As I have been writing for the Odyssey I have picked up on a few small things from my EIC that have helped me not only with writing for the Odyssey but writing in general. These things have helped me get better grades on my papers for all of my classes. So I thought that I would share these things with you all so that maybe you all could use them to try for some better grades on your papers.
1. Use Grammarly.
Grammarly will check your grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes. Make sure that you check what it is asking you to change though because sometimes it doesn't make sense based on what you are writing or the word choice you have used.
2. Re-read your writing.
You can catch a lot of your own mistakes just by re-reading your own work before turning it in. You may also try reading your work backward to catch mistakes too.
3. Keep more than one draft of your writing.
From time to time a computer crashes or your online submission place eats your writing so you always want to have a backup just in case of either of those cases. The last thing you want is for it to be 5 minutes before a deadline and you have to try to scramble to find a way to get your writing back and submitted on time.
4. Think outside the box.
It might be a little harder to do when you are writing an academic paper but if you can find a way to bring in something that you know others won't you should do it because it will draw in your professors more.
5. Find a proofreader for all your papers.
This is incredibly helpful because another person can catch the mistakes that you didn't. When you are re-reading your own writing you can sometimes miss some mistakes because you wrote it and you know exactly what it was supposed to say or where that comma should have been but wasn't.
