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WEEKS 1 AND 2
PROFESSOR KLEINBERG
CONTENTS
“Overview of the Academic Essay.” Writing Center, Harvard College, 20 July 2018,
http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/overview-academic-essay............3

Williams, Joseph M. and McEnerney, Lawrence. “Writing in College Part 1: Some

crucial differences between high school and college writing.” Writing Program,
University of Chicago, 20 July 2018,
http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/undergrads/wic1highschool.................5

Walk, Kerry. “A Writing Lexicon.” Handout. Princeton University. Princeton, NJ.

nd. Print....................................................................10

“Top Twenty Errors in Undergraduate Writing.” Hume Center for Writing and
Speaking, Stanford University, 20 July 2018..................................12

“How to Do a Close Reading.” Writing Center, Harvard College, 20 July 2018,

http://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-do-close-reading..............15

X, Malcolm. “Learning to Read.” Handout. Palomar College. San Marcos, CA. nd.
Print........................................................................17

Epstein, David and Gladwell, Malcolm, et al. “The Temin Effect.” Ophthalmology.
vol. 125, issue 1, January 2018, pp. 2-3. http://www.aaojournal.org/
pb/assets/raw/Health%20Advance/journals/ophtha/OPHTHA_10071.pdf..............19

Alter, Adam. “Popular Science.” The Point Magazine, nd. http://thepointmag.com/

2014/criticism/popular-science. Accessed 20 July 2018........................21

Birkenstein, Cathy and Graff, Gerald. “I Take Your Point.” They Say I Say,
2nd ed., New York, 2009, pp. 141-144.........................................24

Birkenstein, Cathy and Graff, Gerald. “What’s Motivating This Writer?” They Say
I Say, 2nd ed., New York, 2009, pp. 145-155..................................26

Cover Image: puppet talk by mynamepong from the Noun Project

HOME / WRITING RESOURCES / STRATEGIES FOR ESSAY WRITING /

Overview of the Academic Essay

A clear sense of argument is essential to all forms of academic writing, for writing is thought made visible. Insights and ideas
that occur to us when we encounter the raw material of the world—natural phenomena like the behavior of genes, or cultural
phenomena, like texts, photographs and artifacts—must be ordered in some way so others can receive them and respond in
turn. This give and take is at the heart of the scholarly enterprise, and makes possible that vast conversation known as
civilization. Like all human ventures, the conventions of the academic essay are both logical and playful. They may vary in
expression from discipline to discipline, but any good essay should show us a mind developing a thesis, supporting that thesis
with evidence, deftly anticipating objections or counterarguments, and maintaining the momentum of discovery.
Motive and Idea
An essay has to have a purpose or motive; the mere existence of an assignment or deadline is not sufficient. When you write
an essay or research paper, you are never simply transferring information from one place to another, or showing that you
have mastered a certain amount of material. That would be incredibly boring—and besides, it would be adding to the glut of
pointless utterance. Instead, you should be trying to make the best possible case for an original idea you have arrived at
after a period of research. Depending upon the field, your research may involve reading and rereading a text, performing an
experiment, or carefully observing an object or behavior.
By immersing yourself in the material, you begin to discover patterns and generate insights, guided by a series of unfolding
questions. From a number of possibilities, one idea emerges as the most promising. You try to make sure it is original and of
some importance; there is no point arguing for something already known, trivial, or widely accepted.
Thesis and Development
The essay's thesis is the main point you are trying to make, using the best evidence you can marshal. Your thesis will evolve
during the course of writing drafts, but everything that happens in your essay is directed toward establishing its validity. A
given assignment may not tell you that you need to come up with a thesis and defend it, but these are the unspoken
requirements of any scholarly paper.
Deciding upon a thesis can generate considerable anxiety. Students may think, "How can I have a new idea about a subject
scholars have spent their whole lives exploring? I just read a few books in the last few days, and now I'm supposed to be an
expert?" But you can be original on different scales. We can't possibly know everything that has been, or is being, thought or
written by everyone in the world—even given the vastness and speed of the Internet. What is required is a rigorous, good
faith effort to establish originality, given the demands of the assignment and the discipline. It is a good exercise throughout
the writing process to stop periodically and reformulate your thesis as succinctly as possible so someone in another field
could understand its meaning as well as its importance. A thesis can be relatively complex, but you should be able to distill
its essence. This does not mean you have to give the game away right from the start. Guided by a clear understanding of the
point you wish to argue, you can spark your reader's curiosity by first asking questions—the very questions that may have
guided you in your research—and carefully building a case for the validity of your idea. Or you can start with a provocative
observation, inviting your audience to follow your own path of discovery.
The Tension of Argument
Argument implies tension but not combative fireworks. This tension comes from the fundamental asymmetry between the one
who wishes to persuade and those who must be persuaded. The common ground they share is reason. Your objective is to
make a case so that any reasonable person would be convinced of the reasonableness of your thesis. The first task, even
before you start to write, is gathering and ordering evidence, classifying it by kind and strength. You might decide to move
from the smallest piece of evidence to the most impressive. Or you might start with the most convincing, then mention other
supporting details afterward. You could hold back a surprising piece of evidence until the very end.
In any case, it is important to review evidence that could be used against your idea and generate responses to anticipated
objections. This is the crucial concept of counterargument. If nothing can be said against an idea, it is probably obvious or
vacuous. (And if too much can be said against it, it's time for another thesis.) By not indicating an awareness of possible
objections, you might seem to be hiding something, and your argument will be weaker as a consequence. You should also

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become familiar with the various fallacies that can undermine an argument—the "straw man" fallacy, fallacies of causation
and of analogy, etc.—and strive to avoid them.
The Structure of Argument
The heart of the academic essay is persuasion, and the structure of your argument plays a vital role in this. To persuade,
you must set the stage, provide a context, and decide how to reveal your evidence. Of course, if you are addressing a
community of specialists, some aspects of a shared context can be taken for granted. But clarity is always a virtue. The
essay's objective should be described swiftly, by posing a question that will lead to your thesis, or making a thesis statement.
There is considerable flexibility about when and where this happens, but within the first page or two, we should know where
we are going, even if some welcome suspense is preserved. In the body of the paper, merely listing evidence without any
discernible logic of presentation is a common mistake. What might suffice in conversation is too informal for an essay. If the
point being made is lost in a welter of specifics, the argument falters.
The most common argumentative structure in English prose is deductive: starting off with a generalization or assertion, and
then providing support for it. This pattern can be used to order a paragraph as well as an entire essay. Another possible
structure is inductive: facts, instances or observations can be reviewed, and the conclusion to be drawn from them follows.
There is no blueprint for a successful essay; the best ones show us a focused mind making sense of some manageable aspect
of the world, a mind where insightfulness, reason, and clarity are joined.
Copyright 1998, Kathy Duffin, for the Writing Center at Harvard University

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Writing in College
by Joseph M. Williams and Lawrence McEnerney
Part 1. Some crucial differences between high school and
college writing
From high school to college
Some students make very smooth transitions from writing in high school to
writing in college, and we heartily wish all of you an easy passage. But other
students are puzzled and frustrated by their experiences in writing for college
classes. Only months earlier your writing was winning praise; now your
instructors are dissatisfied, saying that the writing isn't quite "there" yet, saying
that the writing is "lacking something." You haven't changed--your writing is still
mechanically sound, your descriptions are accurate, you're saying smart things.
But they're still not happy. Some of the criticism is easy to understand: it's easy
to predict that standards at college are going to be higher than in high school.
But it is not just a matter of higher standards: Often, what your instructors are
asking of you is not just something better, but something different. If that's the
case, then you won't succeed merely by being more intelligent or more skillful at
doing what you did in high school. Instead, you'll need to direct your skills and
your intelligence to a new task.
We should note here that a college is a big place and that you'll be asked to use
writing to fulfill different tasks. You'll find occasions where you'll succeed by
summarizing a reading accurately and showing that you understand it. There
may be times when you're invited to use writing to react to a reading, speculate
about it. Far more often--like every other week--you will be asked to analyze the
reading, to make a worthwhile claim about it that is not obvious (state a
thesis means almost the same thing), to support your claim with good reasons,
all in four or five pages that are organized to present an argument . (If you did
that in high school, write your teachers a letter of gratitude.)
Argument: a key feature of college writing
Now by "argument" we do not mean a dispute over a loud stereo. In college, an
argument is something less contentious and more systematic: It is a set of
statements coherently arranged to offer three things that experienced readers
expect in essays that they judge to be thoughtful:
• They expect to see a claim that would encourage them to say, "That's
interesting. I'd like to know more."
• They expect to see evidence, reasons for your claim, evidence that would
encourage them to agree with your claim, or at least to think it plausible.
• They expect to see that you've thought about limits and objections to
your claim. Almost by definition, an interesting claim is one that can be
reasonably challenged. Readers look for answers to questions like "But
what about . . . ?" and "Have you considered . . . ?"
This kind of argument is less like disagreeable wrangling, more like an amiable
and lively conversation with someone whom you respect and who respects you;
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someone who is interested in what you have to say, but will not agree with your
claims just because you state them; someone who wants to hear your reasons
for believing your claims and also wants to hear answers to their questions.
At this point, some students ask why they should be required to convince anyone
of anything. "After all," they say, "we are all entitled to our opinions, so all we
should have to do is express them clearly. Here's my opinion. Take it or leave
it." This point of view both misunderstands the nature of argument and ignores
its greatest value.
It is true that we are all entitled to our opinions and that we have no duty to
defend them. But universities hold as their highest value not just the pursuit of
new knowledge and better understanding, but the sharing of that knowledge.
We write not only to state what we think, but also to show why others might
agree with it and why it matters. We also know that whatever it is we think, it is
never the entire truth. Our conclusions are partial, incomplete, and always
subject to challenge. So we write in a way that allows others to test our
reasoning: we present our best thinking as a series of claims, reasons, and
responses to imagined challenges, so that readers can see not only what we
think, but whether they ought to agree.
And that's all an argument is--not wrangling, but a serious and focused
conversation among people who are intensely interested in getting to the
bottom of things cooperatively.
Those values are also an integral part of your education in college. For four
years, you are asked to read, do research, gather data, analyze it, think about it,
and then communicate it to readers in a form in which enables them to asses it
and use it. You are asked to do this not because we expect you all to become
professional scholars, but because in just about any profession you pursue, you
will do research, think about what you find, make decisions about complex
matters, and then explain those decisions--usually in writing--to others who
have a stake in your decisions being sound ones. In an Age of Information, what
most professionals do is research, think, and make arguments. (And part of the
value of doing your own thinking and writing is that it makes you much better at
evaluating the thinking and writing of others.)
In the next few pages, we're going to walk you through a process of creating an
argument in a Humanities or Social Science paper. Note that we're describing
"a" process and not "the" process. We're not describing the way that everyone
does go about writing an argument. We're certainly not describing the way
everyone must go about writing an argument. Further, we can't cover
everything, and some of your teachers will expect something other than what we
describe here. There are even some differences between how you write papers
in Humanities and in the Social Sciences. But within all these limits, we can lay
some groundwork for writing college papers.
We begin with the assignment that gets you started; then we discuss some
ways to plan your paper so that you don't waste too much time on false starts.
We conclude with some strategies for drafting and revising, especially revising,
because the most productive work on a paper begins after you have gotten your
ideas out of the warm and cozy incubator of your own mind and into the cold
light of day.
Interpreting assignments: a guide to professors' expectations
Not all of your instructors will be equally clear about what they expect of your
paper. Some will tell you in detail what to read, how to think about it, and how to
organize your paper, but others will ask a general question just to see what you
can do with it. Some instructors will expect you to stay close to the assignment,
penalizing you if you depart from it; others will encourage you to strike out on
your own. Some few instructors may want you to demonstrate only that you
have read and understood a reading, but most will want you to use your
understanding of the reading as a jumping-off point for an analysis and an
argument.
So your first step in writing an assigned paper occurs well before you begin
writing: You must know what your instructor expects. Start by assuming that,
unless you see the words "Summarize or paraphrase what X says about . . . ,"
your instructor is unlikely to want just a summary. Beyond this point, however,
you have to become a kind of anthropologist, reading the culture of your
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particular class to understand what is said, what is not, and what is intended.
Start by looking carefully at the words of the assignment. If it is phrased in any
of these ways, one crucial part of your task has been done for you:
• "Agree or disagree: 'Freud misunderstood the feminine mind when he
wrote . . . .'"
• "Was Lear justified in castigating Cordelia when she refused to . . . ?"
• "Discuss whether Socrates adequately answered the charge that he
corrupted the youth of Athens."
For questions like these, you start (but it's only a start) by considering two
opposing claims: Freud understood the feminine mind or did not , Lear was or
was not justified, Socrates did or did not answer the charges against him. For
reasons we will discuss below, you will not want the claim of your paper to be
merely yes or no, he did or he didn't. But an assignment like this can make it
easier to get started because you can immediately begin to find and assess data
from your readings. You can look at passages from the reading and consider
how they would support one of the claims. (Remember: this is only a start. You
do not want to end up with a claim that says nothing more than "Freud did (or
did not) understand the feminine mind." "Lear was (or was not) justified in
castigating Cordelia " "Socrates did (or did not) adequately answer the charge.")
More likely, however, your assignments will be less specific. They won't suggest
opposite claims. Instead, they'll give you a reasonably specific sense of subject
matter and a reasonably specific sense of your task:
"illustrate," "explain," "analyze," "evaluate," "compare and contrast,"
"Discuss the role that the honor plays in The Odyssey. "
"Show how Molière exploits comic patterns in a scene from Tartuffe."
None of these assignments implies a main point or claim that you can directly
import into your paper. You can't just claim that "honor does play a role in The
Odyssey" or that "Molière does exploit comic patterns in Tartuffe." After all, if the
instructor has asked you to discuss how Molière used comic patterns, she
presumably already believes that he did use them. You get no credit for
asserting the existence of something we already know exists.
Instead, these assignments ask you to spend four or five pages explaining the
results of an analysis. Words such as "show how" and "explain" and "illustrate"
do not ask you to summarize a reading. They ask you to show how the reading
is put together, how it works. If you asked someone to show you how your
computer worked, you wouldn't be satisfied if they simply summarized: "This is
the keyboard, this is the monitor, this is the printer." You already know the
summary--now you want to know how the thing does what it does. These
assignments are similar. They ask you to identify parts of things--parts of an
argument, parts of a narrative, parts of a poem; then show how those parts fit
together (or work against one another) to create some larger effect.
But in the course of so doing, you can't just grind out four or five pages of
discussion, explanation, or analysis. It may seem strange, but even when you're
asked to "show how" or "illustrate," you're still being asked to make an
argument. You must shape and focus that discussion or analysis so that it
supports a claim that you discovered and formulated and that all of your
discussion and explanation develops and supports. We'll talk more about claims
-- also known as points -- in later sections.
A third kind of assignment is simultaneously least restrictive and most
intimidating. These assignments leave it up to you to decide not only what you
will claim but what you will write about and even what kind of analysis you will
do: "Analyze the role of a character in The Odyssey." That is the kind of
assignment that causes many students anxiety because they must motivate
their research almost entirely on their own. To meet this kind of assignment, the
best advice we can give is to read with your mind open to things that puzzle
you, that make you wish you understood something better.
Now that advice may seem almost counterproductive; you may even think that
being puzzled or not understanding something testifies to your intellectual
failure. Yet almost everything we do in a university starts with someone being
puzzled about something, someone with a vague--or specific--dissatisfaction
caused by not knowing something that seems important or by wanting to
understand something better. The best place to begin thinking about any
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assignment is with what you don't understand but wish you did.
If after all this analysis of the assignment you are still uncertain about what is
expected of you, ask your instructor. If your class has a Writing Intern, ask that
person. If for some reason you can't ask either, locate a Writing Tutor in Harper
and ask that person. Do this as soon as possible. You're not likely to succeed
on an assignment if you don't have a clear sense of what will count as success.
You don't want to spend time doing something different than what you're being
asked to do.
Another key feature of college writing: what's your point?
However different your assignments may seem, most will share one
characteristic: in each, you will almost certainly be asked to make a point. Now
when we talk about the "point" of your paper, you should understand what we
do and do not mean. If asked what the point of their paper is, most students
answer with something like, "Well, I wanted to write about the way Falstaff plays
the role of Prince Hal's father." But that kind of sentence names only
your topic and an intention to write about it.
When most of your instructors ask what the point of your paper is, they have in
mind something different. By "point" or "claim" (the words are virtually
synonymous with thesis), they will more often mean the most
important sentence that you wrote in your essay, a sentence that appears on the
page, in black in white; words that you can point to, underline, send on a
postcard; a sentence that sums up the most important thing you want to say as
a result of your reading, thinking, research, and writing. In that sense, you might
state the point of your paper as "Well, I want to
show/prove/claim/argue/demonstrate (any of those words will serve to introduce
the point) that
"Though Falstaff seems to play the role of Hal's father, he is, in fact,
acting more like a younger brother who . . . .""
If you include in your paper what appears after I want to prove that, then that's the
point of your paper, its main claim that the rest of your paper supports.
But what's a good point?
A question just as important as what a point is, though, is what counts as a
good one. We will answer that question here, even though it gets us ahead of
ourselves in describing the process of writing a paper. Many beginning writers
think that writing an essay means thinking up a point or thesis and then finding
evidence to support it. But few of us work that way. Most of us begin our
research with a question, with a puzzle, something that we don't understand but
want to, and maybe a vague sense of what an answer might look like. We hope
that out of our early research to resolve that puzzle there emerges a solution to
the puzzle, an idea that seems promising, but one that only more research can
test. But even if more research supports that developing idea, we aren't ready to
say that that idea is our claim or point. Instead, we start writing to see whether
we can build an argument to support it, suspecting, hoping that in the act of
writing we will refine that idea, maybe even change it substantially.
That's why we say we are getting ahead of ourselves in this account of writing a
paper, because as paradoxical as it may sound, you are unlikely to
know exactly what point you will make until after you have written the paper in
which you made it. So for us to talk about the quality of a point now is to get
ahead of ourselves, because we haven't even touched on how you might think
about drafting your paper, much less revising it. But because everything you do
at the beginning aims at finding a good point, it is useful to have a clear idea
about what it is you are trying to find, what makes for a good point.
A good point or claim typically has several key characteristics: it says something
significant about what you have read, something that helps you and your
readers understand it better; it says something that is not obvious, something
that your reader didn't already know; it is at least mildly contestable, something
that no one would agree with just by reading it; it asserts something that you
can plausibly support in five pages, not something that would require a book.
Measured by those criteria, these are not good points or claims:
• "1 Henry IV by William Shakespeare is a play that raises questions about
the nature of kingship and responsibility." Sounds impressive, but who
would contest it? Everyone who has read the play already knows that it
raises such questions.
• "Native Son is one of the most important stories about race relations ever
written." Again, your readers probably already agree with this, and if so,
why would they read an essay that supported it? Further, are you ready to
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provide an argument that this point is true? What evidence could you
provide to make this argument? Are you prepared to compare the effect
of Native Son with the effects of other books about race relations?
• "Socrates' argument in The Apology is very interesting." Right. So?
• "In this paper I discuss Thucydides' account of the Corcyrean-Corinthian
debate in Book I." First, what significant thing does this point tell us about
the book? Second, who would contest this (who would argue that you are
not going to discuss Thucydides' account?).
None of these is a particularly significant or contestable point, and so none of
them qualifies as a good one.
What does qualify as a good claim? These might:
• The three most prominent women in Heart of Darkness play key roles in a
complex system of parallels: literally as gatekeepers of Africa,
representatively as gatekeepers of darkness, and metaphorically as
gatekeepers of brutality.
 • While Freud argues that followers obey because each has a part of
themselves invested in the leader, Blau claims that followers obey in order
to avoid punishment. Both neglect the effects of external power.
You should recognize, however, that you will only rarely be able state good
points like these before you write your first draft. Much more often,
you discover good points at the end of the process of drafting. Writing is a way of
thinking through a problem, of discovering what you want to say. So do not feel
that you should begin to write only when you have a fully articulated point in
mind. Instead, write to discover and to refine it.
One note on the language of point sentences. If you're like us, you will want your
readers to think that your points are terrifically interesting and significant. What
almost never accomplishes this is to say: "My point is terrifically interesting and
significant." Many writers try to generate a sense of importance for what they
write by simply adding some synonym of the word "important:" "An important

Page 9 of 31
question to consider . . ." "It is essential to examine . . . " "A crucial concern is
whether. . ." This isn't going to work. What convinces readers that a point is
important is not the word "important," but the words that tell us the substance
of the point. If, during your first draft, you find yourself using words like
"important," you should make a note to yourself to come back during your
revisions to replace "important" with more substantive language. Then don't
forget to do it. It's really important.
Now: in order to prove that important point -- or to go through a process that
will help you develop one -- you'll need a strategy for gathering evidence and
writing a first draft. We offer advice on these matters in the next section:
"Preparing to write and drafting the paper."
···
Lawrence McEnerney is Director of the University of Chicago Writing Program. Joseph
M. Williams (1933-2008) was Professor of English Language and Literature and the
founder of the University of Chicago Writing Program.

A Writing Lexicon*
Thesis: A paper’s central claim or promise.
In humanistic disciplines, the thesis is an arguable claim—i.e., an assertion someone could
reasonably argue against; as such, it provides unexpected insight, goes beyond superficial
interpretations, or challenges, corrects, or extends other arguments. In scientific disciplines, the
thesis is a statement of purpose indicating that a particular investigation will be described and
significant results presented—results that challenge standard opinions or methodology, or add to
knowledge in the field.

Motive: Defined by Gordon Harvey as the “intellectual context” that’s established at the beginning
of a paper to suggest why the thesis is original or worthwhile.*
In both humanistic and scientific disciplines, the motive is typically an incongruity, puzzle, or
surprise in the primary sources or data; and/or holes, limitations, or disagreements in the
secondary literature. All good academic papers have a well-defined motive, which, according to
Harvey, is “usually defined by a form of the complicating word ‘But.’”

Structure: A paper’s line of reasoning, from beginning to end and also within and between
paragraphs.
A successful structure is logical, coherent, and easy to follow. In humanistic disciplines, the
structure allows for a dynamic development of ideas (is not merely a list of points or examples).
In scientific disciplines, the overall structure is typically signaled with subheadings, such as Title,
Abstract, Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Results, Discussion, and References; within
each section, the structure allows for a logical development of ideas.

Key Words: A paper’s main terms or concepts.

Key Words usually appear in the title, are defined early on (often with the aid of sources), and
could be used in a library or Web search to locate the paper if it were published.

Methodology: The methods and strategies used to make an argument or conduct an investigation.
In humanistic disciplines, scholars typically don’t discuss their methodology, except to describe
an analytic framework, but social scientists and scientists always do, whether their projects are
empirical or theoretical. One reason for the difference is that social scientists and scientists value
reproducible results, which are dependent on methodology.

Evidence, or Data: Interpreted primary sources, empirical observations, or factual information.

In humanistic disciplines, evidence is usually quoted and analyzed. In scientific disciplines, data
are visually summarized in labeled graphs and figures.

Analysis: The interpretation of sources.

In humanistic disciplines, analysis of primary sources is used to support claims, while analysis of
other kinds of sources is used to advance the overall argument (for example, by providing a
theoretical framework). In scientific disciplines, analysis of data leads to results (described in the
Results section); the results are further analyzed for their larger implications (in the Discussion
section).

Page 10 of 31
Sources: The various materials used to develop an argument, including artifacts, information, and
other people’s ideas.
Primary sources are uninterpreted documents, artifacts, data, or information that, when analyzed,
function as evidence. Secondary sources, also known as “the literature” or “the secondary
literature,” are texts that make direct claims about the topic and may be used to establish a
problem or question worth addressing, the standard opinion(s) on the topic, the standard way in
which the problem or question is approached, or the current state of knowledge in the field. Other
relevant sources are texts that relate indirectly to the topic and may be used to provide context or
background information, key words or concepts, or points of comparison.
Sources appear in any of several forms: they may be quoted (if the style of writing is special
or significant), paraphrased (if the style of writing is complex or jargon-laden), summarized (if
the source is long and complicated), or referenced (if the source is briefly mentioned). In
humanistic disciplines, sources appear in each of these forms. In scientific disciplines, sources
are usually referenced or summarized, almost never quoted or paraphrased.

Orienting: Defined by Harvey as “bits of information, explanation, and summary that orient the
reader.” *
The amount of orienting, or context, a writer provides depends on readers’ likely expertise in the
subject. Even experts require some orienting; those with less expertise require more.

Citations: Bibliographic information that enables readers to track down a paper’s sources.
In academic writing, sources are always cited; the citation style employed (e.g., MLA, APA,
CMS, CSE) depends on the discipline. A list of sources is called the Works Cited, Bibliography,
or References, depending on purpose and discipline.

Conventions: The accepted standards of various elements of academic writing, such as paper
format, voice, tone, diction, and citation style.
Academic writing in different disciplines follows distinctive conventions. Should a writer include
a roadmap at the beginning of a paper or divide the paper up into conventional sections? Is the
active or passive voice preferred? May a writer refer to him- or herself in the first-person
singular? Is there a specialized language, or jargon, that the writer should use? Which citation
style is appropriate? Writers can infer answers to these and other questions of convention by
glancing through the most widely read journals in the field—for example, PMLA, Social Science
Research, and Nature—or by reading excellent papers (by students or professionals) distributed
by the professor or graduate student instructor.

Mechanics: Grammar, punctuation, spelling, and citation format.

Writing guides that focus on mechanics are readily available online, as are guides to the citation
styles used in various disciplines. See, for example, “Citing Sources” at
http://library.princeton.edu/help/citing-sources.

*
This lexicon was developed by Kerry Walk, former Director of the Princeton Writing Program,
with assistance from Judith A. Swan, Associate Director for Writing in Science and Engineering
(WSE). The lexicon was inspired and informed by Gordon C. Harvey’s “Elements of the Academic
Essay.”

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Page 11
This page was printed from http://undergrad.stanford.edu

Hume Center for

Writing and Speaking

Top Twenty Errors in Undergraduate Writing

THE TOP TWENTY:
A QUICK GUIDE TO TROUBLESHOOTING YOUR WRITING

Readers judge your writing by your control of certain conventions, which may change depending on your audience, purpose, and writing situation.  For example, your instructor may or may not
mark errors in your paper if he’s more concerned with its argument or structure than he is with sentence-level correctness; he could also decide an error is not serious.  Some instructors may even
see the errors listed below as stylistic options. However, a large-scale study by Andrea Lunsford and Karen Lunsford (2008) found that these errors are the most likely to attract readers’ negative
attention.  Before handing in your papers, proofread them carefully for these errors, which are illustrated below in the sentences in italics.  

THE TOP TWENTY

1. Wrong Word
Wrong word errors take a number of forms. They may convey a slightly di erent meaning than you intend (compose instead of comprise ) or a completely wrong meaning (prevaricate instead of
procrastinate ). They may also be as simple as a wrong preposition or other type of wrong word in an idiom.

Use your thesaurus and spell checker with care. If you select a word from a thesaurus without knowing its precise meaning or allow a spell checker to correct spelling automatically, you may make
wrong-word errors. If prepositions and idioms are tricky for you, look up the standard usage.

Here are a couple of wrong word examples:

Did you catch my illusion to the Bible?

Illusion means “an erroneous perception of reality.” In the context of this sentence, allusion was needed because it means "reference.”

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is a magnificent sixteenth-century allergy.

A spell checker replaced allegory with allergy.

2. Missing Comma a er an Introductory Element

Use a comma a er every introductory element—whether word, phrase or clause—to clarify where it ends and the rest of the sentence begins. When the introductory element is very short, you can
skip the comma, but including it is never wrong.

Without a comma a er the introductory element, it’s hard to see the location of the subject (“they”) in this sentence:

Determined to make their flight on time they rose at dawn.

3. Incomplete or Missing Documentation

Documentation practices vary from discipline to discipline.  But in academic and research writing, it’s a good idea to always cite your sources: omitting documentation can result in charges of
plagiarism.

The examples below follow MLA style.  In this example, the page number of the print source for this quotation must be included.

The Social Media Bible defines social media as the “activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge, and
opinions using conversational media.”

And here, the source mentioned should be identified because it makes a specific, arguable claim:

According to one source, it costs almost twice an employee’s salary to recruit and train a replacement. 

Cite each source you refer to in the text, following the guidelines of the documentation style you are using. 

4. Vague Pronoun Reference

A pronoun (e.g., he, this, it) should refer clearly to the noun it replaces (called the antecedent).  If more than one word could be the antecedent, or if no specific antecedent is present, edit to make
the meaning clear.

In this sentence, it possibly refers to more than one word:

            If you put this handout in your binder, it may remind you of important tutoring strategies .

In some pronoun usage, the reference is implied but not stated.  Here, for example, you might wonder what which refers to:

The authoritarian school changed its cell phone policy, which many students resisted.

To improve this sentence, the writer needs to make explicit what students resisted.

5. Spelling
Even though technology now reviews much of our spelling for us, one of the top 20 most common errors is a spelling error.  That’s because spell checkers cannot identify many misspellings, and
are most likely to miss homonyms (e.g., presence/presents), compound words incorrectly spelled as separate words, and proper nouns, particularly names. A er you run the spell checker,
proofread carefully for errors such as these:

Vladmir Putin is the controversial leader of Russia.

Every where she walked, she was reminded of him.

6. Mechanical Error with a Quotation

When we quote other writers, we bring their voices into our arguments.  Quotation marks crucially show where their words end and our own begin. 
Page 12 of 31
Quotation marks come in pairs; don’t forget to open and close your quotations.  In most documentation styles (e.g., MLA Style), block quotations do not need quotations marks.  Consult your
professor’s preferred style manual to learn how to present block quotations. 

Follow conventions when using quotation marks with other punctuation. Here, the comma should be placed inside the quotation marks:

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction", Virginia Woolf argues.

7. Unnecessary Comma
We o en have a choice about whether or not to use a comma.  But if we add them to our sentences when and where they are not needed, then we may obscure rather than clarify our meaning.

Do not use commas to set o restrictive elements that are necessary to the meaning of the words they modify.  Here, for example, no comma is needed to set o the restrictive phrase of working
parents , which is necessary to indicate which parents the sentence is talking about.

Many children, of working parents, walk home from school by themselves.

Do not use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet) when the conjunction does not join parts of a compound sentence.  In this example, no comma is needed
before the word and  because it joins two phrases that modify the same verb, applies.

  This social scourge can be seen in urban centers, and in rural outposts.

Do not use a comma before the first or a er the last item in a series.

           The students asked their TAs to review, the assignment rubric, a sample paper and their comments, before the end of the quarter.

Do not use a comma between a subject and verb.

            Happily, the waiters, sat down during a break.

Do not use a comma between a verb and its object or complement.

            On her way home from work, she bought, a book at the bookstore.

Do not use a comma between a preposition and its object.

            On her way home from work, she bought a book at, the bookstore.

8. Unnecessary or Missing Capitalization

Capitalize proper nouns and proper adjectives, the first words of sentences, and important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships. Do not capitalize
most other words. When in doubt, check a dictionary.

Financial Aid is a pressing concern for many University Students.

9. Missing Word
If you read your work outloud before submittingit, you are more likely to notice omitted words.  Be particularly careful not to omit words from quotations.

Soccer fans the globe rejoiced when the striker scored the second goal.

10. Faulty Sentence Structure

If a sentence starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind, it will confuse readers.

The information that families have access to is what financial aid is available and thinking about the classes available, and how to register.

Maintain the grammatical pattern within a sentence.  Each sentence must have a subject and a verb, and the subjects and predicates must make sense together.  In the example above, thinking
about the classes available does not help the reader understand the information families have access to.  Parallel structures can help your reader see the relationships among your ideas.  Here’s
the sentence revised:

Families have access to information about financial aid, class availability, and registration.

11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element

A nonrestrictive phrase or clause provides additional information that is not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence.  Use commas to set o a nonrestrictive element.

David who loved to read history was the first to head to the British Library.

The clause who loved to read history does not a ect the basic meaning of the sentence.  The clause could be taken out and the reader would still understand that David was the first to head to the
British Library.  

12. Unnecessary Shi in Verb Tense

Verbs that shi from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.

Martin searched for a great horned owl.  He takes photographs of all the birds he sights.

13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence

A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses.  When the clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), use a comma before the conjunction
to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.

Miranda drove her brother and her mother waited at home.

Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Miranda drove both her brother and her mother.

14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)

To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's phone) or an apostrophe alone (the girls’ bathroom). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and
hers. Use its to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.

Repeated viral infections compromise doctors immune systems.

The chef li ed the skillet o it’s hook.  Its a fourteen-inch, copper skillet.

15. Fused (run-on) Sentence

A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate
sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.

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 The house was flooded with light, the moon rose above the horizon.

He wondered what the decision meant he thought about it all night.

16. Comma Splice

A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with
a word such as and/or/because, or restructure the sentence.

The students rushed the field, they tore down the goalposts. 

17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement

Pronouns typically must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female, if appropriate) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are
always singular.  However, they can be used to agree with a singular antecedent in order to use inclusive or gender-neutral language.  When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must
agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.

Every guest le their shoes at the door.

18. Poorly Integrated Quotation

Quotations should be logically and smoothly integrated with the writing around them, the grammar of the quotation complementing the grammar of the neighboring prose.  They usually need to
be introduced (with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.

An award-winning 2009 study of friendship "understanding social networks allows us to understand how indeed, in the case of humans, the whole comes to be greater than the
sum of its parts" (Christakis and Fowler 26).

"Social networks are intricate things of beauty" (Christakis and Fowler xiii). Maintaining close friendships is good for your health.

19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen

A compound adjective requires a hyphen when it modifies a noun that follows it.

          This article describes eighteenth century theater.

A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. 

The dealers want to buy-back the computers and refurbish them.

20. Sentence Fragment

A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is presented as if it were a complete sentence.  The following illustrate the ways sentence fragments can be created:

Without a subject

The American colonists resisted British taxation.  And started the American Revolution.

No complete verb

The pink geranium blooming in its pot.

Beginning with a subordinating word

We visited the park. Where we threw the Frisbee.

These 20 most common errors can be avoided in your writing if you reserve time to proofread your final dra before submission.

Works Cited

Lunsford, Andrea A. and Karen J. Lunsford.  “’Mistakes are a Fact of Life: A National Comparative Study.”  CCC 59 (2008) 781-806.

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HOME / WRITING RESOURCES / STRATEGIES FOR ESSAY WRITING /

How to Do a Close Reading

The process of writing an essay usually begins with the close reading of a text. Of course, the writer's personal experience
may occasionally come into the essay, and all essays depend on the writer's own observations and knowledge. But most
essays, especially academic essays, begin with a close reading of some kind of text—a painting, a movie, an event—and
usually with that of a written  text. When you close read, you observe facts and details about the text. You may focus on a
particular passage, or on the text as a whole. Your aim may be to notice all striking features of the text, including rhetorical
features, structural elements, cultural references; or, your aim may be to notice only  selected  features of the text—for
instance, oppositions and correspondences, or particular historical references. Either way, making these observations
constitutes the first step in the process of close reading.
The second step is interpreting your observations. What we're basically talking about here is inductive reasoning: moving from
the observation of particular facts and details to a conclusion, or interpretation, based on those observations. And, as with
inductive reasoning, close reading requires careful gathering of data (your observations) and careful thinking about what
these data add up to.
How to Begin:
1.  Read with a pencil in hand, and annotate the text.
"Annotating" means underlining or highlighting key words and phrases—anything that strikes you as surprising or significant, or
that raises questions—as well as making notes in the margins. When we respond to a text in this way, we not only force
ourselves to pay close attention, but we also begin to think with the author about the evidence—the first step in moving
from reader to writer.
Here's a sample passage by anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley. It's from his essay called "The Hidden Teacher."

. . . I once received an unexpected lesson from a spider. It happened far away on a rainy morning
in the West. I had come up a long gulch looking for fossils, and there, just at eye level, lurked a
huge yellow‑and‑black orb spider, whose web was moored to the tall spears of buffalo grass at the
edge of the arroyo. It was her universe, and her senses did not extend beyond the lines and spokes
of the great wheel she inhabited. Her extended claws could feel every vibration throughout that
delicate structure. She knew the tug of wind, the fall of a raindrop, the flutter of a trapped moth's
wing. Down one spoke of the web ran a stout ribbon of gossamer on which she could hurry out to
investigate her prey.
Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket and touched a strand of the web. Immediately there was a
response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur.
Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped.
As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A
pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was
circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational,
extraneous, at best raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully, like a vast
impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider I did not exist.

2.  Look for patterns in the things you've noticed about the text—repetitions, contradictions, similarities.
What do we notice in the previous passage? First, Eiseley tells us that the orb spider taught him a lesson, thus inviting us to
consider what that lesson might be. But we'll let that larger question go for now and focus on particulars—we're working
inductively. In Eiseley's next sentence, we find that this encounter "happened far away on a rainy morning in the West." This
opening locates us in another time, another place, and has echoes of the traditional fairy tale opening: "Once upon a time .
. .". What does this mean? Why would Eiseley want to remind us of tales and myth? We don't know yet, but it's curious. We
make a note of it.
Details of language convince us of our location "in the West"—gulch, arroyo,  and  buffalo grass.  Beyond that, though, Eiseley
calls the spider's web "her universe" and "the great wheel she inhabited," as in the great wheel of the heavens, the galaxies.

Page 15 of 31
By metaphor, then, the web becomes the universe, "spider universe." And the spider, "she," whose "senses did not extend
beyond" her universe, knows "the flutter of a trapped moth's wing" and hurries "to investigate her prey." Eiseley says he could
see her "fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle." These details of language, and others, characterize the "owner" of the
web as thinking, feeling, striving—a creature much like ourselves. But so what?
3.  Ask questions about the patterns you've noticed—especially how and why.
To answer some of our own questions, we have to look back at the text and see what else is going on. For instance, when
Eiseley touches the web with his pencil point—an event "for which no precedent existed"—the spider, naturally, can make no
sense of the pencil phenomenon: "Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas." Of course, spiders don't have ideas, but we do.
And if we start seeing this passage in human terms, seeing the spider's situation in "her universe" as analogous to our
situation in our universe (which we think of as  the  universe), then we may decide that Eiseley is suggesting that our universe
(the  universe) is also finite, that  our  ideas are circumscribed, and that beyond the limits of our universe there might be
phenomena as fully beyond our ken as Eiseley himself—that "vast impossible shadow"—was beyond the understanding of the
spider.
But why vast and impossible, why a shadow? Does Eiseley mean God, extra‑terrestrials? Or something else, something we
cannot name or even imagine? Is this the lesson? Now we see that the sense of tale telling or myth at the start of the
passage, plus this reference to something vast and unseen, weighs against a simple E.T. sort of interpretation. And though
the spider can't explain, or even apprehend, Eiseley's pencil point, that pencil point  is  explainable—rational after all. So
maybe not God. We need more evidence, so we go back to the text—the whole essay now, not just this one passage—and
look for additional clues. And as we proceed in this way, paying close attention to the evidence, asking questions,
formulating interpretations, we engage in a process that is central to essay writing and to the whole academic enterprise: in
other words, we reason toward our own ideas.
Copyright 1998, Patricia Kain, for the Writing Center at Harvard University

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Page 16 of 31
Learning to Read
MALCOLM X

Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was one of the most articulate and powerful leaders of
black America during the 1960s. A street hustler convicted of robbery in 1946, he spent seven years in
prison, where he educated himself and became a disciple of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of
Islam. In the days of the civil rights movement, Malcolm X emerged as the leading spokesman for black
separatism, a philosophy that urged black Americans to cut political, social, and economic ties with the
white community. After a pilgrimage to Mecca, the capital of the Muslim world, in 1964, he became an
orthodox Muslim, adopted the Muslim name El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and distanced himself from the
teachings of the black Muslims. He was assassinated in 1965. In the following excerpt from his
autobiography (1965), coauthored with Alex Haley and published the year of his death, Malcolm X
describes his self-education.

It was because of my letters that I happened to stumble upon starting to acquire some kind of a
homemade education.
I became increasingly frustrated. at not being able to express what I wanted to convey in letters that I
wrote, especially those to Mr. Elijah Muhammad. In the street, I had been the most articulate hustler out
there - I had commanded attention when I said something. But now, trying to write simple English, I not
only wasn't articulate, I wasn't even functional. How would I sound writing in slang, the way I would say
it, something such as, "Look, daddy, let me pull your coat about a cat, Elijah Muhammad-"
Many who today hear me somewhere in person, or on television, or those who read something
I've said, will think I went to school far beyond the eighth grade. This impression is due entirely to
my prison studies.
It had really begun back in the Charlestown Prison, when Bimbi first made me feel envy of his
stock of knowledge. Bimbi had always taken charge of any conversations he was in, and I had tried to
emulate him. But every book I picked up had few sentences which didn't contain anywhere from one
to nearly all of the words that might as well have been in Chinese. When I just skipped those words,
of course, I really ended up with little idea of what the book said. So I had come to the Norfolk Prison
Colony still going through only book-reading motions. Pretty soon, I would have quit even these
motions, unless I had received the motivation that I did.
I saw that the best thing I could do was get hold of a dictionary - to study, to learn some words. I was
lucky enough to reason also that I should try to improve my penmanship. It was sad. I couldn't even write
in a straight line. It was both ideas together that moved me to request a dictionary along with some tablets
and pencils from the Norfolk Prison Colony school.
I spent two days just riffling uncertainly through the dictionary's pages. I'd never realized so
many words existed! I didn't know which words I needed to learn. Finally, just to start some kind of
action, I began copying.
In my slow, painstaking, ragged handwriting, I copied into my tablet everything printed on that first
page, down to the punctuation marks.
I believe it took me a day. Then, aloud, I read back, to myself, everything I'd written on the tablet.
Over and over, aloud, to myself, I read my own handwriting.
I woke up the next morning, thinking about those words - immensely proud to realize that not
only had I written so much at one time, but I'd written words that I never knew were in the world.
Moreover, with a little effort, I also could remember what many of these words meant. I reviewed the
words whose meanings I didn't remember. Funny thing, from the dictionary first page right now, that
"aardvark" springs to my mind. The dictionary had a picture of it, a long-tailed, long-eared,
burrowing African mammal, which lives off termites caught by sticking out its tongue as an anteater
does for ants.
I was so fascinated that I went on - I copied the dictionary's next page. And the same experience
came when I studied that. With every succeeding page, I also learned of people and places and events
from history. Actually the dictionary is like a miniature encyclopedia. Finally the dictionary's A section

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had filled a whole tablet-and I went on into the B's. That was the way I started copying what eventually
became the entire dictionary. It went a lot faster after so much practice helped me to pick up handwriting
speed. Between what I wrote in my tablet, and writing letters, during the rest of my time in prison I would
guess I wrote a million words.
I suppose it was inevitable that as my word-base broadened, I could for the first time pick up a book
and read and now begin to understand what the book was saying. Anyone who has read a great deal can
imagine the new world that opened. Let me tell you something: from then until I left that prison, in every
free moment I had, if I was not reading in the library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn't have gotten
me out of books with a wedge. Between Mr. Muhammad's teachings, my correspondence, my visitors,...
and my reading of books, months passed without my even thinking about being imprisoned. In fact, up to
then, I never had been so truly free in my life.

Page 18 of 31
 Editorial

The Temin Effect

David Epstein - Washington, DC
Malcolm Gladwell - New York, New York

Many years ago, one of us (M.G.) interviewed the biologist prevailing trend in medicinedand in many other complex
Howard Temin. Temin had just won the Nobel Prize for his domainsdhas been toward greater and greater
work on the discovery of reverse transcriptasedthe class of specialization in training. Cardiologists were once experts
enzymes capable of creating DNA from a RNA templated in all of the heart. Today, the field has been sliced into
and he was an unforgettable figure. He had a wiry shock of small pieces: Some cardiologists focus only on cardiac
hair and a wry smile. He was raised by activist parents in valves, with the rest of the organdthe coronary arteries,
Philadelphia. His bar mitzvah money was donated to a cardiac muscle, and the heart’s electricitydleft to others.
refugee camp. His valedictory address in high school was Similarly, the IMG tennis academy in Bradenton, Florida,
about the hydrogen bomb. He had read deeply about phi- perhaps the most famous breeding ground for elite players
losophy and literature, and during the interview he spent as in the world, begins its residential training program at the
much time, brilliantly, in the larger world of ideas as he did pre-kindergarten level. The tennis-playing adolescent has
talking about his own work in molecular biology. become the tennis-playing toddler. Tennis and cardiology
We observe, of people like Temin, that they know a great and any number of other disciplines have responded to the
many things beyond their field. But in the use of that word increasing technical and informational demands of the
“beyond” is an assumptiondthat knowledge of literature modern age with focus: To be a great tennis player, the
and philosophy lies outside the domain of the scientist. Why belief is, you have to play lots and lots of tennis.
do we assume that? The discovery of reverse transcriptase But Gurwin et al1 remind us that that position may
was a challenge to a tenet of modern biology so hallowed it conflate 2 very different principles. To be a great tennis
was actually called “the central player, clearly, requires lots and
dogma”: genetic information Taking would-be physicians out of the lots of preparation. But where is
flows from DNA to RNA and hospital and into a museumdtaking it written that that preparation
from there is encoded in proteins. them out of their own world and into a needs to take place exclusively
Temin argued it could also flow different onedmade them better on the court?
in the opposite directionda Consider that scientists in the
claim that was treated with physicians. United States have about the
derision. To imagine a possibility same number of hobbies as
so heretical required imagination. It required a paradoxical members of the general public. But scientists inducted into
turn of mind. It was, in a way, an observation born as much national academies tend to have more. Nobel laureates have
of a literary sensibility as a scientific one. Temin’s wide more still. Nobelists are at least 22 times more likely to
interests were not extraneous to his scientific pursuits. A partake in serious hobbies apparently unrelated to their
case can be made that they were in the service of his sci- work,2 and those hobbies are particularly likely to involve
entific pursuits. serious aesthetic interests. More accomplished researchers
In this issue, Gurwin et al1 (see http://www.aaojournal.org/ have what a creativity researcher called “networks of
article/S0161-6420(17)31708-6/fulltext) attempt to verify enterprises,” and when they approach difficult problems,
what we might (whimsically) call the “Temin effect.” A they draw on analogies from one enterprise to inform
group of medical students at the University of Pennsylvania another. As Santiago Ramon y Cajal,3 the father of
were given six 90-minute training sessions at the Philadel- modern neuroscience, explained it, “To him who observes
phia Museum of Art. There they were taught, as art history them from afar, it appears as though they are scattering
students have been taught for centuries, how to look at art: and dissipating their energies, while in reality they are
how to observe and describe and discuss works of imagina- challenging and strengthening them.” If, as Ramon y
tion. The question was, would lessons in a field far from their Cajal3 suggested, it is not merely despite this time and
own make them better at the observational and diagnostic energy apparently off task that they are able to hone their
skills that lie at the core of ophthalmology? And the answer is skills, but because of it, there may be a vast unexplored
that it did, substantially. Taking would-be physicians out of world of potential cross-training opportunities, of the sort
the hospital and into a museumdtaking them out of their own described in the current issue by Gurwin et al.1
world and into a different onedmade them better physicians. Temin’s intellectual forebears, the actual, heretical
The scope of the study by Gurwin et al1 is quite narrow: Renaissance men, provide proof of concept. Where his
36 medical students randomized in a treatment and control contemporaries looked at the moon and saw a perfectly
group. But the implications of the study are not. The smooth, divine sphere, Galileo recognized shades of dark

ª 2017 by the American Academy of Ophthalmology https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ophtha.2017.11.008 1

Published by Elsevier Inc. ISSN 0161-6420/17

Page 19 of 31
 Ophthalmology Volume -, Number -, Month 2017
and light for what they were: mountains and craters. Why?
He was trained as an artist and was well practiced at
depicting 3-dimensional figures in various light conditions.
As the science historian Mark Peterson wrote in his book
Galileo’s Muse,4 Galileo’s genius was built, in part, on his
grounding in the arts: “It seems plausible, and perhaps
almost obvious, that someone who is trained to see, and
who thinks about the process of seeing, sees more and
sees better.”
That sort of preparation, Gurwin et al1 argue, is what is
missing in ophthalmology. “Observation and description
are critical to the practice of medicine,” they write. But
they point out that physical examination courses in medical
school generally focus on memorization of clinical signs,
without regard to developing the underlying skill of
observation. Cognitive psychologists have repeatedly
shown that this variety of teaching will not lead students to
develop broadly applicable skills that will serve them for a
lifetime.5 It will, instead, lead to a reliance on algorithmic
rules for familiar situations. And algorithms, of course, are
algorithmic: wonderful so long as they are facing a
problem they have seen exactly before, and terrible when
confronted with a novel situation. “Interestingly, we noted
a decline in the overall score of the control group,” the
authors write, in one of the most intriguing (and troubling)
moments in the article. Without a foundation in the basic
skills of observation, further medical training may have the
effect of eroding the skills of the would-be ophthalmologists.
Is this evidence of pedagogical negligence on the part of
medical education? That is much too harsh. What we are
witnessing here is in all likelihood a structural issue: There
are simply practical limits to what or how much any one
discipline can teach its students. Temin’s love of paradox
could only have come from literature. Similarly, the point
made by Gurwin et al1 is that sometimes medical students
just need to leave the hospital and walk down the street to
the museum.
This idea is not entirely new. The world of elite sports
embraced the concept of cross-training many years ago. But
one of the (many) thoughts prompted by the study in
question is whether we have been too tentative in exploring
the potential benefits of cross-disciplinary preparation.
Tennis players at the IMG academy will occasionally, for
example, repair to the gym, where they will squat and
stretch and lift. But this is training that is different in degree
from the athlete’s primary activitydnot in kind. Continuous
improvement requires the ability to introspect about
Footnotes and Financial Disclosures
Financial Disclosure(s): The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial
interest in any materials discussed in this article.
Page 20 of 31
performance. It requires the capacity for self-analysis, a
willingness to accept and respond to criticism. These are
skills of character, psychology, and cognition. “He never
learned how to play within the system,” the National
Basketball Association coach will sometimes say, wearily,
of a player who never lived up to his potential. But maybe
that is because the best place to learn to play within the
system of professional basketball is away from the basket-
ball court. Do those students at the IMG academy, tethered
to their rackets from the age of 5 and 6 years, need to spend
more time debating the classics in literature class?
We are back, admittedly, to being whimsical. But there
are plenty more concrete questions raised by this line of
inquiry. How long will the improved observational skills
demonstrated by Gurwin et al1 persist beyond the training
period? Could additional or different kinds of training lead
to larger improvements? Are there other nonmedical
institutions a medical student might profitably visit in the
course of his or her training? “After just the first session, I
found myself listening to a radiologist discuss the same
principles we used to look at art in analyzing a CT scan,”
one of the subjects in the study by Gurwin et al1 is quoted
as saying. It is a good thing to see “art” in the same
sentence as “radiology.” A medical expert is rightfully
concerned with the particular and narrow aspects of their
specialty. But as Temin and Gurwin et al1 remind us, the
best expert is the one who also belongs to the wider world.
References
1. Gurwin J, Revere KE, Niepold S, et al. A randomized controlled
study of art observation training to improve medical student
ophthalmology skills. Ophthalmology. 2017 Aug 3. pii: S0161-
6420(17)31708-6. doi: 10.1016/j.ophtha.2017.06.031. [Epub
ahead of print].
2. Root-Bernstein R, Allen L, Beach L, et al. Arts foster scientific
success: Avocations of Nobel, National Academy, Royal So-
ciety, and Sigma Xi members. J Psychol Sci Technol.
2008;1(2):51-63. Available at: http://psycnet.apa.org/record/
2009-22160-003.
3. Ramon y Cajal. Precepts and Counsels on Scientific Investi-
gation: Stimulants of the Spirit. Mountain View, CA: Pacific
Press Publishing Association; 1951.
4. Peterson MA. Galileo’s Muse: Renaissance Mathematics and
the Arts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 2011.
5. Richland LE, Stigler JW, Holyoak KJ. Teaching the conceptual
structure of mathematics. Educ Psychol. 2012;47:189-203.
Correspondence:
Malcolm Gladwell, Pushkin Enterprises, 302A West 12th Street, #132,
New York, NY 10014. E-mail: malcolm@gladwell.com.
 “Popular Science” • Adam Alter • The Point Magazine • 2014
The first thing I learned in law
school is that law school is not for learning
the law. My decorated professor explained
that we would spend twenty hours each
week reading and discussing cases—and
that very few of those cases would ever
again figure in our lives as lawyers. Those
hours were not wasted, but it was not
because they filled our heads with legal
content that they were useful. It was because
they slowly formed us into the kinds of
minds that make successful lawyers.
My professor was right. I began to
speak, think and consume information like a
lawyer. When I joined a large corporate law
firm as a paralegal, I was coiled and ready to
be lawyerly. Not a single one of the dozens
of cases we discussed for thousands of hours
appeared again, but that didn’t matter. I was
primed to read dozens of new cases quickly
and efficiently, and to distill thou-sands of
pages of judicial content into a rich
concentrate of legal argument.
Eventually I left the law firm and
embarked on a new life. I started and
finished a doctorate in social psychology,
began an academic job in psychology and
marketing, and wrote a book. The book,
written for people who are interested in
human psychology but have no background
in the subject, consumed me for three years.
I wanted to share with other people the ideas
that had kept my mind occupied and
entertained for more than a decade. I created
a document entitled “Book Plan” and filled
page after page with references to my
favorite experiments—first dozens and then
hundreds. “Book Plan” became a catalogue
of the content that populated my thoughts,
the closest thing to a facsimile of my
academic mind. My aim, I decided, should
be to transfer as much of that information to
the reader who happened to pick up my
book.
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I wrote intensely, but briefly.
Tattooing my mind to the page wasn’t
working. My law professor had promised
not to bombard us with content, but that’s
exactly what I was doing to my readers—
giving them a brute-force education in social
psychology. I stopped writing and spent
some time leafing through popular-science
classics. Some were written by academics in
their respective fields, others by journalists
and writers. The best of them presented
ideas, but these ideas were mostly dressed in
anecdotes and narratives.
The first book I opened when I
prematurely stopped writing was Malcolm
Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. When I first
read the book I was two years into a
psychology degree, and it explains in no
small part why I went on to pursue a
Ph.D.—and why ten years later I wrote a
book of my own. In this, his first book,
Gladwell explores why some ideas, trends
and products go viral after crossing the
eponymous tipping point. What
distinguishes this book from almost every
other I had read before it is its complete
disregard of intellectual boundaries.
Gladwell is omnivorous, picking and
choosing the most compelling ideas from
more than a dozen fields. The references at
the back of the book show traces of
psychology, soc-iology, medicine,
epidemiology, ethology, mathematics,
marketing, history, public policy, comm-
unications theory, media studies,
criminology, jurisprudence, evolut-ionary
behavior, linguistics, public health and
psychiatry. Gladwell is a wonderful writer
and I enjoyed the book immensely, but long
after my memories for each anecdote grew
hazy—why crime rates in New York City
fell in the mid-Nineties, why the cool kids
suddenly started wearing Hush Puppies—I
continued to see the world through a sharper
lens. As a psychologist, I saw no reason why
I couldn’t dip my toes into thousands of
other discipline-driven universes that fill our
world with information.
A decade after reading The Tipping
Point, I stumbled on a book called The
Secret Life of Pronouns, written by
psychologist James Pennebaker. Pennebaker
and Gladwell are very different authors.
Pennebaker writes about his own work, so
his book covers a narrow field of
information in great depth. But his book had
a similarly profound impact on how I think
about the world. Pennebaker’s premise is
that the “small, stealthy [function] words”
we use every day—you, a, am, to, I, but, the,
for, not—actually reveal a tremendous
amount about our mental lives. He presents
a string of compelling anecdotes and chases
each one with empirical proof.
In one, he analyzes the
correspondence between psycho-analysts
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who
exchanged at least 337 letters between 1906
and 1913. Freud’s reputation ascended
before Jung’s, but by 1911 both had
achieved renown in the psychoanalytic
community—and so the tension between
them escalated. At first, their letters showed
a great deal of linguistic mimicry; both
scholars used similar function words, and
their relationship flourished. By 1913, their
views had diverged, and Freud suggested
they “abandon … personal relations
entirely.” Penn-ebaker shows that even
before their letters grew hostile, their
linguistic styles had begun to drift apart.
These “small, stealthy words” betrayed
animus long before it rose to the surface of
their relationship.
What struck me about The Secret
Life of Pronouns, and Penn-ebaker’s
research program more broadly, is that it
achieves so many ends that are difficult to
accomplish simultaneously. Pennebaker
shows that large effects grow from small,
Page 22 of 31
apparently innocuous roots, and that those
effects persist across many domains, from
presidential speeches and letters between ac-
ademics to Shakespearean character arcs and
Beatles lyrics. In each case, function words
predict vast differences in power, affection,
self-deception, success and leadership skills.
As with Gladwell’s book, long after the
details from Pennebaker’s anecdotes have
begun to fade, I find myself reading legal
and political transcripts differently, listening
to how other people speak differently, and
understanding the world differently.
Gladwell’s book succeeded because
it eradicated the barriers between
disciplines; Pennebaker’s succeeded because
it presented one very powerful idea that tied
together disparate worlds. But neither book
succeeded because it filled my mind with
content. The case studies made the books
fun to read, but over time my memory for
them waned and left behind a sketchy trace
of the big ideas that made the books
enduringly important. The vivid anecdotes
were just the vehicles that transported those
big ideas.
To me, then, the essence of good
science writing is not the sharing of
particular ideas, but the sharing of general
approaches to perceiving the world. A book
doesn’t succeed because its readers can cite
ten new facts; it succeeds because the next
time those readers see a person behaving
oddly, or the sun at a particular height in the
sky, or two birds engaged in an elaborate
courtship ritual, they look at those events
differently and perhaps more deeply. This is
a skill that cuts across every sphere of life
and promises to bring great rewards across
time.
Both Gladwell and Pennebaker
change how we look at the world, but
Gladwell’s lesson is broader than
Pennebaker’s. Gladwell implies that the
most interesting way to look at the world is
to develop a voracious appetite for
information without paying too much enough of these ideas, and the average well-
attention to which discipline produced that read layperson becomes the sum of a diverse
infor-mation. When several disciplines range of experts—shallower and less
tackle big challenges—crime, poverty, sophisticated than true experts, of course,
education, prejudice, disease—it makes no but a smarter consumer of the world’s infor-
sense to doggedly rely on one approach mation nonetheless.
without at least considering the others. This Psychologists use the
might seem obvious, but expertise— term metacognition to label how we think
burrowing deeply into one subject—often about our thoughts, and a truly great popular
comes at the expense of breadth. The first science book changes how we approach the
chapter of The Tipping Point illustrates business of thinking, rather than the specific
Gladwell’s approach perfectly. As he things we think about. My law professor was
sketches the “three rules of epidemics,” he explaining this idea without the jargon—that
invokes lessons from epidemiologists (who law school changes how you approach the
were invest-igating a syphilis epidemic in task of consuming information—and books
Baltimore); businesspeople (who were like The Tipping Point and The Secret Life
trying to repeat the success of Hush Puppies, of Pronouns achieve the same lofty goal.
which went from selling 30,000 pairs of Once you’ve read them, you perceive the
shoes per year in the early 1990s to 430,000 same people, places, objects, ideas and
pairs in 1995); and psychologists (who concepts through a more sophisticated lens.
wondered why dozens of bystanders chose Nothing looks the same, because you’re
not to intervene or call for help as a young sporting an upgrade in your basic mental
woman was brutally attacked). There are apparatus.
conferences for epidemiologists,
conferences for businesspeople and
conferences for psychologists—but none
that encourage all three disciplines to come
together as seamlessly as they do in
Gladwell’s book.
Pennebaker’s lesson is narrower but
no less important. He shows how a specific,
obscure idea at the avant-garde of his field
illuminates new terrain for anyone who’s
willing to learn. This is a valuable service,
particularly in aggregate, as academics who
write similar books incrementally bridge the
chasm between academia and everything
else. It’s easiest to see how important this
process is by focusing on how much the
chasm shrank during the twentieth century.
Concepts that were restricted to experts are
understood far more widely today: the forces
of supply and demand from economics;
sterilization and infection from medicine;
the relationship between natural light and
well-being from psychology. String together

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