Writing essays in English is both very easy and very difficult.
It’s difficult if you don’t know how to do it.
And it’s easy if you do.
In this post, let’s take a look at some essay-writing tips that you can follow if you are an
English language student. Mind you, most of the stuff you can follow, even if you want to
write in other languages.
Let’s get straight into it.
Essay writing tips: What you need to do
The essay-writing process is typically divided into different parts and phases. For one,
there is the research phase, the writing phase, and the checking phase.
We’ll talk about some tips that you can follow during research, the actual writing, and so on.
1. Pick the right sources for your research
The first step in the process is research. And incidentally, it is also the most important. If
you take proper care during the research, you can improve the overall quality of your
essay.
Of the many things that you have to do for good research, the first thing is to find the right
sources for it.
The broad criterion that you can set to find “good” sources is to look for the ones that are
generally hailed as reliable and authoritative. Think of places like the New York Times
website or Forbes.
Since we’re talking about writing essays, however, some sources that you can consider
using are as follows:
1. Google Scholar – a good place to find academic papers on various topics
2. ResearchGate – pretty much performs the same function as G Scholar
3. JSTOR – same thing once again
And so on.
Depending on the type of essay you’re writing and the institution you’re associated with,
there may be some additional instructions and guidelines that you may have to follow
about the research sources.
Some institutes may have certain restrictions in place about some research sources, such as
Wikipedia, etc. If there are any such restrictions in place, you should take them into
consideration before deciding on the sources.
2. Don’t copy-paste from the sources
…because that’s plagiarism.
Plagiarism is something akin to a disease in academics. Its presence in your essay will only
warrant the rejection of the latter.
You should never copy-paste anything directly from your research sources, even if it
happens to be a single line or sentence.
Rather, when taking information from a source, here is what your routine should be.
1. First, you should open multiple sources at a time so that your tone, tenor, and
information don’t get influenced
2. When taking information from the sources, you should note them down as points
using your own words. This falls within the old “take ideas, not content” advice.
3. Whenever taking information, you should note down the citation details of the
sources. Then you should create and add the citations whenever adding the
borrowed information.
If you note down ideas, you will be able to expound on them without using the same words
as the source. This will help you steer clear of plagiarism issues.
3. Keep the essay organized
Proper content organization can do wonders for the quality of your essay. An organized
essay can look better on the eyes and be generally more readable.
Here is what you should do to make your essay organized:
1. Split up the contents using headings and sub-headings
2. Follow a proper progression for the headings, sub-headings and section-headings in
the typical cascading format…something that goes like this
a. Heading
i. Sub-heading
1. Section heading
3. Use bullets to convey information in a more readable way. Things like steps for a
process and multiple items are better off written in the form of lists rather than a
paragraph.
4. Keep your wording clear
Just as proper organization can help with the overall quality and readability of your essay,
the same goes for the choice of words you use.
Using needlessly difficult words isn’t recommended in any type of content, be it an essay or
anything else. Oftentimes, using difficult words can also get you confused about what you
want to write. For example, a person describing the inordinate craving for people to utilize
recondite terminology with unprecedented fervor…may lose what they’re trying to say in
the first place.
Of course, other than this, the main benefit of using easy words is that the essay becomes
more readable for the reader – who, in this case, can be the teacher or the instructor.
To bring them together in the form of a list, here are some tips that you can follow to make
your wording easy and simple.
1. Firstly, take care not to use any words that you may think are alien to normal
conversation.
2. If the situation demands the use of a difficult word, be sure to address and explain it
for the ease of your reader(s).
3. Once you are done writing the draft of your essay, you should give it a couple of
thorough reads and re-reads. If you come across any difficult words that you may
have used without realizing it, you can fix them then.
Another good way to go about the last step there is to use a paraphrasing tool. In other
words, if there are some difficult words in your essay and you can’t figure out how to make
them more readable, you can try rephrasing those particular parts with the help of a
paraphrasing tool.
Should you choose a high-quality one, you will be able to get smart results without much
need for editing, etc.
5. Find and remove plagiarism
Another important thing that you have to do during the essay-writing process is find and
remove plagiarism from the content.
We don’t need to go on about the harms and consequences of plagiarism. Suffice it to
understand that it is one of the worst things that can occur in your academic write-ups.
They can get you a low grade, put you in trouble with your teachers and even get you in
legal trouble if the offense is serious enough.
As we’ve done above, let’s adumbrate the steps that you need to follow for this in points:
1. First, you need to find out the parts of your content that are plagiarized. This you
have to do with the help of an online plagiarism checker. There are different
plagiarism checkers that you can use; some of the popular ones of which include
Copyscape and Check-Plagiarism.
2. Once you are done with the first step, i.e., plagiarism detection, the next thing that
follows is the removal or fixing. You can eliminate plagiarism from your content in a
few different ways.
a. You can just excise the plagiarized parts and cut them out altogether
b. If the plagiarism exists in just a few lines or just one of them, you can put it in
quotes and make it look like you’ve taken it legally from a source
3. We mentioned paraphrasing above as a way to remedy bad readability. Incidentally,
it is a good fix that you can use for plagiarism as well. In other words, you can
paraphrase the content that you find to be plagiarized. After being paraphrased, the
content will come back new and shining.
Conclusion
For the sake of brevity, we’re skipping some of the finer details. But we have outlined the
main stuff, and you should be good as long as you follow them.
Before we give this post the wrap, here are some other additional tips that you can follow
to write a good essay.
1. Be sure to check for grammar and spelling errors before finalizing your essay
2. Be sure to add the citations and references properly (if needed)
3. Make sure there are no loose ends with the formatting, i.e., font size, margins, and
the like
4. Add graphics and visuals where suitable i.e., for proof and illustration, etc.
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