William Shakespeare, regarded as one of the best literary writers of all time once said that “the pen is mightier than the sword.” By all aspects, this statement still remains true many years after he passed on, but there’s one point that needs to be noted from his line of thinking. The pen alone does not guarantee that the person wielding it is a good writer, the true expertise lies within the writer.
The same concept also applies to essay writers. It takes more than just having a pen to make your essays to come off as exceptional. Essays have many conventions that are endowed with a lot of technicalities that you need to take into account when trying to write a masterpiece of an essay.
In this article below, we’ll look into some of the instructions that you need to bring on board as you write your essays. By following them, you will have indeed taken the shackles off the true power of the pen that makes it mightier than the sword!
1. Avoid Imprecise and Vague Language
One of the instructions that you should hold close to heart is ensuring that your essays are devoid of imprecise and vague language. Such language does sound okay in verbal language but on the hand, it is ridden with imprecision especially when written down. When writing essays such as college application essays, it is best to choose your vocabulary wisely so as not to point your readers in the direction of thinking that your mastery of English is below average.
Some of the words that you should eliminate from your writing include terms such as; “things” and “stuff” among many other examples. Failure to do so could lead to your essays getting low grades or being discarded if they are meant for college applications. Vague language is easily eliminated by identifying what you really meant to communicate by using words like “things” and “stuff”. After placing a finger on what you wanted to say, you should then find precise words that can be used in their place. If it is a word like “things”, you should mention the exact things or stuff that you wanted your writer to be aware of.
2. Avoid Repetition and Wordiness
Wordiness can be graded as the most frequent error and ranks among the top essay pitfalls that students fall into when writing essays. It is not strange to find a scenario in which you could truncate up to a third of a given essay and it will still remain with meaningful content. In fact, it could wind up making the essay come off as more effective and engaging as compared to its prior state.
Wordiness can be in a wide array of forms but the most common include incidences of too much word repetition, filler, and fluff content, and redundancy among many other examples. If you write an essay that has any of the above features, more likely than not, you won`t make to winning admission if it was meant for college application. If it was in an exam set up, it would subject your essay to ominous grades, a situation that can be easily avoided by keeping off such writing habits.
3. Eliminate Clichés From Your Essays
Clichés are popularly known to be phrases that are heavily overused thus making them pose as uninspiring and unoriginal. By lacing your essays with such types of phrases, you are highly likely to make your audience tire from reading your work due to lack of creativity.
With an essay, your main objective should be to make an effort to get your readers excited about your work starting from the topic of your essay and right to its conclusion. If it’s a college application essay, you will be better placed in landing yourself an admission and in the case of an assignment or exams, impressing your reader will surely earn you good points. Try your level best to prevent your essay’s message from being hidden in the shadows by un-creative and gloomy essay clichés.
4. Avoid Excessive Digression
Digressions are meant to serve as temporary departures that veer off the main topic in your writing. They can be used effectively to break the monotony in your essay and are highly appreciated by readers only if they are used in the correct manner. However, it is worth noting that the colorful anecdotes that you use with the aim of engaging the reader to enhance their reading experience could turn against you and do the exact opposite of the above.
Such scenarios are brought about by writers deviating from the main point without any legitimate purpose whatsoever behind their doing so. To most readers, such a move will be registered as unnecessary additions to your essay, thus reducing the digressions into mere extraneous words.
5. Avoid Overusing Flowery Language In Your Essays
When writing an essay, be it a college admission essay or a given essay in an exam, it would be wise to exercise caution as you apply flowery language. Flowery language is mostly comprised of adjectives, metaphors, and adverbs among others. Good adjectives, strong verbs, and adverbs are the best ingredients for making your essay seem to have some breath of life in it.
However, when almost every inch of your essay is covered with these adverbs and adjectives, it simply sends one message to your readers. This message is that the writing is from an immature author and one who is doing too much to impress. Your essay should not have up to four adjectives and adverbs in a single sentence. It will be too confusing to comprehend what your main message was all about because your readers` attention will be shunted towards your language and not what you’re trying to communicate. Just use enough of these “spices” and ensure that they are well distributed throughout the essay in an orderly fashion.
Conclusion
Writing an essay and getting all the technical regulations spot-on is almost next to impossible to achieve. However, there are some main aspects that are considered when evaluating both an essay’s quality and its writer. The instructions that have been talked about in the article above are some of the areas that most writers neglect and this has led to their detriment.
We hope that they’ve laid a great foundation for you as you write your essays and in your descriptive essay topics. If you correctly follow these tips, you can rest assured that these instructions will keep you away from trouble. Have you liked the article above? Which of the five instructions has inspired you to try a new perspective when writing your essays?
Lori Wade is a freelance content writer who is interested in a wide range of spheres from education and online marketing to entrepreneurship. She is also an aspiring tutor striving to bring education to another level like we all do. Lori is used to handling many writing orders at the same time and as she likes sharing her ideas and experience, she decided to write a great article for you to show how multiple tasks should be dealt with. If you are interested in writing, you can find her on Twitter or Google+ or find her in other social media. Read and take over Lori’s useful insights!
All views and opinions of guest authors are theirs alone and are not representative of the views of Petersons.com.
