Adjectives are describing words. Adjectives modify nouns and verbs, and should be used carefully in an academic essay; sometimes it is better to be creative with nouns and verbs than to litter your work in adjectives like, beautiful, great, awful, or exciting. Frankly, if those adjectives aren’t in a direct quote don’t use them at all. Adjectives exist in three forms, positive, comparative, and superlative. These are tall, taller, tallest; good, better, best; little, less, least and so on. There are proper adjectives that describe a person’s nationality, religion, or cultures, for example, American, British, Catholic, and Latino etc. Other categories of adjectives are as follows: appearance, colour, feelings, shape, size, condition, sound, time, taste, touch, and quality.

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Cast your mind back to when you started your degree… now think about the word count of your essays. They were small, weren’t they? About 2,000 words? Think about your second year… your workload increased from your first year, didn’t it? Naturally, in your final year, your workload should trump that of your first year, which, of course, is the natural progression of any degree. You have been studying your degree, for a number of years and in order to graduate, you must be able to demonstrate authority over a topic of your choice (the use of first person narration in American Psycho, or how the capitalist structure we have adhered to in modern society is doomed to fail, and so on). A dissertation should display a throughout grasp of appropriate techniques and methodologies, which is what your degree (undergraduate or postgraduate) has been working towards. A dissertation is your opportunity to convince the academics you are working with to your intellectual capabilities, and proofreading services will help you along your way.

The semi-colon joins two sentences together, and there are three rules that apply to its use. The two sentences must be closely related to one another, enough so that it would be disadvantageous if they were separated. The two sentences cannot be connected with and or but, and if they are, they do not qualify for the use of a colon. The semi-colon’s duty is to be placed in the middle of two complete sentences; these can be long or short. If in doubt, simply change the semi-colon in the sentence to a full stop, does it work? Yes? Then you’ve done it correctly. No? Consider using another form of punctuation – like a comma.

This is an example of correct semi-colon use: it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

This is an example of incorrect semi-colon use: I don’t like him; not at all.

The semi-colon in the above example is incorrect, as a comma would have fit in well. Our proofreading services will make sure your use of semi-colons is correct, throughout your essay or dissertation.

In short, YES!

You need to make sure that the work you hand in is written in the correct form of English, and you need to make sure that this language is set as the default language on your word processor (otherwise your spellchecker will miss things). Americans tend to spell a lot of words differently to the British. Here are some important examples that are often suggested as corrections by word processors with American English set as the default language.

‘Behaviour’ – the Americans spell this ‘behavior’.

‘Neighbour’ – Americans tend to write ‘neighbor’.

‘Organisation’ – Americans tend to spell this ‘organization’, with a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’, but this is becoming more and more common in English these days.

‘Programme’ –Americans will write ‘program’.

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Want to try and get the best marks for your work? Here are a few not-so-obvious suggestions on how you can produce a piece of work that really stands out from the others:

• Don’t stick to items on your reading list. There is a plethora of material out there on your topic, and if you can show that you’ve explored your subject area beyond the suggested texts in your reading list, examiners will definitely be impressed.

• Have an argument. Examiners hate reading essays that have no point to make. Always set out to try and formulate an answer to any given question that argues something. Remember that essays need not always be literature reviews.

• Be critical with the material you have read. If you discuss the ideas of other individuals in your essay, then don’t be afraid to criticize or attempt to disprove them. Examiners love this – it shows originality of thought. Anyone can read a book and quote it, but the best essays are the ones that ask whether or not an author is right to say what he/she has written.

• Keep the reader’s attention at all times. Don’t write long, meandering sentences that are impossible to follow. Avoid confusing statements. Be blunt (this is always best). Don’t spend much time telling the reader what you’re going to go next either. Examiners hate reading ‘now I am going to tell you all about this’, or ‘now I’m going to review the literature’. If you give an outline of your essay at the outset, this should be sufficient.

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The main difference between Harvard and Chicago is how the in-text referencing is presented.

Full Harvard referencing (author, date, page) is always placed at the end of the sentence, and is used for direct quotations and close paraphrasing. Exceptions to this are (author-date) for loose paraphrasing.  If you are referring to a specific author, you are allowed to put the date after the name, for example: Frank (2012) articulated. However, that is regarded as the only instance that you should reference in a sentence. You should never write: Frank (2012, p.34) articulated. Save the page number for the end of the sentence. There are two variations of the Harvard referencing system: American Psychological Association (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA).

Chicago referencing does not use in-text citations and it is up to the author and/or institution to use endnotes or footnotes. Endnotes appear at the end of a document, before the bibliography and footnotes appear at the end of each page.

There are benefits and disadvantages to each referencing system. Using the Harvard referencing system, the reader is able to see the precise source of the quotation or of the point being made. However, many argue that it takes away from the reading, as the references clog up the page.  The Chicago referencing style makes the reading of a piece more fluid, as there are only numbers to identify the footnotes or endnotes, yet many others argue that the number system can become confusing due to having to reference in different formats. Whatever referencing style you have to adhere to, our professional proofreaders will make sure it is perfect.

There is a very specific way to write an empirical scientific report. This is usually something that reports the results of an experiment, and is only ever really found in scientific journals. If you’re doing a scientific course, then you’ll definitely need this template:

Abstract – 100 word summary of entire paper

Introduction – specify the research topic and provide the research hypothesis

Method – what you did, with specific subsections:

Design–how the participants were used, what the variables were, what was being observed

Participants – who, how many, age range, how they were chosen and why

Materials/Stimuli – equipment used, what was used to test the given variables, data collection

Procedure – the exact sequence of events for each participant and the instructions given

Results – report empirical facts and all statistical data, include tables and figures

Discussion – summarise main points, discuss interesting findings and try to explain, implications

References – comprehensive list of all paper consulted during the research project

Appendices – raw data tables, figures and graphs that the reader may find interesting, list of stimuli

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How to reference journal articles from an online source:

The typical outline for referencing an article that you access via the internet is as follows.

Author, Initials., Year. Title of article.Full Title of Journal, [type of medium] Volume number (Issue/Part number), Page numbers if availalble. Available at: include and underline web site address/URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and additional details of access, such as the routing from the home page of the source. [Accessed date].

An example of this would be:

Hamill, C., 1999. Academic essay writing in the first person: a guide for undergraduates. Nursing Standard, [Online] 21 Jul., 13 (44), pp. 38-40. Available at: http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/ejournals/333

[Accessed 16 July 2009].

A common error in written English is the confusion between “it’s” and “its”. It’s really quite simple, if you think about it.

The word “its” (without the apostrophe before the s), simply means “belonging to it”: for example, “the company wrote to its customers” or “the shop opened its doors”.

“It’s” is a shortened (abbreviated) version of “it is”; just think of the apostrophe as replacing the missing letter: for example, “I need an umbrella if it’s raining” or “it’s a mystery to me”.

The same rule applies for “can’t” (cannot) and “don’t” (do not), and “won’t” means “will not”. However, these abbreviations should be avoided when writing an essay or dissertation. It’s worth knowing for its use elsewhere. Get it?

Another three words that can confuse your spellchecker are “there”, “their” and “they’re”.

“There” means “in that place” (check your dictionary for slight possible variations).

“Their” means “belonging to them”. It is an adjective i.e. it describes the noun (e.g. “their car” means the car that belongs to them). Note also “theirs” is a pronoun (used instead of the noun, as in “the car is theirs”); make sure you do not write “their’s”.

By the way, your spellchecker may also get mixed up over “your” and “you’re”. You can probably guess by now that “your” means “belonging to you” and “you’re” is an abbreviation of “you are”. Finally, “yours” is just like “theirs”, e.g. “the car is yours”.

These words are quite simple when you know them; it’s just useful to remember that your spellchecker may not pick them up