Verb tenses indicate whether a sentence takes place in the past, present or future. Your essay should choose one tense and stick with it, making sure the verbs are consistent and switch tense only when a time gap warrants it. For example, a personal narrative might use the past tense, while an essay about health care reform primarily would use present tense. Exceptions would be to summarize related events from the past or future plans for the issue. Reading your paper out loud can be an effective way to catch any errors in tenses.
Active voice occurs when the subject of a sentence is directly performing an action, while passive voice uses "be" verbs and the word "by." For example, "The school board approved the initiative" clearly indicates the board's responsibility in the decision, but "The initiative was approved by the school board" is less direct. As a result, active voice brings greater life and specificity into your message. As you edit, look for uses of passive voice and rewrite the sentences to allow for a direct relationship between the subject and verb.
A run-on sentence occurs when improper use of punctuation makes clauses run together as if they were one sentence. One example might be, "I went to the store I bought peanut butter." A similar type of sentence error is a comma splice, where an author uses a comma to divide two clauses: "I went to the store, I bought peanut butter." The Ohio State University Writing Center suggests solving both of these problems by combining the two clauses, as in "I went to the store and bought peanut butter."
Using a variety of sentence structures adds artistry to your work and keeps readers engaged, according to the Purdue Online Writing Lab. For example, alternating between short and long sentences creates rhythm and brings life to your writing. Simply beginning your sentence with different words also can retain readers' interests. If all of your sentences start with "The," for example, audiences may be distracted by the repetition. Like editing for verb tense, reading your paper out loud lets you hear how the language sounds, giving you ideas for how to vary the rhythm and structure.