Tips on Writing Conventions for College Students

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Are you looking for the tips regarding the basic conventions of writing? You are at the right place. But it is very common for the students to confuse themselves about conventions in writing. Let us make it simple for you.

Conventions are the elements in writing that make your written piece clear and understandable. In fact, when the reader is finished reading, they learn the meaning of text.

Yet, learning conventions is sometimes not a happy experience for many students. This blog will give you some quick tips and hacks that will save you from learning countless grunting rules.

Tip #1: Make sure you do capitalization correctly.

Capitalization errors are the most common in college students’ essays. It helps the audience better understand the purpose of a word. For instance, ‘March’ indicates a month while ‘march’ indicates an action. The quick thing to remember is to capitalize at the beginning of a sentence, titles of people, salutations and complimentary closes, titles of publications, and titles of courses.

Tip # 2: Take your time to check your punctuation marks.

Without correct application of punctuation marks, your text will be topsy-turvy. Here are quick tips on punctuation:

• Use commas to connect adjectives, to separate city and state, to separate added information from a sentence, and to connect clauses.
• Use semicolon to connect two complete sentences
• Use colon before mentioning a list.

Tip # 3: Combine the clauses properly

Properly combining clauses of a sentence increases the sentence’s readability and understanding of audience. Use comma and semicolon to join the two clauses.

Clauses represent one of the most trying writing conventions, so learn them with care and practice them as much as you can.

Tip # 4: Create a variation in your sentences

Creating variation in the sentences not only makes the text interesting but it also saves the text from sounding monotonous. It will increase the quality of your essays, for sure. There are multiple ways of creating a variation in sentences. For instance, set an interesting opening paragraph, change the length of sentences in each para, and write sentences having different structures.

Tip # 5: Make sure to use parallel sentence structure

When you write different items in a list, make sure you follow a parallel structure. It creates an emphasis on the reader and also increases your capability as an essay writer in mind of the audience. Here is an example of this tip:

• Revising, editing, and to proofread are the vital steps after you are done writing your essay.
• Revising, editing, and proofreading are the vital steps after you are done writing your essay.

The second example indicates the correct example of parallel structure.

Tip # 6: Grammar is the key.

Grammar is all about changing the forms of words and combining them into correct sentences. You might be pissed off thinking that you better know when to put ‘ed’. But here we are talking about being consistent in time usage. For instance, it is not possible that half of your essay is in present tense and half in past tense. If you fail to keep the time consistent, the audience will be confused about your time frame.

Tip # 7 Make sure to use the correct spelling

Last but not the least tip for you is to double check all the spelling mistakes. If you make a spelling mistake, you will ruin your impression in the eyes of the audience and your credibility.

Above all, also do not forget to proofread, edit, and revise your essay based on these convention tips. Start practicing these to become a proficient writer.

However, you can never become a proficient writer overnight. If your assignment is due in the next couple of days, take help from an online essay writing service. Hire one of their writers to get your assignment done.

Good luck!