Meet Top Bad Habits to Stay Away from in Your Essays

Perfect does not exist, and all college and university students make mistakes more often than not. It is especially true when undergrads work on their papers. There’s a range of bad habits and failures that tend to turn into a real burden on students’ way to the desired grades. They spoil the general impression about every other essay if the research has been performed inappropriately. 

There are a lot of habits of students who never fail. Most of the mistakes that students make in their papers are induced by some bad habits that they have. It is important to keep each in mind to stay away from them. Thus, we provide you with some of the bad habits that college undergrads make in college papers.

Long and Complex Sentences

A lot of students believe that if they produce long and complex sentences, their writing will become more professional. They try to express their points of view by means of long sentences. However, for the majority of their readers, long sentences are too difficult to read and comprehend. By the time your readers come to the end of this or that complex sentence, s/he may forget what it was about at the beginning.

The situation is getting worse when college students decide to include complex words into their words. A lot of them do their best to sound clever and use specific tech terms, slang, professional jargon, etc. They try to hook their readers’ attention. But the reality is that the result of their work is absolutely opposite.  

What is more, the essay structure is usually getting quite messy. Since the paragraphs are long and wordy, the authors try to overview several arguments at a time. This, in turn, makes it hard to read and comprehend such texts.

Statin Your Viewpoints without Proper Support

When it comes to academic writing, it is important to back up every other opinion or idea with solid evidence. Does it mean that you can’t say what you think? Of course not. You, as the paper author, have to demonstrate that you can think. However, you can’t simply say what you think in a college essay. Your task here is to support your points of view with the relevant facts: this is known as analysis, and analytical thought is the cornerstone of academia. In other words, regardless of the discipline that you study, it is important to get acquainted with it, review scientific materials, form a well-structured and analytical point of view. You will support the latter with relevant sources (that is, literary, academic, scientific).

More Than One Exclamation Point 

When you want to put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, keep in mind that every other mark that you use beyond the first one will spoil your credibility. The reality is that the more exclamation points you include in your sentence, the less believable and weaker your argument becomes.

Let’s face it, in most cases, you don’t need an exclamation point at all. However, if you believe that it is crucial to use an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, then ensure to limit yourself to one mark.

Lack of Unique Voice

Every author of a college essay, research paper, dissertation, book review, or lab report should have his or her unique voice. The latter demonstrates what kind of person you are and what message you’re trying to convey.

It is important to learn how to present your arguments in a language that your target audience will find interesting and comprehend. Finding your unique voice will help you get your work appreciated by the readers.

Skipping Proofreading and Editing

It’s weird but a lot of college and university students believe that when they write the final sentence of the paper, it’s time to submit it. They do not understand how important it is to pay attention to the post-writing phase. You have to perform thorough proofreading and editing. It’s no doubt that you will identify a range of mistakes that you failed to notice in the process of writing. Even if the typos aren’t too serious, it is important to fix them if you want to get the highest grades. The most common mistakes include grammar, spelling, stylistic, punctuation, and other issues.

Delaying Your Essays Until the Last Night

Every student on earth has postponed working on his or her essays until the last minute once or twice. The reasons may be different; however, if you tend to delay your papers until the last night, you will have to face pretty disappointing consequences. It’s no doubt, managing several tasks at a time is tough. If you’re not sure that you can cope with your essay on time, make sure to approach someone from professional academic writers to do your essay for you. It’s impossible to manage everything within the deadline when you’re a busy college student. That is why professional writers and editors are there to lend you a helping hand.

Overuse of Footnotes

If you need to include certain information in your essay, footnotes will help you to find the right place for it. However, sometimes many college and university students tend to overuse footnotes, and their readers are the ones to suffer because of that. In this case, it is highly recommended to ask yourself the following question – are you sure that each of your footnotes is justified? If this or that piece of information is crucial to have its own footnote, it may be crucial enough to be provided in the essay’s body section.

Conclusion

Now that you know some of the worst habits that college students have to overcome to become better at academic writing, make sure to consider them when you work on your next project. Get rid of plagiarizing other people’s pieces, writing without proper outlining, using slang, and so on. Once you take care of all the habits discussed above, you’re on your way to taking your prose up to the next level.