Top 9 Mistakes That People Make in Expository Essays

The expository essays are those that give information to the readers. However, they are not as easy as they might seem at first. Therefore, it is important to look at some of the common mistakes that people make when writing such paper. In this text we are going to look at the most common mistakes that the starting authors make when writing an informative text.

1. A bad thesis statement

This mistake is one of the most common. The thesis statement should include the topic of your text, the reasons and a little of your own opinion. If you have a bad thesis, there is a lot of chances that the whole expository paper will fail.

2. Usage of the ideas that you cannot support

Always choose the ideas that will be easy to support. You need to get the entire needed information ready before the actual writing. That will allow you to give some support to the ideas that you include in the text.

3. The false or irrelevant facts in the main body

Those who are just starting to write the informative texts usually make such mistake. The main purpose of the expository paper is to give the reader some information. This means that you should make sure that no irrelevant or fake info was used in the text. Surely, there is no way to be 100% sure about anything, but you have to check everything that you can, from the origin of the info to the dates.

4. Wrong words usage

One of the more advanced problems is the fact that people use the words that do not fit their texts. For example, even one informal word in a formal essay is going to cost you a lot. At the same time, you should keep your eye on such thing as the word repetition. It is hard to follow during the writing, but it does not mean that you have to forget about it. Moreover, after you have your text ready, it is the best to start looking for the words that repeat too often.

5. Some other stylistic mistakes

There are many examples of the mistakes made by the young writers, but among the most common you can meet the passive structures and the long sentences. The passive structures are not something that you should totally try to get away from. They are something that is useful in everyday writing, but when you have too many of those in one text, it starts to look excessively weird and unprofessional. The same about the long sentences, they are a normal thing, if you do not have too many of those. In addition, the long sentences should not be as huge as the half of a paragraph.

6. Grammar mistakes

The mistakes that include the grammar are usually made by those who are writing in their second or third language. The reason for this is simple; their knowledge of the language is not as deep as the one of the native speakers. However, there is nothing to blame them for. In most of the cases, such people are working on their mistakes much more than the native speakers.

7. Vocabulary mistakes

Something as the confused words is not a thing that you will notice often, because they sound just like their similar words. Something as the ‘too-to’ or ‘affect-effect’ is usually difficult to notice, but that does not mean that the writer should just take it as a normal thing. This problem needs to be solved as soon as possible, as it will not allow the writer to get on to the advanced level of writing.

8. Punctuation

Probably all of the authors face this problem at some point of their writing. This is one of the most difficult part of English, as you have to keep track of every comma in order to keep the text nice and clean. Moreover, as you are writing it is almost impossible to detect the mistake, as you always have a mindset that you are writing at your best. Yet, you might be wrong when writing something.

9. Conclusion

This part is one of the most difficult for those who are writing the expository essays for the first time. Most authors consider the thesis and the main body to be the most important parts of the text. However, in this type of writing we can say that you need to work on the last paragraph even more than on the previous ones, because in this one, all of the summaries and conclusions are made and that is something that will affect the reader the most if you do it right.