This file contains some regex patterns that are useful for editing formal writing, such as essays. Note that this is not perfect and you only use this ALONGSIDE proper editing.
Contractions are frowned upon, so detect them with [a-zA-Z]+'[a-zA-Z]{1,2}. This also detects posessives.
If your writing is supposed to be in present tense, it is apparently pretty easy to accidently write in past tense. Detect all words ending with "ed" using [a-zA-Z]+ed[^a-zA-Z]. Note that this also detects words that already end in ed without being past tense and may not even be verbs. For example, red and need.
I will add more if i think of any that would be useful.