Advice for Writing Papers - by Gabriel Rossman and Sada Aksartova

Dear Sociology Students,

In reading over many student essays we've noticed a few problems in bothvisual layout and writing style found in varying degrees in most of them. Writing style and type layout will be valuable to you in this course, therest of your academic career, and the real world as well. While we feelthat most of what's in this message is more or less universally applicable,you should recognize that each arena has its own standards. Some of thestandards of sociology (such as avoiding normative statements) do not applyin other areas (such as newspaper editorials, casual conversation, ortheology). When in doubt as to what the standards are in an academic discipline or other social context, ask someone familiar with its codes and culture.

Papers should be formatted so as to be legible -- a high standard when theyare in a pile of 35. They need not be identical, but they should follow certain rather narrow conventions. Type should be a legible font in either 11 or 12 points with double-spacing or leading between 20 and 26 points. Serif typefaces (eg. Times or Garamond) are more legible than sans seriffonts (eg. Arial or Helvetica), but the latter are also acceptable. If you use headers to demarcate themes in your paper they should be boldfacedand/or in a different font. Margins should be 1 inch on top and bottom andbetween 1 and 1.25 inches left and right. A page number should be at the bottom of every page except the first, which is optional. Double-sidedprinting is fine. Often students who know better use formatting tricks to try to make a paperfit the magical recommended number of pages. Your instructors are notstupid, they realize something is a miss when a paper is triple spaced 14point type or 8 point type with 1/4 inch margins. The only acceptable way to make a paper shorter is editing, the proper way to make it longer isfinding more to say.More important than typesetting is the writing itself.

Here are some rulesfor good writing that we noticed many students flaunt:

1. Unless you are royalty, be very careful with the first person plural(we/ us/ our). It is acceptable to use "we" when you mean yourself and yourreader, as in concluding with "we have seen that a malnourished hamsterdoes sloppy algebra." What is unacceptable is to use "we" when you arereferring only to yourself, as in "to measure the independent variable wecarefully weighed the hamsters' excrement each morning." It is acceptablefor this message to use "we" because two people wrote it.

2. Strive for economy of language. Whenever one word will do, do not useseven. At best this wastes space, at worst it is confusing and pretentious. For instance, many students are fond of phrases like "white sector of society," a needlessly difficult way of saying "whites." Linguisticexperiments have shown that most people find few things as annoying as"hypercorrect speech," which is characterized by such circumlocutions.

3. Make sure that every paragraph contributes to your argument. Any extended discussion that is meant primarily to showcase your wit ordemonstrate your mastery of a concept from lecture or the reading should be purged.

4. Do not use words if you are uncertain of their meanings. Use adictionary if necessary. The Oxford English Dictionary is now online andhas excellent, thorough definitions, as well as elaborate search capabilities.

5. Do not write like advertising copy or political speeches. Maybe peoplerise to challenges, push envelopes, and inspire worlds with messages ofhope, but they shouldn't in sociology essays. Try to keep somewhat distantfrom the object of your analysis and find both its selling points and itswarts.

6. The only way to catch these errors is to proofread carefully. At leastseveral hours after finishing the first complete draft, read it overcarefully looking for mistakes. If you stay up late writing, proofread thenext morning when you're fully awake and no longer buzzed on caffeine. Payattention to your computer's spelling and grammar checker, but realize thatit is not always right, nor does it catch everything. Since computersalways miss them, and humans usually do as well, be especially wary ofmisspellings that are also words, such as there/their, to/two/too,its/it's, and comprise/compromise. If possible, trade papers with friendsand correct each others.

Probably the best book on style is Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, which in about 100 amusing pages shows how to write well. An earlyedition of it can be found at http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html

A humorous example of applied style is Mark Twain's ruthless critique,"Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses." Though the essay is about fiction,it takes little imagination to apply it to nonfiction. We highly recommendyou read it and pay special attention to rules 1, 2, 8, and 12-18. Theessay is available at http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html

Twain continues his gripe in "Cooper's Prose Style" in the book Lettersfrom the Earth. This essay very clearly demonstrates how Cooper used halfagain more words than are necessary, and thus is a model for how you oughtto edit. In this excerpt from that essay Twain has italicized (here shownas brackets) the redundancies in a passage of The Last of the Mohicans. In a minute he was once more fastened to the tree, [a-helpless object-of-any-insult-or-wrong-that-might-be offered.-So-eagerly did-every-one-now-act,-that-nothing-was-said.] The fire was immediately lighted [in-the-pile,-and-the-end-of-all-was-anxiously expected.] It was not the intention of the Hurons [absolutely] to destroy [the-life-of] their victim by [means-of] fire. They designed merely to put his [physical] fortitude to the severest proofs it could endure, short of that extremity.Grammar is an issue distinct from, but related to, style. Whether you are amall rat, speak English as a second language, or are a member of the teaand biscuit set, the dialect of English you are accustomed to speaking mayhave different rules from Standard American English. For better or worse,academics and other members of the upper middle class use SAE more or lessexclusively in formal writing, and proficiency in using it is taken by manyof them as a sign of competence and sophistication. If you are uncertainabout SAE grammar, you may wish to consult a manual, such as Karen Gordon'sgothic grammar The Transitive Vampire