Essays writing tips: how to impress the reader
Whether you are writing for a particularly choosy professor or to gain admission to a prestigious university, almost every writer wants to pen impressive essays. This leads countless would-be writers to make many mistakes, such as using excessively complex language or too many “five dollar words” when simpler words would do. The result can be a paper that is cringe-worthy or incomprehensible.
However, there are some tricks to writing impressive essays. Follow the steps below to create something that really knocks the wind out of your readers’ sails.
Be Witty
It is easier to feign intelligence than it is to feign wit. The average hard working student can conduct a great deal of research, read sample essays and primary sources, and consult writing tutors and grammatical texts to end up with a paper that is cogent and well written. However, it takes a specific and rare breed of talent to write an essay that is not only informative and properly written, but smartly funny.
Practice your wit by writing informative blog posts on contemporary news topics, educational subjects, or events in your life. Find ways of inserting high brow humor into your work, but do so without cracking jokes, making puns, or resorting to any other cheap means of getting laughs. A true wit can enlighten and delight a reader with a clever turn of phrase and a well-placed quote or statement of fact. Your professors will be thrilled to discover your intelligent humor, and be impressed that you pulled it off while maintaining a professional, academic voice.
Learn to Write Concisely
Most students attempt to write intelligently by using a great deal of academic jargon and long, meandering sentences. Professors get sick of reading such pretentious papers. Instead, favor short, declarative sentences and use active voice. Describe confusing concepts in simple language that any lay reader could follow. Clarity of thought is far more important that complexity of sentence structure, and a clear paper is easier to read and grade. Drop the literary pretenses and make your papers simple and strong.
Learn to Edit
Editing is an art, and learning to cut and edit your paper can help you elevate your writing. Do not simply proofread your essay for typos and grammatical errors; this is only the first and most superficial step of the editing process. Find areas of your paper that are redundant, wordy, or confusing, and rewrite them or omit them altogether.
Published on 27.12.2016