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Writing Tips - ArchiveACCURATE PROOFREADINGYou can't accurately proofread your own writing, and you can't trust your spell-checker to do it for you. (That's why professional writers rely on professional proofreaders.) Fortunately, you live in a community where everyone faces the same problem. So share the task with your friends--proofread their papers, and have them proofread yours. In the end, you'll benefit, your friends will benefit, and your readers will benefit as well.(Submitted by Professor Peter Rabinowitz.) THE VERB "TO BE"Overuse of the verb "to be" is common in papers; the writer can easily fix the error with the simple insertion of a subject at the beginning of the sentence. Common usages of "to be" include the phrases "It is," "There is," "That is," "There are," etc. and these construction are weak, either burying the subject in the middle of the sentence or omitting the subject completely. For instance, consider the following sentence: "It is Wolfe?s fault that the descriptions are so boring." Wolfe is the subject of the sentence but hidden within the sentence. To cut the "it is" from the beginning, simply place his name at the beginning, followed by a verb: "Wolfe faults in writing such boring descriptions."Yet a bigger problem results when the subject is curiously not even in the sentence. Consider the sentence, "It is unfortunate that the bathrooms in North resemble a toxic waste dumping ground." The sentence contains an inherent subjectivity, so the writer should specify who exactly believes the statement. The proper construction would include the introduction of a subject, the most common being the plural of the first person, "we," followed by a new verb ("find"). Thus, "We find it unfortunate that the bathrooms in North resemble a toxic waste dumping ground." Now we have an active sentence successfully conveying the important point that the writer wants to get across. (Submitted by writing tutor Mike D'Alessandro.) THESAURUS USERealize that the thesaurus is not always your friend. At some point, you undoubtedly were warned against repeating words or phrases for fear of boring your readers or sounding inelegant. In many cases, however, a word has a precise meaning; turning to the thesaurus for synonyms can quickly lead to confusion for the reader (and perhaps for the writer as well). For example, if you are writing about "industrialization" in economics, you will undoubtedly have to repeat that word many times. Don't look for substitutes such as "economic growth" or "technological change" which are related but different concepts. If you are discussing a specific concept, use the specific word or phrase!(Submitted by Professor Betsy Jensen.) PREPAREDNESSPreparedness is one of the most crucial elements in writing a good essay. No matter how perfect your grammar or how excellent your vocabulary, chances are good that you will not be able to write a quality essay without careful preparation before you sit down to write.The first step in writing that A paper is to actually read the material. Although this may sound like a silly first step, there is no substitute for having read (and UNDERSTOOD) the assigned material. Using Cliff Notes or Spark Notes or any other aid, besides most likely being a violation of the Honor Code, cannot possibly give you the same understanding of a work that actually reading the work will provide. As an addition to this thought, if you don't understand something, ask your professor - that's why he/she is there! By making an appointment with your professor outside of class, you are able to take full advantage of your professor's (hopefully!) undivided attention. You can show him/her what you DO know (having, of course, read the assigned material) and you can clear up any problems/concerns/questions that may not only trip you up on this particular assignment, but may come back to haunt you later in the course. Once you have read and understood the material (and the question being asked in the assignment), begin jotting notes. Do not make any formal attempt at an outline yet - simply put your pen to paper and write (hint: in elementary school we may have called this brainstorming). Once you have all your thoughts down on paper, you can begin sorting through them and attempting to give them some semblance of order. To do this, an outline is recommended. Do not worry about formal outline techniques - simply start by formulating a strong, clear, concise thesis statement and work from there. Decide what you want your main points to be and think of equally strong, clear, and concise topic sentences for each main paragraph. Once you have these all planned out, jot a few notes under each topic sentence about how you plan on proving your point - this may include information from class notes, good points from class discussions, or citations from actual texts, among other things. Strive for about 3 GOOD pieces of evidence to back up any claims you have made - fewer pieces of evidence puts you at the risk of not having enough 'proof' and more is welcome ... as long as it does not become too much of a burden (i.e. are you beating a dead horse??). If you lay out at LEAST the main points in your argument, you should have no problem sitting down to write your paper - after all, everything you want to mention is in your outline, so the only task left is putting your information into coherent sentences. By being prepared and breaking your paper-writing down into smaller steps (rather than simply sitting down to write and hoping that genius will strike you), writing papers should become much easier. (Submitted by writing tutor Jen Kostka '04.) FIRST SENTENCESThe first sentence of a paper should make it worthwhile for the reader to keep reading. Don't just provide background information; start with an idea. The importance of a good idea is clear in the contrast between the following two introductory sentences written for the same biology assignment:(1) "The study entitled 'Biochemical variation in roe deer' was conducted by Hartl and Reimoser in 1988." (2) "Carson and Wisotzkey (1989) reported evidence contrary to the conventional understanding of genetic drift in their study." A reader's response to the first opener is likely to be "so what?", but to the second, the response may be "I wonder what the disagreement is?" The introduction sets the tone for the rest of the paper. Look at the first sentence of each of your papers the way a casual reader would; after reading that sentence, are you spurred intellectually to keep going? (Submitted by Professor Ernest Williams) "THAT" VS. "WHICH"So your high school English teacher told you to use "which" instead of that, but MSWord insists on a comma before "which" and recommends "that" as an alternative. What to do?The question is one of restrictive and non-restrictive clauses (and if your professor has written "ps" in the margin of your paper, this is the issue to which she is probably referring). Your English teacher wasn't wrong; in fact, some refuse to categorize the terms "that" and "which" on the grounds that in spoken language "which" may serve in a restrictive or a non-restrictive clause. Regardless of whether you use one term or both, however, you should do so appropriately. According to the Style Sheet, nonrestrictive or merely parenthetical sentence elements must be set off by commas. Do not set off restrictive elements. What does this mean? A restrictive element (e.g., a "that" clause), restricts the meaning of the word it modifies, and does not necessitate commas. A nonrestrictive element (e.g., a "which" clause) causes no such restriction; it adds information without changing the meaning of the sentence, and therefore must be set off by commas (much the way less important information may be enclosed in parentheses). Consider this example, from Strunk and White's "Elements of Style": The lawnmower, which is broken, is in the garage. This sentence indicates that there is only one lawnmower in question, and it is in the garage (the fact that it is broken is unessential to its location, which is the main idea of the sentence). Substituting "that" for which, however, gives us this sentence: The lawnmower that is broken is in the garage. This sentence implies an abundance of lawnmowers, of which the broken one is in the garage. Therefore "that is broken" qualifies the lawnmower in question and does not need to be de-emphasized by commas. For more information on restrictive and non-restrictive clauses, take a look at the subordinate elements section of the Hamilton College Style Sheet or the Commonly Confused Words page. (Submitted by Courtney Fitch '03) |
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