The single most effective thing most people can do to improve an answer to an essay question is to read the question statement closely.

    The next most effective thing most people can do to improve an essay question answer is to write a brief outline before starting the answer.  This will help you provide a clear structure to thoughts.  It will help you add value to your argument with each new paragraph.  You may use the back side of another page to write your outline.

    If you are given the essay question in advance, take advantage of your word processor to write a draft.  List the major points you need to make.  Rearrange the list to meet the requirements of the essay.  This becomes the outline for your essay.

    An introduction needs to introduce.  It should contain a very brief reference to the key concepts that will follow.  In a report, the introduction should contain a brief statement of the most important conclusions.

    Pretend you are a busy student and you need to quickly find out as much as you can to answer an important specific question.  You do not have time to read all the literature that has ever been written on general topics.  You need to be able to scan several hundred articles in a few days, and select which ones you need to read in more detail.

    The introduction, or abstract, needs to clearly give enough information to help the reader determine if further time should be spent reading that particular article.  It is not the purpose of such an introduction to create interest.  On this point, academic writing differs greatly from entertainment writing, such as seen in magazines and entertainment books.

    The academic world is international, even on major university campuses.  Formal writing is to be understandable by educated people for whom English is not the native language.  Assume foreign speakers can use a dictionary to transliterate.  Try to choose words that have only one meaning.  You do not need to avoid using technical words or words that express specific meanings very clearly.  If words are very specialized, either define them in a glossary or identify a dictionary or reference in which they may be found.  A person should not need to live in our culture to understand what is being written.  Minimize the need for understanding context or situation when a word is used.

    Writing that is acceptable for newspapers, magazines, and personal correspondence is not necessarily appropriate for formal academic work.  Formal writing should not include idioms, figures of speech, colloquialisms, slang, or complicated sentence structures.  Avoid using contractions in formal writing.

    Abbreviations and acronyms may be used only after being defined in the article.  It is better to avoid use of abbreviations and acronyms in formal writing unless they add clarity or replace redundant use of the full phrase.  For example: Internet Protocol (IP) address, hypertext markup language (HTML), etc.  Once defined, the abbreviation or acronym may be used later in the article.  In a manuscript exceeding about 10 pages, it is a good idea to repeat the definition, or to have a list of definitions.

    Formal academic writing requires different skills than entertainment or letter writing.  Do not use symbols as a substitute for the words "and" and "or", such as "&", "+", and "/".

    Do not permit political correctness and gender sensitivity to lead you to awkward or repetitive grammatical constructs.  If you do not have a smooth flowing gender-neutral word or phrase, choose just one gender-specific pronoun.  Educated people understand gender-specific pronouns to include the gender neutral case unless context prohibits such understanding.  Avoid "she/he/it", "she or he", etc, when repeated use adds little informational value and your intent is to indicate a generic person.  Be careful not to invent gender neutral replacements for gender specific words if such a construct invites derision.  For example, do not use "mailperson" instead of "mailman".  You could instead choose "letter carrier".

    The subject and verb of a sentence must agree in number.  When a word refers to just one person or thing, it is called "singular" in number.  If a word refers to more than one person or thing, it is called "plural" in number.  Sometimes, you want to refer to a collection of things as one set.  Do you use singular or plural?  You can clarify the situation by explicitly referring to that collection as a set.  When you are referencing the whole set as a set, use the singular case.  When referencing the collection of individual elements, use the plural.

    For regular verbs, form the third person singular case by adding an "s".

    Pronouns

    If a noun ends in "y", the plural is formed by dropping the "y" and appending "ies".  The singular possessive case is formed by appending an apostrophe followed by an "s".  The plural possessive case is formed by appending an apostrophe to the plural case.

    The Three Letter Acronym (TLA) is in common use in the computer world.  Some acronyms eventually become accepted as regular words, such as sonar, radar, and laser.  Before this time, acronyms are written in all upper case letters.  The following table illustrates formation of plural and possessive cases.

    If a pronoun (he, she, it) is used, the noun it refers to must be in the same sentence or the immediately preceding sentence.  Make obvious what you are referring to when you say "it".

    The words "a", "an", and "the" are special adjectives called "articles".  Articles are used with a noun to specify whether you are referring to a specific object or are intending the object to be understood as just a representative of a class of similar objects.

    Use the article "an" rather than "a" when the next word begins with a vowel, or if the next word begins with "h" and the "h" is silent.  An example of this rule is "It is an honor to have you as a student." The purpose of using "an" is to provide a non-vowel sound before a vowel sound.

    I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.  I wish people would use might instead of may as an auxiliary verb to indicate the possibility of occurrence of an event happening when it is not certain that the event will happen.  "Might" might be right.  You may use it when appropriate.

    I might go to the store, even if it is raining.  I might go to class.

    In formal academic writing, try to express your thoughts accurately using the fewest possible words.  If you can delete words from a sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence, then those words are unnecessary.  The technical word for this idea is "parsimony".  This is one important quality that is very different from entertainment writing.  Redundancy is considered occasionally useful in entertainment writing.

    When referring to quantities, write the names of small numbers (one, two, ...) rather than using Arabic numerals, except in the context of mathematics, science, or engineering.  When numbers are labels, such as No. 10 Downing Street, use the number symbol.

    Many people have difficulty knowing when to use commas.  If I have inserted commas in your essay, please check your grammar book for the grammar rules on commas.  Commas serve to help a person parse a sentence into units of thought.  When we speak, we do this by pausing, changes in speed and tone of voice, or body language.  A person looking only at written text does not have these clues.

    Use commas to separate words, phrases, and subordinate clauses written in series. It is optional to omit the comma before the word "and" if the meaning remains clear. It is not wrong to retain the comma.
        The saint honored God, prayed daily, spoke truthfully, and acted kindly.

    Use commas to isolate expressions which interrupt a sentence.
        Of course, John needs to review comma usage.
        Mary, of course, needs to review comma usage.
        Barasum needs to review comma usage, of course.

    Use commas before and, but, or, nor, for when they join main clauses, unless the clauses are very short.

    Use a comma after an introductory adverb clause.
        After she outlined her thoughts, she wrote her essay.
        Because he did not bring a pencil, Darin used a pen.
        If the computer ceases to respond, we use Control-Alt-Delete to restart the machine.

    Learn the difference of meanings and usage of the groups of words identified below.

    The purpose of a reference citation in academic writing is to give enough information so that a reader can efficiently find the material you are citing.  For college level writing, you must get into the habit of recording bibliographic information when preparing reports and essays.  If you do not supply bibliographic information in academic writing, you are implying

    Otherwise, the academic world treats use of such information as plagiarism, which is the act of presenting an idea as your own when it is not.  The issue of who first came up with an idea is important to scholars; it is the equivalent of establishing bragging rights.  Even when material is not protected by copyright, the ethics of the academic world require proper crediting of sources.  If you publish your writing, you must also diligently obtain copyright permission from copyright holders of material you use.

    Modern Language Association (MLA) format for references are easy to prepare in advance.  NoodleBib provides such a tool on the Internet.  It is easy to use. http://noodletools.com/noodlebib/index.php. There is a nominal fee of $4 for 3 months (in 2003). It is great if you have many references. Here is an example for our text.  The authors are:  Gary B. Shelly, Thomas J. Cashman, Misty E. Vermaat, Susan L. Sebok, Dolores J. Wells.

    To proofread for spelling, read your essay backwards.  This helps you concentrate at the word level rather than at the sentence or paragraph level.  Be sure to proofread your list of references, as well as your text.

    If you leave a blank line between each written line, you have room for making changes when you proofread your work.  When you make corrections, delete unwanted words by neatly drawing a single line through unwanted words.  Insert words by indicating the place of insertion with a caret (^).