Essays are an integral part of a student’s work in both high school and college. The capability to express one’s ideas, findings, and conclusions in written format is always an advantage in professional life as well. As students struggle with finding the right topic, the relevant resources and adhering to the established formatting rules, things might get messy for many.

If a topic is hard to understand, it becomes a necessity to do thorough research. In today’s digital world, due to cyber limitations and obstructions, certain websites and databases are inaccessible for certain regions of the world. Students who find themselves in such a situation may here new buzz words – VPNs and proxy but they need first to understand what is a vpn and how it functions.

Searching the Internet for necessary information, it is easy to get caught by phishing sites or websites containing malware. To avoid being infected with newest viruses like Mac Auto Fixer you need to update your antivirus on regular basis and do not click on suspicious links and be cautious about email attachments.

Essay writing’s hardships are not necessarily limited to access to information as issues such as creativity, style and punctuality are common too. Many have put their minds to working out a formula for success, but many have failed as well: writing a good essay for school or for professional life requires personal effort and deep investigation. As one develops confidence and style, available guidelines provide an excellent roadmap for success, emphasizing details and tidbits, which are necessary but are usually overlooked.

Structure is one of the key components of success for essay writing and it helps students start the process and move forward with ease, as one of the biggest problems for such students is to actually sit down and focus. An Abstract, Introduction and Background sections are necessary for the writer to have a clear vision of how to proceed while for the reader, these sections make it a lot easier to understand the concept. A Related Work and Future Work sections are also quite handy because they create the logical pathway to the Conclusion(s) section. A well-structured essay guides its reader. Without the mentioned sections, continuity is not achievable. In terms of the structure for writing, analysis and compare/contrast sections are required to support the outline and create focus on important points.

During the actual writing process, criticism is very important. Peers and teachers provide sound directions to success if one is ready and capable of accepting errors and looking for ways to fix them. Collaboration is also another important option, as references to other papers where the same, similar or opposing ideas are discussed make it possible for the reader of the paper to be more indulgent in the discussion. Drafts are very useful for this purpose as well, because they help developing a sense of contextual reality and utilizing confidence about the subject matter.

The business world and academia have never been more intertwined than they are today. With respect to writing, there exists a direct correlation. In the business world, writing a comprehensive and convincing memo separates the good employee from the bad and as David Teten for Forbes magazine points out, memos and academic articles are very similar things. Teten gets more technical with his explanation and states that a Thesis is a necessity for a successful piece of article or other documents, as the capability to identify an argument is a great guide for the writer and reader alike.

Strong background research never hurt anyone and sticking to the preferred or necessitated formatting style. Clarity and concision of sentences helps the reader understand the subject matter quickly while the use of jargon or informal language should be avoided at all costs. Finally, Teten states that collaboration with a friend or a professional regarding the content is a step that should never be skipped. The writer should be asking crucial questions such as: “What is my main argument?”, “Is the evidence convincing?” When all the steps are completed, the writing reaches the levels of excellence and helps the business professional or the ambitious student achieve their goal.

Academic journals are some of the hardest publications to be featured in and many students do their best to be published in them. One of the main mistakes that students make in this pursuit is to stick to a chronological structure within which arguments get lost easily. It is a far better idea to develop a logic and then integrate ideas, findings, and conclusions as the reviewers are not usually interested in a historical framework of events. Arguments should be provided in the most comprehensible manner and should never be nested within one another, as access to crucial ideas and findings in the middle of the paper is a huge turn-off for the reviewers of these journals. Asking a colleague to check one’s work, preferably someone who has already been published, is a great idea because their experience will surely add a significant element of professionalism to the work.

Writing reviews or responses for academic material is an easy way to get published because such journals demand professional ideas based on already published work. These journals are read by an international community and therefore having a local approach, language or mindset is a definite key to failure. Most students seek to express their entire dissertation within a 6000 words article, but it never pays off and it is a far better idea to split arguments and publish separately.

Most students, upon entry to their desired academic institutions, are rather alien to the whole academic writing process and end up getting lost in it. To begin with, it is important to identify the type of assignment being undertaken. Whether it be essays, reports, literature reviews or short-answer assignments, every such assignment has its own unique requirements and understanding them is a key to success.

Developing a unique yet functional structure catalyzes the process of concentrating on the subject to present logical work. Defining question words provides a shortcut for the struggling student, enabling them to understand crucial aspects of the discussion they wish to present. As most students get lost in their ideas, providing direct answers to the question at hand becomes obligatory. Once the assignment is completed, seeking for ways to improve the quality of ideas, words and grammar separates a great paper from an average one.

Review is a process that needs to be professionally done while further practice in writing enables the students to develop necessary skills. Online resources are more than helpful and generally free of charge, meaning that in times of stagnation or doubt, students should check them out and make use of them.

Amidst all the general ideas and advices available, being more specific and to the point should be seen as an aspiration Zofia Niemtus asked several experts on academic writing about their ideas regarding the common misconceptions associated with the subject. Tim Squirrel of the University of Edinburgh runs an online blog on the issue, offering his learnt wisdom to the interested readers. According to him, writing a good paper is like learning to ride a bicycle as there is not much help that an outsider can give except for the basics but once the person learns how to do it, it becomes a joyful habit.

Since most materials and resources are generic in nature, it is up to the student’s cognitive capabilities to make sense and use of them. Bryan Greetham, the author of the bestselling ‘How to Write Better Essays’, says that the key here is to provide critical evaluation and to find poke holes in the existing arguments to be able to provide fresh and reasonable alternatives.

Within the writing itself, it is always a good to critique one’s own assertions to discuss possible implications but most importantly to ensure that the reader does not feel isolated with the thinking process.

Quality of resources is important and mainstream sites such as Wikipedia should only be used to get a general idea about the subject. Keeping a focus on the reading material is extremely important because otherwise, the avalanche of information and ideas will end up smothering intelligent writing. Zofia Niemtus finalizes her research by pointing out that the introduction is the most important part in any academic writing because most readers expect to understand a general sense of the debated subject matter at a first look and failure here often results in disconnection and dissatisfaction for the reader.

Writing and editing stages should be kept separate while giving breaks following the completion of daily goals helps the student relax and prepare for new accomplishments.

Author's Bio: 

David Balaban is a computer security researcher with over 15 years of experience in malware analysis and antivirus software evaluation. David runs the Privacy-PC.com project which presents expert opinions on the contemporary information security matters, including social engineering, penetration testing, threat intelligence, online privacy and white hat hacking.