Why Markers Give Better Grades to Essays They Enjoy Reading.
Students are often told that essays are marked objectively, as though lecturers transform into emotionless citation-scanning machines the moment they open Turnitin. In reality, markers are people. They get tired, bored, irritated, impressed, and occasionally relieved. When an essay is technically sound but flat, it can feel like wading through wet cardboard. When another says much the same thing with clarity, rhythm, and genuine intellectual life, it lands differently. Uncomfortably for the myth of pure objectivity, that difference can show up in the marks.
The Essay Marking Myth
There is a comforting fantasy that university essays are judged in a perfectly sterile way. The argument is weighed, the evidence is checked, the structure is assessed, and the final mark emerges untouched by tone, style, rhythm, or whether the marker wanted to fling themselves out of a window halfway through paragraph three.
This is not how reading works, and it is certainly not how marking works.
Markers are trained. They use criteria. Many take fairness seriously. None of this turns them into software. They are still human beings reading dozens of essays on the same topic, often in a short period, often after encountering the same phrases, the same stock openings, and the same oddly embalmed prose over and over again. “This essay will critically evaluate...” may be accurate, but after the fortieth version it starts to feel less like academic writing and more like a hostage note.
Students are usually warned about weak structure, missing evidence, poor referencing, and vague claims. Fair enough. What gets talked about far less is the way writing feels to read. Not because style replaces substance. It does not. But because style affects how substance is received.
That is where many students lose marks without realising it.
When Two Essays Say the Same Thing but One Feels Better
This is not a theoretical issue for me. During my degree, I had a lab partner and friend who was, frankly, sharper than I was in a lot of ways. She was technically precise, knew the material well, and her essays were factually solid. Yet I kept getting higher essay marks.
Eventually we compared our work and the feedback side by side. The strange part was that we were often saying broadly similar things. The real difference was not depth of knowledge so much as delivery. Her writing was accurate, but dry. Mine had more movement to it. More voice. More sense that a person was actually present in the argument. My feedback kept using phrases like refreshing, enjoyable, and a delight to read.
That was the moment the penny dropped.
A lot of students think essays are mainly about being correct. Correctness is essential, obviously. You cannot charm your way out of being wrong. But once you cross the threshold of competence, readability starts doing more work than people admit. A marker reading two essays with similar content may well respond more positively to the one that is easier to follow, more engaging in tone, and less dead behind the eyes.
That is not corruption. It is cognition.
Why Lively Writing Has an Advantage
Part of the issue comes down to processing fluency. Put simply, people tend to respond more positively to things that are easier to process. When something is clear, coherent, and naturally phrased, it often feels more convincing, more intelligent, and more pleasing to engage with. Reber, Schwarz, and Winkielman (2004) argue that processing fluency shapes aesthetic pleasure and judgment more broadly. In plainer English, if your essay is easier and nicer to read, people are more likely to experience it favourably.
That does not mean markers are being fooled by pretty sentences. It means style influences how effortful the reading experience is.
A clunky essay creates drag. A stiff, overstuffed, textbook-scented paragraph forces the reader to do extra work just to get to the point. Even when the ideas are valid, the experience of reading it becomes tiring. By contrast, an essay with rhythm, clarity, and some sense of intellectual personality helps the marker move through the argument with less friction.
And friction matters.
There is also a halo effect lurking here. Thorndike (1920) described the general tendency for one positive quality to shape impressions of others. In essay terms, when writing feels sharp, confident, and well controlled, readers may be more inclined to see the thinking itself as stronger. Ideally, a good marker resists this. Realistically, nobody reads like a robot.
So yes, two essays can make similar points and still receive different marks because one creates a better overall impression. Not merely because it is “nicer,” but because it communicates competence in a more convincing way.
The Problem With “Academic” Writing Advice
A lot of student writing advice accidentally makes this worse.
Students are taught to sound academic, and many interpret this as a command to become unreadable. Suddenly every sentence is inflated, passive, and slightly ashamed of itself. Simple points are buried under layers of abstract wording. Ordinary verbs are swapped for pompous ones. A paragraph that could have said something clearly now sounds like it has been translated from English into committee and back again.
Oppenheimer (2006) made a related point in memorable fashion. Needlessly complex language often makes writers seem less intelligent, not more. Yet students continue to believe that good academic writing must be stiff, formal, and bloodless.
Part of this comes from fear. Students worry that if they sound too natural, they will seem unserious. So they write in a voice nobody actually thinks in, let alone enjoys reading. The result is often a technically competent essay with the atmosphere of expired wallpaper.
Good academic writing is not casual. It is controlled. It is precise. But it is also readable. Helen Sword (2012) has written persuasively about the difference between scholarly seriousness and scholarly sludge. The best academic prose usually has shape, clarity, and presence. It sounds like a mind at work, not a style guide having a nervous breakdown.
Passion Helps, but It Has to Be Controlled
There is a caveat here, because students can run with this idea and end up in a ditch.
Adding life to an essay does not mean becoming chatty, melodramatic, or theatrical for its own sake. It does not mean turning an analysis of attachment theory into a stand-up routine. It means writing in a way that lets the reader feel your engagement with the material. The argument should still be well structured. Claims still need evidence. Sources still need to be used properly. Your essay still needs to answer the question you were actually set, which sounds obvious until you read enough undergraduate work.
The sweet spot is something like this: technically accurate, analytically sound, but written with enough fluency and confidence that the marker can feel a person behind the page.
That can show up in several ways. A better sense of rhythm. Cleaner transitions. A more deliberate opening. Slightly sharper phrasing. Judicious use of emphasis. A conclusion that sounds like a conclusion rather than a corpse being zipped up.
Passion on its own is not enough. Plenty of bad essays are passionate. But passion filtered through control often becomes voice, and voice makes writing memorable.
Why This Matters Even More in the Age of AI
We are now in a period where students can generate essays that are grammatically clean, structurally tidy, and emotionally vacant within minutes. AI prose is often competent in the same way hotel art is competent. Nothing is obviously wrong with it. Nothing is particularly alive either.
As this style becomes more common, genuinely human writing may stand out more sharply. Not because markers can always “detect AI” in some magical sense, but because a lot of AI-assisted prose shares the same dead texture. It is balanced, polished, generic, and weirdly passionless. Every paragraph behaves itself. Every sentence sounds faintly pre-approved. The result is readable enough, but often devoid of any genuine intellectual pressure.
That creates an odd new advantage for students who can actually write.
A well-argued essay with real voice, some texture, and a clear sense of purpose may now feel even more distinctive than it did before. In a pile of flat competence, liveliness becomes easier to notice. The essay that sounds like someone genuinely thinking can feel almost subversive.
This does not mean students should start performing authenticity in a loud way. That usually looks dreadful. It means the old lesson still holds, perhaps more than ever: do not submit prose that feels like it was assembled in a warehouse.
So What Should Students Actually Do?
The first thing is to stop equating “academic” with “dull.” They are not synonyms. An essay can be rigorous and readable at the same time. In fact, that is usually the better outcome.
The second is to think about the marker’s experience. Not in a cynical, manipulative way, but in a practical one. Is this easy to follow? Does each paragraph move with purpose? Does the argument sound like it belongs to a thinking person? Or does it read like a collection of quotations tied together with damp string?
Third, students need to realise that clarity is not a simplistic virtue. It is one of the main ways intelligence shows up on the page. A dense essay is not automatically a sophisticated one. Sometimes it is just badly written and hiding behind a long word.
Finally, write with enough conviction that the essay feels inhabited. You do not need jokes. You do not need gimmicks. You do not need to be flashy. You just need prose with some pulse in it.
Because the uncomfortable truth is this: when markers are tired, overloaded, and reading the same material again and again, an essay that is genuinely good to read can have an advantage. Not because standards disappear, but because standards are applied by human beings, not by detached machines floating above the department in a cloud of perfect objectivity.
Simply Put
Students are often told that essay marks come down to knowledge, structure, and referencing. Those things matter, but they are not the whole story. Markers are people, and people respond to writing that is clear, fluent, and alive. When an essay is technically accurate but lifeless, it can sink into the pile. When another essay communicates similar ideas with more energy and control, it stands out. In the age of AI-generated flatness, this may become even more obvious. The trick is not to sacrifice rigour for style. It is to realise that good style is part of rigour.
References
Sword, H. (2012). Stylish academic writing. Harvard University Press.
