Betty Margaret

Grammar and Style Mistakes to Avoid in Essays Guide-2022

When you are writing your essay, researching, brainstorming, and writing takes a lot of time and effort. Under the tasking job of essay writing, you tend to give little thought to look out for errors and mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and style. Most people turn their essays at the moment they are done writing them. The essay goes under only a cursory review and proofreading. 

A good essay writer always proofreads and edits the essay before turning it in. And like one, you should also learn to look for mistakes in your writing whether it’s in style, structure, or in grammar and punctuation.  A flaw in the essay as little as a spelling mistaken can ruin the effect of your essay on your reader. Finding one or many mistakes tells the reader about a lack of effort put forth by the writer. Such mistakes take away the power from your unique arguments and insightful analysis.

You should, therefore, always thoroughly check your essay for errors, during the proofreading and editing process. With only a few things you can drastically improve your essay grammar and style. 

Avoid split infinitive

While it may be okay in informal writing and may sound normal to the ear when spoken, split infinitives are at times unsuitable for formal essay writing. Though in recent times split infinitives are tolerated and accepted in the writing, its usage in some cases should be avoided you can also take some help from an write my essay service online.

A split infinitive occurs when an adverb or a phrase comes between the infinite (‘to’ flowed by a verb). The rule is that the adverb or the phrase should come after the infinitive. 

For example: 

I need you to carefully step away from the vehicle.

Here, the word carefully is between the infinitive ‘to step’. And according to the rule, the adverb should come after the infinitive. 

However, this would be acceptable nowadays, as here the sentence naturally puts the needed importance on the word ‘carefully’.

Dangling Infinitive

Next, we have another error that involves an infinitive. A dangling infinitive occurs when the infinitive is not grounded to a specific object or a subject in a sentence. Most of these errors occur when we insert a phrase after the infinitive in a passive sentence. 

“To make space for the living, the room was demolished. "

The verb ‘to demolish’ doesn’t have an object or subject to stick to.’

This should be: “To make space for the living, we demolished the room.”

Wrong use of ‘that’

An example of the wrong use of that word ‘that’:

“Neil Armstrong was the first human that walked on the moon”

That is often misused when referring to a person. A person shouldn’t be referred to as a thing but a person, especially if the person is Neil Armstrong, the first human who walked on the moon.

Avoid the Passive Voice

Passive voice is responsible for many bad writings. It is responsible for drowning your brilliant ideas and arguments in its sea of passivity.  In a sentence with the passive voice, the subject is the sentence that takes the backseat in its own action take some useful advice from an essay writing service. Things happen to the subject in this writing instead of the other way around.    

“The cure was successfully developed by the scientists at a local research lab. “

The sentence should be:

“The scientists working at the local research lab successfully developed the cure. “

This allows for a clearer language with the subject doing the action right at the start. Otherwise, the reader will have to wait for the end of the sentence to know about the subject. 

Many other passive voice structures miss our eyes. These are the sentences that don’t have a subject and the action is linked to everything and nothing at the same time.