3 Writing Tips to Improve Your Essays This Semester
By Darren Lacsado
Writing a great essay is a lot like riding a bike: I didn’t learn how to do either until I turned twenty-four. Luckily for you, that doesn’t have to be the case! Learn and apply these three simple writing tips and ace your upcoming essays this semester: 1) Read the rubric: If you don’t how your work is being evaluated, then how do you know what you’re working towards? The first question you should ask yourself is what type of essay are you writing. Is it expository, argumentative, narrative, or descriptive? Your thesis statement—the focal point or key idea of your essay—is contingent on your answer. Expository and argumentative thesis statements consider various ideas and opinions and synthesize them into a single, explicit, concise point. Narrative and descriptive thesis statements, on the other hand, tend to only act as a starting point for the reader to contextualize what the essay will be about. Besides what type of essay you will be writing, another important consideration is what citation style you will be using. The three main citation styles used in post-secondary education are APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), and Chicago style. Generally, APA is used by Education, Psychology, and Science majors; MLA is used by the Humanities; and Chicago is used by Business, History, and the Fine Arts. Each style comes with its own rules and limitations. 2) Proofread your essay: Before you submit your essay to your professor, carefully proofread it. Look for any grammar or spelling errors or misused concepts. While they may only account for minor deductions, over time, they can quickly add up to a letter grade or two. Run your essay through Microsoft Word’s in-built grammar checker or through an online checker like Grammarly. On top of that, have a friend proofread your essay too! Having two sets of eyes speeds up the process and ensures that you don’t miss any avoidable mistakes. Also, read your essay aloud to yourself. Through your natural cadence, mistakes that won’t be picked up by a checker or another person will become obvious. 3) Use clear and concise language: The main goal of writing an essay is to clearly communicate an organized set of ideas to the reader. While you should care about what your professor thinks about your work—at least to some degree—impressing them should not be your goal. Many first- and second-year students believe that parsing through their essays and changing words using a thesaurus amounts to a higher mark. It does not. The quality of your ideas and how you structure them make a cogent argument, not the words that you use.
