This article discusses 6 bad habits to avoid in academic writing. To give you an opportunity to practice proofreading, we have left a few spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors in the text. See if you can spot them! If you spot the errors correctly, you will be entitled to a 10% discount.

Writing an academic paper is not similar to other forms of writing. It requires patience, knowledge, and the use of proper sentence construction. Being a proofreading and editing services provider, we often find that many researchers and students make dramatic mistakes in their research paper writing without following academic guidelines. An academic paper should be informative, polished, and well structured. As a student or researcher, you should learn about bad habits and not repeat them in your academic writing. In this article, we discuss 6 bad habits to avoid in academic writing.

1. Using lengthy and complex sentences unnecessarily

Academics papers require clarity in sentence construction. However, many students and researchers use lengthy and complex sentences in their writing. They use excessive conjunctions and acronyms to make the sentence more attractive. In reality, it makes the sentence harder to read and understand. Writers often move from the main topic and arguments while they use long and complex sentences. However, you may follow these basic rules for flawless writing:

• Try to keep each sentence average of 15–20 words.

• Sentence length may vary from topic to topic but make writing a mixture of short, lengthy, and medium sentences.

• Try to use simple sentences to make your paper easy to read.

• Use small subheadings instead of bland long paragraphs.

2. Overuse of passive construction

Excessive use of passive voice is just another way to make your writing more complex. Academic writing requires clarity in tone as well as dynamism and universality. However, using passive voice frequently can spoil the purpose of your research paper or essay.

3. Collecting information from Wikipedia

Collecting information from Wikipedia to write an academic paper is another form of malpractice. When you search anything on Google, Wikipedia links appear at the top, but you can’t consider it a trusted and scholarly source. Anyone around the world can edit these sites. That is how Wikipedia operates. Instead of Wikipedia, you can use online journals and databases such as Google Scholar, Core, and ScienceOpen.

4. Plagiarism

Plagiarism refers to stealing someone else's hard work and writing. Plagiarized content doesn't only affect the uniqueness of your writing but also violates academic guidelines. If your academic paper is caught with plagiarism, it will be rejected for sure. Moreover, it has the worst impact on your academic career.

We can divide plagiarism into two sections: Intentional plagiarism and unintentional plagiarism. Intentional plagiarism means that a student or a researcher copies others’ work intentionally, while intentional plagiarism can occur due to several reasons i.e., researchers might not have the idea of a subject, or they don’t get enough time. Unintentional plagiarism happens when a student or researcher can’t cite the references properly, or they may miss adding quotation marks or many other reasons.

Plagiarism is the activity in which another author’s works, expressions, thoughts, ideas, or language are copied or stolen and published. Such activity is highly frowned upon and if someone’s work has plagiarism, it becomes susceptible to fines, penalties, dismissal, and at times, even imprisonment. Having your work marked as plagiarized is highly humiliating and may cause an end to one's academic career. Therefore, having your work checked for plagiarism is a mark of authenticity and originality. As a writer, this evidence of originality is extremely essential.

To detect plagiarism in writing, researchers can use online plagiarism checker tools. However, researchers can also consult experienced proofreading and editing services to detect and remove plagiarism from the entire paper.

• How to Choose the Right Plagiarism Checker for Your Academic Works

• What is Plagiarism | How to Avoid It

• 5 Practical Ways to Avoid Plagiarism

5. Avoiding revision

Don’t ever skip the revision part. At the time of the final revision, you can proofread and edit your assignment to make it error-free and more attractive. There can several mistakes associated with spelling, grammar, styles, readability, etc. It is a vital part where you have to use your patience and knowledge of grammar. However, many writers leave this part to expert proofreading and editing services.

6. Not consulting an expert for proofreading and editing for help

Consulting experienced proofreading and editing services is the last step before submitting your final assignment. While writing an assignment, it is not always possible for a researcher to keep everything organized. They unintentionally leave several loopholes related to structure, styles, grammar, use of sentences, and everything mentioned above.

Especially, non-native English speakers often make several mistakes in the choice of words and grammar in research papers. Writers must have a solid knowledge of the content they write. They are expected to give the primary framework of an article, essay, story, novel, thesis, or any literary piece. However, they might make numerous typing and literary mistakes while writing. These mistakes become a primary reason for rejection and unclear creation of content.

Companies and freelancers offer editing and proofreading services to enhance your write-up. Dedicated organizations nourish a skilled team of editors and proofreaders who check your write-up and correct anything that is at fault. The solid reasons to consider editing and proofreading services are:

• To professionally eradicate the grammatical mistakes that make your writeup unclear.

• The editing service will make your literary piece confident to read and listen to with a vivid painting of pictures through words.

• Your writing will get a professional outlook.

• You will save time as re-reading long pieces require much time and effort. In the meantime, you can finish up writing a new piece.

• The written piece will get a structure with an appropriate title, subheadings, and paragraphs.

• You will receive suggestions to make your content better.

In a nutshell…

Writing research papers and assignments seamlessly is important for your academic career and future. Please don’t take it lightly. However, if you are looking for a trusted proofreading and editing service, you may contact Best Edit & Proof. Our experts are dedicated to easing your academic career. You may reach us for more information.

Do you need an expert to review and edit your manuscript?

Have you completed writing your manuscript? Do you want someone to review the entire article and make necessary changes if required? If yes, we bring the most trusted and efficient editing and proofreading services near you. At Best Edit & Proof, our experts will edit and proofread your papers to make necessary changes. 

Best Edit & Proof expert editors and proofreaders focus on offering manuscripts with proper tone, content, and style of academic writing and also provide an upscale editing and proofreading service for you. If you consider our pieces of advice, you will witness a notable increase in the chance for your research manuscript to be accepted by the publishers. We work together as an academic writing style guide by bestowing subject-area editing and proofreading around several categorized styles of writing. With the group of our expert editors, you will always find us all set to help you identify the tone and style that your manuscript needs to get a nod from the publishers.

English manuscript formatting service

You can also avail of our assistance if you are looking for editors who can format your manuscript, or just check on the particular styles for the formatting task as per the guidelines provided to you, e.g., APA, MLA, or Chicago/Turabian styles. Best Edit & Proof editors and proofreaders provide all sorts of academic writing help, including editing and proofreading services, using our user-friendly website, and a streamlined ordering process.

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