As a college student I believe my writing has improved greatly since I began, but I am not perfect. I still have flaws in my writing assignments that are improving. A common error that leads to me losing points is a comma splice. A comma splice is when two complete sentences are only joined by commas. This basically means that a comma is not enough to hold two complete sentences as one so they need some reinforcement. This mistake can be fixed one of five ways. A comma splice can be avoided by using a period, a semicolon, a coordinating conjunction, a conjunctive adverb, or a subordinate conjunction. It is best if the semicolon isn’t used too often. Another error I try my best to avoid is the usage of clichés. A cliché is a phrase that is overused and unoriginal. A cliché does not look good on a formal paper. It is difficult for me to avoid clichés, because I like to write modernized literature and use popular phrases of my generation. What I prefer to do to fix the cliché is to keep reading over it and rephrase it into my own original sentence but still with the same meaning.