Cross my heart, in the six years of proofreading and providing assignment help, I can tell you with full confidence (and maybe some emotional damage) that I’ve seen students make the same mistakes over and over and over again when it comes to writing academic essays.
And don’t get me wrong, this is not because they’re not smart – in fact, they are all very smart. This is because no one sat them down and said, look, here are the things that are quietly destroying your grades while you think everything looks fine.
That’s why I’ve compiled here nine very common mistakes students make, and how you can avoid doing them on your own assignments.
1) Not actually reading your assignment briefs before writing
Believe me when I tell you that this is the most dreadful way for you to fail your assignment. I can’t tell you the amount of perfectly written essays I’ve read that answered the wrong question because someone missed one line in a secondary document.
It is genuinely upsetting.
Because there is a massive difference between skimming for the deadline and word count, and actually reading every single instruction, rubric criterion, attached file, and note the lecturer included.
The brief is not an introduction to the real information. The brief is the information. All of it. Including the parts that feel like fine print.
Read everything. Then read it again. Then open a new document and start writing.
2) Writing paragraphs that are way too short or way too long
When checking I see that there are two kinds of students when it comes to writing paragraphs, and neither of them get it right.
One, there’s a group of you who write one sentence – one – and act like that’s a paragraph already. (Okay, I did that just now, but this is a blog, not an essay).
Then, two, there’s another group that writes so long that their paragraph puts Hemingway to shame.
Both are incorrect, and both are actually losing marks.
A paragraph is supposed to do one thing, and then stop. If you are still going after 200 words, you’ve technically already started a second argument already and you don’t even know it yet.
Keep it to 150 to 200 words, and you’re good.
3) Writing grocery lists instead of paragraphs
“Topic A has several advantages. Firstly, efficiency. Secondly, cost reduction. Thirdly, communication. Then next paragraph”
I’m sorry, are you writing an essay, or texting someone a shopping list? Because that is what you are showing me here.
You’ve named three things and explained none of them, which means your marker is sitting there going — okay, and?
A paragraph isn’t just vibes and bullet points with the dashes removed. You pick one idea, you actually explain it, and you show why it matters.
In my experience, following a framework (e.g. either the PEEL structure or the What-so what- then what structure) will help make your writing more critical and less descriptive.
4) Falling into the “he said, she said” trap
You cited a source in your first sentence – good. The next one is from a different source – okay. The third one is from TWO different sources. Then your last paragraph also has a citation.
This is the assignment equivalent of being a court reporter. Every claim is someone else’s that by the time you reach the end of the paragraph, the reader has heard from six different scholars and absolutely nothing from you.
“According to Smith… Jones also states… Lee further suggests…”
At some point, your marker is going to ask: but what do you think? Academic writing isn’t a relay race where you pass the baton from one source to the next. You need to be in the paragraph too — synthesising, connecting, forming a view.
From experience, adding a sentence that says “[state your synthesis – see why this is needed?] reflects that…” to show that you have indeed done some thinking on your own to help to combat this mistake.
5) Falling into the opposite “where did you get this” trap
And then there are students going fully the other direction, writing with full confidence, zero citations, and an apparent belief that assertions become facts if you state them firmly enough.
“Consumer behaviour has shifted dramatically.” Has it? According to whom? When?
“Society has become more health-conscious.” Interesting. Can you prove that?
It doesn’t matter how obvious something feels to you. If it’s a claim about the world, it needs a source.
Your lived experience and general vibes are not APA-referenceable.
6) Describing everything, analysing nothing
This one is genuinely the most heartbreaking because the essay looks done. It has words. It has citations. It has paragraphs. And yet.
Descriptive writing explains what something is. Critical writing explains why it matters, what it means, and whether it’s actually strong or just seems that way. When you spend the whole essay summarising concepts without ever stopping to go “so what though?” — your marker reads the whole thing and feels nothing. Which is not the goal.
After every paragraph, just ask yourself: did I just summarise, or did I actually say something? If your paragraph could slot straight into Wikipedia, it’s descriptive.
If it could only exist in your essay, responding to your specific question? That’s critical. That’s what they want.
7) Writing your conclusion like a summary, not a verdict
“In this essay, I have discussed X, Y, and Z.”
Yes, I’ve just read that in the body of your essay. What is your overall insight then?
Your conclusion is not a recap. Your marker just read the entire essay, so already they know what was in it. What they want to know is what you concluded from all of it. What is your final position? What does all the evidence actually point to? That’s the trick to good conclusions.
Oh and another tip? Best that you show how firm your argument is. “The evidence clearly indicates…” hits completely differently from “it could perhaps be argued that maybe…” One sounds like someone who did the work and formed a view. The other sounds like someone who is still deciding whether to commit.
8) Writing in the wrong format type for the assignment
A business report should not read like an essay. An essay should not have headers and sub-bullets like a report. A nursing reflection is not a clinical log. These are different formats and they are different for a reason.
Format is not just aesthetics — it’s part of the grade. Your marker is assessing whether you understand how this type of writing works, not just whether you know the content. You can have all the right information and still lose marks because you presented it like a completely different assignment. Which is, genuinely, such an avoidable loss.
Find a sample of the assignment type before you start. Study it. Then write yours. It takes twenty minutes and it will save you.
9) Lastly, starting too late and hoping no one notices
Want to know a secret? Your lecturers notice it. They always notice.
A rushed essay has a very specific feeling to it, and not a good one. The first half is careful, the second half is chaos. The citations that were properly formatted early on start getting a little loose. The conclusion doesn’t quite connect back to the introduction because by that point you just needed it to end.
The parts of an assignment that actually require thought — the synthesis, the evaluation, the strong conclusion — those are exactly the parts that get abandoned when you’re out of time.
Start early enough that your brain can actually do the thing it’s supposed to be doing. That’s the whole job.
Conclusion
If you’ve made it to the end of this list and thought “okay that’s literally me” for more than half of these — first of all, you’re not alone. Second of all, now you know. The good news is that every single mistake on this list is fixable, and most of them just require slowing down and being a little more intentional before you start writing.
If you need a hand getting there, that’s what we’re here for. At inkmypapers, we’ve been helping Singapore students produce work they’re actually proud of since 2009.
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