Writing essays that inspire isn’t as easy as putting words down on a blank digital paper. It starts with picking a topic, doing in-depth research, creating an outline, writing the first draft, proofreading, and citing primary and secondary sources.
That’s a lot of work for one person to be honest, one in which you are bound to make the most common essay mistakes that many students do.
Unfortunately, you’re going to make many makes if you haven’t mastered the art of writing great essays. And that isn’t good at all.
So in addition to our ultimate guide to essay writing, we’d like you to identify the most common mistakes that can fail your essay, and how to fix the essay dos and don'ts.
8 Common Essay Mistakes to Avoid
The following are the 8 common essay writing mistakes students often make, and how you can avoid them.
1. Not Writing a Thesis Statement
Professors generally don’t read essays that don’t have thesis statements. Yet this is a common mistake that many students make in writing.
To be clear, the thesis statement contains the central theme of an essay and it therefore must appear in the opening paragraph and reiterated in the conclusion.
Write your thesis statement first. It should be one or two sentences long within the opening paragraph.
Make sure the thesis is clear and concise. Your professor should immediately know what the essay is about by just reading the thesis statement.
2. Repeating the Introduction in the Conclusion
Copying and pasting the opening paragraph in the conclusion section of an essay is a bad writing practice.
Doing so doesn’t answer the “so what?” question. Not to mention it makes your essay sound redundant.
Instead of just reiterating the thesis statement from the opening paragraph, write an engaging conclusion that proves your claim or support your argument.
You could even leave a reader with some new ideas by simply raising questions or exploring additional effects as long as they’re relevant to the topic in question. And never end an essay with a quote.
3. Writing Essays that are Hard to Read
If your essay requires a cup of coffee and a dictionary to read, it’s probably not going to pique the interest of your professor.
Sure, you want to prove that you’ve mastered the technical terms that you feel should go into the essay, but how is that going to help if your writing is difficult to read?
Instead of using ambiguous words to try to make your essay stand out, use a simple language that communicates your message in a clear way.
Use short sentences, stick to the main ideas, and don’t use additional words or phrases that won’t add meaning to the essay.
4. Making an Essay One Paragraph
The tendency to make an essay one paragraph isn’t that common per se. But it’s still easy to fall into the temptation of NOT breaking an essay into sections, especially if it’s as short as 500 words.
Remember that the rules of writing any kind of essay remain the same. In other words, you essay should have an opening paragraph, the body section, and a concluding paragraph.
As such, you commit an academic writing felony when you submit a big block or wall of text as an essay.
After all, which professor even has the guts to read an essay that doesn’t have organized thoughts let alone one that’s hard to read?
5. Plagiarizing the Essay
As dangerous as plagiarism is, some students still take their chances with it and attempt to pass another person’s work as their own.
If you want to know just how bad copying someone else’s work is, ask a student who has been expelled or suspended from school what it feels to not go to college anymore.
These days, institutions uphold academic integrity by asking students to submit their essays to Turnitin, a software that checks the uniqueness of a paper against what’s already in public databases.
You can read more about plagiarism here.
The take away from that post is that you need to make sure your paper is 100% unique, even if you bought the essay online.
6. Buying an Essay from an Unreliable Writing Service
It’s no longer a secret that students turn to virtual academic assistance for cheap essay writing services. The goal is to get the essay completed and submitted in time.
The problem comes when you hire the wrong company to do the job for you. Not only do you risk failing to get the value for your money, you’re more than likely to miss the deadline too.
You can get around this by hiring the right academic writing service. First, check the site in question on platforms like Trust Pilot and Site Jabber.
Second, read the review to determine if the company is authentic.
Third, check how much the site charges per page to determine if they’re within the budget. Have they earned a tick for each criterion? If yes, don’t hesitate to place an order with them.
7. Spelling Mistakes
Making spelling mistakes in writing is something inevitable. That’s because some words are straight out difficult to spell right.
Even with that fact in mind, the worst mistake you can make is to submit your essay without checking the spelling mistakes.
The only way to get around this is to proofread your essay at least two to three times. If it helps, use a tool such as Grammarly fix spelling errors that your naked eyes may miss by error.
8. Not Creating an Outline for the Essay
As simple as an essay outline is, some students completely ignore the structure and write their essays as if they’re writing blog posts. This is a wrong approach that will fail you miserably.
Don’t get down to writing as soon as you’ve completed your research. Instead, use an essay outline to organize your thoughts in a logical order.
Make sure each paragraph has its own thought or idea, with in-depth explanation and conclusion, followed by a subsequent paragraph that builds on another idea within the same topic.