By Professor John McSnoot Throughout history, people have begun essays with grand generalizations. It’s one of the most common mistakes I see in student papers. These generalizations are often the same as the title of the essay, which should always be its own thought. There are three main mistakes I see in my students’ writing: Making a laundry list of reasons, sentence construction badness, and repetitive, redundant sentences of redundancy. Then, they do not provide adequate explanations for their reasoning.