Technical tips

You can have a clear thesis, logical outline and present killer evidence, but if you use confusing, grammatically iffy language, you will never make an A. Use these first two tips and you will make an A, on virtually everything you ever write.

Only use: Am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been, have, has, or had, once in every three sentences.

When you find yourself typing, "…ing," backspace, backspace, backspace and find a different way to say it. Be-Verbs set you up to make grammar errors. The more you use them, the higher the chance that you will make tense and agreement errors. When you use Be Verbs, punctuation becomes more confusing than it already is. So, avoid them as often as possible. Stick with simple present and simple past tense. Your writing will be easier to understand and your vocabulary will grow.

This is the most important part of academic writing. No matter what anyone says, don’t write like you talk. You’ll sound smarmy at best and stupid at worst. Learning how to write without using Be-Verbs will do more to make your writing stand out than any other thing you can do. Writing with an active voice helps your vocabulary grow and leads to a deeper understanding of your subject, for you and your reader. Writing with an active voice is hard, but so is flunking out and working at a call center.

Beware of: Can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must, which, whether, or whom.

 

These words confuse and dilute your voice and they usually have to be followed by Be-Verbs. Besides, in a literature class, if you use "must" in any kind of research, you had better have a Works Cited or Reference List entry that won the Nobel Prize to back you up. If you use "whom," you’ll be wrong, so think of a different way to say it.

Count the number of times Robert frost uses those words.