Learn by Taking a Quiz

This quiz takes about five minutes to complete, depending upon your level of preparedness. With each answer you select, a pop-up message will appear explaining why that particular answer is right or wrong.

As you edit the grammar of your essay, you should particularly focus on the grammar concepts that your teacher has previously marked on your papers. For example, if your teacher has written “run-on” on your previous papers, especially look at the following instruction on run-ons and then look carefully over your essay to make sure you’re avoiding them. You should also be familiar with all the rest of the grammar concepts here and be sure that your essay is grammatically correct. If a term below looks unfamiliar, learn it. Although a grammatically perfect essay won’t mean that the essay is also perfect, a teacher is less apt to give you a poor grade if he or she is unable to justify that grade with grammatical errors. In the minds of many old fashioned teachers, perfect grammar equals a perfect essay. When you’re done editing for grammar, and you’ve proofread your essay a dozen times, you’re done. Congratulations!

Avoid Personal References

Use topic sentences

Few techniques add more clarity to your writing than well-formed topic sentences. Topic sentences usually appear at or near the beginning of each paragraph and tell the reader what the topic of the paragraph will be. Using topic sentences to “signpost” your meaning will orient the reader and help him or her follow comfortably along your path of thought.

According to Truman Capote, “The greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make.” As you edit the language of your essay, you are trying to make music out of the words.

There are three main ways to integrate quotations into your essay: (1) direct quotation, (2) paraphrase, and (3) mixed quotation. You should usually paraphrase the material, and only directly quote it or give a mixed quotation when the phrasing of the quotation is interesting or catchy in some pleasing way — quote when the text is quotable, in other words (like the quotation on the homepage of this site).

When using ideas or phrases from other writers in your own essay, you must correctly cite in your text exactly where the ideas or phrases come from. Correctly identifying these ideas and phrases is called “in-text citation,” and the page at the end of your essay listing the sources you used is called a “Works Cited” page.

Recap your main idea

If your essay was long and complex, sometimes difficult to follow, in the conclusion you’ll want to recap your ideas in a clear, summarizing manner. You want your readers to understand the message you intended to communicate. However, if your essay was short and simple, don’t insult your readers by restating at length the ideas they already understand. Strike a balance according to what you feel your readers need. In a short essay (600 words or less), any recapitulation should be brief (about 2 sentences), and rephrased in a fresh way, not just cut and pasted from the thesis.