5 Ways to Quickly Improve Your Academic Essay Writing Skills

Anyone who wants to write an academic essay or paper realizes that the most important goal you have is to get an “A” on those papers and the best way to do that is to ensure that you write your essay in the most effective way possible. There are obvious ones covered on other websites, which I won’t go into, so instead, let’s take a look at the most important, but lesser know ways to get the “A” that you want! Without further ado, here are five ways to improve your essay skills:

1.     Research your essays and papers.

This one should be a no-brainer. You can’t write a good paper if you don’t know what you’re talking about, but some people try to bluff their way through an essay, despite that! A great deal of research for essays can be done online (libraries are usually available on your campus as well), and this has become an accepted practice for most colleges.

2.     Plagiarism is not what a college wants to see.

Yes, we have to talk about plagiarism. This is something that almost every college never bothered to mention in the past, but it has become a growing issue in the last ten years. There is no professor out there who will accept a plagiarized document, and that is the accepted custom everywhere now. They now have software that searches online for matching text to ensure that plagiarizers are caught. This is something that is heavily penalized, and I highly recommend other ways of writing the essays and papers you want to create.

3.     Citations are essential in college.

This is something that many people don’t do, as they are new to college and university. Unfamiliarity with this practice is nothing to be ashamed of, but it’s best to know, then not to know, and get a poor grade on a paper. A citation cites where you got your information from. Citations usually have the author of the book you are citing, along with its name, and possibly the year of publication (example (Smith, 2000) ). Citations can also take the form of a list at the end of the paper, which contains all of your references from the paper.

Citation practices differ according to the custom of the institution and what you’re citing. Any word processor can do this. Also, you can find instructions on how to insert citations and create references online. There are also websites that can provide this service for you. Moreover, this is what your essay or paper can’t do without. If a professor sees an essay without the proper references and citations, you’re not going to do well.

4.     Never say always in your essay.

This a little known bit of advice, but professors are snippy when it comes to making any absolute declarations in your paper. Using words like “certain”, “always”, and “one hundred percent” may be the way of expressing your thoughts, but it is frowned on, as academia will always make you defend any assertion that what you’re saying is a certainty. Why? Because you can’t. Nothing is one hundred percent certain, and professors will dock you points for saying something is. As a result, you should use words like “nearly”, “almost”, and “usually” in essays.

5.     Proofreaders and opinions matter before you hand in your essay.

In the end, you’re never going to catch everything by yourself, and you can never be sure that there isn’t some point you made in your essay that might be missing some bit of logic or have a loophole in it. That’s why you should always have someone else to take a look at it, find grammar and punctuation mistakes, and of course, make sure that everything you’re saying makes sense! Even if you need to buy these services online, it’s still worth the effort.

And that’s it! The rest is up to you. With these important rules and a bit of help, you’ll be able to create great essays and papers.

Author's Note

The UK, US, Canada, and many other countries all have strict rules on this subject. You do have the option to buy an essay online or buy other academic papers, but ensure that you visit a reliable site that will write new content for your essay or paper and employ native speakers from the UK or the US