Write clearly, at any level.
Wherever you are with English — writing your first sentences, speaking it every day but unsure on paper, or already confident and aiming higher — this is for you. Free punctuation and grammar training that meets you at your starting point and builds step by step toward clear, precise, fully confident writing at the highest level. Typing speed is tracked too — but understanding comes first. No signup: open a lesson and start.
Tung Tung Tung Sahur — your hostTung tung tung… hi! I'm Tung, your host for the whole site, not just the tour. I'll pop up in lessons, races and challenges to cheer you on and point out what's next. Pick a level below and let's earn your first badge together.
Your progress, badges and streak live only in this browser on this device. Use the same browser and link every time to keep them. Clearing site data, switching device or browser, or using private / incognito mode will erase them — use Download my progress in Progress to back them up.
Choose how you want to learn
Pick a guided level and work through it in order, or choose Self-Paced and jump to any mark. Progress is shared — a mark finished in Self-Paced also counts in its level.
Not sure where to start? Take the 2-minute placement check
Six quick questions. It only recommends a starting level — it never locks you into one.
Self-Paced — all 18 marks
Every punctuation mark, in teaching order. Pick any one.
Quick reference — all 18 marks
One line per mark. Open any lesson above for the full version.
| Mark | Name | One-line reference |
|---|
Tung's race tipsAccuracy first, speed second — that's how racers win. I'll be at the finish line watching your punctuation score. Ready when you are: tap the passage below and type!
Accuracy first: your WPM counts only characters typed correctly, so pausing to get a comma or apostrophe right never costs you speed — a wrong mark does. Your punctuation score tracks the marks alone, apart from letters. Type the passage exactly — capitals and punctuation included.
Speed over time & test history
Speed over time
Finish a test and your speed-over-time chart will appear here.
Test history
No tests yet. Your finished tests will be listed here, and you can delete any of them.
Technique — speed comes from accuracy
1 · Accuracy first
Every mistake costs a correction, and corrections cost more time than typing slowly. Aim for clean runs; speed follows accuracy on its own.
2 · Home row, all ten fingers
Rest your fingers on A S D F and J K L ; and return to them after every reach. One finger per key zone means your hands stop travelling and start remembering.
3 · Eyes on the text
Watch the passage and the live colours, not your hands. Looking down breaks your rhythm and hides which key your finger missed. The per-character feedback in the passage is your error signal.
4 · Keep a steady rhythm
Type like a metronome, not in bursts. A rushed word followed by a pause is slower — and far more error-prone — than the same word typed evenly.
5 · Learn the punctuation reaches
Commas, periods, apostrophes and capitals are where most tests are lost. Slow down deliberately at sentence ends and around quotation marks until those reaches are automatic — your punctuation score above shows whether it is working.
6 · Short, daily, at the edge
Ten focused minutes a day beats one long session a week. Practise with text one level above comfortable, and stop while your accuracy is still high — you are training the habits you finish with.
Essay Formatting
Tung's essay cornerEssays are just big, tidy paragraphs. I'll walk the shape with you — a strong start, one idea per paragraph, citations done right. Grown-up writing, zero scary bits.
An essay is one argument, built in a fixed order. Every part has a specific job, and the parts only work in that order: the introduction promises an argument, each body paragraph proves one piece of it, and the conclusion shows what the proof adds up to. This page takes the structure apart piece by piece — what each part must contain, in what order, and what it looks like when it is done well — then puts a complete essay back together so you can see the whole shape at once. One running example is used all the way through: an essay arguing that social media weakens teenage focus.
The whole essay at a glance
Five parts, always in this order. Select any part to jump to its full explanation.
How the size of each part scales
| Essay length | Introduction | Body | Conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 words (short school essay) | About 50–75 words, 1 paragraph | 3 paragraphs of about 125 words | About 50–75 words, 1 paragraph |
| 1,000 words | About 100 words, 1 paragraph | 3–4 paragraphs of about 200 words | About 100 words, 1 paragraph |
| 2,500 words (typical undergraduate essay) | About 250 words, 1–2 paragraphs | 5–7 paragraphs, often grouped under headings | About 250 words, 1–2 paragraphs |
Very short pieces break the percentages, and that is fine: in a 250–300-word reflection, a one-paragraph introduction and a one-paragraph conclusion can together be a third of the piece, with two or three short body paragraphs between them. The order and the jobs of the parts are what matter — not the percentages.
The proportions matter more than the exact counts. If the introduction is a third of the essay, the argument has been announced but not proved. If one body paragraph is three times longer than the others, it is usually carrying two points and should be split.
1 · The introduction, in detail
The introduction moves from wide to narrow, like a funnel: it starts with the general topic, narrows to the specific problem, and lands on the single sentence the essay will defend. It has three jobs, done by three groups of sentences in this order.
The first one or two sentences earn the reader's attention. A hook is not decoration — it shows the topic matters. Five reliable kinds: a striking fact or statistic (with a source, if it is a real number), a short vivid scene, a direct question the essay will answer, a common belief the essay will challenge, or a brief quotation. Avoid dictionary definitions (“The dictionary defines focus as…”), apologies (“I don't know much about this, but…”), and announcements (“In this essay I will discuss…”).
The middle sentences give the context a reader needs before the argument makes sense. What is the topic? Why is it being debated now? What key term or situation must be understood? Two to four sentences is usually enough. Background informs; it does not argue. Save opinions and evidence for the body — if a background sentence could be disagreed with, it belongs in a body paragraph, defended.
The last sentence states the argument. Everything before it leads here, and everything after it in the essay exists to prove it. The thesis is covered in full directly below, because most weak essays fail at exactly this sentence.
An introduction, sentence by sentence
HookA phone lights up during dinner, during homework, and during the last quiet minutes before sleep — for many teenagers, it is the first thing touched in the morning and the last thing seen at night.
BackgroundSocial media was built to connect people, and it has become the main place where teenage friendships are kept up day to day. That constant connection has a cost that families and schools are only beginning to measure: sustained attention — the ability to stay with one task until it is finished — is becoming harder to hold.
ThesisSocial media weakens teenage focus because it fragments attention, displaces sleep, and rewards outrage over reflection.
Notice the shape: wide (phones everywhere) → narrower (connection has a cost to attention) → one exact claim with three reasons. Those three reasons, in that order, become the three body paragraphs.
The thesis statement, in detail
A thesis is a claim someone could disagree with, stated in one sentence, with the essay's reasons previewed. The standard shape is:
“Social media [topic] weakens teenage focus [position — the side taken] because it fragments attention [reason 1], displaces sleep [reason 2], and rewards outrage over reflection [reason 3].”
- It takes a side. “Social media has good and bad effects” cannot be proved or disproved; it commits to nothing, so the essay that follows it wanders.
- It is specific. Name the exact effect and, where it matters, the exact group: not “young people today,” but “teenage focus.”
- It previews the body. The reasons, in the order named, are the order of the body paragraphs. A reader who has seen the thesis should be able to predict the essay.
- It is one sentence (occasionally two in a long essay), and it sits at the end of the introduction.
- It answers the set question. If the assignment asks a question, the thesis is that question restated as a claim. An essay can be well written and still fail because its thesis answers a different question from the one set.
Too weak — names a topic, takes no side
“This essay will discuss the effects of social media on teenagers.” Nothing here can be proved. The reader learns the subject and nothing about the argument.
Too broad — a claim no single essay can prove
“Social media is destroying society.” Too large, too vague, and impossible to support with the evidence one essay can hold.
A fact, not an argument
“Most teenagers use social media every day.” Even if true, nobody needs an essay to argue it — it needs a source, not proof.
Strong — claim, scope, and reasons
“Social media weakens teenage focus because it fragments attention, displaces sleep, and rewards outrage over reflection.” A side is taken, the group and effect are exact, and the three body paragraphs are announced.
Try it: build a thesis sentence
Fill in the five parts. The sentence below rebuilds itself as you type, in the topic + position + reasons shape.
Read it back and test it: Could someone disagree with it? Does each reason deserve a full paragraph of its own? If a reason is too small to fill a paragraph, it is a detail, not a reason — merge it into another one.
2 · Body paragraphs, in detail
Each body paragraph proves one point — no more. Inside, the sentences follow a fixed pattern, often called TEEL: Topic sentence, Evidence, Explanation, Link. Most weak paragraphs contain the first two and skip the last two, which is why they read as notes rather than argument.
States the paragraph's one point, and ties it to the thesis. The topic sentence is a claim, not a fact and not an announcement: “First, social media fragments attention” argues something; “This paragraph is about attention” argues nothing, and “Notifications exist” is only a fact. A reader who skims nothing but the topic sentences of the body should be able to reconstruct the whole argument.
Supports the claim with something checkable. Evidence comes in five main forms: a fact from a reliable source, a statistic, a concrete example, an expert's statement or a short quote, or a paraphrase of research. Every borrowed fact, number, or idea needs a citation — see “Using sources” below. One strong piece of evidence, explained well, beats three pieces listed without comment.
Your own analysis: what the evidence shows, and why it supports the topic sentence. This is the part readers and markers are actually grading, and the part most often missing. Evidence does not speak for itself. Ask of every piece of evidence: “So what? What does this prove, and how?” Two to three sentences of explanation per paragraph is a sound minimum — in a strong essay, the explanation is usually longer than the evidence it explains.
The final sentence ties the paragraph back to the thesis and, where it helps, leads into the next paragraph. Without it, paragraphs sit side by side like separate mini-essays. With it, the essay reads as one continuous argument: each paragraph closes the point it opened and reminds the reader why that point counts toward the thesis.
A body paragraph, taken apart
Topic sentenceFirst, social media fragments attention by training the mind to expect something new every few seconds.
EvidenceShort videos and endlessly refreshing feeds are built around rapid novelty: each swipe delivers a new image, joke, or message, and notifications continue the pattern away from the app itself, breaking into homework, reading, and conversation throughout the evening.
ExplanationAttention strengthens through sustained use, the way stamina builds through sustained exercise. Reading a chapter, solving a multi-step problem, or following an argument all require holding one thread for many minutes at a time. A mind interrupted every few seconds never stays with a task long enough for that deeper focus to develop, so demanding work feels unusually hard and unusually tiring.
LinkBecause school asks for exactly the sustained focus that feeds train away, fragmented attention is the first and most basic way social media weakens teenage focus.
One point per paragraph — and how to tell
A new point means a new paragraph. Test: can the paragraph be summed up in one short claim? If the summary needs the word “and” between two different claims (“phones fragment attention and teenagers sleep less”), the paragraph holds two points — split it. Paragraphs in academic essays usually run from about 120 to 250 words. A paragraph of two sentences is almost always underdeveloped; one that fills a whole page has almost always taken on a second point without noticing.
Ordering the body paragraphs
Keep the order promised in the thesis. Within that promise, two arrangements work well: strongest point last, so the essay builds to its most convincing argument just before the conclusion, or strongest point first, when the reader may be sceptical and needs convincing early. Chronological order suits processes and histories; cause-before-effect suits explanations. What never works is no order at all — paragraphs that could be shuffled without the reader noticing are paragraphs whose links are missing.
Transitions: carrying the reader between ideas
A transition word or phrase shows the reader the relationship between what came before and what comes next. Choose by the relationship, not by variety for its own sake — using “however” where there is no contrast is worse than repeating “also.”
| Relationship | Useful transitions | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Adding | also, furthermore, moreover, in addition, secondly | “Moreover, the habit follows teenagers into the night.” |
| Contrasting | however, nevertheless, in contrast, on the other hand, yet | “The apps are free; however, the cost is paid in attention.” |
| Cause and effect | because, consequently, as a result, therefore, thus | “As a result, homework takes longer and is done worse.” |
| Giving an example | for example, for instance, in particular, such as | “For instance, a single notification can break a train of thought.” |
| Emphasising | indeed, in fact, most importantly, above all | “Most importantly, the pattern repeats every single day.” |
| Concluding | in conclusion, overall, taken together, in short | “Taken together, the three habits reshape the teenage day.” |
Punctuation: a transition that opens a sentence is followed by a comma (“However, …”). A transition joining two full sentences needs a semicolon before it and a comma after it (“…every day; however, the pattern is rarely noticed.”) — a comma alone makes a comma splice.
3 · The conclusion, in detail
The conclusion is the introduction in reverse: it starts narrow, at the thesis, and widens out to why the argument matters. It has three moves, in this order.
Restate the thesis in new words. Not a copy — the same claim, rephrased, now carrying the weight of the proof behind it. If the introduction said social media “weakens teenage focus,” the conclusion might say teenagers' focus is being “trained away by daily habit.” Repeating the thesis word for word reads as padding; changing the claim itself reads as a new argument.
Draw the body points together; do not merely list them again. Synthesis shows how the points combine into something larger than any one of them: three separate habits become one pattern. “Fragmented attention, lost sleep, and constant outrage are not three unrelated problems — each one makes the others worse” synthesises. “In this essay I discussed attention, then sleep, then outrage” only summarises, and summary alone is the most common reason conclusions feel flat.
End on significance: why the argument matters, what follows from it, or what should change. This final sentence is the widest point of the essay — the mirror of the hook. Good closings answer “so what?”: a consequence, a recommendation, or a look ahead. Never end by apologising (“In conclusion, this essay was about…”), and never introduce new evidence, a new example, or a new claim here — anything that needs proof belongs in the body, where proof is possible.
A conclusion, taken apart
RestateSocial media weakens teenage focus not through one dramatic harm, but through ordinary daily habits that train attention away from sustained thought.
SynthesiseFragmented attention makes deep work feel difficult, displaced sleep makes it feel exhausting, and a feed that rewards outrage fills the remaining attention with noise — three habits that reinforce one another every day.
CloseProtecting focus does not require abandoning these platforms; it requires treating attention as something worth defending, because every other kind of learning depends on it.
A complete essay, labelled
The whole structure in one place. The labels name each part; the bold sentences are the thesis and the three topic sentences. Read only the bold sentences in order and you have the essay's entire argument — that is the test of a sound structure.
Introduction
A phone lights up during dinner, during homework, and during the last quiet minutes before sleep — for many teenagers, it is the first thing touched in the morning and the last thing seen at night. Social media was built to connect people, and it has become the main place where teenage friendships are kept up day to day. That constant connection has a cost that families and schools are only beginning to measure: sustained attention — the ability to stay with one task until it is finished — is becoming harder to hold. Social media weakens teenage focus because it fragments attention, displaces sleep, and rewards outrage over reflection.
Body 1 · Reason 1
First, social media fragments attention by training the mind to expect something new every few seconds. Short videos and endlessly refreshing feeds are built around rapid novelty: each swipe delivers a new image, joke, or message, and notifications continue the pattern away from the app itself, breaking into homework, reading, and conversation throughout the evening. Attention strengthens through sustained use, the way stamina builds through sustained exercise. Reading a chapter, solving a multi-step problem, or following an argument all require holding one thread for many minutes at a time. A mind interrupted every few seconds never stays with a task long enough for that deeper focus to develop, so demanding work feels unusually hard and unusually tiring. Because school asks for exactly the sustained focus that feeds train away, fragmented attention is the first and most basic way social media weakens teenage focus.
Body 2 · Reason 2
Moreover, social media displaces sleep, and a tired mind cannot focus. For many teenagers the phone is in the bedroom, and a feed designed to offer “one more” video has no natural stopping point, so the last half hour of the day quietly becomes the first hour of the night. Sleep is when the day's learning is consolidated and when the capacity for attention is restored. A teenager who regularly loses that sleep arrives at school with a shorter attention span, slower recall, and less patience for difficult tasks — the exact opposite of what learning requires. Lost sleep therefore does not merely add a second problem beside fragmented attention; it deepens the first one.
Body 3 · Reason 3
Finally, social media rewards outrage over reflection, filling attention with whatever provokes the strongest reaction. Content that angers or shocks is shared more widely than content that informs, so feeds systematically promote the provocative over the considered. Reflection — pausing, weighing evidence, changing one's mind slowly — produces no visible engagement and is quietly buried. The result is that even the attention teenagers do have is spent on material chosen for its emotional charge rather than its value. An essay, a proof, or a difficult chapter cannot compete on those terms, so calm and sustained thought comes to feel unnatural by comparison.
Conclusion
Social media weakens teenage focus not through one dramatic harm, but through ordinary daily habits that train attention away from sustained thought. Fragmented attention makes deep work feel difficult, displaced sleep makes it feel exhausting, and a feed that rewards outrage fills the remaining attention with noise — three habits that reinforce one another every day. Protecting focus does not require abandoning these platforms; it requires treating attention as something worth defending, because every other kind of learning depends on it.
Tung read the whole thingSee it now? One promise at the start, three proofs in the middle, one big finish. That bold-sentence trick is my favourite — if the bold lines alone make sense, your essay's skeleton is solid!
Planning: from question to outline
Structure is decided before drafting, not during it. Five steps, in order:
- 1 · Unpack the question. Circle the instruction word (discuss, evaluate, compare, to what extent) and the topic limits. “To what extent” demands a position on a scale, not a yes or no.
- 2 · Brainstorm, then group. List every point you could make, then group related points. Each group with enough material becomes a body paragraph; a point that fits no group is usually dropped.
- 3 · Write the thesis. Your position plus the groups, in order, in one sentence — using the builder above if it helps.
- 4 · Outline each paragraph. One line each for the topic sentence, the evidence you will use, and the link back to the thesis.
- 5 · Draft in any order, assemble in structure order. Many writers draft the body first, then the introduction, then the conclusion — but the finished essay always reads in the fixed order.
Fill-in outline
One line per part is enough — an outline is a plan, not a draft. Copy it or download it when it is complete, and draft from it.
How the page is set up
Structure is what the essay says; formatting is how it sits on the page. Both APA and MLA share most settings — the differences are in the first page, the page numbers, and the source list.
| Setting | APA (7th ed.) | MLA (9th ed.) |
|---|---|---|
| Font & size | 12 pt Times New Roman, or 11 pt Calibri / Arial, or 12 pt Georgia — one font throughout | 12 pt Times New Roman or another readable serif font |
| Line spacing | Double-spaced throughout, including the references | Double-spaced throughout, including Works Cited |
| Margins | 1 inch (2.54 cm) on all sides | 1 inch (2.54 cm) on all sides |
| Paragraphs | First line indented 0.5 inch (one Tab). No extra blank lines between paragraphs | First line indented 0.5 inch (one Tab). No extra blank lines between paragraphs |
| Alignment | Left-aligned, with a ragged right edge — do not justify | Left-aligned, with a ragged right edge — do not justify |
| Page numbers | Top right of every page, including the title page, starting at 1 | Top right, as your surname + number (Smith 1), from the first page |
| First page | Separate title page (see below) | No title page: a four-line heading block at the top left of page 1 (see below) |
Online writing is the exception to the indent rule: there, paragraphs are separated by a blank line with no indent. Pick the system your assignment uses and apply it consistently — mixing indents and blank lines in one document reads as carelessness. Instructors' own instructions always override a style guide.
APA title page (student version)
1
Social Media and Teenage Focus:
Attention, Sleep, and Outrage
Jordan Smith
Department of Psychology, York University
PSYC 1010: Introduction to Psychology
Dr. A. Instructor
October 29, 2026
Title in bold, centred, in the upper half of the page, in title case. Then your name, affiliation, course number and name, instructor, and due date, each on its own line. Nothing else goes on this page.
MLA first page (no title page)
Smith 1
Jordan Smith
Dr. A. Instructor
PSYC 1010
29 October 2026
Social Media and Teenage Focus
A phone lights up during dinner, during homework, and during the last quiet minutes before sleep…
Heading block at the top left: your name, instructor, course, date — double-spaced, one item per line. Title centred below it (not bold, not underlined), then the essay begins on the next line.
APA vs MLA, side by side
APA is used in the sciences and social sciences; MLA in the humanities and literature. If your instructor names a style, that style governs every detail below.
| APA (7th ed.) — sciences & social sciences | MLA (9th ed.) — humanities & literature | |
|---|---|---|
| In-text citation | Author + year: (Smith, 2023) or Smith (2023) found… | Author + page: (Smith 214). No year in the brackets. |
| Direct quote | (Smith, 2023, p. 214) — note the comma and “p.” | (Smith 214) — no comma, no “p.” |
| Three or more authors | From the very first citation: (Smith et al., 2023). Two authors are always both named: (Smith & Lee, 2023) | For three or more authors: (Smith et al. 214). Two authors are both named: (Smith and Lee 214) |
| Source with no date | Write n.d. where the year goes: (Smith, n.d.) | No date appears in the citation; the Works Cited entry simply leaves the date out. |
| Organisation as author | Spell it out first, with the short form in square brackets: (World Health Organization [WHO], 2023); after that, (WHO, 2023) | Spell it out: (World Health Organization 214). A long name may be shortened in later citations. |
| A source quoted inside another source | Name the original, then cite the source you actually read: Freud (1900, as cited in Smith, 2023). Only Smith goes in References. | Use “qtd. in”: (Freud, qtd. in Smith 214). Only Smith goes in Works Cited. |
| Long (block) quotes | 40 words or more: indent the whole quote 0.5 inch, no quotation marks | More than 4 lines of prose: indent the whole quote 0.5 inch, no quotation marks |
| Source list | “References” page, alphabetical by surname. | “Works Cited” page, alphabetical by surname. |
| Headings | Five heading levels; Level 1 is centred, bold, title case. | Headings are optional; number them (1., 1.1.) if your instructor asks. |
| Numbers | Words below 10, numerals for 10 and above. | Words for numbers expressible in one or two words. |
| Title of the work | On the title page: bold, title case, centred in the upper half | On page 1 below the heading block: title case, centred, not bold |
The same sources as APA References
Format examples. Entries are alphabetical, double-spaced, with a hanging indent — the first line sits at the margin and later lines indent.
Smith, J. A. (2023). Learning to focus: Attention in the digital age. Oxford University Press.
Smith, J. A., & Lee, M. (2023). Phones in the bedroom and teenage sleep. Journal of Adolescent Health, 72(4), 214–221.
Details to notice: surname first with initials; year in brackets right after the authors; book and article titles in sentence case (first word and proper nouns only); journal names and volume numbers in title case and italics; “&” before the last author.
The same sources as MLA Works Cited
Format examples. Entries are alphabetical, double-spaced, with the same hanging indent.
Smith, John A. Learning to Focus: Attention in the Digital Age. Oxford UP, 2023.
Smith, John A., and Min Lee. “Phones in the Bedroom and Teenage Sleep.” Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 72, no. 4, 2023, pp. 214–21.
Details to notice: full first names where known; titles in title case; article titles in quotation marks, journal titles in italics; “vol.” and “no.” spelled out as labels; page ranges labelled “pp.”; the second author's name in normal order after “and.”
Using sources: quote, paraphrase, summarise
Three ways to bring a source into an essay. All three need a citation; they differ in how much of the original wording survives.
| Quote | Paraphrase | Summarise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | The author's exact words, copied | One idea or passage, fully rewritten in your own words and sentence structure | A whole work or section, compressed into its main point |
| Length vs original | Exactly as long as the words taken | Roughly the same length as the passage used | Much shorter than the original |
| Use it when | The wording itself matters — a definition, a striking claim, a line you will analyse | The idea matters but the wording does not — the default for most source use | The source's overall finding matters, not its detail |
| Example shape | Attention is “a resource that depletes with interruption” (Smith, 2023, p. 88). | Smith argues that every interruption costs attention that takes time to rebuild (2023). | Smith's book argues that digital habits, not devices alone, are reshaping attention (2023). |
How to integrate a quote
Four steps, every time: introduce it with a signal phrase (“Smith argues that…”, “As Lee points out…”), quote the exact words in quotation marks, cite it in the style required, then explain what it shows and how it supports your point. A quote dropped in with no introduction and no comment after it — a “dropped quote” — proves nothing, because the reader is never told why it is there. Your own sentences should always outnumber quoted ones.
How to paraphrase properly
Read the passage until you understand it, look away from it, write the idea in your own words and your own sentence shape, then check back: if more than two or three distinctive words in a row survive from the original, rewrite again. Changing three words is not a paraphrase; it is a quote with the marks missing. And a paraphrase still needs a citation — the words are yours, but the idea is not.
Block quotes
A long quotation is set as a block: indented 0.5 inch from the left margin, double-spaced, with no quotation marks — the indentation does the marks' job. In APA the threshold is 40 words; in MLA, more than four lines of prose (or three lines of poetry). Introduce a block quote with a colon, and place the citation after the quote's final period — the one time the period comes before the citation. Use block quotes rarely: each one hands a stretch of your essay to another writer.
In-text citations: the awkward cases
- A source quoted inside another source (a secondary source). Cite the source you actually read, and say so. APA: Freud (1900, as cited in Smith, 2023) argued… — and only Smith appears in References. MLA: (Freud, qtd. in Smith 214) — and only Smith appears in Works Cited. Whenever you can, track down the original and cite it instead.
- The author is an organisation, not a person. APA: spell the name out at the first citation and give the short form in square brackets — (World Health Organization [WHO], 2023) — then use the short form alone: (WHO, 2023). MLA: spell the name out — (World Health Organization 214).
- There is no publication date. APA: write n.d. exactly where the year would go — (Smith, n.d.). MLA: leave the date out of the citation and out of the Works Cited entry; everything else stays in its usual place.
- There is no page number (a web page, or an e-book without fixed pages). APA: use a paragraph number — (Smith, 2023, para. 4). MLA: leave the locator out — (Smith) — rather than inventing a page.
Punctuation mistakes inside citations
- Period placement: In APA and MLA, the sentence period goes after the bracketed citation: …as shown in the study (Smith, 2023).
- Block quotes (40+ words in APA; 4+ lines in MLA): no quotation marks, indented as a block, and the period goes before the citation — the one exception.
- Commas inside APA brackets: (Smith, 2023) needs the comma; MLA (Smith 214) must not have one.
- Et al.: “et al.” already ends with a period. Both styles shorten three or more authors to the first surname plus “et al.” — APA from the very first citation. The comma differs: APA keeps the year comma after it, (Smith et al., 2023); MLA has no comma and no year, (Smith et al. 214).
- Quotation punctuation: In North American style, periods and commas go inside closing quotation marks; colons and semicolons go outside.
- Citation inside a sentence: If the citation falls mid-sentence, the sentence continues after the closing bracket in lower case, and its period waits until the real end: “…depletes with interruption” (Smith, 2023, p. 88), and the cost is paid later.
Final structure check
Read the finished essay once for structure alone, before checking spelling or punctuation. Every line below should be answerable with yes.
- The introduction ends with one thesis sentence that takes a side and previews the body in order.
- Reading only the thesis and the topic sentences, in order, gives the whole argument.
- Every body paragraph contains one point, at least one piece of cited evidence, and explanation longer than the evidence itself.
- Every body paragraph ends by linking back to the thesis.
- The paragraphs appear in the order the thesis promised.
- The conclusion restates the thesis in new words, synthesises rather than lists, and adds no new evidence.
- Every in-text citation has a matching entry in References / Works Cited, and every entry there was cited.
- Font, spacing, margins, indents, and page numbers follow one style — APA or MLA — from the first page to the last.
Tung's last word on essaysStructure first, sparkle second! Nail the skeleton — promise, proofs, finish — and every essay after this one gets easier, because the shape never changes. Now go build yours in the outline above.
Daily Challenge
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