Most Common Writing Errors to Avoid in Your Essay

Writing an academic essay may seem to be a trivial task that doesn’t require a lot of expertise and may be performed by anyone who has at least basic understanding of principles along which the English language operates.

This assumption, however, proves to be faulty when one encounters an actual necessity of writing an essay – the task turns out to be much more difficult than it seemed. That’s why it is a good idea to learn what are some common mistakes when writing an essay, and try to avoid them.

Indeed, why waste time reinventing the wheel, when you can study most common errors in writing essays, thus improving your skills, optimizing your efforts, and avoiding negative consequences in a form of bad grades?

Most common essay mistakes can be broken into the following categories:

• Mistakes in content

  The types of essays are numerous and every one of them is supposed to contain this or that kind of information. Many beginners make mistakes and let their writing digress from the original purpose, thus ruining the overall impression.

  If you want to know what the most usual drawbacks of this kind are, study the article on Content mistakes.

• Mistakes in vocabulary

  It is natural that essay writing operates with its own vocabulary that is somewhat different from the one we use in everyday speech. It shouldn’t contain colloquialisms, slang, jargon and some other elements.

  If you want to know what you should avoid in this respect, feel free to read the article on Vocabulary mistakes.

• Mistakes in style

  Both the style of academic writing and its subtypes specific for every kind of essay have certain peculiarities that are often lost by the students who just begin writing essays. Even if you have created your essay correctly and wrote in an interesting way, it still may make poor impression if you are unable to use correct style.

  In order to avoid mistakes of this kind, examine the Style mistakes article.

• Mistakes in structure

  Essay is an established form of academic writing that has long history and tradition of structuring and formatting. That’s why there exist strict rules along which every essay of this or that type is supposed to be written. Without limiting the creativity, it makes it easier to organize one’s thoughts.

  Recommendations concerning the ways of avoiding the most common mistakes of this kind are found in the article on structural mistakes.

• Mistakes in spelling

  Even if you study mathematics or physics, spelling is still an important part of writing any academic work, although your own one may not be centered on it. If you deal with humanities, you should be even more attentive about this aspect of writing.

  You may find more information about it in the Spelling mistakes article of our website.

• Mistakes in punctuation

  Punctuation may seem to be a rather unimportant and not very conspicuous part of academic writing, and sometimes it is true – it is harder to notice an incorrectly placed comma, than a blatant spelling mistake. But still it doesn’t create a good impression on the reader.

  Find more information on the most usual mistakes in this sphere in our Punctuation mistakes section.

• Mistakes in grammar

  Grammar is an important element of any piece of academic writing and there is hardly anything that deteriorates the overall impression of otherwise brilliant essay, than a grammar mistake sticking out of the smooth pattern of text.

  Learn the most common types of grammar flaws students’ essays contain in the Grammar article and be on the lookout not to repeat them yourself.

Remember, even if you master one field, but make some obvious mistakes in another, it may drastically degrade your whole essay. Close study of all these aspects may dramatically improve your overall results.