Some General Grammar and Style Tips

Vary your sentence structure - Nothing seems more unsophisticated than an uninterrupted succession of subject-verb constructions. Take a series of sentences like the following as an example:"Moby Dick can symbolize both a manifestation of God or of the ultimate evil.”. Here are just a few of the variations you can make:

· Melville renders Moby Dick as simultaneously a manifestation of God and as a symbol of the ultimate evil.
· That Moby Dick is subject to a dichotomy of interpretations is evident in his depiction as both a manifestation of God and of the ultimate evil.
· We may intimate that Moby Dick is a juxtaposition of both the divine and the diabolical.

Combine short sentences - Try reading your paper out loud. If it seems choppy it can likely be remedied by your grouping short sentences into longer, more complex ones. For example:

"Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy has deeper implications. He becomes obsessed with escaping his own past."

This would be much stronger if combined:

"Gatsby's obsession with Daisy eventually translates into a yearning to escape his own past."

Don’t use passive voice - Plain and simple. It makes your writing weak.

Bad:"This fact was proven by Napoleon's subsequent actions."

Good:"Napoleon proved this fact through his subsequent actions." The object of the sentence should never be turned into the subject.

Maintain consistency in tense - Don't drift from the present to the past to the conditional (from"he is" to"he was" to"he would have").

Some things to avoid wherever possible:

· Starting a sentence with"there are" or"there were".
· Using the phrase"this shows" (as a substitute say"evident in this fact is" or"This interpretation belies the idea that").
· Using the word"quotation" when incorporating a direct quote. This makes for an awkward break from your natural thoughts, and creates an aura of self-consciousness in your writing.
· Exclamation points.
· The first person or second person tense. Sometimes using the first person plural (as in the previous example of"we may intimate") is generally acceptable, in that it conveys a universality that the"I" or"you" voices preclude.
· Confusing commas and semi-colons. A semi-colon can be used to connect two short, related sentences into a longer one: ”Trench warfare became standard during World War One; it was used in all the major confrontations.". A comma cannot be used in this way.
· Confusing"who" and"whom"; the former is a subject, the latter an object.
· Broad, non-specific words like"good,""bad,""nice,""important,""vivid," and"thing". If those are the only words you can use to express what you're saying, it's likely not subtle enough to make for a very good argument.