Writing Guides

Writing a Memoir

When it comes to memoirs, most people tend to think that it is a prerogative of celebrities, retired politicians, and other renowned people to write them, as if there can be nothing remarkable about the life of an average person.…

Writing an Evaluation Letter

One of the best methods to learn about the productivity of other people is to ask someone from his or her surroundings to evaluate them. Be it a coworker or a fellow student, one of the best and universal ways…

Writing a Play Review

Why would someone need to write a review for a theatrical play? First of all, to inform the potential audience about what they are going to pay money for; whether a play does or does not contain controversial scenes; whether…

Choosing an Essay Topic

When having to write an essay, students often find themselves between a rock and a hard place, so to say. If their instructor gives them a topic to write a paper on, they feel unsatisfied, because the topic seems complicated…

Balance of Commas

Commas are commonly used either too often or too little. It is a plague in a writer’s style when either of these instances happen. The clarity and smoothness of writing is drastically affected. Though non-native writers are more prone to…

Writing a College Deferral Letter

A deferral letter, or a letter of continued interest, is written in the case when you sought to enter a college or university and were deferred, but nevertheless want to show your interest in successfully entering. As a deferral means…

10 Rules of Creative Writing

1. You can write anything in any style. 2. Continually experiment with your style and the forms you use. 3. Read a lot of creative writing, and use the styles and forms you enjoy from what you read. 4. Don’t…

Writing a Music Review

Before buying a music group’s album/song on the Internet or in a music shop, you can shape your opinion of it by reading numerous reviews. This is nice when you are not sure whether or not you are making the…

Writing a Refund Letter

Sometimes, the quality of services we are provided with is lower than we expected. In this case, we can either write a letter of complaint, or request a refund, if a sum of money has been spent. However, you cannot…

Sentences Using Time Expressions

English expressions of time (those that indicate a specific time period during which certain events occur) generally follow the main rules of syntax, which you can get acquainted with in our grammar handbook. However, time expressions have a couple of…

Relevant Sources

What is Relevance? The relevance of a bibliographic source is its connection with commonly acknowledged requirements, following which allows people to assess a source as credible. Simply speaking, if the sources you used for your paper do not match these…

Present Perfect Continuous Tense

What is It? The present perfect continuous tense shows how an action which started in the past is still going on. When to Use? Cases Examples *Show how long an action has taken until now. 1. Boris and Michael have…

Prepositions in English

What is a Preposition? We can think of prepositions (on, at, in…) as small verbs that help describe something. But without a word following it (determiner), a preposition does not mean too much. A preposition is a part of a…

Past Perfect Subjunctive Tense

What is It? Using had + past verb (past particle) to express actions or events that could of happened or someone had wished had happened. Cases Examples * To express actions or events that could of happened. 1. Had they…

Past Perfect Continuous Tense

What is It? The past perfect continuous tense is had been + a verb in passive voice (past particle). When to Use? Cases Examples *Show that something started in the past and ended before the present time. 1. They had…

Past Habitual Tense

What is It? It deals with the verbs used to or would, or the simple past tense of a verb (I saw, you called). When to Use? Cases Examples * Describe a situation that was in the past, but no longer…

Past Intensive Tense

What is It? It lets readers know an event happened for sure by confirmation. When to Use? Case Examples * To make clear how a situation happened. Usually, it is in the form of a question or a serious statement.…

How to Avoid Inconsistencies

What is Inconsistent Writing? Imagine you have written three chapters of your novel, describing the main character as a nice person with pleasant manners and a positive background; however, in the fourth chapter, this person suddenly acts completely opposite to…

Frequently Misused Words

What is Incorrect Word Usage? Along with words that are usually misspelled (such as “there” and “their,” for example) there is also a group of words whose meaning are usually misunderstood. This leads to a mistake called “incorrect word usage.”…

Typo Mistakes

What is a Typo? Any skilled writer is familiar with such a typical but pesky flaw as typos. A typo is often an entirely mechanical mistake in writing (grammar, punctuation, a misspelling, or incorrect word usage, and so on), that…