After countless hours of research and writing, you don’t want to turn in a final draft with grammatical errors. Use this handy grammar checklist to inspect your research paper for mistakes:
Be sure that the subject of the sentence agrees with the verb — singular subject with singular verb, plural subject with plural verb.
Write about literature in present tense.
Write about history in past tense. Use the had form of the verb to show an action occurring before another action.
Don’t change tenses unnecessarily.
Be sure that every pronoun replaces one (and only one) noun. Be especially careful with that, which, and this. Never use these pronouns to refer to a loose collection of ideas.
Be sure that the meaning of each pronoun is clear. Don’t place a pronoun where it may refer to more than one noun.
Place all descriptions near the word they describe.
End every sentence with an endmark (period, question mark, exclamation point).
