Learn to Write Perfect Formal Essays

If you’re a student, you may know different types of essays and what do if you need to write any one of them. The simplest way to categorize essays is to divide them into formal and informal ones. Indeed, the same approach works with academic writing. Some assignments leave you with a lot of freedom, being able to stay relaxed and use the informal tone. Other papers are impossible to write in an informal way, so you need to follow strict guidelines. We decided to describe the basic differences between these two big categories of academic writing.

Third Person

The chosen point of view determines your style and used methods. Here are a few reasons why the third person is recommended for formal essays:

• “I,” “we,” and “our” are often used in narrative and reflective essays. These are three forms of the first person. You can choose the first person in informal writing in case your instructor allows you to do so.
• The second person is never used in academic papers. The only exception is when the assignment includes an instructional process description.
• “He,” “she,” “they,” and “it” are three forms of the third person which fits both academic papers and formal essays.

In fact, the third person also changes the tone of any sentence, making it more credible.

Synonyms

When you get instructions on the number of words, there is a certain reason for it. You can’t expect to get the highest grades if you wrote fewer words than you’ve been asked to. Thus, you need to make every word important.

Formal essays offer you a great opportunity to use your thesaurus. Using formal words, you make your writing more professional. The proper word choice allows you to deliver information more effectively. Specific vocabulary also allows you to be more informative, using the given number of words with the maximum productivity. General phrases provide only the broadest meaning, while specific terms and figures provide details. This is why they also need citations.

However, we don’t suggest stuffing up your essay with long complex words. Before you decide to put some in your text, ask yourself a few simple questions:

• Do you know what this word actually means?
• Have you ever used it before?
• Does it add any specific meaning to what you’re going to write?
• Are you sure there are no other words that can be used?

If you’ve answered most of these questions positively, there’s no reason to stop yourself from using some term, however, if you’re not really sure about it, we suggest using simpler words and phrases to avoid awkward situations.

If you’ve seen this word many times but you’re not sure you got it correctly, check your dictionary.

Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are nice and good, but you shouldn’t use them in your academic papers, in fact, they may cause many problems. The use of phrasal verbs is the shortest way to make your document informal. Therefore, if you’re puzzling on how to make your writing formal, just replace all phrasal verbs with synonyms.

Redundant Words

If you caught yourself on an attempt to use these short and, basically, meaningless words, this means that you just don’t know what to say. The only real function of these words is increasing the word count. Just search for them through your document and delete every one of them if it’s unnecessary. Here are your main enemies:

• Really
• Very
• Believe
• Actually
• Think
• Always

There are also special programs that allow you to check your documents automatically, removing all the trash from it, making it more clear and informative. Most often, removing these words will not affect the meaning of your content at all.

Acronyms

Abbreviations are quite common in academic documents, however, you must know how to use them properly. Otherwise, these words will only make reading your paper a difficult and boring task. Every time you mention some acronym for the first time, start with the full name and then write the acronym in brackets. If you mention some name too often, you can go with abbreviations only. There are also acronyms familiar to almost everyone, so you don’t need to explain them. For example, these are NASA, the UK, or the USA.

Contractions

You don’t need them in academic writing. They are useful in speech and informal papers, but the formal tone is different from emails you send to your friends. The formal tone of writing doesn’t allow you to use contractions. When writing persuasive or argumentative essays, use “can not” or “cannot” instead of “can’t,” “we will” or “we shall” instead of “we’ll,” “it is” instead of “it’s” (to emphasize that you don’t mean “its”), etc.

On the other hand, you can use contractions in college admission essays, as these papers are informal and more personal, but you should avoid awkward and ridiculous constructions, such as “y’all’d’ve.”

Even if you’ve written dozens of formal papers, there are always a plenty of opportunities for your improvement. Just take into account our advice, check your paper, and remove everything that is unnecessary and used improperly. After this, take a glance at your assignment, and you’ll be surprised by how professional it looks. And you can be sure that your professor will notice the difference as well.

If you don’t have enough time to cope with your formal papers, our writers are always ready to get your back. We also have a team of professional editors who can turn your first draft into a masterpiece. Learn more about formal writing, move towards your goals, and don’t be afraid to ask for help!