Writing tips
by Professor Jay Dickson
- Always have an argument to your paper, which should be clear to your reader from very early in the essay (so she or he will know where you're going to take your essay next). An argument must answer not only "What do you see happening in the text at hand?", but also, "Why is this interesting?" An argument must also be debatable, ipso facto: for example, to say "Mrs. Ramsay dies" is not an argument because it is not debatable, it is a fact; nor can you have something like "Rupert is a more interesting character than Gerald" as a viable argument for an expository essay because you could not prove this one way or another. Having an argument is the most essential feature to any paper in the humanities.
- Structure your paper around your ideas, rather than around what happens next in the novel's plot. It will make it easier for your reader to understand the flow of your ideas.
- Substantiate points wherever possible by drawing examples from the text under question.
- You should quote often, but when you do it you must do it for a reason other than to summarize the plot (if you want to summarize the plot, do it quickly via paraphrase). Whenever you quote from a text you must analyze the language of the quote; otherwise; there is no point in quoting at all.
- And speaking of summarizing the plot.... You can assume your reader (i.e., your course professor) has read the literary text you're reading if it's on the syllabus. Thus it is simply a waste of space to summarize the plot of a novel or poem for him or her.
- Quotes can never "stand on their own"; they must be incorporated into a sentence, preferably with the speaker of the quote or of the text (or both) identified (e.g., "Bowen writes," "As Lawrence explains it," "Rupert explains to Ursula his ideas concerning love:")
- Use the present tense to describe events happening in a literary text: "Ursula argues for leaving for the Continent" (rather than "argued for"). Use the past tense to describe actual historical events: "Forster died in 1970" (rather than "dies in 1970").
- One of the few hard and fast rules in the English language is that you never split an infinitive form of a verb: thus it is incorrect to say "to quickly dance" but correct to say, "to dance quickly." (Thus Jean-Luc Picard should really be saying, "To go boldly where no one has gone before" on the Star Trek: TNG credits.)
- Words to ban from your critical vocabulary for the purposes of course papers: "perhaps," "maybe," "possibly," "important," "key," and, most egregious (and useless) of all, "interesting"
- A list of bad verbs you should avoid: "impact" (not a verb unless you're talking about teeth), "utilize" ("use" is always preferable), "prioritize" ("make a priority" is preferable), "reference" (usually the verb you want here is "refer to"), and "evidence" (usually the verb you want instead is "demonstrate" or "prove").
- Never say something like "for reasons which I do not have the space to describe here" in a formal paper. We've blamed Fermat for not supplying us with the proof to his Last Theorem, so why should we excuse you?
- There is no need to write an analytical paper in the humanities as if it were a lab report. Phrases like "In this paper I will show X and demonstrate Y" are not only awkward but they also tend to obscure your real argument.
- There is no need to add superfluous qualifiers like "I think," "I believe," "I assume," "In conclusion," "To begin with." They are all redundant and add excess wordiness to your papers.
- Try to avoid abbreviations wherever possible in formal writing: for example, write out "twenty pounds" rather than write "20 lbs." Exceptions to this rule include long numbers ("345, 845, 211") and the literary abbreviations "i.e.", and "e.g."
- Avoid cosmic introductions to your paragraphs: "From the dawn of time, mankind has been fascinated with marriage. Thus we see in Howard's End…." Just cut to the chase.
- Speaking of clichés, they tend to make your sentences sound old hat (even if you have a tin ear). So, put your nose to the grindstone and work like the dickens to make each image and each sentence as fresh as a daisy and fit as a fiddle...