No matter how strong your paper's contents, if your style is poor, you have a problem. Poor style eclipses a paper's merits and makes even a strong argument appear weak.

One way to avoid this is by carefully re-reading your own work - perhaps even have someone else proof-read it for you - and to revise and edit. For more on this process, go to Drafts and Revisions.

Also, avoid common stylistic errors. Learn about the proper use of tense, verb/noun and noun/pronoun agreement, apostrophes, homonyms, and prepositions, and learn to avoid typos.