Describe your whereabouts on the evening of the 18th. Okay, this isn’t CSI, and you’re not under investigation, so this isn’t the type of description we’ll be learning about in this post. Describe your summer vacation. You’re not in third grade, either...

“I want to tell you about the time I almost died.” I really don’t have such a tale to tell, but I bet I piqued your interest, didn’t I? Why? Because it’s a great opening line that makes you want to learn more. You keep reading because you want to know...

Ever sit under a tree on a beautiful summer day and reflect about your life and what you’ve learned? No? That’s okay if you haven’t. A lot of students are way too busy to spend their days reflecting. But if you’ve been assigned to write a reflective essay,...

Your instructor just told you that your next writing assignment will be a reflective essay. Reflective essays are about you, so you go home and take a good long look in the mirror. Before you start writing about what you see on the surface, keep in mind that a...

Do you remember the Mirror of Erised? You know… the one from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone–the one that shows you your deepest desire. Now imagine standing in front of that mirror. What would you see? If you wrote an essay in response to that...

If you’re havin’ essay problems, I feel bad for you, son. I got 99 problems but a hook ain’t one. I don’t have a hook problem, aside from the sick pleasure I glean from mangling popular song lyrics to suit my purpose, nor does Jay Z, if all those platinum...

Your doctor does it after you leave. Your waiter does it in front of you. Reporters do it all over the place. No no no, not that. They take notes! Even the best of us have rather limited capacity for storing information in our brains, let alone knowing exactly...

My eyes were red and burning as blood slowly ran down my forehead. My cramped and trembling fingers hovered over the keyboard like it was a Ouija board. I closed my eyes and, when I opened them again, the blog post was finished. It was like nothing I had written...

After years of being told that you shouldn’t use “I” or other personal pronouns in your essays, you get to break all the rules! Here come the personal pronouns! Finally, a topic that is actually interesting to you: YOU! Finally, an essay topic that is actually...

You have probably had to write about a fair share of boring essay topics, but this time, you’ve been dealt a topic that you think is completely played out–the death sentence. You may feel like your teacher is giving you the death sentence by making...

Whenever you’re writing an essay for a class, to get into your dream school, or for some other reason besides “just for the heck of it,”  you usually need to write a minimum number of words or pages. And while there are probably topics you could write...

Tired of writing about the same tired old topics like the ban on smoking in public places, the dangers of texting and driving, or gun control? Good. Your professors are tired of reading about these topics, too. When you’re writing a research paper, you want to...

You’ve done your research and have written a compelling essay on the existence of extraterrestrial life in the universe. You’ve developed an argument claiming that not only do aliens exist, but they have even visited our planet. You are ready to knock...

Once upon a time there was a hard-working student who paid close attention to lectures, studied hard, and learned how to cite properly in both MLA and APA format. The sun shone brightly. Then one day a dark cloud overshadowed the world. A professor asked the student...

We all know that when you write a research paper, you need evidence to support your arguments. That means you throw in a few quotes to prove to your professor that you’ve actually used sources to help write your paper, right? Sure, it’s important to add some...

You’ve heard your instructor rant, rave, and threaten about avoiding plagiarism since the beginning of the school year, but now that the first major paper is almost due, you are starting to panic. Can you plagiarize on accident? What counts as plagiarism? What...

By now, the rules of using quotation marks have probably been pounded into your head–use them when quoting a source or using dialogue, and know where to put your punctuation. But don’t worry if they haven’t been pounded into your head. I’ll cover it...

Imagine that you just had a fantastic meal at a new restaurant opened by a renowned chef. You tell your friends all about it, raving about the chef’s brilliance (he studied in France, you guys), and the atmosphere (you should see the chandelier in the foyer!),...

“You’re bound to get idears if you go thinkin’ about stuff.” — Tom Joad in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath So you have to write a paper for your English class, and your teacher has asked you to include MLA citations for your sources. And maybe...

In an age where communication in the simplest form is all the rage, you can learn a lot from Twitter. Being able to write an engaging sentence in 140 characters or fewer can be a great skill to apply to writing an essay, like when tackling those all-important...

True or false? Writing a research paper is time-consuming. True:  Writing a research paper is very time consuming. You can’t just grab a few random sources and try to make them work. You certainly can’t start writing a research paper a few hours before...