Essay writing is an art of displaying information on a piece of paper that is intended to take a position in favour or against an issue. It can also be use as a tool to gather mass attention over a single point.
Writing essays is a task that requires talent as well as technique of presentation and creating interest for readers to engage till the end. It doesn’t mean that only select group of people with God gifted talent can write essay, but it is a difficult job to do; that’s for sure. Here are some tips that can help you in writing essays as well as in avoiding common mistakes that beginners usually do:
1. Plan you writing process:
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Start with choosing an essay topic that you like most or are very strong over it. Now, focus on your ideas on what you want reader to understand. Set an outline and stick to it till the end.
Your outline ideally should include introduction, your view statement and conclusion, proofread and edit as per
2. Stay on purpose:
Make sure that your essay meets all the requirements – it is focused on a single issue and is easy to read and understand for general readers. Don’t just provide information, rather give your arguments and try to illustrate your point in a defined manner.
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3. Don’t forget the basics:
It is important that you don’t forget the basics of essay writing, such as managing your time by not involving in complex statements, answering the question clearly, and above all not providing copied material.
Remember, people don’t want to waste time on things that they can easily find on internet, you need to come up with original thoughts to maintain reader’s interest.
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Essay Writing Tips
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Talking about essay writing tips, you need to avoid some common mistakes also, such as the following:
1. Don’t put useless items:
It sounds good to fill it up with loads of information to give away a decent impression of your knowledge and ability as a writer, but the reality is that people will just waste seconds to scroll down to decide whether they can digest all this useless item or not!
2. Don’t copy other’s ideas:
That’s another famous policy of beginners who seems to lack confidence on their own skills and search for cool ideas on internet and other sources. Today’s readers are smart enough to pick the tone of essay. Copying will not just reduce the readership, but it will hurt the reputation of the writer badly.
3. Choosing an easy topic:
If it’s easy for you to understand, then it’s same for other people also. Always choose a topic that people wants to read about, but is not well supplied by writers.
Sentence Writing Tips
In essay writing sentence structure and flow is very important. These two things are very important to writing as they greedy affect readers.
You are about to read some of the most valuable essay writing tips on which English teachers mostly stress because they are central for developing good writing skills. Applying these strategies to your writing will greatly improve your clarity in essay writing.
Furthermore, once you consciously get into the habit of using them regularly, you would find that your good writing skills would aid you in any career field.
Transition between Sentences and Paragraphs
Writing is just like having an actual conversation except for the fact that readers cannot ask you a question if they don’t understand something you just said. With that being said, having intermediary phrases and sentences in between your ideas would greatly help your ideas to flow.
Transitions are also a great way to show similar or opposite ideas in your writing. For instance, phrases or words such as: in addition, furthermore, also, and additionally tell your reader that you are adding related ideas to your previous sentence.
On the other hand, words phrases like: conversely, alternatively, then again, on the other hand, and in contrast, the tell reader that you are discussing an idea that opposes your previous sentence’s idea.
While finding changeover words between sentences can be accessed by the use of thesaurus, transitioning between paragraphs gets a little tougher.
With paragraphs, it is necessary to have previous paragraph flow into the next one by introducing the next paragraph’s idea in the last sentence of previous paragraph. After that, the first sentence of next paragraph will now talk about the new idea in it.
Sentence Variety
Sentence variety refers to the length of sentences. If one writes short sentences one after another, his or her writing will seem variable.
On the other hand, if one writes long sentences one after another, reader might get lost in ideas. In both instances, readers will lose interest in whatever you’re discussing because they cannot follow your train of thought.
Sentence variety is one of the easiest essay writing tips to adapt because it allows you to make your essay exciting by simply varying the length of your sentences. Let’s take the first paragraph of this section (sentence variety) as an example.
You will notice that the first two sentences are short and direct while the last two sentences are longer and more elaborate. This strategy becomes easier to incorporate into writing skills because even though you may not have sentence variety in your first draft, you can go back and make the necessary changes.
Passive vs. Active Voice
Passive voice is the sign of wordiness. The passive voice is usually in the form of ‘to be’ (is, are, was, were, be, been) followed by the past participle (hint: looks like a past tense verb).
For example:
Passive voice: The neighborhood fire was started by a lightning strike.
Active voice: The lightning strike started the neighborhood fire.
Do you see the difference? The sentence in the active voice is much more direct and clear.
Stick to Your Thesis
A thesis is created for a reason and that is to argue writer’s point of view regarding a particular topic. The whole essay should support writer’s argument with many little arguments and evidences.
The writer should write his thesis in a small piece of paper. Then, he should place this piece of paper right next to each of his paragraphs. After that, he should read each paragraph and compare it to his thesis.
This process allowed him to catch any paragraphs in his essay that are ‘off topic’ and revised them accordingly.
Reliable References and Records
This is probably one of the most common essay writing tips. To avoid using untrustworthy resources, writer should always look into peer reviewed articles in research papers or articles that are published in a well-known newspaper.
These publications make an extra effort to providing good, reliable information because they have a name to conserve.
Time
If there was one thing that students can do to improve their writing, it would be to give themselves enough time to write. Many students tend to delay about their writing assignments that they do not have time to edit or review their work before they turn it in.
Besides having the chance to review and edit your essay, you can get the chance to take a break from it for a day or two so that you can look at it in a whole new light when you read it again.
Peer-review
If you wrote a 5-page essay and felt that you really did a good job, you probably would not edit it further. On the other hand, if your classmates or friends read it, they may be able to find spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or arguments that can be better supported.
Thus, having your essay reviewed by somebody else who would give you that one extra chance to get their opinion before you present your essay before the target readers.
The Word ‘it’
Often, it is not good to use ‘if at the beginning of any sentence. Just replacing the word it with the actual word, makes your writing much more clear to your reader and this avoids confusion.
Essay writing tips would not help you become a better writer unless you practice them regularly. So practice writing and become good writer.