Common Writing Mistakes
Academic Writing Mistakes to Avoid and Tips for Success
Auto-Correct Can Be A Pain
- Collecting numerical data is called statistics, not statics.
- You definitely, not defiantly, need to proofread more!
Word Choice Errors
- That’s where [they’re, their, there] playing with [they’re, their, there] toys, over [they’re, their, there] in the corner
- I’m is short for I am. Im is short for Instant Messaging.
Punctuation Issues
- Use [apostrophe’s, apostrophes] on to indicate possession, not to show plurals. Conversely, don’t forget to add an apostrophe when discussing two [authors, authors’] grammar issues.
- Try to avoid, using so many commas, because it can, you know, become so annoying, to your readers.
- If you take a very deep breath and then try to read this sentence out loud all at once but can’t then it probably needs punctuation somewhere.
Watch For These Sentence Issues!
- A fragmented sentence.
- It is not very difficult to explain wordiness in order for you to understand why it is never good to use so many words when it may be entirely possible to use a lot less words in order for you to get your points across to your readers without wasting time for your reader.
- Along those same lines, run-on sentences can be so long that the reader with never know when you’ve finished one idea and then you go on to the next idea, so that by the time the reader finally finds a period at the end of the sentence,, the reader is totally exhausted because your sentence just kept going and going and going and readers couldn’t possibly follow along because you threw so much information to them at one time. Whew!
- To be redundant is to redundantly say the same things over and over again repeatedly, ad nauseum.
Be Mindful Of These Other Issues and Tips
- Subject-verb agreement errors is often found in many schoolchildren’s papers; even one example are too many!
- I hate emotional language, don’t you?
- It’s really, clearly, positively without a doubt, necessary to avoid adverbs in scholarly writing.
- Instead of saying an article was terrible, say it lacked objectivity or was out of alignment or otherwise deficient.
- To come in first place, avoid 1st.
- Hey bro, ya gotta avoid slang, you know?
- Shoot for brevity.
- Unless you are told differently, papers should always be in the third person.
