When you write your essay it is necessary to forget about making grammar mistakes, because they will ruin all the impression of your paper. Even if you have the best essay ever, you won’t get high grades if your paper will be full of mistakes. There are some common mistakes that almost everyone does in his or her essay writing. This article will show you what you need to pay attention to when writing your essays.
• Tenses. Don’t mix up tenses, which you use for your essay. If you write in the present tense, try to use it until the end, of course, if it is possible. If you write your paper in the past tense, write it in the past from the very beginning to conclusion. It doesn’t mean that you can’t use the necessary tense if you need, it just means that you shouldn’t jump from one tense to another.
• Contraction. Essay writing has quite an official style, so you need to avoid contraction.
• Fragments. The English language has certain rules. One of them is that every English sentence should have subject and predicate. Never forget about this in your papers.
• Double negatives. In English academic writing, it is necessary to avoid double negatives.
• Words confusion. Be attentive when you use words that sound similar but have different spelling. For example their-there, through-thorough, your-you’re, effect-affect, etc.. Also be sure that you know meanings of words, to use them correctly in your sentences.
Special attention should be paid for these ones:
- may and might;
- fewer and less;
- farther and further;
- since and because;
- continual and continuous;
- which and that;
- who and whom.
A lot of these words have not only difference in meaning but difference in grammar usage. Every such case has its rules and if you want to write correctly you need to know all of them, or, at least, to read these rules before writing your paper.
• Passive voice. Be aware of the passive voice. It is not good to use too much passive in your text because this will look artificial. You need to use active voice to make your language more natural and clear.
• Punctuation. There are a lot of rules for punctuation. If you want to make your essay better, you need to pay attention to commas and semicolons and other punctuation marks. Check the rule, if you have any hesitations.
• Incomplete comparisons. When you compare something, make sure that you finish the comparison. For example: “This project is better written and it is more interesting.” This sentence doesn’t look completed, so you need to finish things.
• Misplaced modifiers. You should place modifiers near the words they modify. The common mistake is missing the modified words. Be sure that you have them.
• Unclear pronoun reference. When you use pronouns you must be sure that they will refer to definite nouns. It is very important to use it, this, that, which, they, these and those very carefully. Otherwise, you will lose the coherence of your sentences and even of the whole text.
English grammar is full of rules. Moreover, it has a lot of exception to rules. Without a doubt, it is impossible to remember all of them without revising the information from time to time, but when you start writing your essay you need to be very careful. You always can use the help of online essay services. If you have a reliable one, you don’t need to worry about mistakes. There are also various programs that can check your grammar. They rally can help, but you should understand that any program can’t correct every mistake the way that people can.