Language Rules That Will Significantly Impact Your Academic Writing

You must consider several factors to make your writing clearer, more captivating, and convincing. These include sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, and choice of words.

These factors allow your reader to understand your piece without any difficulty. After compiling your piece, you proofread it and edit the parts you think need altering. You can use the Scribinggeniouses Grammar Checker, a tool that allows you to proofread and correct your work.

In this article, we discuss common mistakes made when writing.

Table of Contents

1. Capitalization
2. Punctuation
3. Word Choice
4. Sentence Structure
5. Verbs

Capitalization

Before writing any piece, you must understand capital letters; where and how do you use them? In English, capital letters are used at the beginning of a sentence and for proper nouns. Proper nouns refer to words naming specific places, people, organizations, and other things.

Sometimes, you must capitalise the first word after a colon or the first word in a quotation.

A common mistake writers make when using capital letters is capitalizing common nouns, such as disciplines, models, and theories. Another mistake is the wrong use of capitalization in headings and titles. You must use a specific style when inserting capital letters in your writing. You are provided with a specific style for most academic pieces.

Punctuation

Punctuation marks depend on the structure of a text. They signal the beginning and end of an idea and how these ideas relate to each other. Many common grammatical errors result from misplaced or misused punctuation marks. It’s easy to fix these mistakes by removing, adding, or moving a punctuation mark.

The wrong use of a punctuation mark, such as a comma or a hyphen, must be clarified for your reader. Hence, it’s important to learn the difference and when it’s most appropriate to use each. It would help if you also learned when using a colon or a semicolon is more appropriate. Avoid interchanging punctuation marks that appear similar, such as dashes and hyphens, as this will change the meaning of your sentence.

In any English writing, you must use quotation marks when citing someone else’s words. This will help you avoid any form of plagiarism. Using quotation marks is not enough; you need to use the correct form of these punctuation marks and place them correctly.

Once you’ve completed your writing, it’s advisable to use a Plagiarism Checker to ensure that it’s plagiarism-free.

Word Choice

Writing is all about the words. Several types of words often confuse writers.

   Articles

An article is a word that comes before a noun. The articles are indefinite (a/an) and definite (the). These two articles describe either a definite or an indefinite noun. You must identify the type of noun you are writing before deciding which article to use. The rules differ depending on whether the noun is singular, plural, or uncountable. Identify the noun and whether it’s singular or plural before inserting an article.

   Pronouns

Pronouns are words that you can use in place of nouns. They include her, it, them, I, etc. Different pronouns are used for different nouns; therefore, you must identify which noun you want to refer to.

In academic writing, using second-person nouns, such as you and yours is not advisable. Depending on the type of writing and the discipline, you can use first-person pronouns, such as I and we.

   Prepositions

Prepositions are words used to describe the relationship between different elements in a sentence. They describe the relationship between direction, logic, space, and time. Some common prepositions include to, in, on, since, of, and by.

Many times, some prepositions have more than one meaning. You must read and practice often to differentiate the meanings and the appropriate times to use each.

   Conjunctions

When writing, it’s common to find a sentence that needs to be shorter to make it easier to understand. Conjunctions break the monotony of these sentences by connecting the different parts. Different conjunctions apply to different types of sentences. Ensure you understand when and where to use them to avoid grammatical mistakes.

   Commonly Misused Words

In the English language, some words can be quite confusing to use. Many writers use one instead of the other, which changes the meaning of a sentence, making it wrong. These words include this/that, who/whom, which/what, then/than, and affect/effect. Researching a word before you use it is important to ensure you use it correctly.

Sentence Structure

In English, basic word order rules state that a verb must follow a subject. Some things students often need to correct are when using fragments and run-ons. To avoid common sentence structure mistakes, practice writing sentences that vary in length and structure.

This will help you learn how to balance different elements in a sentence. You will also be able to fix misplaced and dangling modifiers.

Verbs

Verbs, or action words, explain what happens in a sentence. Verbs come after the subject of a sentence and refer to what or who is doing an action.

There are several types of verbs. Phrasal verbs, for example, combine two or more words to create a whole new meaning. These types of verbs could be clearer and are sometimes considered too informal to use in academic writing. It’s therefore advisable to replace them with one-word verbs.

When using a verb, it’s essential to use the right tense. The tense specifies what time the action is taking place. To determine the appropriate tense to use, you must first identify whether you are stating facts, describing context, stating completed actions, making generalizations, or describing events still occurring.