Overcoming Writer's Block For many writers the worst part of the writing experience is the very beginning,

when they're sitting at the kitchen table staring at a blank sheet of paper or in front of that unblinking and perfectly empty computer monitor. "I have nothing to say," is the only thing that comes to mind. "I am XX years old and I have done nothing, discovered nothing, been nothing, and there are absolutely no thoughts in my head that anyone would ever want to read about." This is the Censor in your brain, your Self-Critic, and sometimes that Censor is bigger than you are. Who knows what causes the ugly Censor to be there a bad experience in third grade? something your mother said once during potty-training? it doesn't matter. The Censor is there for all of us, building and rebuilding this thing called Writer's Block, one of the Censor's many selflimiting toys. It might be some comfort to know that even professional writers suffer from Writer's Block from time to time. Some of the greatest writers in literature Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway were tormented by momentary lapses in their ability to produce text although you wouldn't think it possible if you've ever tried to pick up War and Peace with one hand. American poet William Stafford offers this advice to poets who suffer from Writer's Block: "There is no such thing as writer's block for writers whose standards are low enough." This sounds terrible at first. "What? I'm supposed to write junk? I need a good grade! I'm better than that!" No, Stafford is not encouraging writers to produce garbage. He is suggesting, however, that it's easy to take yourself too seriously, to think you're going to write a poem or an essay that is going to be the greatest poem or essay ever written, that you're going to formulate the greatest, loveliest, most intelligent statement ever made. So you sit there, thinking how unworthy you are, cursing the day you were born, wondering why you ever went to college, hating the very act of writing that has you so stymied. A writer has to let that go, forget about judgment. Go ahead and write drivel at first, as long as you write. Out of your nonsense and ramblings, however, believe that something good will come, some idea will catch fire right there on the page, there will be sparks, patterns will emerge. Be willing to throw stuff out. It's all right. Do you think Shakespeare didn't litter his kitchen floor with balled-up pieces of paper? One nice thing about the word-processor is that you're not wasting paper and trees; you're just exercising the delete key. But this is no time to worry about the environment. Fill that wastebasket with paper and trust that something will come of all this scribbling. It will. Carry with you a pocket-sized notebook in which you can scribble ideas for writing as they come to you. How often have you been stopped at a red-light and a great idea has come into your head? It's so wonderful that you know you'll remember it when you get home, but when you sit down at the table, pen in hand, all you remember is the fact that you had a good idea an hour ago. Part of the writing experience is learning that good ideas do not always come to us when we need them. We must learn to catch ideas as they come to us, fortuitously, even as we're about to fall asleep at night. People who tell you that physical exercise is important for mental activity are telling the truth. If nothing's happening on the computer screen or paper, take a walk around the block. Hit the treadmill or tennis courts or drive to the gym. But take your notebook with you. Fresh blood will

be flowing through your brain and jogging might just jog something loose in your head. It happens. Another trick is to start in the middle of your writing project. Avoid that problem of getting started by starting on a part of the project that interests you more and then come back to the introductory matter later. This sounds a bit like starting to earn your second million dollars before you've earned your first, but it's really not a bad idea in any case, because sometimes it's easier to say where you're going after you know where you've been. After all, your readers will never know you wrote the introduction last (another joy of word-processing technology!). One final maneuver around the old Writer's Block: talk over your paper with a friend, or just blab away into a tape recorder (even better). Play the tape back and write down what you hear in clusters of ideas or freewrite about them.

Getting Started: Freewriting

Freewriting Many writing instructors use a freewriting exercise at the beginning of each class. It's a way of getting the brain in gear, and it's an exercise you can do on your own, safe to try in your own home. (We provide an interactive page for this exercise, see below.) Write down a topic at the top of that empty page. It can be either a one-word topic like "Dentists," for example or a brief statement of the topic you've chosen or been given to write about. Set the clock for five to ten minutes and put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and go at it. Write as fast as you can; the faster the better. You are not allowed to stop writing! If you can't think of anything to say, write down that you can't think of anything to say, something like: "I'm stuck but I'll think of something soon." Don't stop. Don't worry about transitions or connecting the ideas or paragraphing or subject-verb agreement or even commas. And form absolutely no judgment about what you write. Your Censor is on vacation. Your writing may take you in some really weird directions, but don't stop and never think to yourself, "Oh, this is dumb!" If you get off the subject, that's all right. Your divagation may end up somewhere wonderful. Just keep writing. Do not criticize yourself and do not cut or scratch out or revise in any way. Many instructors suggest that at the end of the timed period, you should write one sentence IN ALL CAPS that takes you back to where you started something to do with dentists. It's probably a good idea to read your freewriting out loud when you're done with it. Often the ear will pick up some pattern or neat idea that you hadn't noticed even as you wrote it. Read your freewriting to a friend or have your friend read it out to you. Your friend might think you're insane, but that's all right. Then it's time to spend just a couple of minutes going through the freewriting with an aim toward casual rewriting. The word-processor is a big advantage here. Delete the "I can't think of anything to say" lines and the pure nonsense. Are any ideas or patterns emerging? Don't give up on freewriting after one exercise. Many students think that it's boring or stupid at first and come to love it after a week or so of exercises. Freewriting is like any other kind of mental activity: you will get better at it. The first couple of times you try it, perhaps nothing will come of it. After a few efforts, though, the exercise will become liberating. Just as you would never start to play tennis or jog without stretching a bit first, you will never try to write again

without doing a bit of freewriting first. Sometimes, even in the middle of an essay, when stuck for the next idea, you can do a bit of freewriting to get you going again. Here's a five-minute example of free-writing on the subject of dentists written by an older student, Thruston Parry, who has given us permission to use his work:

DENTISTS
I hate going to the dentist. I'm always afraid that they're going to hurt me, and I'm not very good at pain, at tolerating pain, I mean. I remember the first time,w hen I was a kid, going to the dentists, it seemed I never went to the dentist when I was a kid until I had a toothache, that's my parents fault, isn't it, I guess. They should have taken better care of my teeth when I was little, and then I wouldn't have so much grief now with my teeth. But back then I would go to the dentists and he would have this godawful drill that would make this awful noise and it seemed like it always hurt. I remember there was this sign in his office that said PAINLESS DENTIST, UPSTAIRS, but there was no upstairs in his building. Some joke, huh? I can't think of anything to say, and I can't think of anything more to say. Oh, I wonder how come anyone in his right might mind would ever want to become a dentist, putting his fingers into other people's mouths all day, all that spit and blood and not there's the fear of getting AIDS from your clients that they have to wear those rubber gloves and I hate the feel of those things in my mouth, too, and the sound of that thing that draws the spit out of your mouth. I wonder why my folks didn't take me to the dentist BEFORE i had trouble. Probably because when they were growing up it was bad times and they didn't have any money for things like the dentist and it was just taken for granted that you were going to get cavieties and lose a lot of teeth before you were even an adult. I can't think of anything more to say. I can't think of anything more to say. all I know is that when I have kids, they're going to the dentist every six months whether they want to or not and maybe by then they'll have invented some way to absolutely prevent cavities and maybe there won't even be any dentists or if there are it'll just be to clean your teeth and make sure they're straight and pearly white and we won't worry about cavities and stuff like that that causes pain anymore. DENTISTS, MY ATTITUDE HAS CHANGED AS I GOT OLDER. Looking back over this paragraph, do you see any ideas that might lend themselves toward an essay on dentists or at least the beginnings of one? Why would one want to become a dentist? or some other "unpleasant" line of medical work (even worse than dentistry)? How have attitudes toward going to the dentist changed over the years? Will better toothpastes, etc. eventually make dentists obsolete? How do dentists cope with the threat of AIDS? Is it a real threat? Click HERE for a blank text-area, complete with automatic line-wrapping and ten-minute timer, where you can practice, online, your own freewriting. You might have to click in the upper lefthand corner of the text-area to make your typing cursor appear. When the ten-minute period expires, the page disappears, but you can get back to it by clicking on your browser's BACK button. Also, you can erase your text by clicking on the button at the bottom of the text-area. Use the following hyperlinks if you prefer an Eight-Minute Timer or a Five-Minute Timer or an Untimed Exercise.

TEACHER'S NOTE: "Freewriting: A Means of Teaching Critical Thinking to College Freshmen," an excellent paper on the uses of freewriting in college English courses, was written by Wendy Major. Her paper, written for the English Department of Texas Tech University, contains an extensive bibliography on freewriting and other such techniques. It is reproduced here with the permission of Dr. Fred Kemp, Director of Composition at Texas Tech University.

Getting Started: Clustering Ideas

Clustering Clustering is similar to another process called Brainstorming. Clustering is something that you can do on your own or with friends or classmates to try to find inspiration in the connection between ideas. The process is similar to freewriting in that as you jot down ideas on a piece of paper or on the blackboard, you mustn't allow that ugly self-censor to intrude and say that your idea (or anyone else's) is dumb or useless. Write it down anyway. In Clustering, you jot down only words or very short phrases. Use different colored pens as ideas seem to suggest themselves in groups. Use printing or longhand script to suggest that ideas are main thoughts or supportive ideas. Don't bother to organize too neatly, though, because that can impede the flow of ideas. Don't cross anything out because you can't tell where an idea will lead you. When you get a few ideas written down, you can start to group them, using colored circles or whatever. Draw linking lines as connections suggest themselves. Below is a finished example of Clustering. It is printed here with permission of the aforementioned Thruston Parry. The assignment was to write a Cause and Effect Paper on the weather phenomenon known as El Nio. If you have a very fast modem connection or you're working in a computer lab, you can click HERE or on the image below for an animated sequence showing how the clustering might have happened. (A large image file --532 kb -- is involved, and we don't encourage you to download it without a fast connection; if the download stalls, you can return to this page by clicking on the RETURN link below the image, or you can click on STOP and then BACK.)

Points to Ponder:

Do you think you could write an essay based on the ideas clustered here? Can you draw additional links between concepts? Are there ideas listed above that you'd reject as irrelevant or too much to deal with? Can you think of some ideas (or a whole set of ideas) that should have been included but weren't? What about the causes of El Nio? Should they be included in this essay? Can you come up with a Thesis Statement that would be appropriate for an essay based on this clustering of ideas?

Getting Started: Outlining

Outlining
It might prove useful to organize the ideas that suggest themselves during the freewriting and clustering exercises into a preliminary outline form. It is possible to write a paper without an outline, but it might suggest that your paper lacks organization if it proves impossible to write an outline that describes the thinking process behind your paper. Outlining never hurt; how helpful it is depends on what kind of thinker you are. At the least, a tentative outline can suggest areas in which your paper needs additional work or supporting details to bolster main ideas or, on the other hand, areas which have too much emphasis and need to be pruned down to avoid an imbalance. It might also help you to see how ideas are related and where connections or transitions are necessary between sections of your paper. Furthermore, the outline will help you visualize how ideas fit within the thesis statement that is taking shape in your mind. Remember that your outline is only a tentative skeleton to hang ideas on; limbs can be lopped off or added as the writing proceeds. Your instructor might require you to submit a formal outline for approval before you write your paper or to go along with your final draft. If that is so, this tentative outlining process will serve you well later on. The Guide to Writing Research Papers has a special section on writing outlines, and we recommend you review that material. From that document, here is one image (below) that might prove especially helpful, a sample outline (from the MLA Handbook) of another proposed paper. The important thing to notice about it is how supporting details are arranged beneath more important ideas and the outline branches out (toward the right) as ideas become more supportive in nature. Logic demands that an "A" be followed by a "B." (If there is no "B," maybe there shouldn't be an "A," or "A" should be incorporated into the paper in some other way.)

Based on the MLA's sample, here is Thruston Parry's tentative outline for his proposed paper on the effects of El Nio:
I. Disastrous Weather Effects A. December Ice Storm in Maine 1. huge power outage 2. schools out 2 wks 3. jobs lost 4. cost in trees 5. replacing power poles, etc. B. Rains in CA

II.

III.

IV.

1. mudslides 2. highways ripped apart 3. expensive homes in ocean 4. insurance costs C. Weather in FL 1. Killer tornadoes 2. freeze in March a. dead oranges b. costs of other fruits D. Other Disasters A. Flash floods in AZ B. ???? Not so bad effects A. Mild winter in New England B. Flowers in Death Valley Desert C. Skiing conditions in CO D. Mild winter in upper plains Long-term effects A. Power lines go underground B. Landscape 0. trees 1. ???? Really important effects A. Sense of powerlessness B. Fear of next winter

Points to Ponder:

Are we closer to being able to write a paper than we were before we created the outline? Do any transitions between ideas suggest themselves? Is anything left out of our outline? Would you have organized the thoughts in the clustering exercise differently? Does the outline seem balanced or is part of it overwhelming the rest? There is no Thesis Statement yet. Does the outline help us resolve what that controlling idea might be? Before finally sitting down to write our paper on El Nio, we might check out what we can find out about it on the internet at a site like this one from the Environmental News Network -- being careful, of course, to give proper credit for any ideas we borrow and not to let the thoughts of others overshadow our own good ideas.

Writing with a Sense of Purpose

This section ought to be read in conjunction with the section on Tone, as tone and purpose are very much related: one's tone is defined by why one is writing and vice versa.

It's important to know why you're writing. If your purpose in writing is to please your instructor or to get a better grade, that may not be enough. Many instructors devise strategies to persuade their students to write for a larger community publishing students' best work in a newsletter or online publication, asking students to send their papers to local newspapers, putting their best papers in a collection in the college library something that allows students to feel that more than one person, sitting alone at the kitchen table, is going to read this bit of writing. Knowing that there is more than one person to please, a public "out there," is a motivation in itself to do well, to communicate clearly. It will help establish, also, that consistent sense of tone that is so important to a paper's success. Beyond that feeling that there is an audience out there, waiting breathlessly for this paper you're working on, it helps to have a clear sense of what you're trying to do for this audience. Are you trying to entertain them? That is surely a lofty purpose: writing to lighten someone's spirits is not a project to be undertaken lightly. Is your paper a matter of self-expression? Do you have opinions or feelings that you need to share with others? Are you trying to persuade others that you have a view of things that is clear-sighted, useful, and needs to be shared? Or that someone else's position is faulty, muddle-headed, or otherwise wrong? Are you trying to provide an exposition of facts or process or definition that others can take advantage of, or are you trying to persuade them of the rightness of a moral or ethical position? Do you want your audience to read your paper and then act, filled with new energy because of what you've told them? The objectivity, mood, and earnestness of your prose will be determined by this attitude or sense of purpose. The writing process is normally aided by a sense of pressure. This paper that we're working on is something that has to be written not just because we must please our writing instructors or because we need a good grade in this course (those pressures have their own sense of emergency) but because there is information or a point of view that we need to share with the

reader. Karl Schnapp, an English professor at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, Connecticut, calls this sense of pressure exigence. Exigence consists of the circumstances that necessitate communication. For example, if you fall down the cellar stairs and lie at the bottom screaming for help, then exigence is easy to understand: you have fallen, and you can't get up. Those are "the circumstances that necessitate communication." Here is another example. You buy your Aunt Louise a scanner for her birthday so she can monitor all the emergency and police radio activity in her neighborhood, but she says the programming directions are too complicated and she gives the scanner back to you. When you try to program it for Auntie, you discover she's right. So you write the manufacturer to complain about their programming instructions. Those are "the circumstances that necessitate communication." In a word, exigence is a problem, a defect, a challenge out there in the real world that compels people to communicate. Sometimes these problems are economic: the shortage of financial aid for students, the lack of money for necessities of life, the unwise manner in which tax dollars are spent by our government. Other times the defects are political: bickering over a recycling program among factions on the city council, a quarrel between members of a union over whether or not to strike. Sometimes the challenges are social: the deportation to immigrants, the treatment of people with racial, ethnic, or physical differences. Sometimes the flaws are personal: the need to vent anger about a casual remark that was taken as an insult, the desire to establish or maintain friendly ties with acquaintances or co-workers or family (please note that not all exigences are negative; in reality, many are positive), the need to relieve feelings of pain caused by the breakdown of a long-term relationship. In all these cases (and many more in our everyday lives), circumstances exist that call out for us to communicate with others. Understanding exigence is essential because without it we cannot effectively determine purpose. 1998 (used with Professor Schnapp's permission)

The pressure to write is determined by the relationship between you as writer and the audience you're trying to reach and affect. Let's examine two essay beginnings with an eye toward determining the writer's purpose and how that sense of purpose establishes tone and word choice. Let's say that for a course in Art Appreciation we have to write (there's a bit of pressure right there!) a brief analysis of a famous painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c. 1558; Oil on canvas, mounted on wood, 73.5 x 112 cm; Musees royaux des BeauxArts de Belgique, Brussels). [Clicking on the image below will call up a larger version of the

same painting 179 kb, not recommended with slow connections.] As you read the beginnings, think about the relationship between writer and audience and how this might have influenced how the writer wrote as he or she did.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus [First Version] The first thing that grabbed my eye when I checked out Bruegel's painting was the red jacket worn by the guy in the foreground. Except for the splotchy sun in the sky, it's really the only bit of color in the whole thing, and I really like bright, warm colors like that. Then I noticed the fact that this guy's looking straight ahead at the horse's rear end in front of his plow. "Whoa, Nelly!" I thought to myself. What a weird thing to put in the middle of a pretty painting! It wasn't until later that I noticed a pair of legs sticking out of the ocean down in the lower right-hand corner of the painting. Somebody's drowning. Of course, none of the three guys in the painting (the plowman, the shepherd, and the fisherman) are paying much attention to it either; in fact, they're pretty much oblivious to what's going on in the water. Even the boat is headed in the wrong direction, and no one seems to give a darn or is going to save whoever belongs to those legs splashing into the water. . . .

Our first version of this first essay's beginning is casual, to say the least. Some of the language, the choice of words, would be typical of friends standing in front of a painting at the museum, remarking in an off-handed way some of its more obvious characteristics. Words and phrases such as "guy," "pretty much," "horse's rear end," "weird thing," "give a darn," "pretty," and, of course, "Whoa, Nelly!" would be inappropriate in formal academic discourse. It's not so much that those words are wrong, exactly, just that they are neither precise nor helpful in our understanding of how the painting registers its effects on the viewer. In addition, the analysis of the painting is done entirely from the viewpoint of the first-person singular, "I." Again, that's not

exactly wrong, but the reader is impressed by the fact that these impressions could be entirely those of the eccentric individual writing, not that these are impressions that ought to be shared by others. The reader is not aware of any need the writer might have to make us feel or know something about this painting. The essay excerpt below is taken from a paper by Bea Wildred, who gives us her gracious permission to use this text. Her more objective, academically appropriate essay begins this way:
Bea Wildred Introduction to Art Professor Allegre Capital Community College 14 April 1998 An Analysis of Landscape with the Fall of Icarus [Second Version]

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, impresses the viewer first with the softness of sunshine and the bucolic pleasures of the countryside. The everyday pursuits of the three common men pictured the plowman, the shepherd, and the fisherman are being carried out in earnest, but with apparent ease and even pleasure. The shepherd lifts his face to the sky, seemingly unconcerned that his sheep are grazing perilously close to the seacliff's edge; the other two are a bit more intent on their work. The details of the foreground the way the plowman's feet tread upon the neatly folded soil behind the plow blend toward the vague but powerful treatment of the background's mysteries: the nearly obscured and whitened mountains, the majestic (if somewhat cloudy) city along the far shore, and the ruined castle in the sea with its cave-like entry. The glow of the setting sun (its golden light nearly palpable in the sky) is mirrored by a splash of light in the far sea, but its main effect is in the foreground, the illumination of the commonplace activities of the plowman and the shepherd. The most vivid color in the painting is the reddish orange of the plowman's shirt, juxtaposed as it is to the natural earth tones of horse and dirt surrounding it. Even the shepherd's shadow has an ephemeral quality as the light hits him and his plow nearly horizontally. Whatever energy exists in the painting is moving toward the left side; the plowman, face downward, plods in that direction, as does his horse (whose backside also indecorously confronts the viewer). They move downward and to the left, toward the delicate tracery (like a Chinese screen) of the large tree on the left edge. All of this occurs to the viewer before the central event of the painting (as announced in the painting's title) reveals itself to his attention: the splash of a pair of legs as the fallen Icarus plunges into the sea. In the lower right-hand corner of the painting, the painfully splayed legs, their delicate pinkness, are all that we see of the fallen mythological figure. They are caught at that precise instant that this symbol of human pride or hubris is about to disappear forever from the world's attention (ironically, of course, in a world where no one is paying attention). We are the only ones who will ever know. All of the energies of the painting lead away from this

disturbing and important event: the plowman and shepherd, oblivious, go about their business, as does the fully-rigged boat (also moving toward the left), sailing away from the fallen figure. . . .

Points to Ponder:

Which essay would you find more helpful in your understanding of the painting's effects? Can you relate this to the writer's apparent sense of purpose in each case? There is no "I" in the second version of the essay's beginning. Do you miss that personal element or does the essay work better without it? Does the second version ever come too close to being stuffy? The writer of the second version seems to have a larger vocabulary than the writer of the first version. Words such as "bucolic," "ephemeral," "palpable," "juxtapose," "ironically," "backside," and "energies" come to mind. Did you have to look up any of those words? What impression does that vocabulary have on you as reader? Is there already a thesis statement in this essay or is one about to suggest itself? Can you say what it would be? The author of this piece is neither an artist nor a critic and so lacks some of the sophistication that other student-writers (art majors, say) might have. What other details in the painting or its composition would you select to write about? If you'd like to experiment with this sense of purpose, try writing on a piece of art work of your own choosing. Visit the Texas.net Museum of Art and choose a painting that appeals to you. Then, using the Untimed Exercise Sheet (which will open in its own window), write one paragraph that sounds as if you're talking over the painting with a close friend and then another paragraph that sounds as though you're trying to help a serious group of readers in the general public understand what's going on in the painting. (If you want to save your writing, you'll have to copy and paste the text into a word-processing document.)

Tone: A Matter of Attitude

This section ought to be read in conjunction with the section on Writing with a Sense of Purpose, as tone and purpose are very much related: one's tone is defined by why one is writing and vice versa.

Your behavior while attending church is different from your behavior while hanging out in the back yard with friends, or at least we hope it is. And part of that difference is the difference in language, a difference not just in the words we use but in what we call tone. We also recall being told, when we were very young, not to "use that tone of voice with me, Mister (or Missy, as the case may be)!" Just as the pitch and volume of one's voice carry a difference in tone from street to church, the choice of words and the way we put our sentences together convey a sense of tone in our writing. The tone, in turn, conveys our attitude toward our audience and our subject matter. Are we being frivolous or serious, casual or formal, sweet or stuffy? The choice of a single word can change the tone of a paragraph, even an entire essay. In the first sentence of this paragraph, for example, the phrasal verb "hanging out" is considerably more casual than others we might have chosen: gathering, congregating, assembling.

Audience
One difficulty in writing for a course is that it's hard to think of the reader of our essays as an audience. Our instructor might, in fact, be our sole reader, somebody who will pack a pile of papers into a briefcase or backpack and take them home to read on the kitchen table, correcting pen in hand. (Or nowadays, he or she may read them online or take home a stack of floppy discs and read the papers on a computer monitor.) In fact, that person has to read those essays, whether they're good or bad; he or she is even paid to do so. This is a very limited audience, indeed, and if we aim our essay at that one individual, we have severely limited its appeal. We would be much better off if we could conceive of our essays as being aimed toward a community of readers, the readership, say, of a small-town or neighborhood newspaper. These readers are interested in what we have to say curious, in fact but they're easily distracted; they expect demand, even something that is fresh, honest, imaginative, energetic, without being too zany or offbeat. We don't know exactly who is going to

pick up this newspaper, so we need to be on our best behavior; our tone must aim toward being friendly and helpful without being overly casual (and never slangy); if we can maintain this tone of slight formality without being stuffy, we've hit it just right.
informal light, humorous, comic personal, subjective casual, offhanded "loose," rambunctious zany, experimental plainspoken, simple formal serious, grave, decorous objective, impersonal impassioned reasoned, reasonable controlled, reserved ornate, elaborate

Contractions
One measure of the formality of our language is our use of contractions. The paragraph just before this one has five verb contractions: it's (twice), they're, don't, and we've. We use contractions all the time in casual conversation, of course, and using contractions in our text will convey an informal quality. To elevate the style, eliminate the contractions and write out the verbs: "if we can maintain this tone of slight formality without being stuffy, we have hit it just right." It is a very easy matter to do a search for apostrophes in our text, and it is a very useful exercise, also. First, we can check for any possessives we may have formed incorrectly, but then we can also check for contractions. Remember, there is nothing inherently wrong with contracted verbs; however, they are one hallmark of informality, and your instructor may object to their use. It would be wise to know how your instructor feels about contractions and a looser, informal style before you experiment with their use at least in a paper that you're writing for a grade. A pleasant informality may be void of elevated language, but it is not an excuse for imprecision or wordiness. Read the section on writing Concise Sentences and review the various means of pruning unnecessary words and clichs. Here is a paragraph from Mother Jones Magazine from an article which calls upon us to stop using antibiotics haphazardly. Where would you place this paragraph on a continuum of formality to informality, and why?

Media reports have likely made you aware of this problem, but they have neglected the implications. Your brother catches a cold that turns into a sinus infection. His doctor treats him with antibiotics, but the bacteria are resistant to all of them. The infection enters his bloodstream a condition known as septicemia and a few days later, your brother dies. (Septicemia is what killed Muppets creator Jim Henson several years ago.) Or instead of a cold, he has an infected cut that won't heal, or any other common bacterial disease, such as an ear or prostate infection.

Michael Castleman, "Cold Comfort." March/April 1998. And here is a paragraph from Atlantic Monthly from an article declaring that the cultural assumptions of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment are current at the end of the millennium. Although you have only four sentences to go on, can you say how this paragraph differs from the paragraph above? Does this difference say something about the audiences of Atlantic Monthly and Mother Jones, respectively? Do you prefer one style to another? Which one feels more like your style?
Governments everywhere are at a loss regarding the best policy for regulating the dwindling forest reserves of the world. Few ethical guidelines have been established from which agreement might be reached, and those are based on an insufficient knowledge of ecology. Even if adequate scientific knowledge were available, we would have little basis for the long-term valuation of forests. The economics of sustainable yield is still a primitive art, and the psychological benefits of natural ecosystems are almost wholly unexplored.

Edward O. Wilson, "Back from Chaos." March 1998. If we tried counting contractions for the entire articles from which these paragraphs are taken, we would discover that there is only one contraction a shouldn't in Wilson's article and there are twenty contractions in Castleman's, even though Wilson's article is considerably longer. How do these contractions, or the lack of them, affect your sense of the seriousness of the essays? Visit the web-sites of other well known magazines. (Click HERE for a list of hyperlinks.) Find examples of clearly definable tones that seem consistent throughout an online publication. Test the contraction-count theory and see if it supports your sense of formal versus informal.

Maintaining Objectivity

You wouldn't think of writing e-mail or a letter to a friend without using the first-person singular I, me, or my. If you were writing a letter to an editor or an essay in which it is appropriate and important to claim opinions and feelings as your own, you would, of course, use the first-person singular: I think, my opinion. The following paragraphs are taken from a Labor Day (2 September 1999) editorial by Jeff Rivers in the Hartford Courant:
[My parents] were workers, union people, assembly lines and lunch pails, typing pools and greasy-spoon hot dogs. They worked as hard as they could for as long as they could. They gave out under the strain of their lives and dropped in the dust. Neither lived to be 60 years old. Because of my parents' hard work, I walk along a less rocky path, which was their dream. My parents were walkers. When I was a boy in Philadelphia, I'd go on long walks with one and then the other. When the three of us walked together, the trips were always short and full of purpose, like my parents' lives. But when I walked with just one of my parents, the trips sometimes became grand explorations of the city and life.

Rivers then goes on to tell us how his father would point out day laborers to his son, hinting broadly that his son should grow up to work with his mind, not his hands: "'Don't be like them, don't be like me.' . . . He wanted me to grow up to use my mind rather than my hands in work. I have, which was my dad's dream." And from there, Rivers goes on to say that today's workers have become more like microchips than mules, but they are still not valued the way they ought to be. Rivers' conclusion about society is allowed to grow out of his initial personal reflection; it feels personally justified. Click HERE for the entire essay. (Please note, though, that the very short paragraphs are appropriate for newspaper writing, but that academic text would undoubtedly gather many of those small paragraphs into larger units.) On the other hand, to avoid any hints of subjective bias or a "this is just little ol' me talking" tone, most academic prose should feel as objective as possible. One easy test of objectivity in writing is the use of the first-person singular. Text in which I shows up over and over again will feel weighted with subjectivity, not objectivity. In the personal essay and the letter to Grandma, that

is perfectly all right, and a personal essay without I's can feel oddly detached and cold. In objective, academic prose, however, that sense of detachment is often exactly what is called for. Here is the introductory paragraph to a brief article in the online version of the September 1999 Atlantic Monthly:
The Kansas school board's recent decision to drop evolution from the state's required curriculum represents the latest episode in an ongoing battle between religious fundamentalists and secular educators over whether public schools should teach "creation science" or evolution or both. The Kansas school board claims that because evolution cannot be replicated in a laboratory, and thus cannot be directly observed, it should only be presented as theory rather than as fact. As a mere theory, they argue, it should be omitted from the curriculum or presented alongside other, competing "theories" (namely, creationism). Educators and scientists troubled by the Kansas decision point out that many scientific assumptions like the existence of atoms cannot be directly observed in a laboratory, but are accepted because they are supported by the best scientific evidence.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/ flashbks/genesis.htm as first used in The Atlantic Monthly, used with permission In this paragraph, there is not a single use of a first-person pronoun. The writer's opinions are undoubtedly lurking somewhere behind the piece, but they are not visibly betrayed by personal statement. Taking an objective stance like this might be a relatively easy matter if you, the writer, are removed from the events of Kansas and the creationism debate. What happens when your instructor asks you to write an essay about what you think about scientific theory versus creationism or about what is going on in a short story, or about some phenomenon in economics? How do you keep I out of it?
The vision of the poet is not just a private matter: "all who heard" and "all should cry." It is a collective enchantment with the poet at the center of it. The magic of the final spellbinding lines beyond explication is based partly on abracadabra incantation ("Weave a circle round him thrice") and our corporate recollections of holy visionaries. The poet compels the vision of the public, but at the same time he is an outcast among them untouchable and even cursed ("his flashing eyes, his floating hair!") by his gift. The lines become completely suggestive in their wild blend of holiness, sensuality, prophecy, and danger. The poet and poem have have become their own "miracle of rare device," and the reader has borne witness to the creative miracle.

Student paper: "Miracle of Rare Device" Rudy Begonia, 15 April 1991 http://cctc.commnet.edu/ grammar/composition/review/kubla_frames.htm

In truth, it would probably be a great strain to avoid using the first-person pronoun in such an essay at least in the first draft. It is OK to write "In my opinion," "I think," "I feel." In fact, it's probably a good idea; it helps us to sort out what we're feeling and thinking from the more impersonal facts involved in the experience of reading the poem. Then, when we have them down on paper all these thoughts and feelings we can go back through the paper and eliminate all the I think's and all the in my opinion's. Many writers will move from what I think ("I think this shift in perspective is a purposeful attempt to trick us, and I feel confused.") to a statement about the experience of a hypothetical third-person reader: ("The reader has borne witness to the creative miracle.") to a simple assertion about the point of view ("The shift in perspective can be confusing.") What begins as personal, subjective "guess": "These lines feel to me like something completely suggestive. . . ." becomes an assertion of truth: "The lines become completely suggestive in their wild blend of holiness, sensuality, prophecy, and danger." We don't need to say that this is our opinion; the reader already knows that, and to reinforce that impression seems to weaken the text. The writer must learn to deal from strength or at least to appear to deal from strength. Writing objectively also means writing fairly. What you feel about a poem, say, can never actually be wrong. Feelings can, of course, be based on misconceptions, but the feelings themselves are neither right nor wrong. This makes it important to express things as if they were objective findings, not personal feelings, as what happens to some reader (any reader), not what happened to me. Another part of objectivity is avoiding evaluation: it is the writer's business to point out how something works. In doing so, we imply whether or not it works well. Writing about the Kansas board of education's decision, we probably want either to praise the board members as independent thinkers who refuse to kowtow to the Lords of Technology and Science or to condemn them as dunderheads, but it is better to describe as objectively as possible what has happened and to allow our readers to form their own opinions. (That process can still be shaped by the words we choose or the order in which we describe things. In the paragraph above, for instance, the writer lets the Board have its say, but the last word belongs to science. But that is another matter.) Having said this, we should be reminded that even in a largely third-person, objective essay the use of the first-person is not automatically to be despised. I can play an important (however cameo) role in the objective essay. One very effective strategy in writing about literature, say, is to briefly chronicle what professional critics and other people (casual readers, friends, classmates, people we make up) have said about a novel; go ahead and set them up with their benighted opinions. And then tell the reader what you think "I, on the other hand, believe that . . . ." blowing away the blunderings of predecessors and revealing the best, true way of looking at things, your way. In this strategy, owning your opinions and dealing straight from the self, from I, becomes a position of strength, not weakness. It would be a good idea to discuss this strategy with your instructor, however, before using it.

Abstract, Concrete, General, and Specific Terms

This page was written by John Friedlander, associate professor in the English department at Southwest Tennessee Community College. It is used here with his permission.

Introduction Language may be our most powerful tool. We use it to understand our world through listening and reading, and to communicate our own feelings, needs and desires through speaking and writing. With strong language skills, we have a much better chance of understanding and being understood, and of getting what we want and need from those around us. There are many ways to label or classify language as we learn to better control itby levels, such as formal, informal, colloquial or slang; by tones, such as stiff, pompous, conversational, friendly, direct, impersonal; even by functions, such as noun, verb, adjective. I want to introduce you to a powerful way of classifying languageby levels of abstraction or concreteness or generality or specificity (any one of those four terms really implies the others). Approaching language in these terms is valuable because it helps us recognize what kinds of language are more likely to be understood and what kinds are more likely to be misunderstood. The more abstract or general your language is, the more unclear and boring it will be. The more concrete and specific your language is, the more clear and vivid it will be. Let's look at these different types of language. Abstract and Concrete Terms Abstract terms refer to ideas or concepts; they have no physical referents.

[Stop right here and reread that definition. Many readers will find it both vague and boring. Even if you find it interesting, it may be hard to pin down the meaning. To make the meaning of this abstract language clearer, we need some examples.] Examples of abstract terms include love, success, freedom, good, moral, democracy, and any ism (chauvinism, Communism, feminism, racism, sexism). These terms are fairly common and familiar, and because we recognize them we may imagine that we understand thembut we really can't, because the meanings won't stay still. Take love as an example. You've heard and used that word since you were three or four years old. Does it mean to you now what it meant to you when you were five? when you were ten? when you were fourteen (!)? I'm sure you'll share my certainty that the word changes meaning when we marry, when we divorce, when we have children, when we look back at lost parents or spouses or children. The word stays the same, but the meaning keeps changing. If I say, "love is good," you'll probably assume that you understand, and be inclined to agree with me. You may change your mind, though, if you realize I mean that "prostitution should be legalized" [heck, love is good!]. How about freedom? The word is familiar enough, but when I say, "I want freedom," what am I talking about? divorce? self-employment? summer vacation? paid-off debts? my own car? looser pants? The meaning of freedom won't stay still. Look back at the other examples I gave you, and you'll see the same sorts of problems. Does this mean we shouldn't use abstract terms? Nowe need abstract terms. We need to talk about ideas and concepts, and we need terms that represent them. But we must understand how imprecise their meanings are, how easily they can be differently understood, and how tiring and boring long chains of abstract terms can be. Abstract terms are useful and necessary when we want to name ideas (as we do in thesis statements and some paragraph topic sentences), but they're not likely to make points clear or interesting by themselves.

Concrete terms refer to objects or events that are available to the senses. [This is directly opposite to abstract terms, which name things that are not available to the senses.] Examples of concrete terms include spoon, table, velvet eye patch, nose ring, sinus mask, green, hot, walking. Because these terms refer to objects or events we can see or hear or feel or taste or smell, their meanings are pretty stable. If you ask me what I mean by the word spoon, I can pick up a spoon and show it to you. [I can't pick up a freedom and show it to you, or point to a small democracy crawling along a window sill. I can measure sand and oxygen by weight and volume, but I can't collect a pound of responsibility or a liter of moral outrage.] While abstract terms like love change meaning with time and circumstances, concrete terms like spoon stay pretty much the same. Spoon and hot and puppy mean pretty much the same to you now as they did when you were four.

You may think you understand and agree with me when I say, "We all want success." But surely we don't all want the same things. Success means different things to each of us, and you can't be sure of what I mean by that abstract term. On the other hand, if I say "I want a gold Rolex on my wrist and a Mercedes in my driveway," you know exactly what I mean (and you know whether you want the same things or different things). Can you see that concrete terms are clearer and more interesting than abstract terms? If you were a politician, you might prefer abstract terms to concrete terms. "We'll direct all our considerable resources to satisfying the needs of our constituents" sounds much better than "I'll spend $10 million of your taxes on a new highway that will help my biggest campaign contributor." But your goal as a writer is not to hide your real meanings, but to make them clear, so you'll work to use fewer abstract terms and more concrete terms.

General and Specific Terms General terms and specific terms are not opposites, as abstract and concrete terms are; instead, they are the different ends of a range of terms. General terms refer to groups; specific terms refer to individualsbut there's room in between. Let's look at an example. Furniture is a general term; it includes within it many different items. If I ask you to form an image of furniture, it won't be easy to do. Do you see a department store display room? a dining room? an office? Even if you can produce a distinct image in your mind, how likely is it that another reader will form a very similar image? Furniture is a concrete term (it refers to something we can see and feel), but its meaning is still hard to pin down, because the group is so large. Do you have positive or negative feelings toward furniture? Again, it's hard to develop much of a response, because the group represented by this general term is just too large. We can make the group smaller with the less general term, chair. This is still pretty general (that is, it still refers to a group rather than an individual), but it's easier to picture a chair than it is to picture furniture. Shift next to rocking chair. Now the image is getting clearer, and it's easier to form an attitude toward the thing. The images we form are likely to be fairly similar, and we're all likely to have some similar associations (comfort, relaxation, calm), so this less general or more specific term communicates more clearly than the more general or less specific terms before it. We can become more and more specific. It can be a La-Z-Boy rocker-recliner. It can be a green velvet La-Z-Boy rocker recliner. It can be a lime green velvet La-Z-Boy rocker recliner with a cigarette burn on the left arm and a crushed jelly doughnut pressed into the back edge of the seat cushion. By the time we get to the last description, we have surely reached the individual, a single chair. Note how easy it is to visualize this chair, and how much attitude we can form about it.

The more you rely on general terms, the more your writing is likely to be vague and dull. As your language becomes more specific, though, your meanings become clearer and your writing becomes more interesting. Does this mean you have to cram your writing with loads of detailed description? No. First, you don't always need modifiers to identify an individual: Bill Clinton and Mother Teresa are specifics; so are Bob's Camaro and the wart on Zelda's chin. Second, not everything needs to be individual: sometimes we need to know that Fred sat in a chair, but we don't care what the chair looked like.

Summing Up If you think back to what you've just read, chances are you'll most easily remember and most certainly understand the gold Rolex, the Mercedes, and the lime green La-Z-Boy rocker-recliner. Their meanings are clear and they bring images with them (we more easily recall things that are linked with a sense impression, which is why it's easier to remember learning how to ride a bike or swim than it is to remember learning about the causes of the Civil War). We experience the world first and most vividly through our senses. From the beginning, we sense hot, cold, soft, rough, loud. Our early words are all concrete: nose, hand, ear, cup, Mommy. We teach concrete terms: "Where's baby's mouth?" "Where's baby's foot?"not, "Where's baby's democracy?" Why is it that we turn to abstractions and generalizations when we write? I think part of it is that we're trying to offer ideas or conclusions. We've worked hard for them, we're proud of them, they're what we want to share. After Mary tells you that you're her best friend, you hear her tell Margaret that she really hates you. Mrs. Warner promises to pay you extra for raking her lawn after cutting it, but when you're finished she says it should be part of the original price, and she won't give you the promised money. Your dad promises to pick you up at four o'clock, but leaves you standing like a fool on the corner until after six. Your boss promises you a promotion, then gives it instead to his boss's nephew. From these and more specific experiences, you learn that you can't always trust everybody. Do you tell your child those stories? More probably you just tell your child, "You can't always trust everybody." It took a lot of concrete, specific experiences to teach you that lesson, but you try to pass it on with a few general words. You may think you're doing it right, giving your child the lesson without the hurt you went through. But the hurts teach the lesson, not the general terms. "You can't always trust everybody" may be a fine main idea for an essay or paragraph, and it may be all that you want your child or your reader to graspbut if you want to make that lesson clear, you'll have to give your child or your reader the concrete, specific experiences.
What principles discussed on this page are at work in the following

excerpt from Jeff Bigger's essay, Searching for El Chapareke? HIS WAS THE DAY the canyon walls of Cusarare, a Tarahumara Indian village tucked into the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua in northern Mexico, bloomed with women in colorful skirts, legions of children trailed by dogs, men in their white shirts and sombreros, all cascading down the pencil-thin trails toward the plaza. The women shifting babies saddled on their backs in rebozos sat in groups by the mission walls, wordless for hours, drinking the weekly Coke, watching as the faithful went to attend mass, young men shot hoops, and the older men hovered around benches at the back of the plaza, waiting for the weekly outdoor meeting of the community cooperative. Pigs wandered down the road in idle joy, and the dogs fought on cue outside the small shop.

You can check out this principle in the textbooks you read and the lectures you listen to. If you find yourself bored or confused, chances are you're getting generalizations and abstractions. [This is almost inevitablethe purpose of the texts and the teachers is to give you general principles!] You'll find your interest and your understanding increase when the author or teacher starts offering specifics. One of the most useful questions you can ask of an unclear presentation (including your own) is, "Can you give me an example?" Your writing (whether it's in an essay, a letter, a memorandum, a report, an advertisement, or a resume) will be clearer, more interesting, and better remembered if it is dominated by concrete and specific terms, and if it keeps abstract and general terms to a minimum. Go ahead and use abstract and general terms in your thesis statement and your topic sentences. But make the development concrete and specific.

A Final Note Pointing Elsewhere Sometimes students think that this discussion of types of language is about vocabulary, but it's not. You don't need a fancy vocabulary to come up with bent spoon or limping dog or Mary told Margaret she hates me. It's not about imagination, either. If you have reached any kind of a reasoned conclusion, you must have had or read about or heard about relevant experiences. Finding concrete specifics doesn't require a big vocabulary or a vivid imagination, just the willingness to recall what you already know. If you really can't find any examples or specifics to support your general conclusion, chances are you don't really know what you're talking about (and we are all guilty of that more than we care to admit).

Where do these concrete specifics emerge in the writing process? You should gather many concrete specifics in the prewriting steps of invention and discovery. If you have many concrete specifics at hand before you organize or draft, you're likely to think and write more easily and accurately. It's easier to write well when you're closer to knowing what you're talking about. You will certainly come up with more concrete specifics as you draft, and more as you revise, and maybe still more as you edit. But you'll be a better writer if you can gather some concrete specifics at the very start. After you have read and thought about this material, you should have a fairly clear idea of what concrete specifics are and why you want them. Your next step will be to practice.

Using Unbiased Language

Gender-Specific Pronouns
A student planning to graduate this spring should see his advisor at once.

And we hope that the writer of the sentence above is working at an all-male school; otherwise, grief will follow him or her all his or her days. Our section on Pronouns already has a paragraph on avoiding gender problems with the singular "his," and we refer you to that document. Most gender problems can be avoided without the use of the clunky he or she/him or her construction or the more monstrous he/she by using the plural: "Students planning to graduate this spring should see their counselor at once." An occasional he or she is all right, but after a while it becomes too demanding of the reader's attention, and the device becomes more important than the message. Where a singular pronoun is necessary, use either the masculine or feminine consistently enough to avoid confusion. (You can switch pronouns within an essay, but not within a paragraph.)

Avoid Sexist Terminology

Avoid language based on hurtful assumptions about gender: "I need to see a doctor." "She's busy right now." "No, I said a doctor." The conversation above probably took place between some chap and the "girl" at the front desk. A responsible, sensitive writer will never make demeaning assumptions about gender role. Whether words such as chairman and congressman are sexist and hurtful and whether their substitutes chairperson and members of congress are unnecessary and cumbersome is an argument that some people will still make, but if we can avoid the argument (and the possibility of hurt) with the use of reasonable substitutes, it's well worth it. The following table lists words that many people regard as sexist and some appropriate substitutes for those words.

Avoid actress anchorman all forms of alumnus/a alumni/ae businessman chairman coed forefathers foreman freshman/freshmen mailman male nurse man (meaning any human being) managers and their wives mankind poetess policeman

Use instead. . . actor anchor alum/grad alums/grads businessperson chairperson, chair student ancestors supervisor first-year students, frosh mail carrier nurse person, people Random House Dictionary offers an excellent online guide to "Avoiding Insensitive Langauge" with lists pertaining to age, persons with disabilities, sexism, sexual orientation, national origin, etc. Click the enter button to find it.

managers and their spouses humanity, people poet police officer

salesman stewardess waiter/waitress

sales representative, salesclerk flight attendant server

Copy Editor Bill Walsh has this to say about using the word "female":
In most cases, use "woman" as the noun and "female" as the adjective. "Female soldiers," "female priests." Things like "women senators" should be confined to quotes (does anybody say men senators?). "Female" is OK as a noun when talking about animals, when it hasn't been established whether the person in question is a woman or a girl, and when talking about a group that includes both women and girls. If it's ever necessary to use the sexist cliche "women drivers," that would be an exception.

Being careful to avoid sexist language should not lead one into silliness. High schools do not have women's basketball programs unless they have men's basketball programs, also, which is doubtful (in spite of the bulk and hairiness of that kid playing center). To use women and men in that context suggests that there is something wrong with being a girl or a boy. On the other hand, why do some universities still have a women's basketball program, but the men's program is simply called the basketball program? One last thought: writers should no more apologize for the sexism so liberally sprinkled throughout the history of our literature than they should apologize for the way our predecessors dressed. In the box below is a perfectly wonderful definition of a college. It was written, probably in the late 1940s, by Howard Lowry, a critic of nineteenth-century literature and a President of the College of Wooster. There are word choices in this definition, however, that might make people cringe today.
A college is a corner of men's hearts where hope has not died. Here the prison house has not closed; here no battle is yet quite lost. Here, we assert, endow, and defend as final reality the best of our dream as men. Here lies our sense of community.
__

Howard Lowry

How would we write this piece of text differently today? How about "A college is a corner of our hearts where hope has not died"? and "Here, we assert, endow, and defend as final reality the best of our dreams."? We certainly have not improved upon the sound of Lowry's words, but have we lost anything by these changes? Probably not much, and what we have lost, we've more

than gained by decreasing the chances of offending or marginalizing an entire gender from the definition of a college something that would never have entered Howard Lowry's unbiased mind and generous heart.

Gender Neutral Language Referring to Groups of People

Any time a writer wishes to or has to refer to a group of people to the exclusion of others, he or she must be cautious not to use language that is regarded as hurtful by the group being referred to. Nowadays, minority groups and special-interest groups have a great deal to say, and rightfully so, about the language used to refer to them. More than one political career has fallen upon hard times through an insensitive or rude remark. When a presidential candidate a few years ago made a reference to "you people," he surely did so without conscious or wicked intent. Still, the phrase you people or those people excludes groups without reason for doing so and thus is regarded as hurtful. Staying current with appropriate language is not always easy. In fact, following the history of the ideas and attitudes inherent in words such as crippled or retarded can be an interesting (if not dizzying) exploration of a nation's social consciousness. The need to be sensitive, fair, and respectful can lead to all kinds of social and personal discoveries. A blind person will be the first to remind us that he or she is, indeed, a blind person, and the term visually impaired is a needless euphemism. On the other hand, we should speak of "blind people," not "the blind." The word special, in this regard, has become almost meaningless, and even the term queer, which has often been used in a nasty, derogatory way, has writers who claim it as a badge of honor. The power of language to hurt is never more clear than in the realm of racial slurs or epithets. Within an extremely restricted context, the word nigger has been claimed as a mark of camaraderie and affection, but only a fool or a boor would use that word outside of that limited social and artistic context and only certain writers and journalists in special circumstances would have the artistic license to use it at all. The Editorials Editor of the Yale Daily News contends that "There is, arguably, no other word which elicits the same expressions of disgust, or feelings of shock as universally as that racial epithet." We highly recommend Keith Woods' essay, "An Essay on a Wickedly Powerful Word," from the online archives of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, on the uses of this particular racial epithet in journalistic situations. Among other things, the essay is instructive in the power of language. One must be careful, too, in using ethnic and nationalist terms. The word Asian is now widely used instead of Oriental (except, for some reason, when talking about carpeting) and, in general, it is wise to use a specific geographical term or area when speaking of people's origins. For that reason, the word Hispanic seems to have been supplanted by Latino/Latina and that, in turn, by Cuban, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Chicano/Chicana, etc. Most writers nowadays will use Native

American instead of Indian or Indian-American, but many Native American writers will use the term Indian themselves or insist that writers be more specific (and exact) about tribe and nation grouping (Sioux, Navajo, Paugausset, etc.). In fact, American Indian seems to be regaining ascendancy. The discussion about black versus African American (no longer Afro-American) may know no end, especially if Islander blacks are involved. (Note that the terms black and white are not capitalized.) And that is precisely the point: discussion it is ongoing and it reflects important changes in our culture. As long as writers try to be sensitive to the feelings of minorities and special-interest groups and as long as writers consciously attempt to avoid divisive language that offends, stereotypes, belittles, or hurtfully excludes people, that is all that anyone can ask. The American Heritage Book of English Usage sums it up this way:
As a general rule, it is good to remember that you should only refer to a person by category when it is relevant or necessary to the discussion at hand. That is, you should ordinarily view people as individuals and not mention their racial, ethnic, or other status, unless it is important to your larger purpose in communicating.

That book also maintains a list of names and labels and discusses the social history and appropriateness of those terms.

Using Unbiased Language

Gender-Specific Pronouns
A student planning to graduate this spring should see his advisor at once.

And we hope that the writer of the sentence above is working at an all-male school; otherwise, grief will follow him or her all his or her days. Our section on Pronouns already has a paragraph on avoiding gender problems with the singular "his," and we refer you to that document. Most gender problems can be avoided without the use of the clunky he or she/him or her construction or the more monstrous he/she by using the plural: "Students planning to graduate this spring should see their counselor at once." An occasional he or she is all right, but after a while it becomes too demanding of the reader's attention, and the device becomes more important than the message. Where a singular pronoun is necessary, use either the masculine or feminine consistently enough to avoid confusion. (You can switch pronouns within an essay, but not within a paragraph.)

Avoid Sexist Terminology

Avoid language based on hurtful assumptions about gender: "I need to see a doctor." "She's busy right now." "No, I said a doctor." The conversation above probably took place between some chap and the "girl" at the front desk. A responsible, sensitive writer will never make demeaning assumptions about gender role. Whether words such as chairman and congressman are sexist and hurtful and whether their substitutes chairperson and members of congress are unnecessary and cumbersome is an argument that some people will still make, but if we can avoid the argument (and the possibility of hurt) with the use of reasonable substitutes, it's well worth it. The following table lists words that many people regard as sexist and some appropriate substitutes for those words.

Avoid actress anchorman all forms of alumnus/a alumni/ae businessman chairman coed forefathers foreman freshman/freshmen mailman male nurse man (meaning any human being) managers and their wives mankind poetess policeman

Use instead. . . actor anchor alum/grad alums/grads businessperson chairperson, chair student ancestors supervisor first-year students, frosh mail carrier nurse person, people Random House Dictionary offers an excellent online guide to "Avoiding Insensitive Langauge" with lists pertaining to age, persons with disabilities, sexism, sexual orientation, national origin, etc. Click the enter button to find it.

managers and their spouses humanity, people poet police officer

salesman stewardess waiter/waitress

sales representative, salesclerk flight attendant server

Copy Editor Bill Walsh has this to say about using the word "female":
In most cases, use "woman" as the noun and "female" as the adjective. "Female soldiers," "female priests." Things like "women senators" should be confined to quotes (does anybody say men senators?). "Female" is OK as a noun when talking about animals, when it hasn't been established whether the person in question is a woman or a girl, and when talking about a group that includes both women and girls. If it's ever necessary to use the sexist cliche "women drivers," that would be an exception.

Being careful to avoid sexist language should not lead one into silliness. High schools do not have women's basketball programs unless they have men's basketball programs, also, which is doubtful (in spite of the bulk and hairiness of that kid playing center). To use women and men in that context suggests that there is something wrong with being a girl or a boy. On the other hand, why do some universities still have a women's basketball program, but the men's program is simply called the basketball program? One last thought: writers should no more apologize for the sexism so liberally sprinkled throughout the history of our literature than they should apologize for the way our predecessors dressed. In the box below is a perfectly wonderful definition of a college. It was written, probably in the late 1940s, by Howard Lowry, a critic of nineteenth-century literature and a President of the College of Wooster. There are word choices in this definition, however, that might make people cringe today.
A college is a corner of men's hearts where hope has not died. Here the prison house has not closed; here no battle is yet quite lost. Here, we assert, endow, and defend as final reality the best of our dream as men. Here lies our sense of community.
__

Howard Lowry

How would we write this piece of text differently today? How about "A college is a corner of our hearts where hope has not died"? and "Here, we assert, endow, and defend as final reality the best of our dreams."? We certainly have not improved upon the sound of Lowry's words, but have we lost anything by these changes? Probably not much, and what we have lost, we've more

than gained by decreasing the chances of offending or marginalizing an entire gender from the definition of a college something that would never have entered Howard Lowry's unbiased mind and generous heart.

Gender Neutral Language Referring to Groups of People

Any time a writer wishes to or has to refer to a group of people to the exclusion of others, he or she must be cautious not to use language that is regarded as hurtful by the group being referred to. Nowadays, minority groups and special-interest groups have a great deal to say, and rightfully so, about the language used to refer to them. More than one political career has fallen upon hard times through an insensitive or rude remark. When a presidential candidate a few years ago made a reference to "you people," he surely did so without conscious or wicked intent. Still, the phrase you people or those people excludes groups without reason for doing so and thus is regarded as hurtful. Staying current with appropriate language is not always easy. In fact, following the history of the ideas and attitudes inherent in words such as crippled or retarded can be an interesting (if not dizzying) exploration of a nation's social consciousness. The need to be sensitive, fair, and respectful can lead to all kinds of social and personal discoveries. A blind person will be the first to remind us that he or she is, indeed, a blind person, and the term visually impaired is a needless euphemism. On the other hand, we should speak of "blind people," not "the blind." The word special, in this regard, has become almost meaningless, and even the term queer, which has often been used in a nasty, derogatory way, has writers who claim it as a badge of honor. The power of language to hurt is never more clear than in the realm of racial slurs or epithets. Within an extremely restricted context, the word nigger has been claimed as a mark of camaraderie and affection, but only a fool or a boor would use that word outside of that limited social and artistic context and only certain writers and journalists in special circumstances would have the artistic license to use it at all. The Editorials Editor of the Yale Daily News contends that "There is, arguably, no other word which elicits the same expressions of disgust, or feelings of shock as universally as that racial epithet." We highly recommend Keith Woods' essay, "An Essay on a Wickedly Powerful Word," from the online archives of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, on the uses of this particular racial epithet in journalistic situations. Among other things, the essay is instructive in the power of language. One must be careful, too, in using ethnic and nationalist terms. The word Asian is now widely used instead of Oriental (except, for some reason, when talking about carpeting) and, in general, it is wise to use a specific geographical term or area when speaking of people's origins. For that reason, the word Hispanic seems to have been supplanted by Latino/Latina and that, in turn, by Cuban, Colombian, Puerto Rican, Chicano/Chicana, etc. Most writers nowadays will use Native

American instead of Indian or Indian-American, but many Native American writers will use the term Indian themselves or insist that writers be more specific (and exact) about tribe and nation grouping (Sioux, Navajo, Paugausset, etc.). In fact, American Indian seems to be regaining ascendancy. The discussion about black versus African American (no longer Afro-American) may know no end, especially if Islander blacks are involved. (Note that the terms black and white are not capitalized.) And that is precisely the point: discussion it is ongoing and it reflects important changes in our culture. As long as writers try to be sensitive to the feelings of minorities and special-interest groups and as long as writers consciously attempt to avoid divisive language that offends, stereotypes, belittles, or hurtfully excludes people, that is all that anyone can ask. The American Heritage Book of English Usage sums it up this way:
As a general rule, it is good to remember that you should only refer to a person by category when it is relevant or necessary to the discussion at hand. That is, you should ordinarily view people as individuals and not mention their racial, ethnic, or other status, unless it is important to your larger purpose in communicating.

That book also maintains a list of names and labels and discusses the social history and appropriateness of those terms.

Building a Better Vocabulary

Everyonefrom beginning learners in English to veterans in journalismknows the frustration of not having the right word immediately available in that lexicon one carries between one's ears. Sometimes it's a matter of not being able to recall the right word; sometimes we never knew it. It is also frustrating to read a newspaper or homework assignment and run across words whose meanings elude us. Language, after all, is power. When your children get in trouble fighting with the neighbors' children, and your neighbors call your children little twerps and you call their children nefarious miscreantswell, the battle is over and they didn't stand a chance. Building a vocabulary that is adequate to the needs of one's reading and self-expression has to be a personal goal for every writer and speaker.

Several quizzes have been connected to this section as vocabulary muscle builders. In addition, a javascript pop-up lexicon, A YEAR'S WORTH OF WORDSwith a word for every day of the yearis available. See the hyperlinks at the bottom of this page.

Making It Personal
Using some durable piece of paperwhite construction paper or the insides of the ripped-off covers of old notebooksbegin to write down words in small but readable script that you discover in your reading that you can't define. Read journals and newspapers that challenge you in terms of vocabulary. Pursue words actively and become alert to words that you simply overlooked in the past. Write down the words in one column; then, later, when you have a dictionary at your disposal, write down a common definition of the word; in a third column, write a brief sentence using the word, underlined. Carry this paper or cardboard with you always. In the pauses of your busy daywhen you're sitting on the bus, in the dentist's office, during commercialstake out the paper and review your vocabulary words until you feel comfortable that you would recognize (and be able to use) these words the next time you see them. The amazing thing is that you will see the words

againeven "nefarious miscreants," and probably sooner than you thought. In fact, you might well discover that the words you've written down are rather common. What's happening is not that, all of a sudden, people are using words you never saw before, but that you are now reading and using words that you had previously ignored.

Using Every Resource

Most bookstores carry books on building a more powerful vocabulary, some of them with zany names such as Thirty Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. If you've got money to spare or if they're on sale, buy them and use them; they can't hurt. Books that group words according to what they have in commonmore in meaning than in spellingare especially useful. Newspapers often carry brief daily articles that explore the meanings of words and phrases. These articles often emphasize peculiar words that won't find themselves into your working vocabulary, but they can still be fun. Often you'll find that learning one new word leads to other new words, little constellations of meaning that keep your brain cells active and hungry for more. Make reading these articles one of your daily habits, an addiction, even. Play dictionary games with your family in which someone uses the dictionary to find a neat word and writes down the real definition and everyone else writes down a fake (and funny) definition. See how many people you can fool with your fake definitions.
Two trucks loaded with thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus collided as they left a New York publishing house last Thursday, according to the Associated Press. Witnesses were aghast, amazed, astonished, astounded, bemused, benumbed, bewildered, confounded, confused, dazed, dazzled, disconcerted, disoriented, dumbstruck, electrified, flabbergasted, horrified, immobilized, incredulous, nonplussed, overwhelmed, paralyzed, perplexed, scared, shocked, startled, stunned, stupified, surprised, taken aback, traumatized, upset. . . .
joke circulated on the Internet December 2003

A thesaurus is like a dictionary except that it groups words within constellations of meaning. It is often useful in discovering just the right word you need to express what you want to say. Make sure you correctly understand the definition of a word (by using a dictionary) before using it in some important paper or report. Your bookstore salesperson can provide plenty of examples of an inexpensive thesaurus. The online Merriam Webster's WWWebster Dictionary has access to both an extensive dictionary and a hyperlinked thesaurus. Links allow you to go conveniently back and forth between the dictionary and the thesaurus. If you have a speedy computer processor and a fast hookup to the internet, we recommend the Plumb Design Visual Thesaurus. Once the program is entirely loaded, type in a word that you would like to see "visualized," hit the return key, and a construct of verbal connections will float across the screen. Click on any of the words within that construct and a new pattern of connections will emerge. Try the Visual Thesaurus with several different kinds of wordsverbs, adverbs, nouns, adjectivesand try adjusting some of the various controls on the bottom of the

window. We do not recommend this web-site for slow machines; in fact, the bigger your monitor and the faster your computer and connection, the more satisfying this experience will be. When people use a word that puzzles you, ask what it means! You'll find that most instructors, especially, are not in the least bothered by such questionsin fact, they're probably pleased that you're paying such close attentionbut if they do seem bothered, write down the word and look it up later, before the context of the word evaporates.

Knowing the Roots

At least half of the words in the English language are derived from Greek and Latin roots. Knowing these roots helps us to grasp the meaning of words before we look them up in the dictionary. It also helps us to see how words are often arranged in families with similar characteristics. For instance, we know that sophomores are students in their second year of college or high school. What does it mean, though, to be sophomoric? The "sopho" part of the word comes from the same Greek root that gives us philosophy, which we know means "love of knowledge." The "ic" ending is sometimes added to adjectival words in English, but the "more" part of the word comes from the same Greek root that gives us moron. Thus sophomores are people who

think they know a lot but really don't know much about anything, and a sophomoric act is typical of a "wise fool," a "smart-ass"! Let's explore further. Going back to philosophy, we know the "sophy" part is related to knowledge and the "phil" part is related to love (because we know that Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love and that a philodendron loves shady spots). What, then, is philanthropy? "Phil" is still love, and "anthropy" comes from the same Greek root that gives us anthropology, which is the study ("logy," we know, means study of any kind) of anthropos, humankind. So a philanthropist must be someone who loves humans and does something about itlike giving money to find a cure for cancer or to build a Writing Center for the local community college. (And an anthropoid, while we're at it, is an animal who walks like a human being.) Learning the roots of our language can even be fun! Some common Greek and Latin roots:
Root (source) aster, astr (G) audi (L) bene (L) bio (G) dic, dict (L) fer (L) fix (L) geo (G) graph (G) jur, just (L) log, logue (G) Meaning star to hear good, well life to speak to carry to fasten earth to write law English words astronomy, astrology audible, auditorium benefit, benevolent biology, autobiography dictionary, dictator transfer, referral fix, suffix, affix geography, geology graphic, photography jury, justice

word, thought, monolog(ue), astrology, biology, speech neologism light lucid, translucent

luc (L)

manu (L)

hand

manual, manuscript metric, thermometer operation, operator pathetic, sympathy, empathy pediatrics, pedophile philosophy, Anglophile physical, physics scribble, manuscript telephone,television territory, extraterrestrial vacant, vacuum, evacuate verbal, verbose video, vision, television

meter, metr (G) measure op, oper (L) path (G) ped (G) phil (G) phys (G) scrib, script (L) tele (G) ter, terr (L) vac (L) verb (L) vid, vis (L) work feeling child love body, nature to write far off earth empty word to see

Authority for this chart: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

Learning Prefixes and Suffixes

Knowing the Greek and Latin roots of several prefixes and suffixes (beginning and endings attached to words) can also help us determine the meaning of words. Ante, for instance, means before, and if we connect bellum with belligerant to figure out the connection with war, we'll know that antebellum refers to the period before war. (In the United States, the antebellum period is our history before the Civil War.)
Prefixes showing quantity Meaning Prefixes in English Words

half one two hundred thousand

semiannual, hemisphere unicycle, monarchy, monorail binary, bimonthly, dilemma, dichotomy century, centimeter, hectoliter millimeter, kilometer

Prefixes showing negation without, no, not not, absence of, opposing, against asexual, anonymous, illegal, immoral, invalid, irreverent, unskilled nonbreakable, antacid, antipathy, contradict

opposite to, counterclockwise, counterweight complement to do the opposite of, remove, reduce do the opposite of, deprive of wrongly, bad dehorn, devitalize, devalue

disestablish, disarm

misjudge, misdeed

Prefixes showing time before after again antecedent, forecast, precede, prologue postwar rewrite, redundant

Prefixes showing direction or position above, over across, over below, under supervise, supererogatory transport, translate infrasonic, infrastructure, subterranean, hypodermic proceed, prefix recede erupt, explicit, ecstasy injection, immerse, encourage, empower circumnavigate, perimeter coexist, colloquy, communicate, consequence, correspond, sympathy, synchronize

in front of behind out of into around with

Authority for this table: The Little, Brown Handbook by H. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. Aaron, & Kay Limburg. 6th ed. HarperCollins: New York. 1995. By permission of Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

Suffixes, on the other hand, modify the meaning of a word and frequently determine its function within a sentence. Take the noun nation, for example. With suffixes, the word becomes the adjective national, the adverb nationally, and the verb nationalize. See what words you can come up with that use the following suffixes.

Typical noun suffixes are -ence, -ance, -or, -er, -ment, -list, -ism, -ship, -ency, -sion, -tion, -ness, hood, -dom Typical verb suffixes are -en, -ify, -ize, -ate Typical adjective suffixes are -able, -ible, -al, -tial, -tic, -ly, -ful, -ous, -tive, -less, -ish, -ulent The adverb suffix is -ly (although not all words that end in -ly are adverbslike friendly)

Using Your Dictionary

The dictionary should be one of the most often used books in your home. (We'll allow room for sacred texts here.) Place the dictionary somewhere so that you can find it immediately and use it

often. If you do your reading and homework in the kitchen and the dictionary is on a shelf in the den or bedroom, it's too tempting to say "I'll look it up next time." The home dictionary should be large enough to contain much more than just spellings. It should contain extensive definitions, word origins, and notes on usage. Carrying in your purse or backpack a pocket dictionary with more concise definitions is also a good idea. Get in the habit of turning to it often. A well worn dictionary is a beautiful thing.

Using the Internet

You can use the internet as an aid to vocabulary development by exploring the abundant opportunities for reading available on the World Wide Web. Capital Community College maintains an extensive list of online newspapers and commentary magazines. Choose magazines such as Atlantic and Mother Jones that challenge your mind and your vocabulary with full-text articles. At least once a week read a major article with the purpose of culling from it some vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to you. We also recommend the New York Times Book Review (which might require an easy, one-time, free registration). Vocabulary University is a new online resource for working on groups of related vocabulary words in a puzzle format. Vocabulary U., a graphically rich Web site, is broken into beginning, intermediate, and college-level work. Vocabulary for English Language Learners is a treasury and nicely organized resources for ESL students. It is maintained by the College of Arts & Sciences of Ohio University. There are also at least two services that send you an e-mail message every day with a new wordwith definitions, pronunciation guides, and examples of its use. Get in the habit of reading these messages regularly. Print out the words and definitions you think will be really useful, or write them down and carry them around with you on your personal vocabulary builder.

Garner's Usage Tip OF the Day Bryan Garner, author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (Oxford University Press), offers this invaluable, free, daily e-mail service. Subscription is easy. http://www.us.oup.com/us/subscriptions/subscribe/?view=usa . Vocab Vitamins (formerly "MyWordaDay"): Colin O'Malley maintains this Website, a treasure for people who know that developing an adequate vocabulary is not a short-term project. Users can visit the Website or have the WordaDay e-mailed to them. Words are arranged in meaningful groups and defined in painstaking and useful detail, with plenty of examples. http://www.vocabvitamins.com/. WORDSMITH: To subscribe or unsubscribe to A.Word.A.Day, send a message to wsmith@wordsmith.org with the "Subject:" line as "subscribe " or "unsubscribe." The Wordsmith has thousands of subscribers. It does a great job of discovering interesting themes and sources of words and then exploring those wordsa word a dayfor a week or so and then goes off to another theme and series of words. Word of the Day: Maintained by Merriam Webster, Inc., the dictionary people. Go to the online WWWebster Dictionary and click on Word of the Day. From there, you can either subscribe to their free daily service or explore their archives. The guides for pronunciation are easier to follow than Wordsmith's and the examples are well founded and even fun. The MerriamWebster people also provide a neat link directly to their word database so that you can highlight

a word on a Web-page, click on their icon in your personal toolbar and get an instant and authoritative definition for that word.

The following resources do not go to your e-mail account, but they are easily available online if you can just remember to visit them on a regular basis.

Word of the Day from the OED: Although the online version of the esteemed Oxford English Dictionary is not available without a hefty price tag, you can get a free Word of the Day from the OED. You will find more information there about each word presented than you could ever imagine existed. The New York Times Word of the Day: every weekday, a word chosen from the archives of the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/learning/students/wordofday/. Michael Quinion's "World Wide Words": investigating the use and creation of English words, from a British point of view. Fun to read, always something new.http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm. The Atlantic section on Language: from the Atlantic Monthly's online journal. Select from "Word Court," "Word Fugitive," and "Word Police." http://www.theatlantic.com/language/. Word Safari challenges web surfers' knowledge of vocabulary, and then sends them off on expeditions to see the chosen word used in context on the web. Aiming her Web site at building academic vocabulary skills, Ruth Pettis adds new vocabulary words every week. http://home.earthlink.net/~ruthpett/safari/index.htm. The Maven's Word for the Day was maintained by the Reference division of Random House. It went belly-up in December 2001, but the archives are still available online. http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/.

You can also go to the web-site of the Scripps-Howard Annual National Spelling Bee and listen to words on Audio Paideia. The words are arranged in interesting groups. With RealAudio on your browser, you can hear the word and its definition and then try to spell it on your own. Have a dictionary handy! This Guide to Grammar and Writing also has a series of spelling tests that can be used as a vocabulary builders: go to the section on Spelling and choose the spelling tests (bottom of the page) that use sound (the words you're asked to spell are accompanied by brief definitions). Javascript Vocabulary Stretchers, maintained by John Gales, offers a new computer-graded vocabulary test (ten words) every week. Michael Quinion maintains a series of articles about the English language called Wide World of Words (also available as a weekly e-mail newsletter). You can spend days wandering through the maze of word-games and language resources listed in Judi Wolinsky's Word Play. Crossword puzzles are an excellent way to develop your vocabulary. Do the puzzles that appear in your local newspaper on a daily or weekly basis or try these interactive crossword puzzles on the internet:

The Christian Science Monitor Interactive Crossword Puzzle Crossword of the Day Michael Curl's Puzzles and Wordplay (This stuff is a real challenge!)

Voycabulary.com provides a means of typing in the URL of any Web page and the program will turn every word on that page into a clickable hyperlink that will reveal a definition in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary or Thesaurus. Voycabulary will also translate a Web page into another language for you. Try it with this page, whose URL is http://www.ccc.commnet.edu/vocabulary.htm

Five-Dollar Words
An extensive vocabulary can be a powerful writing and speaking tool; it can also be misused, made to make others feel powerless. Never use a five-dollar word where a fifty-cent word will do the job just as well or better. Do we really need utilize when a three-letter word, use, will nicely suffice. Risible is a lovely word, but is it worth sending your readers to the dictionary when laughable is at hand? It's a good question. On the other hand, don't cheat yourself or your readers out of some important nuance of meaning that you've discovered in a word that's new to you. At some point you have to assume that your readers also have dictionaries. It's sometimes a tough line to drawbetween being a pedantic, pretentious boor (Oh, there are three dandies!) and being a writer who can take full and efficient advantage of the English language's multifarious (another one!) resources.

Quizzes
The quizzes listed below are meant for college-level work. They include a number of words that are alleged to appear on the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and Graduate Record Exams from year to year. Have fun building those vocabulary muscles!

A YEAR'S WORTH OF WORDS: A POP-UP LEXICON

featuring 365 SAT- and GRE-level vocabulary words, definitions, and sample sentences. (large, 93kb, filetakes a moment to download)

Matching Quiz I

Matching Quiz II

Matching Quiz III

Matching Quiz IV

Matching Quiz V

Matching Quiz VI

Matching Quiz VII Words I)

Matching Quiz (Non-English

Matching Quiz (Non-English Words II) Words III)

Matching Quiz (Non-English

Fill-in-the-Blanks I

Fill-in-the-Blanks II

Fill-in-the-Blanks III

Fill-in-the-Blanks IV

Fill-in-the-Blanks V

Fill-in-the-Blanks VI

The Dating Game I

The Dating Game II

The Dating Game III

The Dating Game IV

The Dating Game V

The Dating Game VI

Auntie Nym's World of Opposites I

Auntie Nym's World of Opposites II

Grammar's Misfits POP-UP LEXICON:

featuring 365 SAT- and GRE-level vocabulary words, definitions, and sample sentences. (large, 93kb, filetakes a moment to download)

Guide to Grammar and Writing

Principles of Composition

Index

The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation. If you feel we have provided something of value and wish to show your appreciation, you can assist the College and its students with a tax-deductible contribution. For more about giving to Capital, write to CCC Foundation, 950 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103. Phone (860) 906-5102 or email: jmcnamara@ccc.commnet.edu. Contributions are taxdeductible to the extent allowed by law.

A Statement on Plagiarism
Using someone else's ideas or phrasing and representing those ideas or phrasing as our own, either on purpose or through carelessness, is a serious offense known as plagiarism. "Ideas or phrasing" includes written or spoken material, of course from whole papers and paragraphs to sentences, and, indeed, phrases but it also includes statistics, lab results, art work, etc. "Someone else" can mean a professional source, such as a published writer or critic in a book, magazine, encyclopedia, or journal; an electronic resource such as material we discover on the World Wide Web; another student at our school or anywhere else; a paper-writing "service" (online or otherwise) which offers to sell written papers for a fee. Let us suppose, for example, that we're doing a paper for Music Appreciation on the child prodigy years of the composer and pianist Franz Liszt and that we've read about the development of the young artist in several sources. In Alan Walker's book Franz Liszt: The Virtuoso Years (Ithaca: 1983), we read that Liszt's father encouraged him, at age six, to play the piano from memory, to sight-read music and, above all, to improvise. We can report in our paper (and in our own words) that Liszt was probably the most gifted of the child prodigies making their mark in Europe in the mid-nineteenth century because that is the kind of information we could have gotten from a number of sources; it has become what we call common knowledge. However, if we report on the boy's father's role in the prodigy's development, we should give proper credit to Alan Walker. We could write, for instance, the following: Franz Liszt's father encouraged him, as early as age six, to practice skills which later served him as an internationally recognized prodigy (Walker 59). Or, we could write something like this: Alan Walker notes that, under the tutelage of his father, Franz Liszt began work in earnest on his piano playing at the age of six (59). Not to give Walker credit for this important information is plagiarism.

Some More Examples

(The examples below were originally written by the writing center staff at an esteemed college; that institution has asked us to remove its name from this Web page.) The original text from Elaine Tyler May's "Myths and Realities of the American Family" reads as follows:
Because women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage, single mothers rarely earn enough to support themselves and their children adequately. And because work is still organized around the assumption that mothers stay home with children, even though few mothers can afford to do so, child-care facilities in the United States remain woefully inadequate.

Here are some possible uses of this text. As you read through each version, try to decide if it is a legitimate use of May's text or a plagiarism.

Version A:
Since women's wages often continue to reflect the mistaken notion that men are the main wage earners in the family, single mothers rarely make enough to support themselves and their children very well. Also, because work is still based on the assumption that mothers stay home with children, facilities for child care remain woefully inadequate in the United States.
Plagiarism: In Version A there is too much direct borrowing of sentence structure and wording. The writer changes some words, drops one phrase, and adds some new language, but the overall text closely resembles May's. Even with a citation, the writer is still plagiarizing because the lack of quotation marks indicates that Version A is a paraphrase, and should thus be in the writer's own language.

Version B:
As Elaine Tyler May points out, "women's wages often continue to reflect the fiction that men earn the family wage" (588). Thus many single mothers cannot support themselves and their children adequately. Furthermore, since work is based on the assumption that mothers stay home with children, facilities for day care in this country are still "woefully inadequate." (May 589).
Plagiarism: The writer now cites May, so we're closer to telling the truth about the relationship of our text to the source, but this text continues to borrow too much language.

Version C:
By and large, our economy still operates on the mistaken notion that men are the main breadwinners in the family. Thus, women continue to earn lower wages than men. This means, in effect, that many single mothers cannot earn a decent living. Furthermore, adequate day care is not available in the United States because of the mistaken assumption that mothers remain at home with their children.
Plagiarism: Version C shows good paraphrasing of wording and sentence structure, but May's original ideas are not acknowledged. Some of May's points are common knowledge (women earn less than men, many single mothers live in poverty), but May uses this common knowledge to make a specific and original point and her original conception of this idea is not acknowledged.

Version D:
Women today still earn less than men so much less that many single mothers and their children live near or below the poverty line. Elaine Tyler May argues that this situation stems in

part from "the fiction that men earn the family wage" (588). May further suggests that the American workplace still operates on the assumption that mothers with children stay home to care for them (589). This assumption, in my opinion, does not have the force it once did. More and more businesses offer in-house day-care facilities. . . .
No Plagiarism: The writer makes use of the common knowledge in May's work, but acknowledges May's original conclusion and does not try to pass it off as his or her own. The quotation is properly cited, as is a later paraphrase of another of May's ideas.

Penalty for Plagiarism

The penalty for plagiarism is usually determined by the instructor teaching the course involved. In many schools and colleges, it could involve failure for the paper and it could mean failure for the entire course and even expulsion from school. Ignorance of the rules about plagiarism is no excuse, and carelessness is just as bad as purposeful violation. At the very least, however, students who plagiarize have cheated themselves out of the experience of being responsible members of the academic community and have cheated their classmates by pretending to contribute something original which is, in fact, a cheap copy. Within schools and colleges that have a diverse student body, instructors should be aware that some international students from other cultures may have ideas about using outside resources that differ from the institution's policies regarding plagiarism; opportunities should be provided for all students to become familiar with institutional policies regarding plagiarism. Students who do not thoroughly understand the concept of plagiarism and methods of proper documentation should request assistance from their teacher and from librarians.

Formatting Your Paper

There are nearly as many different possible formats for writing a paper as there are instructors. The only way to know that your papers are going to conform exactly with what your instructors are looking for is to ask what they want! Ask to look at a sample paper. If all instructors could agree on one simple format, that would be nice, and that style would probably be something easy to remember, like the style recommended by the Modern Language Association. The college's Guide to Writing Research Papers contains a section on formatting papers, MLA-style, that should be helpful. Here are some generic suggestions for formatting your paper, attempted answers to the inevitable question: "What's this paper supposed to look like?" But remember, if you have any doubts or questions, ask your instructor!
1. Word-processing is not just a good thing, a clever technological device to make your writing look good; it makes the composing and editing processes much easier and (some people claim) even fun; it is technology that you ignore to your peril! 2. Double-space all typing in all documents. A serif typing font should be used, something like Times, Times Roman, or Times New Roman in a 12-point font size. Don't use anything fancy and avoid the non-serif fonts (except for headlines, if you have any), as they can become difficult to read after a while; cursive scripts are forbidden. Never mix font styles. Use one-inch margins (or a bit more, never less), all the way around the edge of your text. Do not use justified margins (even right margins), even though your word-processor makes that look really nifty. Justified margins tend to create some word-divisions and spacing that are not appropriate. Use plain black printing off a good laser or bubble-jet printer. Dot-matrix printing is acceptable if the copy is strong and dark; otherwise, bring your floppy disc into a computer lab where you can print your paper using a better printer. Use plain, white, 20-lb., 8 1/2- by 11-inch paper. If you use tractor-fed paper, use only laser-cut paper and carefully remove the fringes. (But it is definitely time for a new printer!) 3. Spacing: With modern word-processors, it is a good idea to get into the habit of using only one space after a period, question mark, semicolon, colon, etc. Word-processors will allow for the appropriate spacing. A double-space can actually do weird things, especially if your margin is justified (which is probably not a good idea). If you have any questions about this, ask your instructor (some of whom learned to space their typing on ancient typewriters and still use double-spacing after periods).

Spacing around quotation marks and parentheses can raise questions. Click HERE for help with quotation marks; click HERE for help with parentheses. The most important rule you must remember about quotation marks is that in the United States, periods and commas go inside quotation marks regardless of logic. (When marking papers written by students who have grown up in areas influenced by British education, instructors would be kind to remember that this is not the rule outside the United States.) 4. Titles can be important. If you can't think of a good title, it might mean that your paper has no real focus. Capitalize the first, last, and important words of your title. A title can end in a question mark or exclamation mark, but it cannot end in a period. (This is different from usage in other languages.) You might use quotation marks in a title if it refers to someone else's title (of a poem, say), but do not put quotation marks around your own title (e.g., Robert Frost's "Design" could be your title, but not "Robert Frost's 'Design'."). A title page is probably unnecessary, but you should ask your instructor about that. Fancy graphics or bold or italic printing on your title page, if you use one, is not necessary and probably should be avoided. 5. Place your name, date, and course number at the top of the first page. Your instructor may ask you to put your name on each sheet of paper. 6. Never use the back of a sheet of paper; staple additional sheets at the upper left-hand corner. This professor's prejudice dictates that students not use plastic binders; they're cumbersome and a waste of money. What your instructors usually want is a nice, flat stack of papers they can cram into an attache case or backpack, and those plastic folders just get in the way when it's time to grade the papers. 7. Depending on your instructor and the level at which you are writing, evidence of careful rereading and editing here and there (a last-minute correction done neatly with pen) is permissible; sloppiness is not. Last-minute corrections can be accomplished on a wordprocessor, and your paper ought to be nearly perfect when you hand it in.

CAUTION: Do not wait until the very last minute to print out your paper! Evil, fun-loving
gremlins reside in every printer ever made, just waiting to detect a last-minute paper so they can jam up, eat paper, create havoc, and make your life miserable. Your instructor has filed the excuse of the demonic printer along with the plague that strikes down millions of grandmothers (sometimes grandmothers who died the previous semester) near the end of every term.

The Editing and Rewriting Process

When you have written enough to satisfy the requirements of the assignment or you've said all you ought to say about a given topic, it is time to put your paper through the rewriting process. If you are one of those students who compose on a word processor, you're a step ahead of the game; if not, use the process of going from handwritten text to typewritten (word-processed) text as one of the steps of rewriting. As you go along, some spellcheckers will underline words or otherwise alert you with beeps and whistles that words are misspelled or duplicated and you can fix those on the fly. Otherwise, don't bother with spelling here; you can catch misspellings later. But do watch for clumsy phrases in your writing and gaps in your thinking. Once your paper is in the word-processor, safely saved (on both hard drive and floppy disc), run the spellchecker. Some spellcheckers are better than others, but virtually all spellcheckers will allow some misused homophones to slip through. Depending on how much experience you've had as a writer, you probably know the words you have trouble with affect/effect, their/there, its/it's, your/you're. There are dozens of such words, and you can review them in the Notorious Confusables section. You can do a search for words that give you special trouble and make sure you've used them correctly. Some spellcheckers will catch your typing of duplicate words, but most won't, so you'll have to look out for that, too. It's usually the the little words that slip by as duplicates, something that your fingers do when your brain slips into idle.
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.
__

Robert Cormier

Pay special attention to words that end in s. Some will be possessives, but you might have forgotten the apostrophe, and some will be plurals, which can present their own kind of difficulty in spelling. Grammar checkers are available on many word processors. They are far less reliable than spellcheckers, but they are becoming quite sophisticated. Some grammar checkers are quite good

at pointing out potential problems and even suggesting possible solutions. Don't be bullied by your grammar checker, though. The computer can easily catch extra long sentences and alert you to the fact that a particular sentence is really long. It's quite possible, though, that you need a really long sentence at that point, and if the sentence is well built (i.e., not a run-on sentence), let it stand. If there are several sentences that the computer judges to be extra long, however, that's probably an indication of a serious problem and some of those sentences might be better off broken into smaller units of thought.

Grammar checkers are also very good at picking up on passive verb constructions. Frequently, a sentence will be improved and your meaning will be more clear, more forceful, if you replace passive constructions with active verbs. But not always. Review the section on passive verbs to see those uses of the passive that are appropriate. If you've used the passive construction in an appropriate way, leave it alone, no matter what your grammar checker says. Go through the essay with an eye for proper punctuation, especially for errant commas. Again, whether you tend to leave out commas where they belong or use commas where you don't really need them is a personal matter that requires your personal attention. It wouldn't be a bad idea to print out the section on Comma Usage to have it on hand when you proofread your paper. Being careful about commas forces you to be thoughtful about the way your sentences are put together. Whether you have a grammar checker or not, it is a good idea to know the problems that bother you most as a writer and do your best to eliminate those difficulties as you go from assignment to assignment. Try to grow as a writer with each assignment, eliminating the little glitches that your instructor caught last time and trying different methods of expression. Stretch your vocabulary a bit, try for an interesting effect in parallel style. Mostly, look for patterns of errors so you can

predict the kind of thing that gives you trouble fragments, run-ons, comma-splices, parallel form. Never throw out an old writing assignment. Whether its grade made you happy or not, there is always something to be learned from it. If your Grammar Checker does not check for expletive constructions (sentences beginning with "there is" or "there are" or "here is"), you can do a simple search for the word there in the initial position and try to change clauses with those weak beginnings. Usually it's a matter of eliminating the expletive construction and then saying something useful about the real subject of the sentence.

There are 1200 students on financial aid at that college. The 1200 students on financial aid at that college have applied for renewal of their scholarships.

You can also do a simple search for apostrophes, checking to make sure that your possessive forms are built correctly and that any contractions in your text are appropriate. (Some instructors feel that contractions are signs of lax writing or inappropriate informality and thus should be avoided in academic prose. See Tone.) How much rewriting you do on the computer screen before you print out the paper for the next step in revision is going to depend on how comfortable you are reading text on the computer screen. Most writers find it too easy to skip over problems on the monitor and they need to have copy in hand, literally, to catch all their errors. Other writers, however, have become so comfortable in their use of the computer that the keyboard and screen have become an extension of their mind even more so than a pencil or ballpoint pen can be and on-the-screen manipulation of text becomes second nature. It is probably a matter of practice, but some writers will always want to move quickly to the next step of working with paper copy. Once the written assignment on the computer screen looks the way you want it, it's time to print it out and put it through some additional steps of the rewriting process. Make sure the paper is double-spaced (or even triple-spaced at this point) and you've given yourself some marginal space for scribbling notes. Again, look for the problems that have given you grief before and try looking at your paper as if you were your own instructor, looking for the same old stuff. Review the section on Confusion: Sources and Remedies while you're in the middle of rewriting your paper. Word-processing makes fixing things later on easy, even fun, so don't hesitate to do some serious scribbling, re-ordering of paragraphs, etc. If, when you go back to the computer, you're unfamiliar with the techniques of highlighting and moving blocks of text, consult the software manual or ask a computer lab assistant to help you out. Share your paper with a friendly editor, someone who has your interests at heart and who has the time to review your paper carefully and who is willing to ask questions and to challenge what you said and how you said it. This person should be a friend, but not too much of a friend. After all, you're hoping for useful criticism here. Girlfriends, boyfriends, and parents make notoriously bad editors; they think whatever you write is wonderful, not to be improved. This is no time for coddling on their part or defensiveness on yours. This person is not to rewrite your paper for you, but you can hope he or she will catch an occasional glitch in punctuation or lapse in reasoning. The main purpose of this "outside editor," though, is to challenge your argument. Does the paper

really make sense, is the argument sound? After all, you know what a sentence or paragraph meant and that means you are less apt to catch a confusing phrase or momentary lapse in the argument than someone else would be. If possible, watch your editor's face for confused looks or glazed eyes as he or she goes through your paper. It might mean that clarification is called for, that you skipped over something in your development, or that you've gone too far. Before he or she goes over your paper, it might be helpful to this outside editor to have a list of the kinds of things that have given you trouble in the past or the things that your instructor is apt to look for. Share a copy of the Deadly Sins with your outside editor or use the more extensive Checklist provided below. If you don't have a friend who can go through this editing process with you, try reading your paper into a tape recorder and then play it back to yourself, slowly. It's important to hear your paper as well as to see it on the page. Your ears will catch clumsy phrasing and botched sentences before your eyes will. If your outside editor and you can apply both ear and eye to your paper, that's four separate faculties being brought to bear on the matter. Your chances of catching problems before they make their way into final text have just improved remarkably. There is a fine line between letting someone else rewrite your paper and asking someone to collaborate with you in the editing process. Most tutors become expert at this after a while. The trick is to let you, the writer, keep the pen in hand or your fingers on the keyboard. Probably every professional writer in the world whether he or she is penning a novel or a letter to the editor will share a draft with a colleague before sending his or her text to the publisher. And probably more than one colleague, more than one time, will be involved. Nothing is more important in this process, however, than your personal involvement and improvement as a writer. Some instructors will provide an opportunity for peer editing, a process by which students make suggestions about their classmates' work. Sometimes, in fact, a student's effort in peer editing is an important part of the grade. Melanie Dawson, of the University of Richmond, has written an excellent description of this process along with a checklist of things to look for in someone else's paper and suggestions about how to mark a classmate's work: "Peer Editing Guide." Most writers try to prepare a draft of their paper in plenty of time to let the paper sit a day or so before they go through the rewriting process. You will do a better job of rewriting your work if you come to it a bit "cold." You can be a bit more objective about the paper's grammar and argument. Your mind will be less apt to provide missing links and gloss over errors in style if you can pretend that this is something you just happened to pick up, something written by someone else. Before you return to the computer to fix up your text, it might be helpful to run through a checklist of things to look out for in the rewriting process. Based on your own experience, you probably know best where your essay is apt to be weak. Concentrate on those points, but don't leave anything out. The table below is conveniently hyperlinked to explanations of the various issues. Click HERE for a one-page duplicate of this table that will be easier to print.

Editing Checklist

Can you point to a Thesis Statement in the essay? Is it clearly stated? Does the text carry out the purpose of the thesis statement? If not, does the body of the paper need some paring down or elaboration or does the thesis statement need to be refined to reflect an improved text? Are the ideas in the essay clearly ordered? If the reader had to, could he or she devise an Outline that would reveal the order of development in your argument? Is there any part of the essay that could be left out to good effect? (If so, could a revised organization "save" that part?) Are there any serious fallacies in the Logic of your argument? Are paragraphs adequately developed and is there a clear Transition from one idea to the next? Is the Introduction clear and adequately developed? Does the Conclusion do what you want it to? Does the conclusion remind us of what the Thesis Statement told us (but not too simplistically). Is the Tone consistent and appropriate for the audience you want to reach and the subject you're treating? Have you avoided slang and being overly casual; at the other extreme, have you avoided sounding pretentious and stuffy? Personal Grammatical Issues: Circle those elements below that might be something you need to pay special attention to in your own writing. Fragments Run-ons Comma Usage Other Punctuation Marks Articles Plurals and Possessives Pronouns Pronoun/Antecedent Agreement Modifier Misplacement Subject/Verb Agreement Tense Sequence Capitalization Italics and Underlining Using Numbers Wordiness Parallelism Confusion Spelling

If, in the course of editing and rewriting your paper, you have occasion to use proofreading symbols or need to know what those symbols mean, a handy Guide to Proofreading Symbols is available as part of this guide. When you've finished with the checklist, go through the essay a couple of more times on the computer screen and run the spellchecker again just in case you changed something and created a new misspelling where one didn't exist before. With word-processing, it is almost never too late to make changes. A word of caution, however: don't be one of those students who show up late for class, tearfully protesting that the printers in the computer lab broke down or ate the paper five minutes before class. Leave time for such emergencies. They don't happen often, really, but they always happen at the worst time imaginable.

COMPUTER AS WRITING ASSISTANT

More Than a Fancy Typewriter That computer sitting before you is more than a fancy typewriter. (Some really young readers might be asking, "What's a typewriter?" but bear with us.) With modern word-processing programs and the ability of the computer to attend to more than one task at a time, the computer can become a assistant in the writing process. If you are still typing with two fingers, however, you must learn how to take advantage of all the computer has to offer. It might be a good idea to call a brief time-out in your academic courses and learn some keyboarding skills. Until voice-recognition software becomes a more affordable reality, the ability to use the keyboard with speed and efficiency is going to be one of the keys to academic success. You don't want to spend hours pecking away at the keyboard when a mini-course in keyboarding will give you the skills necessary to keyboard like a speed-demon. And paying someone else to keyboard your paper is not only expensive; it also means that you're not taking advantage of everything that this technology has to offer. If you don't have time during the regular semester, promise yourself that before another winter's intersession or summer session passes by, you will take a course in keyboarding. You will never regret it. There are also software packages that promise to turn you into an executive secretary in a week, and they can be effective. Having the discipline of a course and the encouragement of an instructor and classmates can be helpful, though. One of the first things you'll learn in a keyboard class is how to SAVE the material you're typing. Once you've learned the first basic step, it's easy to save your document as you go along. Some software, in fact, has an automatic SAVE feature that saves your work every few minutes. When you're done with your work, make sure that final copies of your documents are safely "put away" in two places on a floppy disc and on the hard drive or on two separate floppies. Floppies "go bad," and someday you will be very glad that you got in the habit of saving things twice. Your instructor is not interested in what is already an old excuse: "My floppy is corrupted." The only caution here is that you must be careful to work with the latest saved version. Carefully label your discs and keep your backup copy as fresh as your main floppy.

Also, carry floppy discs in a hard plastic case. If that metal slider gets bent in your pocket or purse, that floppy is a goner, and pocket lint and floppy discs don't get along. If your document is really important or private, learn to keep copies in a safe place, away from nasty weather and electromagnetic fields (like some scissors or paperclips and those magnetic closers on cabinet doors). Also, get in the habit of checking the disc drive before you leave the computer station. Carefully saving your documents on a floppy doesn't do much good if you leave it in the disc drive and the next person who uses the lab accidentally blows away your precious text or helps himself to a free floppy disc. As you enter the Editing and Rewriting phases of writing your paper and you begin to move blocks of text around and delete material or insert new paragraphs here and there, it might be a good idea to begin to save subsequent drafts of your paper. Label the draft files systematically and simply: ozone_1.doc, ozone_2.doc, etc. The reason for this is that we sometimes "blow away" something that is quite good and when we want to retrieve it, it's gone if we constantly over-ride a single saved document. (A distinct disadvantage of digital writing!) A high-density floppy disc should be able to hold many versions of several text documents. Be sure to visit these other digital handouts on ways of using the computer as writing assistant:
The Computer and Freewriting, Outlining The Computer and The Editing Process Doing More than One Thing at a Time Special Internet Sources of Information

Guide to Grammar and Writing

Principles of Composition

Index

The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation. I If you feel we have provided something of value and wish to show your appreciation, you can assist the College and its students with a tax-deductible contribution. For more about giving to Capital, write to CCC Foundation, 950 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103. Phone (860) 906-5102 or email: jmcnamara@ccc.commnet.edu. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

The gargoyle, above, is a good friend of Professor Virginia Montecino at George Mason University and appears here with permission. Professor Montecino maintains a Website on education, technology, and scholarship resources for faculty and students.

The Deadly Sins Checklist

Sentence Fragments

Run-on (run-together) Sentences

Agreement Problems: Subject/verb Pronoun/antecedent

Consistency Problems: Pronouns Verb tense

Faulty Parallelism

For a more extensive checklist of things to look out for when re-reading your paper, visit our section on Proofreading and Editing.

Guide to Grammar and Writing

Principles of Composition

Index

The Guide to Grammar and Writing is sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation, a nonprofit 501 c-3 organization that supports scholarships, faculty development, and curriculum innovation. If you feel we have provided something of value and wish to show your appreciation, you can assist the College and its students with a tax-deductible contribution. For more about giving to Capital, write to CCC Foundation, 950 Main Street, Hartford, CT 06103. Phone (860) 906-5102 or email: jmcnamara@ccc.commnet.edu. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Common Proofreading Symbols

Symbol

Meaning
insert a comma

Example

apostrophe or single quotation mark insert something

use double quotation marks

use a period here

delete

transpose elements

close up this space

a space needed here

begin new paragraph

no paragraph

Common Proofreading Abbreviations

(The abbreviation would appear in the margin, probably with a line or arrow pointing to the offending element.)

Abbreviation Meaning
Ab a faulty abbreviation agreement problem: subject/verb or pronoun/antecedent awkward expression or construction faulty capitalization

Example
She had earned a Phd along with her M.D.

Agr
See also P/A and S/V

The piano as well as the guitar need tuning. The student lost their book.

Awk

The storm had the effect of causing millions of dollars in damage.

Cap

We spent the Fall in Southern spain. Raoul tried his best, this time that wasn't good enough Due to the fact that we were wondering as to whether it would rain, we stayed home. Working harder than ever, this job proved to be too much for him to handle.

CS

comma splice

DICT

faulty diction

Dgl

dangling construction

- ed

problem with final -ed

Last summer he walk all the way to Birmingham.

Frag

fragment

Depending on the amount of snow we get this winter and whether the towns buy new trucks.

||

problem in parallel form pronoun/antecedent agreement

My income is bigger than my wife.

P/A

A student in accounting would be wise to see their advisor this month. My aunt and my mother have wrecked her car The committee has lost their chance to change things. You'll have to do this on one's own time.

Pron

problem with pronoun

Rep

unnecessary repetition

The car was blue in color.

R-O

run-on sentence

Raoul tried his best this time that wasn't good enough. This sentence is flaude with two mispellings. He wonder what these teacher think of him. The proofreader uses this Latin term to indicate that proofreading marks calling for a change should be ignored and the text as originally written should be "let stand."

Sp -s

spelling error problem with final -s

STET

Let it stand

S/V

subject/verb agreement verb tense problem

The problem with these cities are leadership.

He comes into the room, and he pulled his gun. Seldom have we perused a document so verbose, so ostentatious in phrasing, so burdened with too many words. What affect did the movie have on Sheila? She tried to hard to analyze its conclusion.

Wdy

wordy

WW

wrong word

Some Online Aids on Proofreading and Editing

Editing and Rewriting (from the Guide to Grammar and Writing) "Revising Your Writing" from Paradigm "Editing Your Writing" from Paradigm Proofreading Strategies from Bowling Green University

Guide to Grammar and Writing

Learning Center

Capital Community College