College Essay: Grammar vs Style

In my essays for colleges, I wrote with my particular writing style, which isn’t exactly 100% grammatically correct. There are sentence fragments and other stylistic choices that I feel emphasis the subjects I’m writing about. Do colleges want your essay to be absolutely grammatically correct, or are some purposeful stylistic choices welcomed?

It probably depends on the reviewer. It would annoy the heck out of me.

How will the reader know this is your “style?”

It is intentional to add emphasis and voice to my paper. Using 100% proper grammar just makes it drone on like a robot to me and doesn’t seem to have any personality. That’s just what it seems like to me, though. I can write it like a typical English paper.

With good writers, it’s usually fairly clear when the author uses this kind of things intentionally. If you doubt it’s obvious from your text, show it to somebody.

With good writing, you can use proper grammar and not seem like a robot.

I showed it to my AP Lang teacher last year as well as my dad, who is an AP Lit/Lang teacher, and they both thoroughly enjoyed it and gave good feedback. They aren’t AOs, though. It’s not like my paper is riddled with these fragments and such - it’s just used at a few points because I felt the way those words read in that style more accurately conveyed my personality than through other means. I kind of hyperbolized proper grammar and it sounding like a robot. I just meant that I felt like my personality was better represented in that style. I’ll show it to a few more people and get their feedback on whether or not it adds to the essay.

Creative intelligence expressed through one’s writing should be valued if done well.

I’m obviously biased in my evaluation, however, the two people I did ask to read it did note that the style was effective. I will get some more outside opinions on it, though.