General Hints for Formal Essays

**aqalieh95** Mon Dec 06, 2010 9:36 pm

General Hints for Formal Essays
Credits to Mr. Honeyman, 8th grade Language Arts teacher at West Hills Middle School
Things to Avoid:

Contractions (don't)
2nd person (you, you're, your)
Weak verbs, especially verbs of being (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been, seem, became, acts)
Unnecessary 1st person (I think, I feel, I believe, In my opinion, I me, mine, myself, we, our, ours, ourselves)
Vague 3rd person (one, person, people, thing, everyone, anyone, someone, everything, something, etc.)
Cliches (a drop in the bucket / tension so thick you could cut it with a knife)
Slang (I was bummed out / That's really cool)
Agreement problems
--Subject - Verb (Each of the boys are going to the store.)[/hide]
--Pronoun - Antecedent (IF a person gets grounded, they are in big trouble.)[/hide]
Sentences that start with the same word or phrase - try starting the sentences with different parts of speech
Sentences that are all of approximately the same length - vary sentence structure as much as possible
Do NOT end lists in formal writing with "etc."