Tips For Good Writing

Top ten tips for writing a paper that will please your instructor:

1. Strive above all else for clarity.
1. Imagine a reader trying to understand what you are saying, and take all pains necessary to be clear about it.
2. Develop a critical sense of your own writing.
3. Think diligently about what you plan to say and don't lose track of it while you are writing.
4. Continue to question your thinking as you are rewriting and proofreading.
   
2. Find an approach to the subject that is interesting to you.
1. Look for a subject that you might be able to feel personally, even passionately involved with.
2. Look for an angle that aruoses your curiosity ("Why is the wallpaper yellow and the letter scarlet?")
3. If you are bored with your paper, pity your reader.
   
3. Avoid at all costs the appearance of sloppiness, that you haven't "cared enough to give the best."
1. Proofread three times.  Few can catch all the errors in one or two readings.
2. Don't be too proud to use the spelling and grammer checkers on your software program, even after three proofings.
   
4. Be concise.
1. Concision usually comes from rewriting, discovering the excess baggage your sentences may be carrying.
2. Sloppy thought is usually wordy.
   
5. Be precise.
1. Don't use terms without defining them.
2. Choose words with care and deliberation
3. Keep a dictionary and a thesaurus at hand.
   
6. Adopt strategies to insure sentence variety.
1. Be aware of the authors you like and imitate them.
2. Experiment.  Risk failure.  But get that variety.
   
7. Find a voice that works for you.
1. A voice that is capable of projecting your intelligence and responsableness,
2. One that seems to enjoy talking to the reader, and
3. One that is as lively and humorous or as sober and serious as the occasion calls for.
   
8. Develop a carefully honed thesis.
1. Back up this main point by cogent argumentation and concrete and specific detail.
2. Except for very short papers, thee should be an introduction.
3. There should be a conclusion that does more than simply repeat what you have already said.
4. Avoid unsupported generalizations.
   
9. You can achieve coherence by attention to transitions, both between sentences and paragraphs.
   
10. Keep your cition at the proper level.
1. Avoid cliches "like the plague."
2. Keep jargon from whatever source (computerese and psychobabble, for insance) out of your paper.
3. If you still want to use a cliche, or some slang or jargon, put them in quotation marks to show you know better (as in 9.1 above).