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Grammar and Punctuation
Admissions officers will evaluate your essay based on
the ideas you present, as well as the tone and style you employ.
They want to know that you can write well if your writing ability
will help you thrive at their school. If your essay is riddled
with grammatical mistakes, they will either think that you missed
some important elementary school lessons, or that you’re just plain
careless.
Don’t worry, we’re not going to waste time boring you
with all the rules of grammar. By your senior year of high school,
you should have a basic grasp of the English language. If you read
your essay aloud enough times, you can probably catch most of your
mistakes just by listening to how the sentences sound.
Give yourself enough time to pore over your essay multiple
times. Make sure you take breaks between each reading so you’re
looking at the essay with fresh eyes. It’s also essential to have
a relative, teacher, college counselor, or friend who’s a good writer
review your essay for any grammatical errors or typos you might
have missed—as well as for tone and content. Here are some common
mistakes:
Verb Tense
Is your essay in the present tense or in past tense? Do
you shift back and forth between the two tenses without rhyme or
reason? It’s a common mistake to start off in the present tense,
drift into the past, then drift back to the present, without even
realizing that you’re doing it. Shifting verb tenses will make you
seem like a less reliable narrator. If you’re going to switch tenses,
make sure you do it correctly.
Here’s an example of switching inappropriately:
I turn on the radio and hit the gas,
back out of my driveway and head down my street, thinking with excitement
about what it will be like to meet my grandfather for the first
time. When I got to O’Hare Airport, I started to get nervous.
In this example, there is no reason to suddenly switch
the past tense in the last sentence. It’s okay to recount a past
experience using the present tense, but you have to stick with it.
Here’s an example of switching tenses effectively:
I often think about the drive to O’Hare
to meet my grandfather for the first time. As I pulled out of my
driveway and got onto the expressway, I was excited and nervous,
but I had no idea of how much my life was about to change. Today,
my views of the world are colored by the lessons my grandfather
taught me.
In this example, a past event is used to reflect upon
the narrator’s present views; the tense switches enrich your writing.
When discussing a work of literature, talk about the events
that take place in the novel in the present tense; when talking
about your experience reading it, use the past tense:
The first time I read The Great Gatsby,
I related to Nick Caraway, an isolated dreamer who is trapped in
a demanding reality.
Another common tense mistake is using the past perfect
(“had,” plus the past tense of a verb) for no good reason. Don’t
write, I had eaten dinner if what you really mean
to say is I ate dinner. Use the past perfect when
you want to show that an event that took place in the past occurred
before another past event. For example:
I had eaten dinner by the time my mother
got home that night.
Use the present perfect to show a link between past and
present. It shows you still do something as opposed to it being
completely in the past. For example:
I have played soccer all my life
If you want to show that an event or behavior came to
end, stick with the past tense:
I played soccer all my life, until my
mother fell ill. Subject/Verb Agreement
A singular subject (such as puppy) requires
a singular verb (plays); a plural subject (puppies) requires
a plural verb (play). This is pretty easy, but
it can get confusing when your subject is a collective noun (such
as family, group, team, or class).
A collective noun implies more than one person but is considered
a singular and takes a singular verb:
The family hopes to find a house by the
ocean.
Certain things that go together seem plural but are actually
singular:
Peanut butter and jelly is my favorite
sandwich.
Also, the words each, either, neither, everyone,
nobody, somebody, and the phrase no one are
singular and require a singular verb:
Nobody likes learning the rules of grammar. Active vs. Passive Voice
When you revise your writing, ask yourself: who is performing
the action? If you can’t answer this question, then chances are
you are using the passive voice. Take a look at this sentence:
The citizens were not informed of the
looming danger.
From this sentence, we know that the citizens weren’t
informed, but we don’t know who failed to inform them. To turn a
passive sentence into an active one, you need to name names and
assign responsibility:
The police did not inform the citizens
of the looming danger.
Use the active voice instead of the passive voice whenever
possible. The passive voice makes your writing dull and listless;
the active voice, which allows you to use strong, interesting verbs,
makes your writing lively.
Look at your verbs: is the subject acting or being acted
upon? Giving or receiving? Rewrite your sentences after you’ve figured
out who’s doing the action, and insert the doer into the sentence.
Passive: I was given a drum set for
my third birthday.
Active: My favorite aunt gave me
a drum set for my third birthday.
Passive: Thanksgiving dinner was
eaten in silence.
Active: We ate Thanksgiving dinner
in silence. Commonly Misused Words
There are countless words that students confuse and misuse
in their writing. These errors aren’t fatal, but they’ll make your
writing look sloppy.
Here are some examples:
It’s vs. Its
It’s is a contraction, meaning “it is.” Its is
a possessive pronoun (The television series is in its final season).
Possessive pronouns (his, hers, whose, its, ours, theirs,
or yours) do not take apostrophes.
Use contractions like it’s sparingly
in your writing. Some admissions officers perceive contractions as
too informal for an application essay. Affect vs. Effect
Affect is a verb, meaning “to influence”:
The death of my grandmother affected
me deeply.
The word affect can also be used as a
noun, but you will pretty much never use it (at least not in your
application essay) unless you become a social psychologist.
Effect can be a verb or a noun. As a
noun, it means “result”; as a verb, it means “to bring about”:
The presidential debates had an effect
on the outcome of the election.
As president of student council, I effected significant
change. Appraise vs. Apprise
To appraise is to figure out the value
of something:
After appraising the drawing, Richard
informed Cynthia that her art was worthless.
To apprise is to give someone information:
In an urgent undertone, Donald apprised
me of the worrisome situation. Desert vs. Dessert
A desert is a place with sand and camels:
The cartoon character pulled himself
across the desert, calling out for water.
A dessert is something
sweet that you eat after dinner:
My favorite dessert is cookie dough ice
cream. Lose vs. Loose
To lose something is to misplace it or
shake it off:
Michael tried to lose the hideous shirt
his girlfriend had given him for Christmas.
Loose means movable, unfastened, or promiscuous:
The loose chair leg snapped off, and
Doug fell to the floor. Principal vs. Principle
The principal is the person who calls
the shots in your high school:
Principal Skinner rules Springfield Elementary
School with an iron fist, yet he still lives with his mother.
A principle is a value,
or standard.
Edward, a boy of principle, refused to
cheat on the test. Eminent vs. Imminent
An eminent person is one who is well
known and highly regarded:
The eminent author disguised himself
with a beret and dark glasses.
An imminent event is one that is just
about to happen:
When the arrival of the paparazzi seemed
imminent, the celebrities ducked out the back entrance. Lie vs. Lay
To lie is an intransitive verb; it describes
an action being performed by something or someone. To lay is
a transitive verb; it describes an action that needs to be done
to something. The tricky thing to remember is that lay is
also the past tense of the verb to lie:
Lie (lay, lain, lying)
Present tense: I lie down on my towel
and soak up the sun.
Past tense: I lay down on my towel
and soaked up the sun.
Lay (Lay, laid, laid, laying)
Present tense: I lay the pencil on
the desk and try to focus on the question.
Past tense: I laid the pencil on
the desk and tried to focus on the question. Very Unique
Unique means “without like or equal.”
There are no degrees of uniqueness; if something is unique, it is
one of a kind.
Incorrect: My cousin has a very unique
personality.
Correct: My cousin has a unique personality. Ambiguous Pronouns
Writing is about communicating. Don’t make your reader
guess the meaning of a pronoun. It should always be clear who “it,”
“they,” “she,” “he,” “him,” or “her” is.
Consider the following sentence:
My dad met with the coach, and he told
him that I was having health problems.
Who is he? Who is him? Instead,
write:
My dad met with the coach, and he told
the coach that I was having health problems. Sentence Structure and Variety
The subject/verb sentence construction dominates most
writing (I ate, We sang, The bird chirped). In
order to avoid boring your readers to death, vary your sentence
structure.
Undesirable: Her husband does not
allow her to work. He does not allow her to take care of her baby. She
longs to do something other than rest. Everyone says she is sick
and must relax. She is trapped in her room. She begins to go mad.
Better: Because of her purported
illness, everyone, including her husband, insists she rest instead
of working or taking care of her baby. Trapped in her room, she
begins to go mad.
By varying your sentence structure, you not only keep
things lively but also you indicate to your readers which assertions
are most important. They’ll instinctively understand that subordinated details (trapped
in her room) aren’t as crucial as prominent points (she
begins to go mad), and they’ll have a much easier time
understanding your writing.
Also vary the length of your sentences. A varied rhythm
to your words keeps your reader awake. Wordiness
With only a limited number of words to get your point
across, you want to be as concise as possible. Being wordy is failing
to use only the words you absolutely need. If you see phrases in
your writing such as being that or in regard
to the fact that or just the fact that,
you’ve fallen prey to wordiness. Here are some easy ways to keep
your writing brief:
Avoid Unnecessary Definitions
Don’t waste precious space explaining the obvious:
We rushed to the emergency room, a bleak
place where people who are sick or who have been in an accident
wait until a doctor can see them.
There’s no need to define “an emergency room” as it speaks
for itself:
We rushed to the emergency room. It is and There are
Avoid starting a sentence with It is or There
are:
Wordy: It is my father who makes
the decisions in my house.
Better: My father makes the decisions
in my house.
Wordy: There are some people who
just don’t know when to stop writing.
Better: Some people just don’t know
when to stop writing.
Wordy: It is to be expected that
admissions officers care about grammar.
Better: Admissions officers are expected
to care about grammar.
Wordy: There are many high school
seniors who worry about getting into college.
Better: Many high school seniors
worry about getting into college. Personally and I think
You can leave out personally and I
think because the reader knows the words on the paper are
your beliefs:
Wordy: Personally, I think the Patriot
Act provides the government with abusive police powers and methods
to invade our privacy.
Wordy: I think the Patriot Act provides
the government with abusive police powers and methods to invade
our privacy.
Better: The Patriot Act provides
the government with abusive police powers and methods to invade
our privacy. Two words are not better than one
Don’t use two words to say same thing:
I was happy and thrilled when my uncle
told me he was visiting.
Choose the stronger word and delete the other. Similarly,
you may have two sentences that say pretty much the same thing,
just in slightly different ways. It’s tempting to use both, but
decide which one is stronger and cut the other. Parallelism
In every sentence, all of the different components must
start, continue, and end in the same, or parallel, way. It’s especially
common to find errors of parallelism in sentences that list actions
or items. For example:
In the pool area, there is no spitting,
no running, and don’t toss your half-eaten candy bars in the water.
The first two forbidden pool activities end in -ing (-ing words
are called gerunds), and because of that, the third forbidden must
also end in -ing. If you start with gerunds, you
must continue with gerunds all the way through a list:
In the pool area, there is no spitting,
no running, and no tossing your half-eaten candy bars in the water. Punctuation
Using correct punctuation is vital to making your essay
effec-tive. Misusing commas, semicolons, and other punctuation marks
can give the admissions officers a bad impression, and it can even make
parts of your essay unintelligible.
Although a few minor errors may not make a huge difference
to your reader, a perfect error-free manuscript will make your application
essay outstanding. You should know the basics, as listed here:
Commas
When you join two complete sentences with conjunctions
such as and, but, or for, place
a comma before the conjunction.
I want to go, but it is snowing.
If you’re unsure whether you need a comma, check to see
if the subject changes over the course of the sentence. If it does,
you need a comma:
The parrot squawks obscenities, and the
dog eats nothing but steak.
If there is no subject following the conjunction, you
don’t need a comma:
The parrot squawks obscenities and eats
nothing but crackers.
Do not join independent clauses with a comma. Instead,
use a period or a semicolon:
Incorrect: It is about to snow, we’d
better not go.
Correct: It is about to snow; we’d
better not go.
Correct: It is about to snow. We’d
better not go.
Be sure to enclose parenthetical statements in commas:
My father, an avid skier, wants to move
to Colorado.
Also use a comma to separate parts of a date or an address:
My niece was born in Morristown, New
Jersey, on May 24, 2002.
Finally, be sure to separate items in a list with commas:
Correct: Chocolate pizza pasta and
ice cream are my favorite foods.
Correct: Chocolate, pizza, pasta,
and ice cream are my favorite foods. Colons and Semicolons
Don’t use colons or semicolons if you are unsure of how
they function in a sentence. The semicolon indicates a pause. It
is stronger than a comma but weaker than a period:
My father has a wonderful sense of humor;
nevertheless, he is a strict man.
The colon means “as follows”:
We learned five stages of grief: denial,
anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
It should not be used to introduce a short list:
Incorrect: I went to the store and
picked up: corn on the cob, hamburger meat, and beefsteak tomatoes.
Correct: I went to the store and
picked up corn on the cob, hamburger meat, and beefsteak tomatoes.
A colon can also be used to introduce a single word or
phrase, to show a close connection between the two parts, or to
add dramatic effect.
There was only one problem with her theory:
She had no proof. Quotation Marks
Commas and periods always go inside the closing quotation
mark:
“I ate too much,” said my little brother.
My little brother said, “I ate too much.”
The first word of a quotation is capitalized, but if you
interrupt the quote don’t capitalize the first word of the continuation:
“Because of your rude behavior,” said Mr. Littell, “you
can’t come on the class field trip.” Exclamation Marks
Do not use exclamation marks to strengthen weak words.
The exclamation mark should only be used for true exclamations or
for commands (and never use more than one):
What a day!
Stop! Spelling
Relying heavily on word-processing programs like SpellCheck
or GrammarCheck can get you into trouble by lulling you into a false
sense of security. For example, SpellCheck doesn’t detect if you use
the wrong word; it only notices if a word is spelled incorrectly
(and occasionally spell-checkers are wrong). So if you’re not careful,
it’s easy to miss that you wrote the word compete when
you meant to write complete.
Incorrect: I completed in twenty
three gymnastics meats last year.
Correct: I competed in twenty-three
gymnastics meets last year.
If you’re lucky, the admissions officers will be able
to guess from the context what you are trying to say. But there
is no reason to look careless. Special Warning: Make Sure You Have the Correct
College Name
Most admissions officers say their number-one pet peeve
is when an applicant puts the wrong college name in the essay. It’s
probably a good idea to know the names of the schools you are interested
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