Writing more effectively
For college and beyond

Students new to the college environment often find that the writing skills that they have developed in high school are inadequate and sometimes inappropriate in their new environment. This document attempts to highlight some of the more common errors that appear in the papers, extra credit, and essays of students.

General Issues

• Personal Voice
• Grammar, punctuation, word use
• All-encompassing statements or broad statements with no supportive statements

Personal Voice

In professional and academic writing the use of terms like "I wrote this because..." or "I feel that..." are inappropriate. The paper is to be independent of the writer as much as possible. Even in the case of opinion pieces, one rarely sees the term "I" or "my", etc. Similarly, the reader will rarely encounter the term "you" in professional or academic writing... accusative pronouns are equally inappropriate.

Two examples:

• Personal voice
  •      The US Space Program involving manned trips to space has always interested me. Since the earliest days of the Mercury launches I have been an avid follower of all of the successes and tragedies that have taken place. One of this program's greatest success stories has been the Shuttle program, but it has also had its share of tragedies. For me, one of the worst moments in history was the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing seven astronauts and setting the shuttle program back for years. The goal of my paper is to investigate the short and long term effects that this tragedy had upon school age children in both the US and abroad.

• Academic (impersonal) voice
  •      Since the late 1950s, the US Space Program has been sending men and women into space. These missions into space: their drama, successes, and tragedies; have interested people around the country and around the world since the earliest days of the Mercury program.
         On April 12, 1981, the US Space Program launched the Space Shuttle Columbia, ushering in a new era of space travel. This program, while very successful, has had its share of tragedies. On September 9, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after launch, killing seven astronauts and setting the shuttle program back for years. The goal of this paper is to investigate the short and long term effects that this tragedy had upon school age children in the US and abroad.

Note the differences in these two. The personal voice makes the writing sound very much like a statement of personal belief or opinion, which may be guided as much by emotion and enthusiasm as it is by facts. The use of the impersonal voicing lends a more authoritative quality to the writing and lessens the sense of emotional involvement between the topic and the author that a reader might infer.

The statements in the academic version also contain a bit more information, and a little less in the way of statements of absolutes. In using the more formal and impersonal voice, one tends to write and think more formally and choose the wording more carefully.

Impersonal writing is not natural... we tend to write like we speak and that means we write in a more personal and informal way. But, to write a good paper in academia or reports and analyses in the working world, you need to become experienced in writing in a formal and impersonal fashion.

Look at the previous paragraph... it is written informally... lots of "we" and "you" terminologies. It can be made more formal fairly easily:

Impersonal writing is not natural... individuals tend to write like they speak and that means writing in a more personal and informal way. But, to write a good paper in academia or reports and analyses in the working world, one needs to become experienced in writing in a formal and impersonal fashion.

It takes a little more space and it involves the use of impersonal pronouns such as "they" and "one" and so on.

Grammar, etc...

It is impossible to emphasize enough how important it is to make use of proper grammar and to make sure that one is using the correct words in one's writing. Poor grammar can make one appear less educated and will tend to bias people against one: "if one is unable to write coherently, how coherent can one's opinions, thoughts, or research be?" It is not a fair assumption to make, but many readers will make it.

Spelling checkers and grammar checkers are an excellent aid to improving one's writing, but one cannot rely upon them exclusively. A simple spell checker will not detect errors in word usage or misspellings that produce other words that are correctly spelled. For example: "Although Harry had bean victorious, he knew that he had only beaten Lord Voldemort temporally and that someday the Dark Enemy would return to settle the score."

There are two italicized words in the example sentence above.

1. The first is a misspelling of the word "been" but it IS a real word so a spell-checker will pass it by. A grammar checker WOULD catch the mistake in this case, because the correct word should be a verb, not a noun.
2. In the case of the second italicized word, "temporally", it is a correctly spelled word AND grammatically correct, but the author intended to use the adverb "temporarily" instead. This may have been a typo, a misspelling of the desired word, or it may have been that the author was confused about the meaning of the word "temporally." Regardless of the reason why it happened, it lessens the quality of the writing.

The take-home message here is that one should use both a grammar/spell checker AND should have someone read one's writing to make sure that there isn't some problem that the checker missed. The author could look for mistakes on their own, but if the mistake is due to the fact that the author misunderstands the meaning of a word or its proper usage, they not likely catch that mistake! Additionally, being familiar with the writing, the writer will often skim rather than read and will tend to miss errors. It can be intimidating or anxiety-producing to have another person read one's writing, but it pays off.

Word usage is another issue that crops up, especially with homonyms: words that are pronounced (or spelled) the same way but have different meanings. The most egregious errors with homonyms tend to occur with the following:

• there vs. their (and, to a lesser extent, they're)
• it's vs. its
• than vs. then
• affect vs. effect
• to vs. too (and, to a lesser extent, two)

Grammar checkers (if used) will usually catch these but spell checkers will not.

Another example of problematic writing:

"Occasionally authors will utilize complex verbiage or multi-syllabic words intended to convey the impression of authority or education, however engaging in practices of this nature can obfuscate the intent of the article and may also enhance the opportunity for the author to commit errors in usage. Therefore, one should eschew this manner of activity..."

The translation of the above: Sometimes writers will use elaborate phrasing and big words in an attempt to give the reader a better impression of their knowledge, authority, and education. The problem is, doing this can make it confusing for the reader and will increase the likelihood of the writer making a mistake. Thus, one should avoid writing like this.

It can be tempting for a novice writer to use a thesaurus to vary the words they use, to make themselves sound more authoritative or educated. But a thesaurus will not usually suggest the implied meaning behind synonymous words. For example, looking up the word secret in a thesaurus produces words as varied in meaning as ambiguous (meaning vague: "Her answer to the question was ambiguous.") and secluded (meaning: to be set-apart, hidden and distant: "In the heart of the forest was a secluded glade"). Their meanings are related to "secret" but the meaning is different. If an author inappropriately uses a word from a thesaurus in an attempt to make their writing sound better, they might be in fact doing the opposite.

Broad or All-Encompassing Statements & Statements without Support

In some of the examples of writing used above several statements are made but not supported: "These missions into space: their drama, successes, and tragedies; have interested people around the country and around the world since the earliest days of the Mercury program." How does the author know this? Can they justify this statement? Or is it just their opinion? A writer should follow statements of this nature with supporting evidence, or refer to some source that could support it. Any statement made in one's writing should be supportable. One can minimize questions about accuracy or veracity by including support for one's statements directly in one's writing.

Some examples of things to watch out for:

• "Native Americans are the only people who have not been compensated for the loss of their lands and their culture."
  Who are these other people that WERE compensated? How were they compensated? There are NO other peoples anywhere that had their land taken and culture destroyed and were not compensated? Where is the supportive evidence for this?
• "This event affected everyone in the world."
  Prove it. There may be peoples living in aboriginal cultures in the South American rain forests and in parts of Africa, Europe, and Asia that have little or no contact with the outside world or cannot imagine the event because of a lack of common referent. Were they REALLY affected? Even people in the region where something happened may have been only marginally, if at all, affected, or inversely affected... depending upon their particular perspective.
• "As everyone knows..."
  That assumption is unwise, for the reasons cited in the previous example as well as the fact that what people know is informed by opinions and attitudes... "Everyone knows that the war in Iraq ________". That last bit could be filled in by "... was a mistake." or "...was a necessary part of the War on Terror."

Related to this are reflections and questions that one might pose in one's writing: "How might this disaster have affected the biological development of the victims?" It's a good question... but if it is not answered, it should never be posed. It should certainly not be phrased like this: "Who knows how this could affect a person?" One should NEVER ask a question in one's writing without answering it.

More will be added to this document as time and experience permit.