Want your composition to sound professional? We’ve explained words to avoid to enhance grammar construction and clarity to boost your essay’s quality.

Words Not to Put in an Essay: Achieving Concise and Meaningful Writing

We have compiled several words and phrases that might compromise the formal writing of essays. The choice of words is frequently underrated, yet it is the backbone of an academic writing exercise.

Using complex vocabulary doesn’t count as having a good mastery of the language; instead, grammar construction determines the quality of academic essays.

Students struggling with sentence constructions, such as using active voice and correct nouns, sometimes opt to get help from the best essay writing sites.

The primary goal of academic writing is to be more elaborate while maintaining a formal writing style with descriptive language. To achieve this, one must be careful with their grammar construction.

Sometimes we might fail to apply critical thinking during word selection allowing room for errors. For example, using passive voice is an avoidable error that might be overlooked.

Therefore, to avoid unnecessary words, it is essential to keep it simple. Let’s review some unnecessary words not to put in academic essays to attain formal descriptive language.

Words That Are Too Informal

Informal words and phrases often include slang and jargon. Including them in an essay portrays a lack of language mastery and critical thinking. Also, your reader might not understand their meaning, making it hard to rate arguments made in the paper.

Informal words downplay the seriousness of stated facts. So when choosing expressions to use in an essay, it is okay to avoid words that can make essays appear informal.

Academic essays should not have casual, ambiguous, or gross information. Therefore, avoid words that can compromise quality in essay writing.

Avoid Words That Make an Essay Sound Vague

Vague words aren’t good in formal academic writing as they often leave the reader in limbo, and they might eventually not get the main points presented in a paper.

Concise and meaningful writing helps the reader understand the arguments presented without spending much time comprehending what the vague words aim to portray.

Expressions That Exaggerate

Using exaggerated words might poke holes even in genuine and solid sentences in academic essays. The reader might fail to differentiate the facts from the overstretched ones with filler words and may even raise doubt on whether the writer is making a fair argument. Some of the exaggerated words to avoid include:

• Obviously
• Very
• Brilliantly
• Terrific
• So much
• Even

Phrases That Are Too Subjective

As much as students are required to give their opinion during essay writing, it is essential to remain objective. Words and phrases such as “I think, my take, and I believe” could come off as being too subjective.

It would be better to substitute such terms with “It seems, or there is reason to believe.” Also, being overly personal in academic writing may be viewed as too emotional and one-sided.

The arguments given would not persuade the reader. Therefore, avoid unnecessary words such as personal pronouns or emotional phrases in essay writing.

Words Spelled Incorrectly

Spelling mistakes are a turn-off in academic writing and might make the reader rule out the work even without reading. If one is unsure of certain words, looking them up for the correct spelling is okay.

Also, reading widely and critical thinking can help one improve their word range to ensure you have a broad range of words to use in an essay. Once you have a good mastery of vocabulary, you won’t ask, “Who will do my essay?”

Cliché Words and Phrases

Cliché words and phrases automatically lower the quality of an academic paper. Overused words and phrases make academic essays appear more memorized and compromise originality.

They might contribute to the word count but will not add much value. Therefore it is necessary to explore a lot of vocabulary and new phrases, and reading a lot can help before proceeding with the academic writing assignment. Some common phrases include:

• To reiterate
• Last but not least
• The points mentioned above
• Time will tell
• As luck would have it

These are a few common words and phrases that your professor has probably seen in every formal academic writing assignment they have given. One does not have to use unnecessary words; sometimes, a simple statement such as “to sum up” will suffice.

Why Avoiding Flabby Expressions Is Essential in Essay Writing

Flabby words and phrases often contain cliché and exaggerated words and may fail to communicate the agenda of an essay writing paper. Just like rhetorical questions, they might also not be helpful to the reader. These phrases only add to your word count but compromise essay quality.

Flabby expressions also border being filler words since they may not make an impact in helping the reader understand arguments presented in academic papers.

When reading an essay, the lecturers always want primary points presented concisely; therefore, using vague words may cause ambiguity and slow the flow of formal essays. So shorten words in your academic paper to achieve clarity.

Colloquial Statements and Expletive Constructions

Colloquial statements are phrases commonly used in conversations, such as “a piece of cake” and “up for grabs.” Such phrases shouldn’t be used in formal writing because they take away some professionalism from the writing.

Expletive constructions are filler words that add no value to academic writing. Examples include “There is,” “There are,” and “It was.” Such phrases take away the energy, flow, and quality of formal essays.

Phrases That Result in Passive Voice

Passive voice often uses the past tense to be. Another passive voice indication is when the verb comes after the action in a statement. It may be hard to identify the subject and object in a sentence when using passive voice, and it may also seem informal.

Using passive voice can also lead to the use of several unnecessary words to complete a sentence. So use active voice in essay writing to achieve concise and meaningful writing.

Active voice brings out the subject of a sentence as expressed by a verb. Thus, using active voice helps to shorten words and achieve clarity. On the other hand, the passive voice does not make it clear who is performing actions in a sentence.

Rhetorical Questions

Rhetorical questions may be unnecessary since they do not require a logical answer. They don’t contribute much to the quality of essay writing. Additionally, your paper may appear disorganized if not placed well.

While rhetorical questions may help the writer better comprehend the topic, they may not be helpful to the reader. If you must use these rhetorical questions, you can switch them into statements.

Big and Long Words

Using complex vocabulary in academic writing is not advisable because it lowers an essay’s quality. Therefore it is essential to shorten words by using simple and understandable phrases.

Using vocabulary such as “prodigious” and “prognosticator” might be detrimental, especially if the reader doesn’t know the meaning of the words and phrases.

If the reader cannot tell the purpose of these words and phrases, they will probably not understand some critical sections of the paper. So it’s better to opt for simpler synonyms.

Summing Up

Essay writing goes beyond meeting the word count; you also have to be thoughtful of the words you use in an essay. Filler words and rhetorical questions are some elements to avoid in academic writing. Formal writing in college should display facts and evidence, and the choice of words used to present these facts is crucial.

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