Published on
June 26, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
March 27, 2025
The idiomhook, line, and sinker is used to describe the way a person believes or goes along with something without any reservation. In another word, the meaning of “hook, line, and sinker” is “completely.”
“Hook, line, and sinker” is in reference to fishing. A fish usually swallows just the hook with the bait, but if, for some reason, it swallows the hook, the fishing line, and the sinker, it has not only taken the bait but everything else as well. As such, when someone has fallen for something “hook, line, and sinker,” they have completely believed it.
Examples: Hook, line, and sinker in a sentenceMy teacher fell for my excuse hook, line, and sinker.
The boy scouts fell hook, line, and sinker for the campfire stories.
I feel so dumb for believing the scam caller hook, line, and sinker.
Published on
June 26, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
April 18, 2025
The idiomrule of thumb refers to a tried-and-true way of doing something based on experience and not theory. A “rule of thumb” is a guideline or helpful hint on how to do something.
“Rule of thumb” originated in the 1600s, as the width of a thumb was used as a rough measurement in many trades, particularly textiles. Because using your thumb was an easy way of measuring, the “rule of thumb” grew into a way of saying that’s how something is done.
Examples: Rule of thumb in a sentenceRule of thumb says you should spend between $50 and $100 on a wedding gift.
As a rule of thumb, we usually meet on Wednesdays.
On my first day of school, someone told me that carrying all your textbooks is the rule of thumb.
Published on
June 26, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
March 27, 2025
The idiompound of flesh refers to an unreasonable demand or payment that could cause the person paying great distress. “Pound of flesh” is one of many terms coined by William Shakespeare.
In the Shakespearean play The Merchant of Venice, a debt collector named Shylock demands a pound of flesh from a merchant in retribution for his cruelty. He explains, “A pound of flesh, which I demand from him, / Is dearly bought; ‘tis mine and I will have it.”
Examples: Pound of flesh in a sentenceTicket companies never miss a chance to take their pound of flesh in service fees and taxes.
My older brother has taken a pound of flesh from me over the years, threatening to break my stuff if I didn’t do what he wanted.
I gave a pound of flesh to the bank when I was hit with another overdraft fee.
Published on
June 25, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
December 18, 2024
One of the more stressful aspects of university is essay writing. I remember being anxious about writing them, I remember my friends being anxious about them, and I still hear complaints about it occasionally from my extended family or friends.
In university, I studied humanities, and essay writing was very common in my classes. So it was eye-opening when I went to graduate school and became the person responsible for grading essays. I got to read the output of everyone in a class and grade each essay accordingly.
When you’re dealing with anything in large numbers, whether it’s customers, data, etc, you quickly notice patterns and common themes.
For essay grading, I quickly noticed that there were a select few things that really influenced how well that student wrote, and thus, how high of a grade they earned. Some of these things were obvious, while others were surprising to me. Not all were related to writing skills, and can easily be improved upon with a bit of work.
If you’re in university and you want to know what your professor or TA is looking for when grading an essay (especially one written for the humanities), read on. We’re going to explore the topic of essay writing and how to write a good essay.
Decide on a Topic
This seems obvious, but you would be surprised at the amount of essays I received where the student had gone completely off topic. Usually this is because people investigate something tangential or barely related to the point they’re trying to make.
Make sure the things you discuss or include in your essay help your argument respond to the prompt. The most notable example of this I remember was an essay I read that did an excellent job of discussing the everyday lives of people in villages in Vietnam. However, the requirements were to write an investigation into the impact of the Vietnam war on Vietnamese citizens, which the essay didn’t do. I had to fail what was otherwise a great essay because it didn’t meet a basic requirement.
Related to that point, if you’re writing an essay where you have some degree of freedom in choosing the topic, the professor will expect you to choose something compelling that demonstrates you used some degree of thought.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t choose what appears to be a simple question to answer. For example, compare these two arguments based on the topic “Why did the Russian Revolution succeed?”:
The Russian Revolution succeeded primarily because of the failure of the Royalist forces to organize together and offer a compelling alternative to the Communists.
The Russian Revolution succeeded because the communists believed they were correct.
One of these arguments is better structured and more compelling than the other because it offers a specific, plausible explanation. The second one is vague and is making a fallacious argument: just because someone believes they are correct doesn’t mean they will win.
Both were based on a simple prompt. Only one, however, appears to have actual effort put into it: the first example.
Formulate a Thesis Statement
Yes, write the thesis statement before you outline. You can’t outline if you don’t have a clear argument that coincides with your essay topic.
In order to create a thesis statement, you need to pick a side, so to speak. The thesis is used to introduce your argument to your audience so they know what they’ll find in the body of your essay; you’ll need to mention the points you’ll be running through throughout the paper.
For example, let’s say your topic is “Dogs vs Cats.”
Your thesis statement could be “Dogs are better than cats because they are playful, they like to go on walks, and they will show their owners affection.”
It has a stance in the argument (“Dogs are better than cats”) and runs through the points of why dogs are better than cats, which will be expanded on further down the essay (“they are playful,” “they like to go on walks,” “they will show their owners affection”).
The thesis statement is one of the most important parts of any essay, so be sure to spend adequate time on this step in order for your paper to be as strong as it can be.
Draw a Diagram or Outline of Your Ideas
Without some semblance of an outline, your paper is going to be either too long or too short, rambling, and in-cohesive. Although it’s not the most exciting part of the essay writing process, outlining is a very important step.
You have to know where you’re going with an idea in order to properly explain it. And if you’re not sure where you’re going with an idea, outlining can help you figure it out.
Here’s a really helpful outline format that I like to use when writing an essay:
If this is too much too quick, try just writing down a list of things you might like to discuss about your topic. Are there any similarities between them? Try to find a common thread between all of these things, and then take a look again at that outline format.
Using a Paraphraser can help. By changing the language you’re using, new ways to think about your topic might come up. With these new angles, you’ll be able to think about your topic more in-depth and in ways you never considered before.
Write the Body Paragraphs
Here’s where you take everything you’ve written in the outline, and expand it all. If you’ve outlined well, all you should need to do is add some details and transitions to make each one of the body paragraphs full.
As you’re writing each one of the body paragraphs, it’s a good idea to run them through a Summarizer. If the summarization tool gives you a summary that reflects your topic sentence, you know you’ve done a good job writing the paragraph.
If you get a summary that is different than your topic sentence, you know that you didn’t do a great job of detailing that point and need to put in some more work in that area.
Check out our Guide to Essay Writing if you’re looking for help on how to write a body paragraph. It’s pretty comprehensive and pretty great, if I do say so myself.
TipGenerative AI tools like ChatGPT can be helpful during the research and writing stages. However, passing AI outputs off as your own work is considered unethical. Our AI Detector can help ensure your writing does not contain AI-generated content.
Write the Final Paragraph
The conclusion paragraph is so misunderstood.
The final paragraph in your essay should be recapping all you’ve talked about in the preceding parts of the essay. This is not the time to bring up new topics, mention another slant or way of looking at the argument, or to further argue your point.
This is the time to reiterate your points. Your second-to-last sentence should be your reworded thesis statement and your very last sentence should be a memorable line to cement your argument in your audience’s heads.
So many people try to bring up new ideas in their final paragraph, but if you want to write a really strong college essay, don’t. Stick to concluding and you’ll be golden.
Apply the Final Touches
The last thing you want to be when writing an essay for university is sloppy. It’s so easy to make sure that your essay is well formatted and easy to read, yet a lot of students skip the steps they need to take in order to get their writing into tip top shape.
You want your essay writing to be the best it can be? Then you need to cycle through the entire essay writing process, not just the actual drafting stage.
Step #1 would be to run your essay through a Grammar Checker. There is no quicker way to lose points on a paper than to have grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. Ensuring that all of that is correct will ensure you the baseline number of points at the very least.
Another important step is to make sure all of your sources are properly cited (and if you’re missing a citation, pop on over to our Citation Generator to get that sorted out real quick). A Plagiarism Checker will be able to catch duplicate content, so you’ll know when something hasn’t been properly cited.
After all this, your final draft will be ready to go.
Final Thoughts on Writing in University
Essay writing is hard, and writing a good academic essay is even harder. However, there are a few tips and tricks you can use to boost your scores, as we’ve outlined above. If you’re able to keep those things in mind as you’re writing, then you’re putting yourself in a very good position to get a high mark.
Published on
June 25, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
August 13, 2024
Verbosity is the quality of being excessively wordy in writing or speech. Verbose sentences can always be made shorter and simpler.
Verbosity example“If you really want to know, I’m late today because I forgot to lock my front door and I had to go all the way back after I had already left for work, and then I drove over a nail in the road, which gave me a flat tire, and roadside assistance didn’t come for another hour.”
A concise version of this sentence would be, “I’m late because I got a flat tire.”
“Verbosity” comes from the Latin word verbosus, which means wordy.
Published on
June 25, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
March 18, 2025
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times: writing a paper is hard. Students dread it, and understandably so. How do you come up with your topic, and how do you find ways to support your argument? There’s no easy answer.
So, feeling like you have an impossible task, you procrastinate until the last minute, when you desperately try to whip something up that makes marginal sense. We’ve all been there.
At Quillbot, our goal is to give you the tools you need to become an effective writer. As we develop these products, we want to give you some writing strategies that can help you write better today.
Published on
June 24, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
March 27, 2025
Play it by ear is an idiom that means “do something without planning it out beforehand.”
The first recorded use of the phrase was in John Playford’s 1658 handbook A Brief Introduction to the Skill of Musick: “To learn to play by rote or ear without book.” This idea of playing music by listening to it instead of reading it off a sheet is where the idiom comes from.
To play music by ear requires the musician to feel the music and play according to how the song develops; to play something by ear in the idiomatic sense is to act on something according to how a given situation plays out.
Examples: Play it by ear in a sentenceI’m not sure when we’ll be there; let’s play it by ear.
We’re playing it by ear because the weather looks bad.
My teacher didn’t have a plan, so she played it by ear.
Published on
June 24, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
October 2, 2024
A malaphor is the unintentional combination of two idioms or clichés. This usually results in a unique, humorous statement that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Malaphor examplesIt’s water under the dam. (“Water under the bridge” + “Water over the dam”)
You hit the nail on the nose. (“Hit the nail on the head” + “On the nose”)
Don’t burn your bridge at both ends. (“Don’t burn bridges” + “Burn the candle at both ends”)
Some malaphors have been repeated so many times that they’ve become as popular as the original idioms they are derived from (e.g., “She’s walking a thin line”).
Published on
June 24, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
March 27, 2025
The idiomcut to the chase means “speak about something without wasting time or including unimportant details.”
“Cut to the chase” originated in the 1920s, when silent film editors would splice in a chase scene after a slower scene in order to keep the audience’s attention. Hence, the expression is used to refer to the act of skipping to the most important or exciting part of a conversation.
Examples: Cut to the chase in a sentenceLet’s cut to the chase and figure out the plan.
Cut to the chase already; you’re wasting my time.
Lisa skipped the small talk and cut right to the chase.
Published on
June 24, 2024
by
Paige Pfeifer, BA
Revised on
October 29, 2024
A euphemism is an expression that is used in place of words or phrases that may be considered embarrassing or unpleasant. For example, “kick the bucket” is a euphemism for “die.”
Euphemisms are used to discuss taboo topics in a more careful and less abrasive way, whether it be to appeal to an audience or adhere to personal beliefs. Many people who don’t like to use profanity use euphemisms instead (e.g., “heck”).
Euphemism examplesShe is between jobs. [She is unemployed]
Dang it, that was close! [Damn it]
Could I interest you in an adult beverage? [Alcoholic drink]
