Discover best tips of avoiding mistakes in college essay writing. Here are 10 most frequent mistakes students make while writing a paper.

10 Ultimate Don’ts of Essay Writing

It’s wise enough to learn from your own mistakes during the first weeks of studies, but what to do then? You’ve learned the rules, but still, every next mark for your paper is lower than you hoped it would be. In spite of despair learn the main 10 Don’ts of Essay Writing and become your own strict editor and filter your work

Most critical don’ts you should avoid

• Never start writing your essay before choosing its topic. A topic is a crucial part of every essay, and a student should not forget about this. Go to this link and discover some awesome research paper topics: 25 Interesting Research Paper Topics.
• Don’t neglect the structure of your paper. A standard student’s essay consists of Introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and Conclusion. If you omit any of these parts, you’ll eventually be the author of some other text, not an essay. Besides, mind placing your thesis statement both into the conclusion and into the introduction. The statement should be clear, laconic and match the ideas of your essay’s body paragraphs.
• Don’t mix academic and creative kinds of writing. The approaches to them differ drastically, and you should not write your essay in a Stephen King style. Furthermore, you don’t need writer’s talent to compose a good essay: all you need is logical thinking and ability to stick to your topic.
• Don’t write in an addressing manner (“You see…”, “In this essay, you will read…”). Objectivity which is crucial for academic writing has nothing in common with “you-speech”. The latter is more suitable for selling vacuum cleaners and for blog writing. Moreover, the author (which means “you”) should also not be revealed in your paper.
• Avoid clichés, or at least don’t misuse them. Original thoughts are precious in every kind of writing, and an essay genre requires the student’s own arguments more than anything else. For example, if you start an essay with a quote being a high school student, it’s OK, but if you’re doing this being a college sophomore or older, – it’s strange if not to say non-professional. Also, it’s no good if a student sets an example from his or his friend’s life and considers this to be a suitable start for a college essay.
• Never plagiarize. It’s quite terrible to steal ideas from some already written papers and put the other’s thoughts on paper in your own words. Have mercy for your teacher. It’s boring to read hundreds of either similar or naive texts almost every day. Besides, in most US colleges, a student can be expelled for plagiarism. Refer to all sources you’re using while writing your essay. Quote, but don’t overuse your ability to do this. An essay is an independent text with unique thoughts, not a list of quotations.
• Don’t make your conclusion and introduction look too much alike. In the introduction, you should set a point, and in the conclusion – prove it. That’s not easy, but not as hard as may seem. In the body of your essay, some questions should be raised, and your conclusion should contain the answers to these questions so that intro and conclusion don’t copy each other.

Some more optional don’ts of essay writing

• Try to avoid negative language in your essays. We don’t mean curse words and vulgarisms, for the usage of them not so widespread in the students’ essays. But the usage of negative suffixes is. There are always ways to replace a negative-suffixed word with a synonymous positive one. For example, it’s better to write “cheap” but not “inexpensive”, “comfortable” but not “painless” etc.
• Don’t make your essay too hard to read. If a small paper is overloaded with information and has long and bulky sentences, it’s almost non-readable. Avoid unnecessary facts and replace too hard words with more understandable ones. Make sentences shorter. Stick to the topic.
• Never underestimate further reading about how to write good essays.
• Don’t write in an addressing manner (“You see…”, “In this essay, you will read…”). Objectivity which is crucial for academic writing has nothing in common with “you-speech”. The latter is more suitable for selling vacuum cleaners and for blog writing. Moreover, the author (which means “you”) should also not be revealed in your paper.

Good luck in writing essays! Now that you know the main don’ts, your work will become easier and faster.