As a student or academic writer, you must concentrate on quality while writing an essay.
You might have produced hundreds of essays with long or difficult sentences that would have resulted in a low grade, which is probably why you have ended up on this post.
Well, we have some good news for you! In this post, we’ll go over 10 steps or tips that can assist you in improving your sentences while you work on an essay.
You can write a strong essay draft that will get you a good grade if you follow the steps mentioned in this article.
There are numerous ways to refine your sentences, but here in this article, we would only list the simplest ones to execute, especially if you don’t have much technical experience in writing.
10 Best Ways to Refine Sentences While Writing an Essay!
Following the steps below, you can create clear, concise, precise, and digestible sentences for the reader.
1. Use Active Voice Instead of Passive Voice
The use of passive voice is not appreciated in academic writing.
This is major because passive voice sentences are usually unclear, difficult to understand, and, most importantly, wordy.
So, it is important to avoid passive voice while writing an essay or any other academic document.
By writing sentences in an active voice, you can focus on the main idea, make it easier to read, and reduce the length.
2. Make Use of Punctuations Where Necessary
You need to use punctuation wherever required when writing sentences in an essay.
Punctuations can make your sentences sound more clear and understandable. Without punctuation, you would end up creating vague content.
It is important to use commas to separate items in a sentence, use semicolons to separate items in a list, use dashes to give a break in a sentence, use quotation marks when quoting someone, and use a period at the end of every sentence.
If you don’t have much knowledge about adding punctuations in the right places, it is best that you get help from a punctuation checker tool.
A punctuation checker would not only find missing areas where you had to add them but would also highlight the wrong use of punctuation in your essay. The tool would offer suggestions following which you can fix punctuations and improve the readability of your essay.
3. Don’t Use Complicated Words or Phrases
Most newbie writers think that using complicated words and phrases in their sentences would make them look smart and intelligent, but this is not true.
When writing an essay you need to make sure that your work is digestible for the common reader. You would be explaining complicated concepts or presenting information so you need to ease it out for the reader.
Note that the best sentences are the ones that contain the simplest words and vocabulary. So if you are planning on using lesser-known words or phrases, you need to drop this idea right away.
In essay writing, you need to deliver information or ideas in the clearest possible way, and you can only do it if you use simple vocabulary.
You can try using a readability checker tool to find complicated words and replace them with suitable synonyms.
4. Divide Your Sentences Logically in Parts
When writing an essay, you must use different types of sentence lengths. You might have heard that short sentences are the best ones but know that despite the fact they are more understandable, short sentences cannot be used when you are transitioning between different ideas in your essay.
You can use long sentences for describing a complicated process or series of an event, you can use it while discussing a complicated idea or you can always use long sentences when you are setting the scene or background for presenting an idea/information.
On the other hand, you can use short sentences when introducing a new idea, making a statement, summarizing a key point, or breaking complicated information into smaller phrasings. You have to be smart about which type of sentence length would make the most sense.
5. Try to Explain One Idea in a Sentence
If your sentence contains multiple ideas or information without any breaks or divisions, it will confuse the reader and damage the quality of the essay.
When writing an essay, you must only discuss a single idea or present a piece of information per sentence or in a passage. If a single passage provides multiple ideas or a variety of information, it is going to create a mess.
Overcrowding your sentences and passages with more than one idea or explanation, you are going to end up ruining your work and will get a bad grade.
It is best that you create an outline before writing the essay. In the outline, you can determine which idea or piece of information shall be presented in set headlines/subheadings.
6. Polish Sentences with Conjunctions & Prepositions
Another way to refine and shorten complex essay sentences is by using coordinating conjunctions such as prepositions.
Most immature writers would use adverbs, which would increase the length of a sentence.
One can describe the action in a sentence in more detail by using prepositions instead of adverbs.
Also, note that it is best to replace large phrases with single words such as in fact or in addition to with also or moreover!
This would help you reduce wordiness and give a bit of clarity.
7. Remove any Unnecessary Words
There is no room for filler or unnecessary words or phrases in essay writing.
These words are added in sentences to make them sound more persuasive, but they add no real meaning or value to the sentence or the presented idea.
These words would not clarify your sentences but instead add redundancy, which is bad in an essay.
Words like so, well, maybe, seriously, actually, slightly, and like terms must be avoided as they don’t add value to the sentence.
8. Avoid Repeating Words in the Same Sentence
Repeating or overusing a word or set of phrases in a single sentence or a short passage is not smart.
It would not only make the sentence sound boring but would also drive away the reader. You must find suitable synonyms and use them instead to give your sentences uniqueness and freshness.
Today you have access to digital thesaurus and word suggestion tools that can provide you with alternative wording and phrases providing the same meaning.
By using a different choice of words you can make your essay more engaging for the reader.
9. Check and Remove any Grammatical Blunders
Making grammatical mistakes in your essay sentences will damage your content’s overall readability.
If you are not good at grammar, then it is best that you check your sentences or even the complete essay for grammar mistakes with a well-reputed proofreading tool.
The tool would find and fix any grammatical mistakes you have made and would make your draft sound more professional.
Whenever you write an essay you must never miss out on the three post-writing stages including revision, editing, and proofreading. Refinement is very important before you submit.
10. Use a Smart Paraphrasing Tool
Essay writing is not as easy as it sounds, and practicing the above tips can be daunting if you are not confident about your content writing skills.
You can always rely on a reliable paraphrasing tool to avoid the manual hassle of polishing your sentences.
A paraphrase tool can help you transform your boring, complex, redundant, duplicate, and low-quality sentences in the best possible way.
Modern paraphrase tools use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, which help them, paraphrase sentences most naturally and effectively.
The tool would change all complex words with best synonyms, remove filler words, set punctuation, remove grammatical blunders, fix typos, break lengthy sentences into short ones, and convey the core ideas in the clearest possible way, and that too in a matter of seconds.
All you have to do is upload the essay sentences you want to paraphrase in the input box, select the “Academic” mode, and click the “paraphrase” button.
The tool would get you high-quality sentences in an academic style and tone without demanding you to put in any human effort.
Conclusion
Essay writing is difficult as you must present ideas and information in the clearest possible and unique way.
If you don’t have much writing skills and have created wordy and complicated sentences, instead of submitting the draft and getting a bad grade, we suggest you follow the ten steps for sentence refinement discussed in this post.
If you want to avoid the manual editing process because of a short deadline or simply because you are not confident enough and want to get your draft fixed in seconds, you can rely on an online paraphrasing solution like Paraphrasing-Tool.ai.
By using the tool, you can get your content improvised in a matter of seconds.
You can save a lot of your time and resources wasted in manual refinement by employing the services of AI tools!
