Essay Masterclass / Module Five
One principle sits underneath almost all sentence repair, and it explains more heavy prose than any other single idea.
Put your characters in the subjects and your actions in the verbs.1
A character is whoever is doing something. An action is what they do. An English sentence is built to carry a character in the subject slot and an action in the verb slot, and a reader takes in a sentence fastest when that is where they are. When a sentence feels heavy and you cannot say why, it is nearly always because those two things have come apart. Somebody is doing something in the world, and the sentence has hidden the somebody and turned the doing into a noun.
An admissions reader meets this in most files, because school has trained students to keep the word I out of formal writing. The reader does not name the problem. They feel the essay as slow, and they feel the writer as distant, because the person who did things keeps disappearing from their own sentences. Here is the principle applied to four sentences of the kind we see in most first drafts.
Weak
The realisation of my error came through a discussion with my coach.
Strong
My coach told me I had been wrong.
Weak
My participation in the robotics club was the beginning of my interest in engineering.
Strong
I joined the robotics club and started to want to be an engineer.
Weak
The improvement of my technique was the result of months of repetition.
Strong
I got better because I played the same eight bars for months.
Weak
Our discussion about the incident led to a reconciliation between my brother and me.
Strong
We argued about it, and then my brother and I made up.
What changed. In every strong sentence a person is the subject and the thing they did is the verb, and each sentence is shorter because the actor and the action no longer need a scaffold of nouns and prepositions to hold them up.
Count the first pair. Fourteen words against eight. The weak sentence has no human being in the subject slot, so realisation is doing the acting. The action, realising, has become a noun, and the person who actually spoke has been demoted into a prepositional phrase at the end. The strong sentence puts the coach where he belongs, at the front, doing the only thing that happened.
The technical name for a verb turned into a noun is a nominalisation, and Joseph Williams makes the point with the word itself. When you nominalise nominalise, you get nominalisation.2
Nominalisations are not errors. Used deliberately they let you refer back to something already said. Used unconsciously they drain sentences, and students produce them constantly because school taught them that formal writing avoids the word I.
The tell is a small set of endings. -tion, -ment, -ance, -ity, -ness, -al. Search for them. Then look at what the sentence is really about and ask who did what. Watch the pattern in the four pairs above. My participation in the club became I joined. The improvement of my technique became I got better. Our discussion about the incident became we argued. In every case the sentence shortened, a person appeared, and the verb became something a body could actually do.
One more pattern is worth naming on its own, because it is epidemic in application essays. An empty verb props up a nominalisation. The intention of the committee is to audit, where intention is could simply be intends. Look for is, was, has, seems and provides sitting next to an abstract noun. That combination is almost always two words doing one word's job.
Weak
My intention was to make an apology to her before the concert.
Strong
I meant to apologise to her before the concert.
Weak
There was a failure on my part to make a decision about the team.
Strong
I failed to decide about the team.
Weak
This experience provided me with an understanding of what patience is.
Strong
That summer taught me patience.
What changed. The empty verb and the abstract noun beside it collapsed into one verb that a person does, and the sentence lost between four and seven words without losing anything the reader needed.
In Water Break, a Harvard essay published in the New York Times, a son climbs a cliff trail with his father, who has lost his job and much of his confidence. Here is the passage where the writer describes his father's decline and his own reaction to it. The material is abstract, a depression and a son's growing contempt, and the sentences are not.
In time, as we both grew older, this changed. He lost his job and fell into a depression and an absent-mindedness I found hard to understand. Despite his dealing with a mental illness, I became more critical, more attentive to his flaws and shortcomings. He lost his glasses, got linguine when we asked for rigatoni at the grocery store and forgot my friends’ names.
At family dinner he sat largely silent until he interrupted with a non sequitur or unrelated question. I promised myself, with all of my naïve bravado, that I would never make myself vulnerable like he did, that I would never wallow in past regrets or failures. I would be assertive, I told myself. I would be a man.3
Read only the subjects. This, he, I, he, he, I, I, I. Every subject after the first is a person. Now read only the verbs. Changed, lost, fell, became, lost, got, forgot, sat, interrupted, promised, would be. Every one of them is something a body or a mind can do. The writer never says the deterioration of my father's condition or my growing critical attitude towards him. He says his father lost his glasses and got linguine, and that he himself became more critical. The passage is about failure and judgement, two abstractions, and there is no abstract noun in the subject slot anywhere in it. That is why a reader moves through it quickly and feels the weight of it at the same time.
Search your draft for the six endings. For every hit, ask who did what, and rewrite so that person is the subject and that action is the verb. Then search for is, was, has, seems and provides and look at the noun beside each one. Exercise one gives you the full procedure and asks you to count what it saved.
William Zinsser opens his chapter on this without hedging. Clutter is the disease of American writing, and we are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.4
His deeper claim is the one to hold onto. Clear thinking becomes clear writing and one cannot exist without the other, which means a cluttered sentence is usually an unfinished thought wearing extra words, and rarely a matter of style. An admissions reader with a stack of files reads clutter as a writer who has not yet decided what they mean. The reader is right more often than the writer would like.
Six categories, and you can search for most of them. Each is shown below on a sentence of the kind a capable student writes.
Qualifiers that qualify nothing. Very, really, quite, rather, somewhat, actually, basically, definitely, truly. Delete all of them and restore none. A sentence that needs very needs a better adjective.
Weak
I was really very nervous before what was actually quite an important final round.
Strong
I was frightened before the final round.
Doubled words. Each and every, first and foremost, hopes and dreams, thoughts and feelings, trials and tribulations. Pick one. The pairing is rhythm masquerading as emphasis.
Weak
First and foremost, my hopes and dreams were tied to each and every match.
Strong
My hopes were tied to every match.
Redundant modifiers. Zinsser's own example is a personal friend of mine, where my friend says everything. Also past experience, future plans, unexpected surprise, final outcome, close proximity, sudden realisation.
Weak
A personal friend of mine gave me some advance warning about the final outcome.
Strong
My friend warned me about the result.
What changed. Every word that was doing no work came out, and the three strong sentences say what the weak ones said in fewer than half the words.
Windup phrases. The fact that, it is important to note, in terms of, due to the fact that, at this point in time, in order to, the way in which. Every one of these can be cut or reduced to one word.
Weak
Due to the fact that my father was working late, I was the one who had to make dinner in order to feed my brother.
Strong
Because my father worked late, I made dinner for my brother.
Announcing what you are about to do. I would like to discuss. In this essay. As I mentioned earlier. Throughout my life. A six hundred and fifty word essay has no room for signposts and no reader who needs them.
Weak
In this essay I would like to discuss how, throughout my life, swimming has mattered to me. As I mentioned earlier, I began at six.
Strong
I began swimming at six.
Adverbs doing a verb's job. Ran quickly, said loudly, walked slowly. Sprinted, shouted, ambled. One word, more information.
Weak
I ran quickly down the corridor, spoke loudly to the nurse, and then walked slowly back to the ward.
Strong
I sprinted down the corridor, shouted at the nurse, and then trudged back to the ward.
What changed. The windup, the announcement and the adverb each turned out to be standing in front of the real sentence, and once they were gone the real sentence was already there.
Now the exercise that produces more improvement per minute than anything else in this course, and the one students resist hardest.
Take a finished paragraph and remove ten percent of the words without losing any content. Ten percent of the words, with every fact and every idea still there.
It is always possible. That is the thing you have to experience rather than be told, because everybody believes their own paragraph is already tight and everybody is wrong. Zinsser mentions that the pages of the chapter you are reading had already been rewritten and retyped four or five times, and that reading them aloud he was still amazed how much clutter remained.5
Here is a paragraph of exactly one hundred words, of the kind a careful student hands in believing it is finished, and the same paragraph after the cut.
Weak
When I started volunteering at the animal shelter, I was really quite nervous, because I had never actually worked with animals before in my life. The very first dog that I was assigned to was a large brown mongrel called Bruno, who was extremely frightened of basically everyone. In order to gain his trust, I would sit down on the floor of his kennel each and every afternoon and simply read my chemistry notes out loud to him. It took about a month in total, but at the end of that time he finally put his head on my knee.
Strong
When I started volunteering at the animal shelter I was nervous, because I had never worked with animals. The first dog I was assigned was a large brown mongrel called Bruno, who was frightened of everyone. To gain his trust I sat on the floor of his kennel every afternoon and read my chemistry notes aloud to him. It took about a month, but at the end of it he put his head on my knee.
What changed. The exercise asked for ten words and the paragraph gave up twenty-four, from one hundred to seventy-six, and the reader still knows every fact the first version contained, including the nervousness, the chemistry notes, the month and the knee.
Do it on a hundred-word paragraph first so the arithmetic is easy. Ten words. Then do it on the whole essay, which at six hundred and fifty means finding sixty-five words. You will find them in the qualifiers, in the windups, and in one paragraph that turns out to be saying something twice.
In In the Shadow of my Piano Teacher, a Brown essay, a girl grows up as the daughter of a famous piano teacher, leaves music to find a name of her own, and discovers late that she does not want to give the other name up. The essay ends in fifty-four words.
A year later, I found myself in Parliament, no pigtails, standing with my mother. I caught Mr. Yang’s eye – a street spotting, but no father in sight. “Congratulations Francesca! It’s so lovely to meet you!” I welcomed the shock. Mum's eyes crinkled. I'm not just the piano teacher’s daughter. But then again, I am.6
Look at what is not there. No pigtails does the work of a sentence about having grown up. No father in sight does the work of a paragraph about standing on her own. Mum's eyes crinkled repeats, in three words, an image the essay planted earlier, when the writer as a small girl scoured the audience for her father and knew, in her words, that when his eyes crinkled, I knew I was climbing his ranks.6 Nothing in the paragraph is qualified, doubled, announced or padded. A reader feels the ending as earned partly because there is nothing left in it to cut.
Run the six searches first, in the order given, deleting as you go. Then take your word count, work out ten percent, and keep cutting until the count has dropped by that much. Exercise two sets the target and tells you not to stop early.
This is the most useful thing in this module and the least known outside professional editing.
Readers want the familiar at the start of a sentence and the new at the end. We understand by attaching new information to something we already hold, so a sentence that opens with the unfamiliar makes us carry it unsupported until the connection arrives.7
Which is why a paragraph can be composed entirely of clear sentences and still feel like wading. Nothing is wrong with any single sentence. The information is arriving in the wrong order. An admissions reader who has read forty essays that afternoon will not diagnose this. They will feel that the essay is hard work, and they will not know why, and the feeling will go into the score.
In each pair below, the first sentence is the same. Only the second sentence changes, and only its order.
Weak
I spent that summer at my grandmother's house. The way she washed and folded used bread bags, saving them in a drawer by the sink, was the thing I remember.
Strong
I spent that summer at my grandmother's house. What I remember is the bread bags, washed and folded and saved in a drawer by the sink.
Weak
My father taught me chess. A cheap wooden set with a missing white bishop, replaced by a bottle cap, was what we played on.
Strong
My father taught me chess. We played on a cheap wooden set with a missing white bishop, which we replaced with a bottle cap.
Weak
The final round was held in the school hall. A judge I had never seen before, a retired barrister with a hearing aid, sat in the middle of the panel.
Strong
The final round was held in the school hall. In the middle of the panel sat a judge I had never seen before, a retired barrister with a hearing aid.
Weak
I failed the audition. A recording of the piece by a pianist my father admired, which I had listened to a hundred times, had taught me every note wrong.
Strong
I failed the audition. I had learned every note wrong, from a recording my father admired and I had listened to a hundred times.
What changed. In each strong second sentence the opening words connect to something the reader already holds from the first sentence, the summer, the game, the hall, the failure, and the new material lands at the end where the emphasis naturally falls.
Take the first pair. Same facts. In the weak version the second sentence opens on a long new clause and delays the familiar idea of remembering to the very end. In the strong version remembering comes first, because it connects to the summer you just read about, and the bread bags land where the emphasis falls.
Williams also notes the trap, which is that this is far easier to see in other people's prose than your own. After working on your ideas for so long everything looks familiar to you, so your sense of what is new is unreliable exactly when you need it.9 His fix is the one to use. Get somebody else to underline every piece of new information in a passage. If the underlining clusters at the beginnings of sentences, revise.
In Tetris, a Penn essay, an Australian student uses the computer game to describe how he learned to stop worrying about what he could not control, first in debating and then on the football field. Here is the paragraph where the essay turns from the game to the writer's habits.
Like the shapes of forthcoming Tetris pieces, our circumstances in life are often beyond our control. As a child, I frequently worried about matters that were, in dad’s words, “none of my business”. Before soccer matches, I would grimace upon seeing the opposition’s best player, intimidated before the game even began. Before debates, I would complain about the difficulty of the topic, failing to acknowledge that every debater had the same challenge. Before exams, I would pray for an easy test, rather than have confidence in how much I had learned. Tetris reminded me that the most important goal when performing any task was to focus solely on the keyboard’s arrows; adapt, improvise and overcome.8
The first sentence opens with Tetris, which the reader has held since the title, and ends on the new idea, that life is beyond our control. The next sentence opens with As a child, which is familiar because the essay is a childhood, and ends on the new fact, that the writer worried about what was none of his business. Then three sentences in a row open on the same shape, Before soccer matches, Before debates, Before exams, so that by the second one the opening is entirely familiar and the reader's whole attention goes to the ending, which is where the writer puts what he did wrong. Grimaced. Complained. Prayed. The last sentence opens on Tetris again and ends on the three words the paragraph was built to deliver. Nothing in the paragraph is difficult, and that is the point. The reader never carries anything unsupported.
Read only the subjects of your sentences, in order, ignoring everything else. That list is your topic string, and it is the fastest structural diagnostic on the page.
A coherent paragraph produces a string that circles a small number of related things. I, I, my mother, she, she, the vacuum. An incoherent one produces a scatter. I, the experience, communication, my teammates, the realisation, things. The second paragraph may contain no bad sentences at all and will still read as drift, because the reader's attention is being moved somewhere new every sentence.10
Weak
I joined the school newspaper in tenth grade. The experience of writing for an audience was completely new. Communication had never been something I thought about. My teammates on the sports desk were older and quicker than me. The realisation that I was slow came in the second month. Things improved after that.
Strong
I joined the school newspaper in tenth grade. I had never written for anyone but a teacher. The sports desk was run by two seniors, and they were quicker than me at everything. They filed in an hour. I filed in four. By the second month I knew I was the slow one, and by the third I had stopped minding.
What changed. The weak paragraph's topic string is I, the experience, communication, my teammates, the realisation, things, and the strong paragraph's is I, I, the sports desk, they, they, I, I, I, so the reader's attention stays on two things, the writer and the two seniors, instead of being moved to a new abstraction every sentence.
Here is the same diagnostic run on a real paragraph. This is Water Break again, the passage where the writer describes the father of his childhood.
My relationship with my dad is a complicated one. In the halcyon days of my childhood, I remember our Saturday morning "dump runs" followed by a stop at McDonald’s, where, as soon as he let me, I would order the exact same "Big n’ Tasty" meal he would. Then, he took me hiking, camping, and skiing. His patient guidance and care on the trail stood in stark contrast to my frustrated, bumbling childhood clumsiness. I would whine and cry and yell on hikes too long or hills too steep; he would stop, listen and encourage me onward. With him, I was comfortable and secure. He could do no wrong.11
The string is my relationship, I, he, his patient guidance, I, he, I, he. It circles two people and one thing between them, and it alternates. Father, son, father, son. The paragraph is about a relationship, and its subjects are the two halves of that relationship, turn and turn about, which is why a reader feels the closeness without being told about it.
This is the mechanical version of all of the above. End a sentence on the thing the next sentence starts with. Do it two or three times in a paragraph and the prose pulls forward without a single connective.
Which is how you get rid of however, furthermore, additionally, moreover and in conclusion. Those words are usually a patch over a join that does not exist. If two sentences genuinely follow from one another, arranging their ends and beginnings makes the connection audible and you can delete the signpost. If arranging them does not work, the connection was never there and the signpost was hiding that from you.12
Weak
My grandmother kept every letter my grandfather wrote her. However, she never let anyone read them.
Strong
My grandmother kept every letter my grandfather wrote her. The letters stayed in a biscuit tin nobody was allowed to open.
Weak
I practised the opening bars for a month. In addition, the hall where the recital was held was the one where I had failed the year before.
Strong
I practised the opening bars for a month, most of it in the school hall. The hall was where I had failed the year before.
Weak
My brother stopped speaking to me after the argument. As a result, the house became very quiet.
Strong
My brother stopped speaking to me after the argument. The silence lasted eleven days.
Weak
I wanted to be picked first. However, the captain chose me last.
Strong
I wanted to be picked first. The captain picked me last.
What changed. Each strong pair ends its first sentence on the thing its second sentence picks up, the letters, the hall, the not speaking, the picking, so the join is audible and the connective that was covering for it can go.
Here is the stitch in Water Break, at the moment on the cliff when the writer's idea of manhood begins to fail.
So he filled me in. Listening to him discuss the necessity of imperfection in the democratic process, I felt a twinge of guilt. Guilt that I had fancied myself superior. Guilt that I had ever bought into facile standards of "manhood"; that I had imagined being a proper man meant unfailing vigor on a hiking trail, never dealing with switchbacks or setbacks, never losing your footing or your way.13
The second sentence ends on guilt. The third begins with Guilt. So does the fourth. There is no however and no moreover anywhere in the passage, and none is needed, because each sentence starts by picking up the last word of the one before it. The reader is pulled through three sentences on a single thread, and the thread is the word the paragraph is about.
Hand one paragraph to somebody else and ask them to underline what is new. Write out your topic string for the paragraph you are least sure of. Then find three places to stitch, and only after that delete the transition words and see which joins hold. Exercise three runs these in order.
Three things, all of which you hear rather than see, which is why this section ends in reading aloud. An admissions reader does not read aloud, but they hear the prose anyway, in the part of the mind that hears, and a flat rhythm makes them skim.
Sentences of uniform length flatten a reader's attention regardless of content. Every strong essay in the bank varies, and the pattern that works is a run of longer sentences resolved by a short one.14
Here is the same moment, a student finding that she has not qualified, written twice. Count the words in each sentence as you read.
Weak
The results were posted on the noticeboard outside the staff room at the end of the last period. I walked over with my friends and looked for my name in the list of students who had qualified. My name was not there, and I read the list twice more to be sure I had not missed it. My friends had all qualified, and they were trying not to look pleased in front of me. I told them it was fine and that I would try again next year, and then I went home.
Strong
The results went up outside the staff room after the last period. I walked over with my friends and looked for my name. It was not there. I read the list twice more, and then a third time, in case the alphabet had changed. My friends had all qualified and were trying not to look pleased. I told them it was fine. It was not.
What changed. The weak paragraph runs 18, 19, 20, 17, 19 words a sentence and every sentence weighs the same, while the strong paragraph runs 12, 11, 4, 17, 12, 6, 3, so the two facts that matter, the missing name and the lie, each arrive in a sentence short enough to stop the reader.
Now the same shape in a real essay. This is the paragraph in Tetris where the writer, dropped by his football club at fourteen, works his way back.
Tetris champions like Josh taught me that it is never too late to pursue my goals. At 14, I was told that I wasn’t good enough to play for my local soccer club. To stop the blocks from piling up, I started to arrive at training an hour early. I decided to analyse players like Philipp Lahm and John Terry, aiming to replicate their distribution in attack and tactical awareness in defence. Above all, I never lost patience and belief in the fact that I would improve. Slowly but surely, the blocks started disappearing. One row at a time. And just two years later, I was playing in Australia’s highest division of youth soccer.15
The sentence lengths run 16, 17, 16, 23, 15, 7, 5, 15. Five sentences of fifteen words and more, the longest of them the one about Lahm and Terry, and then Slowly but surely, the blocks started disappearing, seven words, and then One row at a time, five. Those two short sentences are the paragraph's whole reward, and they land because of the five long ones in front of them. The last sentence goes back to fifteen words to carry the reader out. The writer did not need a bigger word or a stronger claim at the turning point. He needed a shorter sentence.
The short sentence after long ones is the single most reliable emphasis device in English. It is why I welcomed the shock lands at the end of In the Shadow of my Piano Teacher, in a closing paragraph whose sentences run 14, 13, 2, 6, 4, 3, 7, 5 words.6 It is why The blocks won’t stop falling. It’s my job to make them fit works as the final line of Tetris, five words and then seven, after an essay of much longer sentences.16 You cannot get that effect from a paragraph of medium sentences however good each one is.
So look at your paragraph shapes rather than your sentences. If every sentence is between fifteen and twenty-five words, you have a rhythm problem even if you have no sentence problems. Cut one in half and let the second half stand alone.
You have six hundred and fifty words and years of material, so most of your time has to pass in clauses.
Three years can go in four words. By the time I was fifteen. A whole relationship changing can go in a subordinate clause while the main clause does something else. Ursula Le Guin calls this crowding and leaping. You crowd the moments that matter with detail, and you leap over everything between them, and the leaping is a skill rather than an omission.17
Students under-leap. They narrate the walk to the room where the thing happened. Here are three walks and three leaps.
Weak
After the assembly ended, I walked down the corridor, past the science labs, and up two flights of stairs to the music room, where my teacher was waiting for me.
Strong
My teacher was waiting in the music room.
Weak
Over the next three years I practised every day, entered several competitions, had some successes and some failures, and slowly got better.
Strong
By the time I was fifteen I could play it from memory.
Weak
My parents' relationship deteriorated over a long period. First they stopped eating together, then they stopped talking at dinner, and eventually my father moved into the spare room.
Strong
By the time my father moved into the spare room, nobody at the table was surprised.
What changed. Each strong sentence leaps over the stretch of time the weak one narrates and lands on the one fact at the far end of it, so the words saved can be spent crowding the moment that comes next.
The real essays leap constantly, and you will not notice unless you look. Water Break moves a whole childhood into decline in nine words, In time, as we both grew older, this changed. Tetris crosses two years of training in five, And just two years later. In the Shadow of my Piano Teacher covers the years in which a girl stopped wanting to be her father's student in a single opening clause, and then crowds the moment that clause leads to.18
Time blemished the façade, and I embraced the growing opportunities to explore literature, speech and acting. Others’ lives fascinated me, and the more I read, lived, and acted theirs, the more the studio’s hold waned. Determination was substituted for anger. His cabinet of smiling students’ photos - their soft dimples and flower bouquets – once magnetic, now mocked me. Surely I was more than this prescription; the expectations and successes of “the piano teacher’s daughter”. I had to define myself.18
Time blemished the façade is the leap. Years pass in four words. Then the writer stops and crowds one object, the cabinet of photographs, with dimples and flower bouquets, because that is the moment that matters and the years before it do not. Find every transitional passage in your draft, the bits that get you from one real moment to another, and see whether each can become a clause like that one.
Pick a tense and hold it. Most personal essays work in the past, with the present reserved for reflection from now.
The present tense used throughout a narrative is a real technique and it is also the most common unearned choice students make, because it feels immediate and literary. It has a cost. The present tense removes the gap between the person who lived it and the person writing it, and that gap is where your reflection comes from. If you are writing in the present, you have to work much harder to sound like somebody who has thought about this since.
Whatever you choose, the unforgivable version is drifting between them mid-paragraph without meaning to. Here are two drifts and one unearned present.
Weak
I walked into the kitchen and my mother is standing at the stove. She turned around and asks me where I had been.
Strong
I walked into the kitchen and my mother was standing at the stove. She turned around and asked me where I had been.
Weak
Every morning I run to the ghat before school. That day I saw the boatman was not there, and I realise something was wrong.
Strong
Every morning I ran to the ghat before school. That day the boatman was not there, and I knew something was wrong.
Weak
I am standing behind the counter of my uncle's shop and the customer is shouting about the change. My uncle is not here. I am counting the coins again and my hands are shaking.
Strong
I was standing behind the counter of my uncle's shop when the customer started shouting about the change. My uncle was out. I counted the coins again with my hands shaking, and I know now that I had counted them right the first time.
What changed. The first two strong samples hold the past tense the sentence began in, and the third moves to the present only for its final clause, which is the writer looking back, so the reader can hear the difference between then and now.
Water Break shows the standard arrangement. The narrative runs in the past. The reflection is in the present, and the shift is deliberate and audible. The essay's fourth paragraph opens in the present, My relationship with my dad is a complicated one, and then drops into the past for the memories.11 Near the end the writer does the reverse, telling the cliff in the past and stepping into the present for the one sentence that is his conclusion.
For me, the transition to manhood was not an external one: Fortunately, there was no rite of passage or singular circumstance that forced me to become a man. Rather, sitting there against a cliff with my father, I wondered if maybe adulthood simply meant looking beyond oneself, to the other, without any pretense or pomp. Maybe my father, with his unpretentious generosity and willingness to get back up and continue the trek, is the best example of a man I have.19
Was, wondered, and then is. The last verb in the paragraph is the only present-tense verb in it, and it carries the whole conclusion, because it tells the reader that the boy on the cliff and the writer at the desk have arrived at the same place. Read for tense specifically, on its own pass, because you will not catch it while reading for anything else.
Write the word count of every sentence in a row and look at the row. Find your most important moment and make sure a short sentence sits in it. Reduce every transitional passage to a clause. Then read once for tense only. Exercise four takes these in order.
There is a set of words that signals to an admissions reader that a student has been trying to sound impressive. Here is the actual list.
Plethora. Myriad. Esteemed institution. Hone my skills. Since time immemorial. Enthralled. Avid. Delve. Utilise. Endeavour. Garner. Facilitate. Cognisant. Aforementioned. Paramount. Quintessential. Furthermore. Moreover. In essence. Undoubtedly.
None of those words is wrong. Every one of them, in a seventeen-year-old's personal essay, says the same thing to a reader, which is that a thesaurus was open. And the signal is worse than the alternative it replaced, because a reader who catches you reaching starts discounting the sentences where you were not.20
The rule is narrow and easy to apply. If you would not say it out loud to a friend, do not write it. Informal is not the goal. The word you actually own will always outperform the word you borrowed, and a reader can tell the difference at once, even in a stranger.
Here is a paragraph written in the borrowed register, using words from the list, and the same paragraph written in words the student would say.
Weak
Since time immemorial, I have been enthralled by the myriad intricacies of the culinary arts. My grandmother, the esteemed matriarch of our household, endeavoured to facilitate my growth by permitting me to hone my skills at her side, and in this manner I garnered a plethora of insights into the quintessential techniques of South Indian cuisine. In essence, these formative experiences were paramount in shaping my aspirations, and I am undoubtedly cognisant of the aforementioned influence upon my character and my desire to pursue the study of food science.
Strong
I learned to cook from my grandmother. She did not teach so much as let me stand next to her, and for years I mostly chopped. The first thing she trusted me with alone was the tempering, mustard seeds and curry leaves in hot oil, because she said I had finally stopped flinching when it spat. I want to study food science because I still want to know why the seeds have to pop before the leaves go in.
What changed. The weak paragraph contains sixteen words from the list and no fact a reader could picture, and the strong paragraph contains none of them and has mustard seeds, curry leaves, hot oil and a girl who flinched, which is what the borrowed words were standing in front of.
Look at what the real essays sound like at their most direct. Water Break turns on two lines of speech, and there is nothing in either that a person would not say.
"I think we need a water break," I said, looking him over.
"I think so, too," he replied.21
And the essay ends on the same register, seven paragraphs later.
"How about we get that water," I said, reaching back into the pack.21
Tetris opens with a sentence that no thesaurus could have produced, because every word in it belongs to the writer's own desk.
Nothing has shaped my personality like the leftmost bookmark on my Chrome favourites bar - Tetris. Others look to their idols, religious manuscripts or even their favourite superheroes for guidance. I look to coloured blocks because, as a veteran of the game, I view Tetris as a most accurate representation of life.21
The leftmost bookmark on my Chrome favourites bar is the kind of phrase a student would say out loud, and it is more specific than anything on the list could be. A reader believes it immediately, and that belief carries into the sentences that follow.
Bigger than single words, and this list is maintained from real drafts rather than invented.
Ever since I was a little girl. From a young age. I have always been passionate about. Little did I know. It was at that moment that I realised. Taught me the true meaning of. Stepped out of my comfort zone. Made me the person I am today. Changed my perspective forever. A whirlwind of emotions. A rollercoaster. Countless hours. Tirelessly. My eyes were opened. I learned that anything is possible. In today's society. Throughout my life.
Every one of these appears in hundreds of essays a year. Search your draft for each. The repair is the specific thing the phrase was standing in for. A synonym is never the repair. Countless hours becomes every afternoon after school for two years. Stepped out of my comfort zone becomes the actual thing you were frightened of.22
Weak
I have spent countless hours in the chemistry lab.
Strong
I stayed in the chemistry lab every afternoon after school for two years, until the caretaker locked up.
Weak
Auditioning for the play meant stepping out of my comfort zone.
Strong
I asked the drama teacher if I could audition, and then stood outside the door for ten minutes before I went in.
Weak
Ever since I was a little girl, I have been passionate about medicine.
Strong
I was nine when my aunt let me hold the stethoscope, and I have not wanted to be anything else since.
Weak
It was at that moment that I realised the true meaning of teamwork.
Strong
Priya took the blame for my mistake in front of the coach, and I let her.
What changed. Each strong sentence replaces the phrase that could belong to anybody with the fact that could only belong to this writer, the caretaker, the ten minutes outside the door, the stethoscope, the blame she let her friend take.
Add to this list as you go. When you catch yourself writing a phrase that could belong to anybody, that is a candidate, and by the time the supplements start you will have your own list, which is more useful than ours.
Search for every word on the first list and every phrase on the second. Replace the words with the word you would say. Replace the phrases with the specific thing. Then start your own list. Exercise five asks for at least three entries on it.
This section is for anybody who learned English in India, and it is taught explicitly rather than hinted at, because the alternative is a reader deciding your essay is careless when it is actually consistent.
Start with the principle, which is Mina Shaughnessy's and which changed how anybody sensible reads student writing. Error is systematic rather than careless. A student making the same construction repeatedly is following a rule, and the rule is usually correct in one variety of English and not in another.23
So none of what follows is a mistake in Indian English. All of it will be read as one by an American admissions officer, which is the only consideration that matters in deadline season. Every item below is shown as it would appear in a draft and as it should appear in the essay. In every pair the strong sentence says exactly what the weak one says.
Words that do not travel. Prepone. Doing the needful. Cousin brother, cousin sister. Passed out, meaning graduated. Batch, meaning year group. Standard or class, meaning grade. Convent-educated. Shifted, meaning moved house. Revert, meaning reply. Out of station.
Weak
The principal preponed the exam by two days, so I had one night to prepare.
Strong
The principal moved the exam forward by two days, so I had one night to prepare.
Weak
I told my cousin I would do the needful.
Strong
I told my cousin I would take care of it.
Weak
My cousin brother taught me to ride a bicycle and my cousin sister taught me to fall off one.
Strong
One cousin taught me to ride a bicycle and another taught me to fall off one.
Weak
My sister passed out of college the year I started ninth.
Strong
My sister graduated from college the year I started ninth grade.
Weak
My batch was the first to sit the new syllabus.
Strong
My graduating class was the first to take the new syllabus.
Weak
I was in tenth standard when my father was transferred.
Strong
I was in tenth grade when my father was transferred.
Weak
My mother is convent-educated and corrected our English at dinner.
Strong
My mother was taught by nuns, in English, and corrected ours at dinner.
Weak
We shifted to Pune when I was eleven.
Strong
We moved to Pune when I was eleven.
Weak
I wrote to the professor and she reverted within a day.
Strong
I wrote to the professor and she replied within a day.
Weak
My father was out of station on the night of the final.
Strong
My father was out of town on the night of the final.
What changed. Each strong sentence swaps one word that an American reader would stop at for the word they would not notice, and nothing else in the sentence moves.
Constructions. Discuss about for discuss. Revert back for reply. One of my friend for one of my friends. Since three years for for three years. Give an exam for take an exam. Kindly for please. The same used as a pronoun, as in please find the same attached.
Weak
We discussed about the results for an hour.
Strong
We discussed the results for an hour.
Weak
The editor never reverted back.
Strong
The editor never replied.
Weak
One of my friend lent me her flute.
Strong
One of my friends lent me her flute.
Weak
I have been learning tabla since three years.
Strong
I have been learning tabla for three years.
Weak
I gave the exam with a fever of a hundred and two.
Strong
I took the exam with a fever of a hundred and two.
Weak
I asked the librarian to kindly extend the loan.
Strong
I asked the librarian if she would please extend the loan.
Weak
I attached my portfolio and asked her to review the same.
Strong
I attached my portfolio and asked her to review it.
What changed. The strong sentences drop the extra preposition, the doubled verb, the missing plural, the wrong preposition of duration, the wrong verb for an exam, the stiff adverb and the pronoun that is not one, and each is now the sentence an American reader expects.
Present continuous where American English uses the simple present. I am having two brothers. I am knowing him since childhood. This is the highest-frequency one and the easiest to fix once you are looking for it.
Weak
I am having two brothers.
Strong
I have two brothers.
Weak
I am knowing him since childhood.
Strong
I have known him since childhood.
Weak
I am wanting to study physics.
Strong
I want to study physics.
What changed. Verbs of having, knowing and wanting take the simple present in American English, and the middle sentence also needs the present perfect, have known, because the knowing began in the past and continues.
Emphasis particles. Itself and only carrying emphasis. Yesterday itself, I told you only, that is why only. These are precise and expressive in Indian English and read as typographical errors in Boston.
Weak
I finished the draft yesterday itself.
Strong
I finished the draft yesterday, the same day she asked for it.
Weak
I told you only, the bus would be late.
Strong
I was the one who told you the bus would be late.
Weak
That is why only I stopped going to the classes.
Strong
That is exactly why I stopped going to the classes.
What changed. The emphasis that itself and only were carrying is still in each strong sentence, but it is carried by words an American reader recognises as emphasis, the same day, the one who, exactly.
Register. Indian academic English is more formal than American application English by roughly two notches. This is the deepest interference and the hardest to see, because every individual word is correct. If your essay sounds like a well-written letter to a principal, that is what is happening.
Weak
It was a matter of great pride and responsibility for me to be appointed head boy of my school. I was entrusted with the duty of maintaining discipline amongst the students and of coordinating with the faculty regarding various events. Through this position I was able to inculcate in myself the values of leadership and dedication, and I remain deeply grateful to my institution for the same.
Strong
I was head boy, which at my school mostly meant standing at the gate at seven and writing down the names of anyone who came in after the bell. I hated the list. In my second month I started leaving off the boy who came by bus from the far side of the river, because the bus was never on time and neither was he. Nobody noticed. I am still not sure whether that was leadership or the opposite.
What changed. Every word in the weak paragraph is correct and every sentence could have been written by any head boy in the country, while the strong paragraph is two notches less formal and contains a gate, a list, a bus and a decision the writer is still unsure about.
Mechanical, checkable, and worth an hour because it costs you nothing to get right and marks you as careless when you do not.25
Spelling. Color, honor, favor, center, theater, realize, organize, traveled, canceled, practice for both the noun and the verb, math and not maths. Each is shown below in the sentence a student would write and in the sentence the form expects.
Weak
The colour of the river changed after the monsoon.
Strong
The color of the river changed after the monsoon.
Weak
It was an honour to carry the flag.
Strong
It was an honor to carry the flag.
Weak
My grandmother asked me for one favour.
Strong
My grandmother asked me for one favor.
Weak
The clinic was in the centre of the village.
Strong
The clinic was in the center of the village.
Weak
We rehearsed in the old theatre behind the market.
Strong
We rehearsed in the old theater behind the market.
Weak
I did not realise she had left.
Strong
I did not realize she had left.
Weak
I organised the food drive with my sister.
Strong
I organized the food drive with my sister.
Weak
We travelled overnight to reach the tournament.
Strong
We traveled overnight to reach the tournament.
Weak
The match was cancelled because of rain.
Strong
The match was canceled because of rain.
Weak
I practise every morning, and the practice shows.
Strong
I practice every morning, and the practice shows.
Weak
I was better at maths than at anything else.
Strong
I was better at math than at anything else.
What changed. One or two letters in each sentence, which is exactly the size of thing a reader with a stack of files notices and holds against you without meaning to.
Punctuation. Commas and full stops go inside the closing quotation mark. American usage puts them there even when logic suggests otherwise.
Weak
She called it "the good bag", and I never argued. My father called it "a phase".
Strong
She called it "the good bag," and I never argued. My father called it "a phase."
What changed. The comma and the full stop moved inside the closing quotation marks, which is where an American reader expects them.
Dates: September 30, 2026. Month first.
Weak
The final was held on 30 September 2026.
Strong
The final was held on September 30, 2026.
What changed. The month moved in front of the day and a comma went in after it.
School. Senior year and eleventh grade, not twelfth standard or class twelve. College in American English means the university, not a stage before it. School means the whole of your pre-university education.
Weak
My brother is in twelfth standard and I am in class eleven.
Strong
My brother is in his senior year and I am in eleventh grade.
Weak
I moved to a new college for eleventh and twelfth.
Strong
I moved to a new school for eleventh and twelfth grade.
Weak
I left school after tenth and joined a college for the science stream.
Strong
After tenth grade I moved to a different school to take the science track.
What changed. The grade names are the ones an American reader uses, and college now means only the place you are applying to, so the reader is not briefly confused about whether you have already been to one.
One honest note about spelling. The writer of Tetris kept his Australian spellings throughout, favourites, coloured, analyse, defence, and was admitted to Penn.24 Consistency is what protected him. Shaughnessy's point cuts both ways. A reader forgives a system and punishes carelessness, and an essay that is British on page one and American on page two looks careless. We still tell you to switch, because switching costs nothing and removes one thing a tired reader might hold against you. Whatever you choose, hold it from the first word to the last.
Run one dedicated pass for this. Set your document language to United States English, which catches the spelling, and then check the four things a spellchecker cannot. Dates, quotation punctuation, grade names and the word college.
Do this pass on its own, after every other pass in this module, because you will not see interference while you are reading for anything else. Search for each construction in the lists above. Read for the present continuous. Then run the four mechanical checks. Exercise six is the checklist.
Two audits and then a ceremony.
Go through the essay one paragraph at a time and ask a single question of each. If this paragraph vanished, what would the reader not know?
If the answer is nothing, delete it, and it goes to the cut file rather than the bin. If the answer is something the reader learns elsewhere too, delete it anyway, because the other place is doing the job.
Most drafts at this stage contain one paragraph that exists because it was in draft one. It is usually the second or third, it usually restates the opening in slightly different words, and cutting it usually improves the essay more than any sentence work you did in this module. Here is what that paragraph looks like, and what sits in its place once it has gone.
Weak
My uncle repairs bicycles in a shed behind his house, and the summer I was fourteen he let me work there. I learned to true a wheel, which means making it run straight by tightening and loosening the spokes one at a time.
That summer in the shed taught me a great deal. Working beside my uncle, I discovered how much patience a bicycle wheel demands, and how satisfying it is to make something run straight again. I began to understand what it means to do a job properly.
Strong
My uncle repairs bicycles in a shed behind his house, and the summer I was fourteen he let me work there. I learned to true a wheel, which means making it run straight by tightening and loosening the spokes one at a time.
The first wheel took me three hours and still wobbled. My uncle spun it, watched the rim pass the brake pad, and said nothing. He gave it back to me. He gave it back four more times before he let it leave the shed.
What changed. The weak sample's second paragraph tells the reader nothing the first paragraph had not already implied, so it fails the question and goes to the cut file, and the strong sample's second paragraph is the one that was waiting underneath it, with a wheel that wobbled and an uncle who said nothing.26
Before the lock, one question about the whole thing. Where in this essay do I come off badly?
If the honest answer is nowhere, the essay is not finished, whatever its sentences are doing. Every distinctive essay in this bank contains a moment where the writer is impatient, wrong, envious, ashamed or unkind, and it is left in. Here is the hike from Water Break as most students would write it, and as the writer actually did.
Weak
I climbed faster than my father that day, and I waited for him at every turn. When he reached the ledge I gave him water and told him to take his time. I have always tried to look after the people I love, and on that trail I was glad I could be there for him when he needed me.
Strong. From Water Break
So when I scaled that trail with so much comparative ease, I initially relished the fact that I walked ahead, I carried the pack, I checked in on him. I thought I was being a man. Sitting down, my dad’s breathing slowed, and he asked me, like he had so many times, if I had read David Brooks’s column that week. I hadn’t.27
What changed. The weak sample has the son looking after his father and feeling good about it, which any reader has seen a hundred times, and the strong sample has him admitting that he relished walking ahead of a struggling man, which is the sentence that makes the rest of the essay believable.
The other essay in this module does the same thing in its last two paragraphs. In In the Shadow of my Piano Teacher, the writer has spent the whole essay resenting the label, and then admits that she wants it.
The revelation occurred after Junior Black Watch Choir’s final rehearsal. The children jostled out the door except Rose - a second row soprano - who strode up to the piano. “I want to play like you when I’m older.” She darted out as spontaneously as she came. That was when it sunk in. This glorious “pursuit for freedom” had been a misinterpreted self-diagnosis. In music’s absence, the truth had manifested itself. Piano pedagogue’s daughter or not, with or without expectations, I had grown to hear artistry, authenticity, possibility; the other arts had helped me realise their presence. Music had never been lacking, I had. When I returned downstairs, it was on my terms – not a student, or a daughter, just me.
A year later, I found myself in Parliament, no pigtails, standing with my mother. I caught Mr. Yang’s eye – a street spotting, but no father in sight. “Congratulations Francesca! It’s so lovely to meet you!” I welcomed the shock. Mum's eyes crinkled. I'm not just the piano teacher’s daughter. But then again, I am.28
Music had never been lacking, I had. The writer calls her own great escape a misdiagnosis, and then, in the last four words of the essay, takes back the independence the whole piece had been claiming. But then again, I am. That willingness separates the top of the voice scale from the middle, and no technique produces it. You decide it once, usually reluctantly, at the very end.27
When you lock, you do four things in order and then you stop.
Read the whole essay aloud, once, standing up. Mark nothing. Just hear it.
Ask one structural question and answer it honestly. Is the shape right? The question is whether the shape is right, and it is a narrower question than whether the shape is perfect.
Fix only what that question surfaced. Nothing else. Not the sentence you have never liked.
Then save it as the locked version, with the word locked in the filename, and close it.
Here is the lock done in order, for a student with a finished draft about her uncle's bicycle shed. She prints the essay, stands up in her room, and reads it aloud from the first word to the last without stopping. She notices that the fourth paragraph is slow and that the fifth, about the wheel that came back five times, is where her voice changes. She marks nothing. She sits down and asks whether the shape is right. Her answer is that the fifth paragraph is the essay's real moment and it arrives one paragraph too late. She moves it above the fourth and cuts the two sentences that no longer connect. She does not touch the sentence in the second paragraph that she has never liked. It stays. She saves the file as personal-statement-locked, closes it, and sends her mother one message. The essay is locked.29
The ceremony matters, and we want to be plain about why. An essay that is merely stopped gets reopened late at night in deadline season. An essay that was locked, deliberately, with a name, is much harder to reopen, because doing so means overriding a decision your calmer self made on purpose. That is the entire mechanism and it works. Here is what the two states look like in a student's folder.
Weak
The folder holds essay_v9, essay_v9_final, essay_v9_final_REAL and essay_v9_final_REAL_edited. The most recent one still has four comments open in the margin, one of them from the student's mother asking whether the ending is too negative. The third paragraph exists in two versions, one struck through and one highlighted yellow, with a note that says decide later. Nobody has been told anything. The student is waiting to feel sure, and the file will be opened again the night before the deadline, when nobody is calm.
Strong
The folder holds one file called personal-statement-locked and one called cut-file. The locked file has no comments and no highlighting, because the student read it aloud once, standing, answered one question about its shape, moved one paragraph, and closed it. The cut file holds the two paragraphs that came out over the course of this module, in case a supplement wants them. Her mother has a message that says the essay is locked. The next time anyone opens the locked file will be to paste it into the application form.29
What changed. The stopped essay is still a set of open decisions with a family attached to each one, and the locked essay is a single file, a single message, and no decision left for a tired person to reopen.
Tell whoever is paying for this that it is locked, in one sentence. Families reopen essays more often than students do, and the message that prevents it is the message that arrives before anybody is anxious.
Done when every unconscious nominalisation is gone and you have a word count showing what it bought you.
Done when the word count has dropped by a tenth and you cannot name anything the reader has lost.
Done when your topic string circles rather than scatters and no transition word is carrying a connection your sentences do not make.
Done when your sentence-length row varies visibly and one tense holds throughout except where reflection deliberately moves to now.
Done when neither list has a survivor in your draft and your own list has at least three entries.
Done when a dedicated pass for this has been run and finished, separately from every other pass.
Done when a locked file exists and somebody else has been told. The essay is locked and finished.
If you keep one sentence: put a person in the subject, cut a tenth of the words, put the familiar first and the new last, and then close the file and do not open it again.
Every student essay quoted on this page is reproduced in full, with its source, in References. Every weak example on this page was written by us and is not any student's writing.