A selection of advice from generations of Teaching Fellows at Harvard University, edited by Gordon Silverstein
Here are a few things to keep in mind when writing formal academic English:
- Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
- Never use no double negatives.
- Use the semicolon properly, always where it is appropriate; and never where it is not.
- Reserve the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it where it is not needed.
- Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
- No sentence fragments.
- Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
- Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
- When you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
- A writer must not shift your point of view.
- Do not overuse exclamation marks!!! (In fact, avoid them whenever possible!!!)
- Place pronouns as closely as possible, especially in long sentences (as of ten or more words) to their antecedents.
- Hyphenate only between syllables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
- Write all adverbial forms correct.
- Don’t use contractions in very formal situations.
- Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
- It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
- Avoid modernisms that sound flaky.
- Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
- If we’ve told you once, we’ve told you a thousand times: avoid hyperbole.
- Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
- Do not string a large number of prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
- Always pick on the the correct idiom.
- “Avoid overuse of ‘quotation’ ‘marks.'”
- Never use more words than are necessary to get your point across: be as concise as possible.
- Awayz check you’re spelling. (Some spellcheckers would only cathc one of the two errors here.)
- Every sentence a verb.
- Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague: seek viable alternatives.
Source: University of Minnesota