Rambling
By now you may have realized there are lots of mistakes to make in writing essays, from the beginning until the end. Rambling is probably one of the most common mistakes students make when writing essays. This mistake can be avoided by keeping an eye on the word count and only including information that is relevant to your essay topic. To discover whether a paragraph is relevant or not, check if it contains any arguments about the topic of your essay, for example: “In my opinion, daisies are more beautiful than roses.” This argument does not contribute to supporting your thesis statement so cut it out! However, if a paragraph consists of facts and statistics related to your essay’s topic then it is most certainly relevant.
Having a long introduction
Having a long introduction before getting to your thesis statement is also a big mistake in writing essays. Introductions are meant to briefly explain the topic of your essay, not serve as an introduction for yourself in which you talk about how much time you spent thinking about this issue!
Lengthy details
Another common mistake when writing essays is adding too many lengthy descriptions or examples. Sometimes it can be hard to realize whether you are including too much information because what seems like a lot of information when reading aloud may seem completely irrelevant when read silently. To avoid that problem, keep in mind that shorter sentences often lead to clearer and more logical explanations whereas lengthy explanations confuse the reader and could potentially lead to them losing interest in what you have written by putting up their own defense against such complicated sentences.
Instead of writing lengthy, complicated sentences about the topic at hand, summarize what you want to say in a sentence or two. This will make the reader feel more comfortable while reading your essay and help them understand your point quickly and effectively: “The fact that daisies can be used for multiple purposes shows how beautiful they are.” Versus: “Daisies come in lots of different colors and shapes which makes them very versatile flowers; you can even use them as food! Baboons like to eat these flowers too because of their sweet scent!” The second one is much longer than the first one so it’s probably not ideal to include this example in an essay.
Composition mistakes
Your paragraphs should flow logically from one to the other. This means that you should not jump from one topic to another because it will confuse your reader and make you seem less organized.
Using complex vocabulary
Using complex vocabulary is also a mistake many students make when writing essays. Not only are these words often hard to understand for someone who has never read them before, they can be too difficult for an average person to understand if read out loud quickly! No one wants their first impression of your essay to be confusing, so avoid using advanced vocabulary as much as possible or provide a brief explanation of what this word means within the sentence itself.
Contributing sources
The last big mistake students tend to make in writing essays is forgetting about other people’s arguments about the topic at hand. When reading articles written on the same topic as your essay, you may find excellent examples that support your thesis statement. If this is the case, do not hesitate to mention their names or even include a quote; this will strengthen your argument and make it more convincing for the reader!
Before sharing an example from another source, however, remember to credit it by mentioning the author’s name so you don’t plagiarize other people’s work. A great way of crediting these sources is providing a hyperlink at the end of the sentence so readers can click on their names if they want to learn more about them or read some of their other articles on similar topics.
“Rambling” is just one mistake many students tend to make in writing essays. There are many others that could also damage your grades or make people lose interest in what you have written. To avoid making the same mistakes again and again, be aware of what these common errors are and try to avoid them while proofreading your work!
