Are you about to write and submit an essay? Don’t do it. At least not yet. Use our guide and make sure you’ve edited your essay to avoid having these mistakes in your paper and getting a bad grade. We’ve made it simple for you so you can detect them in your work right away, so let’s go through them.
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1. Vague Phrases In General
When it comes to writing essays in general, professors despise vagueness, or they’ll grade you down for it. Ambiguity is reserved for conversation and discussion but not for your writing. So, what does a vague phrase look like? Let’s take a look at an example:
“Current studies reveal that fluoride is a neurotoxin that can potentially make you lose IQ points.”
The sentence isn’t wrong in itself, but it’s missing important details to back up its claim. Do you understand? Instead, write it like so:
“A study by the X department from X University has revealed that fluoride is a neurotoxin. They’ve researched and found correlations between X and X. They integrated their research through rigorous testing of lab rats, measuring their IQ points from the conception of the experimentation to the end of it after two years. The study is accessible through Harvard University’s archive and has been published in many other health-related newsletters and websites such as X.”
Do you see the difference? We’ve stated the sources, we’ve stated who has done the studies, and we’ve stated how they came to the conclusion of it. We were precise with our words and provided evidence as we wrote down our claims.
When writing your perspective or claims, most academic essays require you to be concise, precise, straightforward, and well-backed.
2. Cliché Phrases
Clichés can be hard to detect if you’re used to using them in your essays. Your professors might potentially grade you down or leave you negative feedback if you have too many cliché phrases in your writing, so avoid them like the plague. See that? That was a cliché phrase right there, but we can use it outside of essays.
Let’s go through some that you might be using but aren’t even aware of:
- In other words: A cliché phrase that is very overused in essay papers. It also makes your paper wordy. Just eliminate it and don’t use it. Get straight to your point, or the use of the word “Alternatively” might be more appropriate.
- As a matter of fact: Transition words are needed at times, but phrases like this are irrelevant, and they lower the quality of your writing. Don’t use them for the sake of filling up your paper; just eliminate them. This is what’s called an “expletive phrase.” They don’t add meaning to your sentences.
- First and foremost: Very redundant and adds to potential waffling. It’s a cliché, and it looks lazy on paper. Like the other phrases we’ve already introduced, this one just looks like you’re trying to fill up space on your paper. Your professor will see that. If you need to present various arguments, it would be better to use “Firstly.”
- In light of this: Instead of this word phrase, try using “Considering” instead.
- It is an obvious fact: Again, very redundant and adds to nothing. Instead of writing it, just get straight to the point. However, it’s quite common and overused since it sounds clever.
- It goes without saying: Irrelevant! Do not fill up your essay with these phrases just because it sounds right to you. Learn to use words that don’t need three words to explain one meaning but instead one word to explain one meaning. This could be replaced by “Evidently.”
You might have gingerly used these ones in your high school essays, but it’s time to change gears and learn better alternatives. If you want your writing to score you ace grades in college, then you’d better.
3. Expletive Phrases
Expletives are used to introduce clauses and delay the subject in a sentence, but they don’t have a tangible purpose or meaning. They’re filler words. Remove them from your essay, or greatly reduce their use to ensure the quality of your writing doesn’t suffer.
Examples:
- For all intents and purposes: Wordy. Eradicate. Instead of writing, “For all intents and purposes, we will be reviewing…” Instead, write: “We will be reviewing..” Clear and concise.
- For the most part: “For the most part, it demonstrated that bananas and apples..” No. Write: “It demonstrated that bananas and apples…”
We hope you got the point. More words do not equate to better writing. Better writing equates to better writing, which means content. That means the right words and the right use of them.
Final Thoughts
We hope you’ve learned something from this guide, as there’s a lot to consider when writing essays that professors will like instead of despising. The goal is to improve at writing, so just follow what we’ve stated and avoid making these mistakes. Make sure to proofread the essay before submitting it, too.