Tips for Writer’s Block and Finals Stress
Here at VMI, the end of the semester is rapidly approaching. It can feel entirely overwhelming to look at all of the things left to do before you leave for Summer, but following a few simple tips and tricks will help you from feeling like you’re drowning in...
Article Analysis Essay
Recently, I’ve seen a lot of papers where the student is asked to read an article and write an analytical paper. This is a new concept for some people, and the tendency to summarize instead of analyze is strong. Here are some key tips for analyzing an article...
Writing Pitfalls: Passive Voice
In a sentence that uses passive voice, the sentence’s subject does not perform the action. Instead, the action of the sentence happens to the subject. For example, the sentence “The ball was thrown by the girl” is written in passive voice. If you see a...
Writing Pitfalls: Misplaced and Dangling Modifiers
Modifiers are words or phrases that describe another word. Dangling modifiers do not clearly modify a word in a sentence. What ends up happening, then, is something like the picture to the right. Take into account the following questions when you attempt to identify...
Sentence Variety
Recently, I saw a paper in which an entire two paragraphs basically read as follows: The purpose of this article was to inform. The audience of this article was the general public. The subject of this article was the Ebola outbreak. And on and on. There are several...Social Media
