makes a good introduction? Having a thesis statement in it. A thesis statement is one or two sentences that demonstrate what you are going to cover in your paper. To create a good thesis statement, follow these tips:
- Express your opinion on the topic and add specific details about it (e.g., Parents should restrict their children from excessive smartphone usage)
- Provide reasons why someone can disagree with your position (e.g., It decreases socializing and influences communication skills; it makes children distracted; it rarely stimulates children’s intellect)
- Add a controversial point of view (e.g., It can be educational)
As a result, you’ll get something like this: While using smartphones can be educational, parents should restrict their children from excessive usage of these devices, as it can decrease children’s socializing and influence communication skills, distract them, and rarely stimulate their intellect.
Descriptive instead of argumentative
If you are asked to write a descriptive essay, be sure to do that. In all other cases, provide strong arguments and supportive facts from reliable sources. Otherwise, you risk getting an F for completing the task incorrectly.
The first sign of good research is enough credible materials cited in your paper. This shows you are able to analyze information that is related to your topic and present it properly.
Poor formatting and referencing
Usually, when you get an assignment to write, your professor specifies a preferred formatting style in the instructions. Why is it so crucial for your paper? If you fail to provide proper referencing, you can be accused of plagiarism. Incorrect citations can result in copy-pasted parts. When your professor will run a plagiarism-detection test, your paper most likely will not pass it.
You can find everything you need to know about formatting guides on Purdue OWL.
1st person instead of 3rd
Again, if it’s not a personal statement or application letter, write from the third person. This makes your paper sound unbiased, even if you present your own opinion.
Passive voice
A friend of mine who works at a prestigious U.S. college says that some papers look like they were written by robots. No offense, but you shouldn’t take an academic assignment for something that should be an inhuman piece of text. Any paper will be better and easier to read if you use active voice instead of passive. Compare these sentences:
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- Parents should restrict their children from excessive smartphone usage.
- Excessive smartphone usage by children should be restricted by their parents.
Do you see the difference?
Overly long sentences
Yes, academic writing should be formal. You can’t use short sentences like these two. Yet, it’s not necessary to make them overly long, like in some fiction books.
There’s no ideal number of words a sentence should contain in an academic paper, but we suggest to make each sentence no longer than 2-3 lines.
Contractions
While you can use them in messages to friends or any other informal text, you cannot add contractions to your assignment. They are good for everyday spoken language but not for formal academic writing.
No comma after an introductory phrase
Commas are tough to use, especially for non-native writers. In our case, a missing comma after an introductory phrase complicates comprehension. Have a look at the following examples:
- Before we move onto the next part of our study we should mention the importance of smartphones’ impact on children’s intellectual capabilities.
- Before we move onto the next part of our study, we should mention the importance of smartphones’ impact on children’s intellectual capabilities.
In the first sentence, a reader can be confused and lose your idea, while a tiny punctuation mark in the second sentence makes the difference and allows a person to focus on your main point.
Word choice
Perhaps we should place this mistake before the others, as choosing the wrong wording is a common practice not only among students. Sometimes it can be a pure typo, and sometimes you can get lost in the variety of synonymic words that slightly differ.
Anyway, the best way not to use words incorrectly is to review your paper a couple of times before submitting it. Also, if you are a non-native writer and still feel the gap between your language and English, be sure to read more, watch more movies, and communicate with native speakers. This will help to find the right words for your papers intuitively.
We hope our analysis of the most widespread mistakes in academic writing was useful for you and you’ll never repeat any of those in your papers.
