The Writing Center

In Soviet Russia, Vacation Goes on You!

2008-03-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

By Travis Willmore

Remember how it feels coming back to school after a break between terms and having to bang a couple of unresponsive neurons together in hopes of producing just one coherent thought? After a long, hard slog through ten weeks of academic edification, the tendency is to tune out, turn off and try to make your brief glimpse of freedom as mentally unchallenging as possible. So a little after-vacation rustiness of the brain is extremely common.

While it’s good to decompress after a stressful term, there’s no reason your writing skills have to atrophy, and writing while you’re on vacation (“The very idea!”) doesn’t have to feel like work. After all, you’re not having to fulfill the requirements of any assignment, you’re not having to create an effective thesis statement or make sure your sources are cited effectively—you can just write about whatever you feel like writing about. This is its own kind of mental vacation.

And it can be valuable later. You’re not going to have crystal clear memories of everything that happened over spring break months after the fact—especially if you have the kind of spring breaks and the kind of memory that I do. Many people, myself included, tend to do a lot of writing in situations where they have to—and don’t make much time for it when they’re just out there living. If you write things down at the end of a long day of windsurfing or line-dancing or keg-standing or whatever your spring break entails, then you’ll have a record of some memorable times in your life (which will now be easier to remember further down the road). Not only that, you’ll have positive mental associations when you think about writing. It won’t seem so damn punitive, and when you come back for another long, hard slog of educational enlightenment…lo and behold, you’ll find that you aren’t all rusty with writing, and the onslaught of more writing assignments won’t seem so daunting anymore.

In Soviet Russia, Paper Proofreads You!

2008-03-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

By Travis Willmore

Say you have a classmate who trusts your writing judgment. We’ll call him Bob. There may come a time when Bob calls upon you to help proofread his work. This is a totally different situation from offering assistance in revising a paper, which has been dealt with at length here. Editing and proofreading involve targeted line-by-line changes to help fine-tune a paper. Excellent information on to proofread your own work, as well as that of others, can be found here.

If there is a recurring error in Bob’s work, it may be effective—and less discouragingly repetitive—if you note the first instance and mention that it recurs frequently throughout the paper. If the error is of uniform enough nature, he will be able to go through and make the corrections without having every individual instance marked. If he keeps capitalizing Coffee when you know that coffee is not a proper noun, you probably only need to mention it once.

Sometimes you will run across an unclear passage: one with more than one possible meaning. Rather than narrowing it down to a single specific meaning on your own, ask Bob what he intended the passage to mean before you proceed. If Bob writes, “I launched a cow from a wooden catapult on an English farm that must have been around since the 1580s,” does he mean the cow, the catapult, or the farm looks to be of 1580s vintage? Don’t just assume and fix the passage so it fits your assumption. Bob’s intention may well have been the less likely one.

You will also want to check with the writer about making changes when they deal with style preferences, rather than set-in-stone rules. If Bob doesn't use the serial comma (“this, this, and this” loses the second comma to become “this, this and this”), you have a situation in which either option is technically correct. In that case, it’s a good idea to check if Bob’s choices on the matter were intentional before making corrections that impose your own stylistic preferences.

More important than any of these individual techniques is the attitude you bring to proofreading when Bob calls you in to help fine-tune his work. Keep in mind that you want to be positive in your tone when pointing out problem areas, and recognize situations when the writer just wants you to add a coat of polish rather than rebuild the whole car. You will have a more satisfied Bob and he will have a more satisfying paper as a result.

Brainstorming: Reporters’ Questions

2008-03-14T17:00:00.000-07:00

Adapted from a Portland State University Writing Center handout by Mariah Bennett-Gillard

Reporters have an obligation to their profession to maintain an unbiased point of view when writing their articles. One of the ways they carry this out is to ask as many questions as they possibly can. That way, they get as much information from as many different angles as possible.

When using this structured method of discovering what you want to say, try to produce as many responses as possible for each question. There are no correct answers, only useful ideas that you can explore in greater depth later. Not every question will be relevant to every topic, so you may have no answers for some of the questions.

Remember that the answers you get from asking these questions are not themselves topics. Instead, your goal is to accumulate as much diverse information about your subject as possible. Later, as you organize your paper, you’ll be able to pull out the best ideas from your notes and consider how to organize them or whether to develop the ideas further.

WHO?
Who is involved in X?
Who benefitted from X?
Who suffered from X?

WHAT?
What is X? How is X defined?
How would you describe X?
What is X similar to?
What is X different from?
What parts make up X? How are they related to each other?

WHEN?
When did X occur?
How long did X take?
What happened before X?
What happened after X?
What are the consequences of X?

WHERE?
In what setting did X occur? What were the physical surroundings?
What other circumstances made X possible?
How would X have been different if the circumstances were different?

WHY?
What are the causes of X?
Why did X exist or occur?
Why did X do what it/they did?

HOW?
How did X come to be?
Who made X?
How does X work?

Brainstorming: Making a List

2008-03-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

Adapted from a PSU Writing Center handout by Mariah Bennett-Gillard

Making a list can sometimes help you collect your ideas on a topic. Start by writing the topic at the top of your paper. Underneath it, list whatever words or phrases come to you. Let your mind flow without interruption; without being critical of yourself. In other words, don’t reject any idea that comes to your mind. When you run out of ideas on the topic, stop writing.

Brainstorming a list can also be done in a group or as a class. One person records all the ideas suggested in response to a topic. Group brainstorming is a good way to generate a lot of ideas on a topic. Often someone else’s idea can prompt an idea you may not have thought of on your own.

Once you have a list of ideas, read them over, pick out those most closely related to the topic, and cross out the ones that aren’t suitable. If you wish, you can put the remaining ideas into categories or groups, or you can draw arrows connecting things that go together. You may find that one idea is a good central focus of the paper while others can be used as support.Y

You may want to make another list using one of the ideas on your original list as the new topic. Try making a list of your topics in the order yo you u want to present them. This kind of list can give you a guide for what to write about when drafting your paper.

Active vs. Passive Voice: Part 2 - The Trouble With Passive

2008-03-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

Although the previous post discussed situations where using passive voice is useful, using active voice for the majority of your writing is still recommended to maintain readers’ interest and sentence clarity.

Passives become a problem when obscuring the agent obscures your meaning. For instance, you could write:
The governess is misrepresented.
This is a clever passive sentence: first, it sounds fairly natural; second, the “by phrase” is dropped, so the sentence doesn’t immediately look passive. But when writing analysis, it’s important to keep the agent’s identity clear. That example sentence is actually the sentence: “The governess is misrepresented [by someone].” But by whom? By the author? By a critic you’ve read? The identity of the person misrepresenting is probably crucial to the strength of your argument. By using a passive sentence, your meaning becomes uncertain, and your argument unclear. The active version would be:
[The agent] misrepresents the governess.
It’s a small change, but it keeps the language active and your writing clear, which can make a big difference.

Traditionally, many of the social and natural sciences use passive voice in order to emphasize the research, not the researcher. This is because those conducting the research are supposed to be objective and the research should be the sole focus of the report. For example:
We conducted 50 interviews.
50 interviews were conducted.
However, most current science writing guides recommend using active voice whenever possible, even if it means using “I” or “we.” But be aware that some professors prefer the use of passive voice in formal reports. If you are given an example, check to see whether active or passive voice dominates. A quick way to do this is to look for “to be” verbs, such as is, was, am, or were. Although the use of one of these words does not automatically mean the sentence is passive, all sentences with passive construction use these words. You’ll notice in the above example that the passive sentence uses the word “were,” whereas the active sentence does not. Another option is to check in with your instructor or TA to ensure you’re meeting their expectations for the assignment.

Active Versus Passive Voice: Part 1 - When Passive is Good

2008-03-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

The difference between the active versus the passive voice can be confusing. Sometimes this is because people are taught that a passive sentence is somehow evil or, even worse, ungrammatical, because the subject is at the end, but that’s not true. Passive sentences have a subject and are grammatical. What passive sentences hold until the end is what grammarians call “the agent,” by which they mean the entity that took action. Take the following examples:
James wrote the book.
The book was written by James.
The first sentence is active, and its subject is James; the second is passive, and the subject is the book. But James is “the agent” in both sentences—in both cases, he wrote the book.

Now: passive sentences exist for a reason—they aren’t inherently bad. For instance, imagine an English and Liberal Studies major that will be unemployed when he graduates and will have to take an office job. One day he will come into the office early to get some paperwork done. He will enter the little office kitchen, grab the filthy coffeepot to make some coffee…and drop the pot on the floor, shattering it. An honest employee would go to the office manager, admit to breaking the pot, and thank the company for deducting the expense from his next paycheck. Because he has a degree in English or Liberal Studies, however, it will not occur to him to be honest. What he will do is hide the pieces of the broken pot at the bottom of the trash, and then return to his desk. Later, one of his co-workers will stop by, wondering what happened to the coffeepot. He will say:
“Oh, yeah…it was broken.”
The active version of this sentence (“I broke it.”) would incriminate our hero. The beauty of a passive sentence is that he can drop the “by phrase” and instead of saying, “It was broken by me,” he can just say, “It was broken.”

The more honest use of passive sentences stems from situations in which the agent is unknown or nonexistent. For instance:
The law was passed last year.
You could write, “Congress passed the law last year,” but every congressman who didn’t vote for that law will write you an angry letter stating that he didn’t pass that law. By making the sentence passive, you rid yourself of the complex problem of a case in which there is no easily identifiable agent. Also:
She was struck by lightning.
You could easily say “Lightning struck her,” but we don’t often say that, probably because no one really wants to blame lightning—maybe Zeus throws the lightning, or maybe lightning just happens…it’s natural to use the distance of a passive sentence there.

How I Learned to Stop Hating On My Writing Assignment: Part II – Think Outside the Assignment

2008-03-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

In Part I of this blog topic, we gave you some suggestions for using the buzzing in your own brain to help you get interested in potentially uninteresting essay topics. But there’s a great big world outside your brain! And a great big world outside your assignment, too. So, take a look at these three ideas for ways to step out into that world and stop hating on your assignment:

Do a little research even if the assignment doesn’t ask for it. You might not want to hear this, but sometimes lack of interest in a topic is born of lack of knowledge. Maybe you just don’t know enough yet. A great way to become interested in your topic is to become educated about it. The more you learn, the more likely you are to find something that intrigues you. Be open to seeing the assignment in a new way based on the information you gather.

Academic doesn’t necessarily mean high-brow. If you are intimidated by a topic because you believe that it is too hard or that it flies over your head, don’t despair! It is a mistake to think that you must write heady prose about heady topics in order for your essay to have any academic value. Nothing could be further from the truth. Why not take a look at that low-brow magazine you love so much and let it help you pose questions and answers about the culture you live in? Turn an analytical eye on anything from Britney to bling – it’s all potential fodder for intellectual inquiry.

Answer the assignment guidelines, but make it your own. Yes, you need to address the question or problem the instructor gives you, otherwise you could face a failing grade. But, don’t let that discourage you from looking at the question or problem creatively.

Once upon a time, a student was given an assignment that asked him to come up with his own personal definition of nature. “I don’t like nature, but I do love technology” the student thought to himself. Instead of “checking out” and writing a ho-hum paper, the student decided to write about how technology has changed the ways we think about and define nature. He used the examples of artificial beaches and other manmade, technologically enhanced sites of “nature” as his examples. He loved his paper and got a good grade. The End.

How I Learned to Stop Hating On My Writing Assignment: Part 1 – Use What You’ve Got

2008-03-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

If you lament that writing assignments can seem to have nothing to do with you or what you’re really interested in and you find yourself wishing your professor would let you write about Donkey Kong strategy, or the sexual tension between the cast members of The Real World – or some other topic on which you consider yourself an expert – you are not alone. Every writer at one point or another has been given an assignment that simply fails to inspire. We usually write the paper anyway but feel as if we’re just “calling it in,” and it often shows in the finished product.

That’s why, here at the Writing Center, we like to tailor assignments whenever we can to line up with our own interests and questions. It’s true that some writing assignments are pretty rigid, but we believe that even in the case of rigid assignments, getting interested plays a huge role in writing well. Take a look at these two suggestions for tapping into your own interests to transform a topic from blah to hurrah:

Discover your opinion. Having an idea is probably the single most important component to writing a good essay. But, it’s hard to have an idea if you dislike the topic. Sometimes, though, you can turn even your intense dislike of a topic into a viable, energetic and intellectually rigorous essay. The way to do this is to move beyond simply feeling that dislike and begin to ask questions about why the topic bothers you. When you come up with an answer to the question why, keep asking increasingly probing questions (i.e. So what? Why does that matter?) until you feel yourself hitting on a fresh idea. Make that idea the basis for your essay. Example: an assignment asks you to analyze a piece of art. You don’t like this piece of art. Why? Well, it looks like a child’s drawing. So what? Good art should have a standard of artistic merit. Why? Otherwise anyone would be able to make some random thing and call it art. So what? Otherwise how will we be able to distinguish what is art and what is not art? So what are you trying to say about this painting, then? I think this child-like painting disturbs the viewer because it challenges traditional beliefs about artistic merit. BINGO. An idea is born.

Use your own life experiences as a resource. Not all assignment guidelines will allow you to bring in your own life experiences as evidence, but who says you can’t be thinking of them behind the scenes? No one says that! Maybe you’ve always been obsessed with bats and you know an awful lot about them – perhaps more than you’d care to admit. Why not tap into your passion for bats as a way of approaching your essay assignment on environmental ethics? Research bat habitat and ask how human decisions affect the lives of your smelly big-eared friends.

A second set of eyes, part 3: Reader-based feedback

2008-03-06T20:24:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

Your writing can often benefit from outside opinions, much like your lungs can often benefit from outside oxygen. Peter Elbow’s Writing with Power discusses two types of feedback you can get from outside sources, criterion-based feedback and reader-based feedback. Reader-based feedback asks the reader to describe their reactions as they read the work.

For this type of input, you may want to pick someone familiar with your topic. Don’t worry about any qualifications for technical proficiency that your reader needs to meet beyond an understanding of the standards for an academic paper. Just concentrate on their faculty for honestly expressing how they react to the paper. If you’re looking for reader-based feedback, it might help to get input from a variety of sources because a piece of writing affects each individual differently. Here are some things you can ask your readers to facilitate the kinds of responses you would find helpful:

*What was happening to you as you started reading the piece? Were you bored? Engaged? Furious?
*Which words or phrases struck out the most and why?
*What sense does the writing give you of the writer as a person?
*What images did this writing conjure up?
*Where did you get confused?
*Can you identify the source of the confusion?
*What do you wish had been said that wasn’t?

A key benefit of reader-based feedback is that it highlights where people were confused by your writing. Something that makes perfect sense to you might not translate in a way gets your idea across to the reader intact. Once those areas of confusion are pinpointed, they can be addressed with your own choices on how to revise the ideas, content, and structure to make your intent shine through more clearly.

With this type of feedback, you have an idea of what fundamental areas to address, rather than having to focus on specific technical issues that do or don’t “work.” You are free to focus on how your writing addresses your potential audience and revise it in a way that you see fit, rather than having a prescriptive set of guidelines imposed.

Whether you choose criterion-based feedback or reader-based feedback or both, your writing always stands to benefit from more eyes reading through it. There will be an ultimate reader at the end of your paper’s journey to completion, the person assigning it a grade, so having others along the way to lend outside perspective could be one of the most helpful things you can do for your writing.

A second pair of eyes, Part 2: Criterion-based reader feedback

2008-03-05T15:34:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

Now that we’ve looked at ways to find readers, let’s examine ways to direct readers in order to get the kind of feedback you want. Peter Elbow, in his book Writing with Power, divides feedback styles into criterion-based feedback and reader-based feedback. This post focuses on criterion-based feedback, which asks questions about the quality of the paper’s organization and how well the ideas established in the paper support its thesis and fulfill the needs of the assignment.

Criterion-based feedback assesses how the writing measures up to common writing conventions and the assignment criteria. If you feel your paper needs assistance in these areas, this may be the type of feedback to seek out. Here are some things you can direct your reader to address if you’re looking for criterion-based feedback:

*Is the basic idea of the paper solid?
*Is there a strong, stated thesis?
*Is the thesis supported by evidence and examples?
*Does the evidence build in a logical sequence that relates to the thesis?
*Is the paper fitted to its audience?
*Are the sentences clear and readable?

All these questions give the reader a strong insight into the kind of help you’re looking for, but they aren’t, by any means, an exhaustive list. You can tweak your list of questions based on the demands of specific assignments, or on your specific writing needs. These guidelines help direct them to the most important structural issues facing a paper. You may find your readers responding to issues beyond the scope of the questions you asked, which is fine.

If you’re aiming for criterion-based feedback, one reader with a strong grasp of the criteria relevant to your paper could go a long way toward meeting your needs. Of course, more than one perspective can be beneficial regardless of what type of feedback you’re seeking. Keep in mind that with criterion-based feedback, or any kind of feedback, it can be a ton of help if you have the assignment on hand to show to your reader.

A second pair of eyes, Part 1: Eye-finding

2008-03-03T16:25:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

No matter how many times you read over a draft, it’s still easy to miss some issues due to your close proximity to your own writing. That's why having an outside perspective can be an indispensable part of the writing process. We’ll look specifically at how to direct your readers to get the kind of feedback you want in future posts, but the most important thing to tell them is that they can feel comfortable being honest about the high and low points of the writing without you taking it personally.

Anyone can provide you with useful input on your writing. They don’t have to be an expert on grammar, spelling or sentence structure. A good place to start, if the demands on your paper are technically specialized, might be someone taking the same class. Even if the needs of your paper aren’t too specialized, someone in the same class may still be a good bet for that second pair of eyes because they’re readily available (at least three or four people within slapping distance, in the typical thirty-person class) and can sympathize with the general brand of writing challenges you’re facing.

There are plenty of other places to find readers. Ask your friends, roommates, or someone you’ve had in a previous class to take a look at the writing and share what they think about it. Offer to do the same with theirs. Some majors require students to write a lot of papers – identify friends in these fields and ask for their input. Current students have first-hand knowledge about what is required in a college-level paper and understand how important it is to turn in quality work. Take advantage of this expertise. You can also take a look at those in your life beyond campus. Are there college graduates you know that write in their jobs? These people are often able to reflect on their vast experience and provide relevant feedback that can help bring your paper to the next level. Remember, feedback can be harvested from most anywhere.

Looping: A Focused Approach to Brainstorming

2008-02-26T14:48:00.000-08:00

Adapted from a PSU Writing Center handout by Mariah Bennett-Gillard

If you don’t have time to waste and have to come up with an idea on a specific topic for a writing assignment, try looping. It is a good way for you to manage your time and freewrite without going off topic.

To start looping, find a tentative topic or idea, even if it’s unspecific and broad. Write the topic at the top of the page. Before beginning, check the clock or set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes. Once the timer is set, write without stopping until the timer goes off.

Once your time is up, read over what you wrote and determine the best or most important thing. Pick the idea you want to say more about and copy the sentence or phrase on a fresh line. It doesn’t have to be what you wrote the most about. It can be something you like or even something you didn’t quite say, but want to.

Now, do another loop using the sentence or phrase you copied as your prompt. Set the timer again and begin freewriting. Write like you did before while focusing on your chosen title sentence. Stop when the time is up. Read what you wrote. Decide what was best about the writing in this round and use that idea to start your third loop. Repeat the process one more time so that you have three complete loops.

By the time you are finished with the third loop, you may find that you have an idea that you can develop into a larger piece of writing. You may need more than three loops, and that is alright. The important thing is that you have started to write.

Cubing: A 3-D Approach to Brainstorming

2008-02-26T11:50:00.000-08:00

Adapted from a PSU Writing Center handout by Mariah Bennett-Gillard

Cubing is a good way to look at a person, object, feeling, or idea from six different perspectives. Like a cube, the writing you do while cubing has six sides which represent the different aspects of your writing. When doing this exercise write quickly, spending 3 to 5 minutes on each side of the cube. Read the questions two or three times to make sure you have them locked inside your brain. Set a timer and focus the best you can. If it helps, keep a flashcard with the questions in front of you while you work, switching them once your timer dings and starting again. You’ll surprise yourself with what you can come up with.

Here are the prompts for each side of your cube:

1) Describe it: What does it look like? What are its characteristics? What are the first things you notice about it?

2) Compare it: What is it similar to? What is it different from?

3) Associate it: What does it remind you of? How does it connect with your individual life, with the life of your family or community?

4) Analyze it: Look deeper. What is it made of? How does it work?

5) Apply it: What is it used for? Who uses it?

6) Argue for or against it: Is it a good thing or a bad one? Explain why.

When you are finished, read what you wrote, and put a star besides the writing that seems the most powerful or interesting or that you would like to develop further. Now, freewrite again. This time focus on the sentences that you put the star next to, and before you know it, you will be well on your way to writing your assignment.

How to be a Productive 'Shopper

2008-02-22T14:29:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

The Blog has previously dealt with fear of criticizing others’ work and insecurity about your own writing, two issues that can keep workshops from being that ideal vision of constructiveness and feedback. Another scenario that can arise is when people are willing to comment honestly, but their comments aren’t the kind that lead to improving the paper. For workshop comments to be useful, they need to engage the recipient in a way that isn’t condescending, and leads them to finding their own ways of positive revision. Here are some suggestions for successful ’shopping:

-Distinguish between constructive criticism and criticism for its own sake: When you point out areas in need of revision, do you show a clear path toward possible ways of making those revisions? Raise the possibility that a section of the paper could be revised, and suggest some potential options for doing so…but remember that you’re just offering options. Be suggestive, not prescriptive.

-Balance criticism with praise: You don’t want all your input to be critical, even if it’s all purely constructive. No matter what your intent, it can still be trying for others to listen to an unbroken string of things you think could change in their papers. Intersperse comments on areas in potential need of revision with comments on what you think is positive about the other student’s work.

For more strategies to use in peer response groups, click here.

Open-Ended Assignments, Part 2: Working Around to Eventually Having Some Kind of a Point

2008-02-21T15:28:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

With open-ended assignments, coming up with a topic is only the first of several goals the writer wants to meet. You also need to decide what main point to communicate to your audience. Even if you’re just telling a story, there’s something central you want people to get out of it. It’s often easier to write something (a paper, a personal statement, anything…) when you start with this central theme already in mind. But if you don’t, what then?

Fortunately, it’s not necessary to sit around waiting for inspiration to strike. Start by putting down on paper (or monitor) every thought that comes into your head on anything remotely related to your topic. Make lists, freewrite, yell into a tape recorder—use any method that appeals to you. Then, sift through all this disparate information to see if something emerges as a central theme—an underlying thread that connects these different aspects of the subject.

Maybe there will be more than one common thread. Then you have a choice. Choice is swell. Choose the theme that seems most relevant to the open-ended question you’re attempting to answer. Also, ask yourself which of these central elements would allow you to use the most of your accumulated writing to support it. The more of your already-created output you can clean up and use in your actual paper, the closer you are to being done.

So…if you have no idea what central point you want to make when you decide on your topic, no need to freak out. Try writing your way toward it. It’s just as valid to use this creative sequence to arrive at your final draft as it is to start with a point and work forward from there. When people see a well-crafted paper, they can’t tell in what order its components were assembled, only that it hangs together beautifully.

Open-Ended Assignments, Part 1: A Blank Slate Doesn’t Have to Mean a Blank Mind

2008-02-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

At times in your college career, you’ll face open-ended writing assignments. You may be asked to write about “a moment that changed your life,” or “a time you used interpersonal skills to solve a problem.” This last type of question pops up a lot, not only in class assignments, but in job applications, personal statements, grad school apps, and various other instances when people want to hear you describe your abilities on your own terms.

Such instances give you unlimited creative freedom. This freedom can feel a bit overwhelming—like being placed in the driver’s seat of a car and told to drive in any direction you want. You might find yourself wishing someone would say, “The road’s right over there.” At the risk of sounding self-helpy, though, there are a number of ways you can Find Your Own Road.

Start by playing to your strengths. Of all the papers you’ve been assigned that do have strict guidelines, which type comes most naturally to you? Maybe you’re good with personal narrative, telling the story of your thought processes as you investigate a topic. Or, maybe you prefer to keep things more fact-based and less personal. This isn’t necessarily a big hurdle in an assignment asking you to talk about yourself—just let your experiences have the leading role in the paper and minimize the “I’s” and “me’s”.

If you’re struggling over which experiences to focus on, think about what skills you want to highlight for your readers and pick situations that demonstrate your use of those skills. You could also ask someone involved in your life for some outside perspective. As your topic begins to take shape, stay on the lookout for a main theme or point that all this information might be bringing into focus. An ability to focus in on an overriding theme, when no outside focusing mechanism is provided, will serve you well in college. It will also be useful in the post-collegiate world where you won’t always be handed tightly delineated assignments with a concrete grading scale.

The Big Picture

2008-02-14T13:06:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

The big picture is often difficult to see when revising a paper. It’s easily obscured by minor spelling and punctuation issues that need editing—little distractions that get in the way of your concentration on improving the content of your paper. But wait…aren’t revision and editing basically the same thing?

Actually, no. Revision is something much more urgent than the red-underlined spellchecker stuff crying out “Edit me!” Revision should be applied in liberal doses before you even start to think about line-by-line editing. It means taking a look at that Big Picture we mentioned and asking yourself big questions like:

-Do the facts I mention in my paper support my main point?
-Do I, in fact, have a main point?
-Are my arguments adequately supported and my examples sufficiently explained?
-Is the information presented in an order that lets the reader clearly follow my thought process?
-Do my introduction and my conclusion complement each other?

Feel free to move major sections around or take out entire paragraphs if they don’t fit your overall vision. Swap your conclusion with your introduction if it makes for a stronger intro. Remember, nothing in your original draft is locked in. Any component can be modified or discarded in the interest of creating a more coherent whole.

This is why the editing, the nitty-gritty i-before-e-except-after-c work, can wait until revision is done. No need to obsess over the punctuation of a sentence in your first draft when you might cut out that sentence’s whole paragraph during revision. It’s better to save the final coat of proofreading polish until the larger form underneath is something worth polishing.

Brainstorming: Installment #1

2008-02-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

By Mariah Bennett-Gillard

It really doesn’t matter if you are a natural born writer, a mathematician, or a political leader; everyone experiences writer’s block. Fortunately there are tactics that can make the writing experience less painful, and even fun, depending on which one works for you. The trick is to find a new path to your creativity.

One way to move beyond writer’s block is to add visual images to your writing process. For example, say your subject for your research paper is the pyramids of Egypt. Try googling your subject and clicking on “images”. Then you can take a tour of the pyramids and their contents without having to leave the room. You can see them in color or black and white; day or night; up close or far away; and you may even be able to locate a virtual tour that will walk you through the pathways. Maybe you will notice something particularly interesting that you want to focus on in your paper, or something that you forgot about completely until seeing it again.

A second way to spark your imagination is to play music. All subjects have music to go along with them. Find that music and listen to it for a while. Consider playing it while you are looking at the images, writing your paper, or while you are taking notes. Different genres of music exist to reflect mood, history, or to tell a story. So, listening to the French national anthem while writing your paper on World War II in France could be extremely inspirational.

Part of this method is combing through other peoples’ perspectives on the subject, figuring out what yours is, adding something to it, and communicating your interpretation effectively. Knowing how you feel and what you think about your subject will help you express your ideas on the topic.

Playing to an Audience

2008-02-11T17:41:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

When you’re writing a paper strictly for class credit, the actual audience is the person grading your paper. You probably know that’s not the same thing as writing a paper to the instructor (“Just a friendly note to tell you what I’ve learned about experimental nuclear physics!”). But sometimes profs ask you to have a specific type of reader in mind. The intended audience for academic papers often falls into one of these categories:

Laymen: A layman (or layperson, if you prefer) is the average person on the street who’s never heard of your topic. In this case, you’ll be writing for a popular audience, not an academic one. When writing a paper on experimental nuclear physics, you’ll need to explain what a nucleus is before you go into how you plan to experiment with it. It’s crucial to remember that writing in layman’s terms is not the same thing as dumbing down your paper. It’s just breaking your subject down into its most basic parts.

Peers: Often your classmates, whom you know and love, should be your audience. In this case, you don’t have to define everything so explicitly—you can assume your reader will have some familiarity with the subject. Write to your peers the same way you’d want things explained to you if you missed a lecture or two.

Experts: Now you can assume your readership will understand all the concepts you’re throwing at them, and will be familiar with your technical terminology. This is nothing to be intimidated about. It just means that if you write things at the most advanced level you understand them, you can expect to find a receptive audience.

One final thing. Writing is often easier when you’re not worrying about the specter of an audience. Then you can let your thoughts flow unselfconsciously onto the screen. After you’ve got the meat of the paper taken care of, you can make your intended audience clear through revision and editing.

The Outpost is open

2008-02-11T14:39:00.000-08:00

Need help citing something? How's that conclusion going? Whatever your question, the new Writing Center Outpost can help. It's on the second floor of PSU's Branford Price Millar Library (that's the big library with the tree in front and the field in back). Somebody will be sitting near the back, looking out the window at the field, and waiting for you MON-THURS 2-5pm. See you there!

Assignments and their setup

2008-02-10T15:04:00.000-08:00

By Mariah Bennett-Gillard

It is the time of the quarter when midterm writing assignments are due. Fortunately, they are not as scary as they sound.

Midterms, finals, and standard writing assignments can be broken down into the following 5 components:

1) There will be a subject overview of what the instructor wants you to write about. This can include, but is not limited to, reading assignments such as books, articles, or essays; class lecture material; discussion or guest speaker appearances; and research done outside of class.

2) Next is the format the paper is expected to have. The instructor wants you to do something with this assignment. Look for the action words in the instructions.

- argue –attempt to convince your audience of the validity of your position. You do not have to agree with the subject matter

- summarize – rephrase the main idea of the assigned material using your own words.

- discuss – for each idea you present in your paper use examples to expand and elaborate. Include your own thoughts and the relevance of the chosen examples.

- interpret – explain what the author/writer/creator is trying to say through their book, poem, article, film, etc.

- compare – explain how concepts (from articles, poems, films, theories, etc) are alike and the differences you discovered.

3) Make sure that you do not overlook terms such as why, what, when, where, how because they indicate requirements of the assignment and can help you expand your ideas.

4) Suggestions are usually included by the instructor to help get you rolling. They often appear as sample questions on the handout. If you have your own idea regarding your assignment, bring it up to your instructor. He/she will listen and give you further input, if needed.

5) Finally there is assignment length and due date. The instructor will have a minimum and maximum amount that they want you to write. Assignments can be measured in page length or in word count.

If you still have questions about the assignment, stop by your teacher’s office hours or send an email. If you need help figuring out how to start the assignment, make an appointment at the writing center and a consultant can assist you.

Focusing Your Topic

2008-02-08T15:02:00.000-08:00

By Daneen Bergland

One of the great paradoxes of academic writing is that the narrower your topic, the more you’ll be able to say in your paper. Many students make the mistake of choosing a very broad topic and a vague thesis statement because they are afraid they’ll run out of things to say before they come to the required page length of the assignment. The problem with this tactic is that it prevents the writer from giving in-depth analysis. Or it causes the writer to veer around within the topic without a clear sense of direction. Picture your thesis as a specific destination, a place you’re trying to go to prove your point. The broad topic is a map of the entire country, when you’re really trying to find a street address; whereas, the narrow topic is the city map, full of details, landmarks, and clear directions to get where you need to go.

Narrowing your topic can seem difficult, especially if you’re working on a research paper. You may have found tons of information, all of it interesting and seemingly important. You’ve probably done a lot of work to find all your information and hate the thought of not including all of it in your paper. Take a deep breath and tell yourself whether or not the information you’ve found goes into the paper, it will still be useful as you write your essay and narrow your focus. After all, to the find street you’re looking for, you first need to know what state you’re in.

Here are a couple of ideas taken from Bruce Ballenger’s The Curious Researcher of ways to narrow your topic and find focus. These can be used both at the beginning of your research process, before you’ve started looking, or later in your process, after you’ve done some research and have a good working knowledge of your topic.

Narrow by time, place, story, or person
1. Time. Limit the time frame of your project. Instead of researching the entire Civil War, limit your search to the month or year when the most decisive battles occurred.
2. Place. Anchor a larger subject to a particular location. Instead of exploring “senioritis” at American high schools, research the phenomenon at a local high school.
3. Person. Use the particulars of a person to reveal the generalities about the group. Instead of writing about the homeless problem, write about a homeless man.
4. Story. Ground a larger story in the specifics of a “smaller” one. Don’t write about dream interpretation, write about a dream you had and use the theories to analyze it.

Narrow by relationship
Brainstorm a list of possible relationships between your topic and another.
For instance:
What is the relationship between global climate change and the Internet?
What is the relationship between global climate change and tourism in the U.S.?
What is the relationship between global climate change and advertising?

Once you’ve done some research and taken notes, a good way to narrow your focus is to stand back and look over what you’ve found. Look specifically for patterns or themes that have emerged. Look, too, for possible contradictions or paradoxes. These contradictions are often where you’ll find the most interesting ideas and best opportunities for your own in-depth analysis.

Communicating With Your Professors, Part Two: Grade Weighting/Criteria

2008-02-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

By Travis Willmore

Sometimes you’re clear on all the elements needed for a paper, but aren’t sure which are most important. Will the professor focus mainly on content, or will style issues have equal weight in your final grade? How important is a polished proofreading job?

Why not ask? Your instructor’s response to questions about grading, in addition to the issues in our last post, will make it that much easier to get started on your paper. You’ll be confident knowing that you’re headed in the right direction.

So take advantage of your professors’ office hours. They want to be there. They’re paid to be there. It gives them a nice change of pace from grading papers and reading email to talk to a live person. If you need further explanation of any of your assignments, that live person might as well be you.

Communicating With Your Professors

2008-02-05T18:45:00.000-08:00

What to ask when the assignment doesn’t speak for itself

By Travis Willmore

Say you have a paper due for class. Any class. You’ve read the assignment repeatedly, you’ve dissected the professor’s verbal instructions word by word, and you still wish you had a clearer picture of what’s expected. That’s when it pays to make use of your professor’s office hours. Instructors make it easy to do this—they mention right on the syllabus when they’re available, and they make it a point to be extra helpful to students who have the initiative to seek them out. Their services are also easily accessible by email or phone, generally listed on the syllabus as well.

When is it best to take advantage of these services? Just about any time, especially if you need clarification on any of the following issues about your paper:

Purpose
Should your paper prove a point or just convey information? If you’re writing about a controversial issue, should you simply present the various points the view or should you choose one and try to support it?

Sources
Should the paper make direct use of outside sources? Is there a best way to cite them? Different academic fields have different standards for this. Your instructor can tell you if there are citation standards specific to your field, and where to find guidelines on them.

Format
Some professors give more specific directions on formatting than others. If they don’t indicate a preference for double- or single-spacing, this might be a good thing to ask about—so you know whether the four-page paper you’ve been assigned needs to be the length you thought, or twice as long. An instructor’s preferences on font sizes and page margins also play a big role in determining just how long that “four-page paper” actually has to be.

Writing Personal Statements (Part 3 of 3)

2007-11-24T11:27:00.000-08:00

Writing the Personal Statement

Transcript and test scores are a necessary but boring part of the application—your essay is your chance to truly introduce yourself to an admissions officer. After reading a good essay, an admissions officer may feel that she has met you; after reading a great essay, that officer may be convinced that her institution absolutely needs you and must admit you. Some tips:

• Follow Directions: Answer the question(s) the application asks of you, and stay within the word or character limit.

• Opening Line & Introduction: Grab your reader’s attention with a strong opening line and a compelling introduction. Consider starting with an anecdote; you might use brief dialogue to create a narrative an a sense of immediacy. You might also try using humor to introduce a serious topic. Try to include sensory details to engage the reader. After you write the rest of your essay, review your introduction—does it lead into the body of your essay?

• Put the Thesaurus Down: Big words should only be used in the appropriate context, when they suit the tone and purpose of your essay. Your writing should still sound like you. If you trip over a word when reading the essay aloud to yourself, reconsider using that word in your essay.

• Conclusion: Avoid summary, since your essay will be brief anyway. Also avoid clichés such as “in conclusion” or “in summary.” In your conclusion, you might expand upon the broader implications of your discussion—why is your topic important? Consider linking your conclusion to your introduction to establish a sense of balance. If you frame your discussion within a larger context, you stand a better chance of convincing an admissions counselor that your essay is significant.

• Feedback: Have multiple people (parents, teachers, friends, tutors, guidance counselors, etc.) read your essay and give you feedback. This will help you find mechanical errors and also give you an idea of the overall effectiveness of your piece.

• Revise: Go back through your essay and write a single sentence to summarize each paragraph. Use this reverse outline to see if each paragraph is focused on a single idea; if each paragraph accomplishes a different goal from every other paragraph; and if the order of the paragraphs makes sense. Delete anything in the essay that does not relate to your main idea. Allow for the evolution of your essay; the focus of your essay may change (often for the better) as you work on it.

Writing Personal Statements (Part 2 of 3)

2007-11-22T10:41:00.001-08:00

Questions to consider as you select an essay topic:
• Will the topic I’ve chosen allow me to fully answer the question(s) asked of me? Can I address all points within the word or character limit?
• Will my essay keep the reader’s interest from the very first word?
• Is my topic overdone? If so, you might change your topic. Or you might focus on creating a unique answer to a common topic, which can show your writing skills.
• Will my topic turn off a large number of people? If you are presenting a topic that is controversial, you should acknowledge counterarguments to keep from alienating readers who don’t share your point of view.
• Will an admissions officer remember my topic after a day of reading hundreds of essays?

Using an Essay for Multiple Applications
One or two topics, with small changes, will allow you to answer application questions for many different schools. However, admissions counselors do appreciate essays that provide convincing evidence of your interest in their particular school (you should at least have read the college's webpage, admissions catalog, and have an understanding of the institution's strengths). And be sure not to commit the classic blunder: in an application to College A, it should never say, “These are the reasons why I want to attend College B...” Good proofreading will keep this from happening to you!

Explaining Discrepancies In Your Record
You want to make a positive first impression and showcase your strengths. However, your essay is a chance to explain discrepancies in your record, if you do so carefully. If this is necessary—in order to explain a low grade or an unsatisfactory score on a standardized test—simply give a quick, convincing explanation within the framework of your larger essay.

Stay tuned for Part 3: Writing the Essay!

Writing Personal Statements (Part 1 of 3)

2007-11-20T09:28:00.000-08:00

Brainstorming Personal Statement Topics

When choosing your essay topic, don’t just write about the first thing that comes to mind after you’ve read the essay question. If it’s the first thing that occurs to you, it’s the first thing that occurs to many other applicants, too, and your essay won’t set you apart. Instead, make a list of many possible topics and choose the one that no one but you could write about. You’ve had experiences in your life that make you unique; it’s up to you to think of them and to find a way to write about them.

Spend as long as possible brainstorming potential topics before you begin writing an essay. One way to brainstorm topics is to make lots of lists, and to include at least ten items on each one. Here’s a sample list:

Jobs I Once Wanted to Have
1. Firefighter (age 5)
2. International Spy (age 7)
3. Animal Hypnotist (age 6)
4. Personal Shopper (age 12)
5. Video Game Tester (age 14)
6. Writer of Blurbs on Back of Novels (age 16)
7. Wedding Planner (age 13)
8. Concierge (age 14)
9. Pilot (age 9)
10. Barrista (age 17)

So, how does this list help you select a topic? Say that I’m applying to veterinary school. Writing the above list has reminded me that I, at age six, wanted to be an animal hypnotist; this story will make a great anecdote to open my application essay, and will also lead into a more serious discussion of why I want to be a vet, etc.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of 3 with more tips about selecting an essay topic . . . coming soon!

Let me count the ways

2007-11-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

Do you love lists? If not, you should! Lists are a powerful tool to add to your writing arsenal. They can be used to indicate important elements of a well-written paper: argument, examples, or progression from one idea to another. But remember—with great power comes great responsibility. Thus, if you’re not careful, you can use lists in ineffective ways. For example, they can be vague, punctuated incorrectly, or used too often, which will minimize the effect. Here are some things to know about the power of the list.

Series versus Displayed Lists
First, consider if you would like to use a list within your paragraph or set off from your paragraph. When you use a list within your paragraph, it is called a “series.” When you use a list set off from your paragraph it is called a “displayed list.”

A series is an effective tool to use within your paragraph: it will help you remember the order of your points, it will let the reader know you have thought about the order in which the points should be presented, and it will provide structure and flow to your argument or research.

A displayed list provides slightly different emphasis than a series:

draws attention to the list
sets the list apart from the rest of the paper
clearly displays each item

Series and displayed lists are so different, is it any surprise that they have different punctuation rules? I think not! Read on, brave list-er!

I [Heart] Punctuation

How to Punctuate a Series
1) To introduce your series, you can use a colon or a dash (see our October 25 blog entry for everything you need to know about the dash—and more).

2) Use a comma to separate each item and an “and” before the last item.

3) If you use commas within the items in your series, use a semicolon to separate each item.

4) You don’t have to capitalize the items in your list unless they are proper nouns.

I would like to download the following songs: “My Humps” by The Black Eyed Peas, “Do it Well” by Jennifer Lopez, the new cover of “Imagine” by Jack Johnson, an album by Glenn Miller, and Green Day’s first single.

5) You can add numbers to your lists. All the above rules still apply.

After you read this blog you should be able to do the following: (1) integrate series and displayed lists into your paper, (2) make an educated choice about how to best punctuate your list, and (3) wow the masses with your clarity of thought.

6) You can use the dash to embed a small series within a sentence.

All of the runaway cats—tabbies, calicos, and gingham—surrounded the abandoned house.

How to Punctuate a Displayed List
1. Use a complete sentence punctuated with a colon to introduce to your displayed list.

2. You can use dashes, bullets, or numbers followed by a period to introduce each item in your list

3. You only need to use periods after the items you list if you write complete sentences.

Before—Incorrect
These are a list of my favorite things:
--Raindrops on roses.
--Whiskers on kittens.

After—Corrected Version
These are a list of my favorite things:
--bright copper kettles
--warm wooly mittens

4. Be aware of what directly follows your displayed list. Is it a new paragraph, or part of the same paragraph?

List User, Beware!

Now that you know the nuances between the punctuation of a series and a displayed list, there are only a few things to keep in mind.

“One of these things is not like the other”
It is best to make the elements in your list sound the same; in other words, the phrases should include the same type of elements (just nouns or a verb + noun combo?). If the items include the same elements, it will make your paper easier to read and get your point across.

Before—Incorrect
If I were trapped on a deserted island, I would want to make sure I: (1) had a knife, (2) had some water, (3) brought my dog, and (4) was found.

After—Corrected Version
If I were trapped on a deserted island, I would want to make sure that I had brought the following: (1) a knife, (2) some water, (3) my dog, and (4) a way to be found.

Breaking up is hard to do…even for lists
You can use lists in your sentence without making it into a series or displayed list. In fact, in certain cases you should avoid them. How do you know when its best to use a list? In general, you are safe to use a “series” or “displayed list” once you already have a complete phrase. Don’t break your sentence up right in the middle of a phrase. Note that these sentences below do not need to have any punctuation to introduce their list.

My favorite heroes and sidekicks are Batman and Robin, from the original comic book series; Chip and Dale, from the Disney Afternoon; and Inspector Gadget and Penny, from the cartoon series. My perfect day would consist of sleeping in, hanging out with friends, and a sunset stroll on the beach.

Phew! That should be enough to keep generating some powerful lists. Wield your weapon well.

Good luck.

The Sentence Fragment

2007-11-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

When you (or I, or anyone in the halls of collegiate glory) write, we write to convey complete thoughts to a special somebody—for you here at PSU, that special somebody is probably an academic audience: classmates and professors in particular. Those complete thoughts can only properly be expressed in complete sentence. Pesky partial sentences that obscure meaning and irritate audiences are known as “sentence fragments”, and they make your thinking itself seem fragmented even when it’s not. Here are a few general guidelines that will help you on your way to expressing your brilliance with completeness and clarity.

To start, it’s important to remember exactly what a sentence requires in order to be complete: a sentence must have a subject (that is, something that is “doing” something) and a verb (that which is being done). It may include other, more complicated elements, but they are not necessarily required. A complete sentence, then, might look like this: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. If we forget to include the subject, we have a fragment: *Jumped over the lazy dog. Likewise, forgetting the verb and the bits that accompany it also creates a fragment: *The quick brown fox. These aren’t good sentences because if we look at them by themselves, we have no idea what’s really going on.

This kind of fragment is easy to fix. Read the ‘sentence’ slowly (and independently), and look for missing information. If we see *Jumped over the lazy dog, we just need to think about what or who did the jumping; if we just see *The quick brown fox, we must ask what the fox did. Then, we fill these spaces in for our readers, and all is right in the grammar world.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. That simple, easy fix works for simple, easy fragments—fragments where a specific piece of required information is missing. There are other kinds of ‘sentences’ that may have both a subject and a verb but are still fragments. The nitty-gritty here is that a sentence, technically, is as we have defined it (Subject + Verb [+] extra bits). However, something that has a subject and a verb might not be a sentence. There exists, in the confusing world of language and grammar, a beast called a “clause.” A clause is any group of words that has a subject and a verb, whether it counts as a sentence or not. What you need to know about clauses to avoid sentence fragments is that there are “Independent Clauses” and “Dependent Clauses,” and that they each play a different role in sentence formation.

The Independent Clause is the ‘main’ clause—that is, it’s the one that represents a complete thought and stands all by its lonesome as a sentence. An example of an Independent Clause might be I like people. That might be all the information you want to get across to your audience (even though it is a little vague). If we want to qualify our complete idea to make it clear that we don’t mean all people, all the time, we would use a Dependent Clause, such as: when they bring me cookies. Together, we have another complete sentence: I like people when they bring me cookies. The Dependent Clause has no life of its own,
though. We can’t just say *When they bring me cookies and expect someone to understand what we mean—the information in this clause “depends” upon the information in the Independent Clause for its existence.

Often, key words occur at the beginning of a Dependent Clause, and these will help us determine if our sentence is really a sentence, or if it’s just a lonely fragment looking for another clause to hang out with. Words such as after, although, because, before, if, since, unless, until, when, whether, while and who (among others) indicate that the clause that follows requires an Independent Clause to make complete sense. Frequently the cause for this kind of fragment is improper punctuation—many people insert a period after their Independent Clause (probably because it is a complete sentence), and move on to the Dependent Clause as though it, too, was complete. That means that, as the reader goes along, all the appropriate bits may be there:
I couldn’t finish my history paper. *Because studying for my geometry midterm
took over ten hours.
If we pay close attention, we can gather what this means, but grammatically the
second ‘sentence’ doesn’t work—it’s a fragment, a Dependent Clause that has been
estranged from its Independent friend, and it can cause a reader to stumble over
the intended meaning.

A solution to this kind of sentence fragment is simply to determine where (or what, if it happens to be missing) the Independent Clause is so that we can reunite it with the Dependent one. In the example above, it’s easy, because the Independent Clause comes immediately before our fragment. All we have to do, then, is reconsider what kind of punctuation to use. We will definitely take out the period:
I couldn’t finish my history paper, because studying for my geometry test took over ten hours.
In the example above, about people who bring me cookies, we didn’t need a comma
to unite the two clauses, we just needed to squeeze them together into a single
sentence. The punctuation we choose will be dependent upon many different factors—all that is important, at least in terms of avoiding fragments, is that
we don’t place a period in between the Independent and Dependent Clause.

The sentence fragment is a dangerous thing to have in your writing—it may obscure your meaning or just drop information from your otherwise clear sentences. As you progress in academic writing, it becomes more and more important to aim for clarity and completeness. As your thoughts get more and more complex, it will be tough enough to grasp the genius of your philosophy without having to guess at the meaning of your sentences. Hopefully, these hints will help you find and fix fragments, and turn them into real sentences.

The Super Comma—a Dashcussion, or Welcome to Dashtopia, Population—Two Hyphens

2007-10-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone loves the dash; they just might not know it yet.

Many young writers are either unaware or intimidated by the majesty of the dash. Here at the PSU Writing Center, the writing center of the Worker, we empathize. We say, don't lose heart! The dash can give a writer some added flexibility and freedom in pretty much any type of writing.

Believe it or not, punctuation is not as concrete as you might think! The rules for punctuation have not come down to us from the firmament. Grammarians, or more appropriately pedants, are by their very definition hairsplitters. Above all else they love to disagree with one another. Here at the PSU Writing Center, we believe it's always important to put in perspective the machinations of the ruling class. Since the dash is one of the more elegant and useful punctuation marks, it has become a lightning rod for controversy. Just about every website and style manual differs on just how to use the dash. Trying not to put too fine a point on it (!), we've decided to take the moderate, least narcissistic stance.

Below you'll find a compilation of the rules most of the experts agree on.

First the basics:

1.) The dash is always two hyphens (--).
2.) Never put a space before or after the dash.

Already you're wondering why the dash is sometimes referred to as the super-comma (sorry semicolon). More often than not, the dash can do everything the comma can do--only better. Let's see why.

1. Frequently, the dash is used to add emphasis. Can the comma do that? Yes, but nowhere near as powerfully as the dash can. The dash--due to its uncompromising distancing effect--can set a series of words or items apart from the rest of a sentence.

2. Just think--it can add a pause or mark an abrupt change in a sentence.

3. As alluded to earlier, the dash can also contain a series within a phrase. While experts disagree which punctuation mark is best to use at any given moment--that is, whether to use a comma, semicolon or sometimes a pair of parentheses--we think the dash can usually perform this function effortlessly.

4. Often ignored, but never forgotten, the dash is used in attribution.

"A dash is a mark of separation stronger than a comma, less formal than a colon, and more relaxed than parenthesis."--E.B. White, of the Elements of Style and of spider-squashing fame

Finally, while you might have heard some talk about the em dash versus the en dash, we choose to ignore such debates, pointing out that such are the fading quibbles of philosophers drunk with power.

The Trouble With Homonyms

2007-10-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

A homonym is a word that sounds like another word, but has a different meaning or spelling. If it shares spelling with another word (such as “bark,” which can be either the noise a dog makes or the stuff on the outside of a tree), it is also a homograph; if it simply shares the sounds of another word, it is a homophone.

It takes a whole lot of Greek words to spell out one simple problem: now, not only do writers of English have to worry about word choice, they have to worry about homonym choice. Using the wrong one can drastically alter the meaning of your sentence, or cause it to not make sense at all. Because of that (and because your professor will notice), it’s important to be sure that you are using words correctly.

Some troublesome homophones frequently used by students (and ignored by spell-check):

It’s / Its
This is a trick played on you by the English language: we all are taught that an apostrophe combined with an –s (Sharon’s book) is possessive—that is, it indicates that something is owned or possessed by something else.
That’s a pretty reliable rule, but it doesn’t work here. No, someone along the way decided to create a contraction out of It is, and threw a wrench into the works. Now, at least with it’s and its, you’re stuck with a construction that may seem completely counterintuitive. Quite simply (because grammar rules are always simple, right?), it goes like this:

It’s = a contraction of It is, or It has. It’s a mad, mad world.
It’s been a long time.
Its = possessive. The brown cow meekly ate its hay.

An easy way to check yourself when using these two words is simply to insert It is/has into the sentence—if it makes sense, you’re done. If it doesn’t, you are probably looking at the possessive form; try inserting her, instead.
Examples: It has been a long time (not) *Hers been a long time.
The brown cow ate her hay (not) *The brown cow ate it is hay.

There / Their / They’re
The difference here is relatively easy, because even though we have more options, they each have very specific uses:

There = indicates a placement or location. Put the couch there.
Their = the possessive form of They. The one on the corner is their house.
They’re = a contraction of They are. They’re going out of town tomorrow.

Again, when you want to be sure you’ve used the right form, start by inserting the un-contracted They are. If that sounds wrong, try substituting here—if something can be over there, then grammatically it can also be over here—and if that makes sense, you know you’re looking at the locational There.
Examples: Put the couch here. (not) *Put the couch they are.
They are going out of town (not) *Here going out of town.
It is their house (not) *It is they are house.
(not) *It is here house.

Who’s / Whose
Again we find ourselves faced with the question of possession versus contraction, just like we had with It’s / Its.

Who’s = a contraction of Who is or Who has.
They will announce who’s going to the semifinals.
Whose = the possessive form of Who. Whose book was it?

Luckily, the problem not only looks the same, but can also be solved in the same way as It’s/Its. Simply substitute the expanded Who is into your sentence. Does it sound right? If not, you’re looking at Whose.
Examples:
They will announce who is going (not) *Who is book was it?

Your / You’re
This is, arguably, one of the most stigmatized mistakes made by writers of English, but it can be avoided by thinking (once again) about the difference between possession and contraction.

Your = the possessive form of You (both singular and plural). Here is your book.
You’re = a contraction of You are. You’re going to love it.

You can solve the problem in the same way as It’s/Its and Who’s/Whose: If you want to know if you’ve used it correctly, substitute the expanded You are and see what it looks like. If it makes sense, you’ve won. If not, simply use your—you probably have a possessive on your hands.
Examples:
You are going to love it (not) *Here is you are book.

Not Tutus,

To / Too / Two
This threesome is tricky. For instance, Merriam-Webster lists no fewer than thirteen different uses of To, so there is no easy way to summarize its use. Too is a little easier, because it usually implies something ‘extra’ (hence the extra ‘o’). Two, luckily, is the simplest of the whole bunch of homonyms, because it’s really just 2. Here are a few examples:

To = “for the purpose of” To make the test easier, she studied.
a preposition indicating direction. I am going to the store.
Note: there are many ways to use this particular “to”—these are just common examples.
Too = meaning “also” or “overly” Ma’am, you protest too much.
Her little sister wanted earrings, too.
Two = relating to 2 (the number). The two bunnies frolicked in the sun.

Instead of a substitution test, it is best to think about the word you are trying to use very carefully here. Do you want to talk about the number? Easy: always spell it out, and use two. Are you adding or including information, or indicating an excess of something? Then add an extra ‘o’ to your word choice, and use too.

The way we use each of these homonyms (or homographs, or homophones) can drastically affect the meaning of a sentence or phrase. Try to add these distinctions to your writing arsenal, and you’ll find more precision (and fewer red marks) on your page.

Good Luck!

Essay tests are the best!

2007-10-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

Of course you are the ideal student. You have been studying for weeks: reading and rereading the material, meeting with your professor to work out difficult concepts, and examining countless outside texts to get ever more information on your subject. Lately, you have even devoted more time to writing sample essays than text messages.

You have gone beyond the call of duty for any student. If college tests were more like high school sports, you'd be going to state.

However well you prepare for an essay test, you may still have trouble once the question rests in front of you on that menacing exam page. Here are some practical tips from the reigning state champs (three years running!):

Read over the whole test.
If the test incorporates a mix of questions (multiple choice, short answer, essay, et cetera), identify the section most likely to give you trouble. Jot down short notes for difficult questions, and skim past the questions you know by heart and can return to with confidence at a later time. Recently learned information (i.e. cram-knowledge) has a tendency to flee your brain come test time, and it would behoove you to make sure your caffeine-fueled, last minute work was not for naught.

Students often focus too much on one section without leaving enough time to answer other sections adequately. Giving yourself general time limits for each section ensures you answer each section to the best of your ability. If you finish one section early, you can return to another you left incomplete or work on revising your answers.

HOW TO WIN THE GAME

Get your ideas down on paper.
Perhaps you draw a blank when facing a blank page. In this case, you may want to pick out the points in the question you want to respond to and write those down. Then you can begin to outline what you know based upon what you want to say. Some people prefer to begin writing right away, but if you do this make sure you have a general outline in your head. Otherwise, people have a tendency to trail away from the direct response to the question. Instead of sticking to the topic of, say, writing essays, a writer may get off on a tangent about high school sports.

Buy time by the line.
If you have forty seven hours to complete an essay, you can afford to stray a bit from the answer in favor of style. In a timed test situation, you probably would be better served getting to the point and supporting it to the best of your ability. Avoid redundancy and filler language; this stuff may help you reach ten pages but it will not help the professor understand your point. Many professors prefer a concise, accurate answer to a rambling epic.

Going to state with A-answers!
A professor once shared some test-taking wisdom with me regarding short answers: "I want you to tell me what it is, but also tell me something interesting about it." He meant that a B-answer gives the facts; it may even provide good support for the claims. An A-answer goes a step beyond. In the case above, I was taking a political science course. Going in-depth meant tying the facts to real world situations. An A-answer for a literature test may imply providing an analysis comparing the facts in the work to larger theoretical issues or perhaps other works.

In brief, you may do well to draw connections between the basic facts and either real-world events, theoretical approaches, or similar instances be they in the realm of the sciences, business, or the liberal arts. Try to manage your time appropriately, and record what you know on paper. Even if you don't have a chance to incorporate the material, your professor may credit you for your breadth of understanding.

If all else fails, you could always emulate the ideal student, but I think these tips may be more realistically helpful advice.

I don't know how to use semicolons; however, I would like to learn.

2007-10-11T12:30:00.000-07:00

The semicolon is a beautiful and elegant piece of punctuation; therefore, many writers overuse it, while others are so intimidated by it that they refuse to touch it. Once you learn a few simple rules, however, you'll see that the semicolon is your friend. Maybe even your best friend.

Believe it or not, there are really only TWO uses for the semicolon.

1. BETWEEN INDEPENDENT CLAUSES
Semicolons are most often used to separate two related clauses in a sentence when both clauses could stand alone as a complete sentence. In other words, a semicolon can be used as an alternative to a period, if used between two closely related sentences.

For example, here are two separate but related sentences:

The man leapt out of the car shouting angrily. The woman stood her ground on the sidewalk, arms crossed.

The same two sentences can be joined by a semicolon. Using a semicolon rather than a period to separate the two sentences emphasizes their close relationship.

The man leapt out of the car shouting angrily; the woman stood her ground on the sidewalk, arms crossed.

2. BETWEEN ITEMS IN A SERIES (WITH MULTIPLE COMMAS)
Normally, items in a list can be separated with regular old commas, as in the following sentence:

His traveling menagerie included a llama, a tiger, and a gerbil.

However, when the list already contains multiple commas, you must separate the items with semicolons, as in the following example:

His traveling menagerie included Hercules, an orange cat; Gwen, a large brown dog; Juanita, a blind raven; and three giant turtles, all of whom were named Thomas.

Get it? Great!

Now, use the semicolon in these and only these situations, and no one will ever accuse you of being a semicolon abuser again.

Coping With Writing Anxiety

2007-10-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Has an assignment got you down? Is staring at a blank page making your palms sweaty? Sounds like you’re feeling a little anxious about writing. It happens to everyone. There are many different sources of writing anxiety, so no single solution will work every time. Below are some possibilities; keep trying until you find one that works for you. You’ll probably invent a few of your own along the way.

• To avoid last-minute panic, get started well before the due date.

• Make sure you understand the assignment; read through it carefully. Go to your professor’s office hours or the Writing Center and talk it through. Jot down notes as you talk for twenty minutes. The other person can ask you questions if you get stuck.

• Find a way to make the assignment more interesting for yourself—how can you personalize it and make it matter to you?

• Create your ideal writing environment. Maybe it’s listening to music in your room first thing in the morning, or sitting on a couch in a coffee shop late at night . . . whatever scenario gets your ideas flowing and your pen moving.

• Try doing some preliminary work, such as freewriting, listing, or clustering. (If you haven't tried these strategies before, come to the Writing Center to learn more about them.)

• Break the assignment into steps, and tackle one step at a time.

• Get rid of the blank page by writing something—anything. Try typing the description of the assignment at the top of the page. There! Now the page isn’t blank any more. Plus, this is a useful way to keep yourself on track; as you write, you can easily glance back at the assignment.

• Think of this draft as a practice run. Just write. Don’t worry about structure, spelling, etc. You can revise later.

• Begin in the middle. Deal with the introduction and conclusion after you’ve written the body of the paper.

• Stretch. Take deep breaths. Drink lots of water.

• Take frequent breaks. Walk into another room and do a different task for a few minutes. Just remember to come back to the paper.

Talking to Books: Strategies for Active Reading

2007-09-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

Professors love to assign reading. Hundreds of pages of the stuff! And they expect you to do more than just read all of those words--you have to think and have ideas about them. Have class discussions... write long papers... it can be exasperating.

A good way to keep track of all that reading is by using a reading journal to write questions about things you understand, and to paraphrase the material you think is most important. This kind of "active reading" is like having a conversation with the text, and it begins by marking the text itself in ways that will highlight the ideas you want to return to later. You can underline key passages, circle points you have a comment or question about, even use colored pens or a "?" or "!" in the margins so you can find things later. Some people call this "annotation"--it's a kind of intellectual graffiti.

After you're finished marking the text, in your reading journal you might:

--paraphrase (try to write in your own words) the key passages;
--write comments about the circled passages;
--write out any questions you have about circled passages and then try writing answers to those questions. You don't kneed to know the answers--your thoughts on what they might be will be useful for discussion in class or in a later paper;
--Spend five or ten minutes freewriting about what you read. Begin with something that interests you from your notes, and write out any and all thoughts or connections you can think of. This often helps readers discover what makes the text tough to read, or what their own opinions are about the topic;
--You can even read through your own journal writing when you're finished and do some active reading on yourself by underlining your own best thoughts or points you'd like to further develop.

And presto! You have notes on the text and your responses to it. You'll have smart stuff to say in class, and when it comes time to write your next paper, much of the preliminary work of looking back over the reading will already be done. You'll be ready to get writing.

WRITING IS LIKE COFFEE

2007-08-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

EDITING VS. REVISION

Revision and editing are practically the same thing, right? Dude, where do you get those ideas? Some people may think this (we aren’t necessarily implicating you), but editing and revision are very different processes. Assuming revision is simply changing words, fixing some commas, and moving one paragraph is a dangerous assumption when revising. This is editing. When writing teachers ask you for revision, they’re probably looking for re-vision, that is, to have the vision again. Yes, this sounds scary, but if you do it, you’ll impress your professor. Revision and editing are like coffee. Some days you’re doing pretty okay and maybe only need a tall. Sometimes if you’re feeling shlumpy, you may need a grande. Other days just suck, and you definitely need a venti. If major revision were coffee, it would be the venti.

What does that mean? Well, to start with, you may have to re-think your idea or even change your thesis. In its most radical stages, revision could entail completely rewriting your whole paper. This could happen if you finish your paper and realize the last sentence in your conclusion is really what you want to write. But it might mean that you haven’t clarified your thesis and simply need to rewrite the introduction so it’s coherent. It might mean that you have a super duper introduction, but got bored and rushed through the rest. Your ideas might not be fully developed, so you need to go back and unpack them. (i.e. rewrite these paragraphs.) You may have one awesome paragraph and some muddy ones. Perhaps that awesome paragraph really comes first and the rest just needs to be thrown out and rewritten. Occasionally, revision could be paragraph rearranging if you’ve already rewritten a lot, but we would consider this only a grande. Revision can mean a lot of things, but editing it is not.

What is editing then? If you are sick to death of your paper and can’t possibly think of anything to add or rewrite and find yourself simply fixing comma splices and changing words with a thesaurus, then you’re probably editing without knowing it. Even going through and fixing little lexical ambiguities falls under the heading of editing and proof reading. Things are good. You only need a tall.

The Art of the In-Class Essay / Final

2007-07-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

HOW TO SAY WHAT YOU KNOW IN TWO HOURS OR LESS

Many of you will be asked, soon, to sit in a room, elbow to elbow with your classmates, and demonstrate mastery of your subject in two hours (maybe less). Either it's midterm and time for your instructor to check up on you, or it's nearing the end of term and finals are approaching. Let's talk strategy:

* Know everything you can about the essay ahead of time. Ask your instructor what you will be expected to know and what question(s) you are likely to see on the essay/exam. Pay attention to printed materials from your instructor. They may contain information about what's to come.

* Study early and often. Cramming doesn't work if you need to write a thoughtful essay on your subject. You need time to learn your subject and think about it before the day of the essay.

* Write an outline. The first thing you should do when you sit down and read an essay question is make a list of the things you know about this subject. Then, write a brief outline, organizing your knowledge into a paper. Once you begin thinking about your response in this way the writing will be much easier and much more productive.

* Relax, sleep the night before, eat healthy, and come to class ready to do well.

Easy breezy.

BY THE NUMBERS

2007-07-11T09:18:00.000-07:00

INCORPORATING QUANTITATIVE DATA

From time to time it will be necessary to use quantitative data in your papers. For instance, when you are writing about the results of a survey you’ve designed to determine the percentage of the Portland State University population that own degus. A degu is a kind of rodent that is halfway between a hamster and a chinchilla in size. It isn’t important right now. Look them up later. They’re pretty neat. After you’ve collected your data you will need to communicate it to your readers. Below are some tips for making that communication effective:

1. Be Selective – Don’t use charts, graphs, or tables to take up space. Choose carefully how to display quantitative data and where in your paper it is appropriate to include the information.
2. Be Clear – Provide enough information in a chart, graph, or table that it can be read and understood on its own. And, when including multiple pieces of data in visual form: standardize. Make them look similar. Use the same fonts and place data in the same positions. Be consistent.
3. Discuss – Refer to your data in the text of your paper, but don’t just repeat the facts and figures. Let the visual data do its work. In the text, your job is to expand on the information and put it in context. Use the data from the charts, graphs, and tables to support the claims you are making in your paper. For instance, if you find that the vast majority of degu owners at PSU are male and between the ages of 26 and 30, apply that statistical information to your argument- men in their late twenties have a tendency to make unconventional choices at the pet store.
4. Look Again – Review the work you’ve done with quantitative data. Do the tables and charts stand alone, as well as fit appropriately into the larger context of the paper? Is your analysis supported by the data presented in your graph? Does it enhance the larger argument you are trying to make? If it doesn’t, do you need to revise your argument? Or, find new data?

*By the way, if you are ever in need of information about the degu ownership habits of PSU students you shouldn’t use the information contained here. We made it up.

A Working Thesis

2007-07-05T11:54:00.001-07:00

WORKING? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Okay, I need to write a paper. That means that I need to know exactly what I’m going to write about, right? Not necessarily. Sometimes it is even better to not worry about this since worrying will often lead to writer’s block. So relax! If you have a rough idea, that’s great. It can be rough, it can be messy, it can even be ugly and nonsensical (well, okay, maybe not nonsensical). The important thing is that you shouldn't be married to any one idea. This is why it is a “working” thesis. It will and should change as you write, but sometimes it is helpful to just have a place holder to trick yourself into thinking you have an introduction, so you can charge ahead and actually get those 5 pages written. It is far less painful to write a messy draft and go back and edit than it is to carefully produce 5 “perfect” pages in one draft.

A working thesis is like a road map, but remember that on a road trip sometime you find the coolest stuff when you take detours, but it is also good to have a map handy in case you get lost. Think of it this way, even if you have 5 crappy pages, hey, they are still 5 pages, which will always be less intimidating than staring at that blank computer screen. Just remember that these pages will need to be revised.

Deadlines Looming Near!

2007-07-03T09:05:00.001-07:00

It's summer. You've just spent a lovely afternoon basking in the sun, sitting in the park blocks sipping on a diet soda while the sound of anonymous indie-rock winds its way up from the amphitheater. Summer classes have just started and...now they are about to end. Yep. Four weeks move by fast. Just four weeks to learn all there is to know about cultural anthropology, form some opinions on the subject, and compose the perfect term paper. Do not fear. The Writing Center understands, and we have some solid suggestions.

First, talk to your instructor. They know what they want and they can tell you. Use those office hours. Ask specific questions. What should the scope of my paper be? Who is my audience? How long should it be? Do I need to do outside research? Where should I look? Oh, and do it now. Right away is better than a little later. You can quote us on that one.

Second, come to the Writing Center. Bring in the assignment sheet and the syllabus and all the notes you undoubtedly took on the conversation you just had with your instructor (see above). Do you have any ideas about what to write on? Bring those too. No ideas, no worries. Let's talk about it.

And, last, start now. Talk to your instructor. Talk to us. Talk to a reference librarian (always a good idea). Seriously. Right now. And...now. The term is only four weeks long. It's time to shorten that procrastination cycle. In fact, let's do away with it altogether.

HOW TO BATTLE WRITER’S BLOCK

2007-07-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

(IT’S NOT AS PAINFUL AS IT SOUNDS)

Ah, summer is here, but you're taking summer school, and with those insane accelerated classes and 80 degree weather outside, the papers are creeping up on you even faster than usual. What to write? All you really want to do is nap in the grass and stare at leaves. This too may have benefits in battling summer time writer’s block, but bring pen and paper with you.

So you are napping in the grass thinking about X broad paper topic. As you daydream, your mind may drift and start to make strange connections between X topic and other ideas. This may actually be helpful. Now grab your pen and paper and start to make a list, even if some of the things you list seem silly. Do this until your paper is full. Now look back at some of the things you have written down. Do any of them interest you more than the broad topic you started with? If one does, good. A key in fighting writer’s block is to be interested in your topic.

(Yes, what you are interested in. Trust us on this one. No matter how much you think you may be pleasing your Prof. in writing about something you think they want to hear, you’re not. If you are uninterested, it will show in your writing. 98% of the time you have a much better chance writing well about something of interest to you than poorly about what you think the Prof. wants.)

Now you have a more focused topic, but still don’t know what to write. Try this: Take out your pen and paper again and without stopping and looking at the leaves, time yourself for 5 min and write a paragraph non-stop on your new topic. It’s okay to let your mind drift and write weird ideas down. The important thing is to KEEP WRITING. When you have a paragraph you can do a couple different things. Either keep writing if you suddenly get inspired and have an overflow of ideas, or stop and find one sentence in the paragraph that you think is the most important. Start a new paragraph with that sentence and repeat the first step of this exercise. Your ideas may change or they may stay the same. If the idea changes, that’s great. You are probably getting closer to the subject that you really want to write about. If it stays the same, you may be ready to start writing.

If you are working on a research paper or something into which you have to incorporate a lot of sources, but you don’t know where to get started, consider the following: Get a pack of note cards. Now go though and write down on each note card a sentence or phrase that captures your interest from your sources. This could be as detailed or as broad as you like, depending on what you are working on. Once you have all the quotations that you may want to use, go through again and write down your own thoughts underneath the quotation on each card. When you are finished, spread out all of the cards and see if your notes on the cards could be grouped in any way. If they can, these points may become the body of your paper. Then think about what these related groups may have in common. If you had one idea to tell someone about this subject, idea, whatever, what would that be? This may be your thesis. Even if it seems hazy, this could give you a “working thesis” and a point to start writing. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

If none of this worked, go back outside and stare at more leaves or at the snazzy picture on this page.

2007-06-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

Summer is Here:
Can You Handle It?

Hello, hello!
The PSU Writing Center is now open for summer! It is still free and open to the public. However, we are not taking appointments this summer. Instead, just come on in during any of our open hours. They are:

Monday: 9am-8pm
Tuesday: 9am-5pm
Wednesday: 9am-1pm, 3pm-6pm
Thursday: 9am-4pm
Friday: 9am-8pm

We hope that you agree that these hours are pretty radical. We look forward to seeing you in Cramer Hall room 188F. Seriously. It is going to be great.

2007-06-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

Finals Week Update: Breaking News

Monday, June 11: 9am-6pm
Tuesday, June 12: 9am-5:30pm
Wednesday, June 13: 9am-1pm

These are the hours that the Writing Center will be open. This term, the Writing Center is trying something new: There will be no prescheduled appointments. Writing Center consultants will meet with whoever is sitting on the Writing Center sofa.

The Writing Center hopes that this will result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. The Writing Center is a big fan of John Stuart Mill, to be perfectly honest.

If you or someone you know needs to make an appointment so that a translator can be present, the Writing Center can work that out with you. Otherwise, just show up and have a seat on our sofa! This is going to be the best finals week ever.

2007-06-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Quote Week Ends; Finals approach

The Writing Center often wonders, "How might I be more useful to my friends?" This term, the Writing Center has answered its own question. The Writing Center will be open to walk-ins only for finals week. The Writing Center will have more information soon.

Quote Week Ends With Famous Non-Quotes

2007-05-25T16:48:00.000-07:00

A lot of famous quotes are attributed to the wrong people, or were never even "spoken" by anyone in the first place. Today: some examples.

"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damn lies, and statistics." Most people attribute this quote to Mark Twain, but he didn't say it. He repeated it, though, and gave credit to the person who DID originally say it: Benjamin Disraeli.

Business students: Don't claim President Bush said, "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur." President Bush has said many things, but not that.

Did Chief Seattle ever say, "The earth is our mother"? He did not. If you have a Chief Seattle quote in your paper, you better track down the original source, because there are a number of ecology-based quotes attributed to him that he never actually said.

Despite the jokes about it, Al Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never had Sherlock Holmes say the line, "Elementary, my dear Watson." (In a later film version of a Sherlock Holmes story, though, the film Holmes did say something close to that.)

We could go on, but the lesson is simple: document your sources. Even if you want to use a "famous" quote that you're sure the source said, because everyone says that the source said that, remember that if you're writing for college, you better track the quote down and cite your source.

Good weekend to you.

Quote Week: Don't Be Afraid to Change It Up

2007-05-22T15:39:00.000-07:00

Quote week turned into two weeks. That's cool with us if it's cool with you. We thought about acknowledging that in the title, but "Quote Fortnight" just doesn't have the same punch. So last week was quote week, and this week, too, is quote week. Right? Right.

When writing a paper with quoted sources, don't be afraid to utilize diverse sentence structures. Consider the following variations of the same quote:

a. "What is known can seldom be immediately told, and when it might be told, it is no longer known," writes Johnson on the subject of biography (116).

b. About biography, Johnson writes that "what is known can seldom be immediately told" (116), thus expressing both his discretions and his desire for intimate knowledge.

c. In the Life of Addison, Johnson further acknowledges the biographer's difficulties: "What is known can seldom be immediately told, and when it might be told, it is no longer known" (116).

d. "What is known," Johnson writes, "can seldom be immediately told, and when it might told, it is no longer known" (116).

Now: you could vary your constructions randomly, and it might work fine. More advanced writers, of course, report having a "sense" (or sometimes a "rhythm") that tells them which of the possible constructions follows smoothly from the previous sentence, or leads smoothly to the following sentence. The criteria for those kinds of decisions are complex and the subject of opinion. What we can say with certainty, though, is that if you use the exact same construction for every sentence in which you quote someone, many readers become bored. So why not switch it up?

Own the Quote, Don't Let the Quote Own You

2007-05-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

We're talking this week about effectively using quotes in research papers. Today, our suggestion is to make sure that rather than sprinkling quotes into your paper in isolated moments, you make sure to discuss any quote you use, so that the quote is serving your own argument, rather than the other way around.

Consider the following paragraph:

Sometimes things aren't so easy. "The problem with their plan," psychologist Jane Smith said, "is that they didn't account for the degree to which people are controlled by forces that we can neither prove the existence of nor agree on the function of. I'm talking, of course, about the unconscious, or the subconscious, depending on whether you're Freudian or Jungian about things, which makes a big difference, of course, if you study it closely, though Jung was a student of Freud's, but still, what I'm trying to impress upon you is that sometimes you just don't know" (312).

That paragraph is completely controlled by a quote--the writer hasn't managed to contribute anything to it other than a brief introductory sentence, and it's unclear what the writer wants us to understand from that quote. An example of a writer taking control of the use of a quote might be:

Dogs might salivate at the sound of a bell, but strict behavioral psychology often fails to capture the somewhat more complex behavior of human beings. We know, of course, that people are hungry for food, but other motivations behind human behavior can be maddeningly inscrutable. As Jane Smith notes, strict behaviorists "didn't account for the degree to which people are controlled by forces that we can neither prove the existence of nor agree on the function of" (312). Regardless of whether one prefers Freudian, Jungian, or some other psychology, most people agree that they have experienced moments in which deeper forces seemed to be pushing them to choose one action over another--and those forces aren't as simple as responding to a dinner bell.

All of that stuff--the quote, the paragraphs, etc.--was just made up off the top of our head. What we're trying to show, though, is that in the first example, a somewhat messy and not particularly focused quote had nevertheless been allowed to dominate a paragraph. In the second example, the quote has been trimmed to its useful point, and has been used within a context (and paragraph) controlled by the writer.

Quote Week: Incorporating Quotes into Your Research Papers

2007-05-15T17:34:00.000-07:00

It's Quote Week in the Writing Center! Many courses end with some kind of writing assignment that asks you to incorporate information from other sources, and that information can often be delivered in the form of quotes from important texts or knowledgeable authorities. Now that we're in week 7 of spring term, you may be gearing up to write a final paper of that sort, so we'll offer some thoughts on how to effectively incorporate quotations from other sources into your academic papers.

Today's suggestion: Have a good reason for the quotation.

Does the quote strongly support your point or argument? Is it something that can't be paraphrased or summarized effectively in your own words? Consider the following example from a made-up paper about how cats make the best pets:

Jane Smith, a clinical psychologist, puts it best when she says, "Cats are the best pets. They're just better than other kinds of pets" (111).

That quote might seem to support your argument, but it doesn't actually do much. If you, as the writer, have already claimed cats make the best pets, then the only reason to use quotes from other sources would be to extend that argument in greater detail. There's no need for an exact quote there.

You could paraphrase her, though, and save an exact quote for important new information from your source, as in the following:

Jane Smith, a clinical psychologist, claims that cats are better than other pets because "cats are an alien race come to earth, and have much to teach us about our place in the universe" (111).

In that example, an exact quote works well because the information is specific and new.

Here's another example of saving direct quotes for important information:

Before:

"If you really think about it without jumping to conclusions or just saying the first thing that flies into your crazy head," Smith says, "cats require less of an owner's time and energy, and are therefore more convenient as pets--you don't have to feel guilty about not taking them for a walk, because they don't want to go for a walk. My cat just wants to sleep on my couch" (112).

After:

Smith also says that because cats require less maintenance, "You don't have to feel guilty about not taking them for a walk, because they don't want to go for a walk" (112).

In the second version, we've cut or summarized the parts of the quote that aren't distinctive, and saved the direct quote for the words that are interesting and more detailed. The writing is tighter and easier to understand, because the essential information isn't lost in an overlong quote or a glut of irrelevant words.

More tomorrow!

Jesus' Moses' Isis' What???

2007-05-07T17:19:00.000-07:00

The Forgotten Theory of . . .
Possessive and Plural Possessive

Our investigators have been working hard scrounging through dusty tomes for the following forgotten theory on strange and obfuscating rules of the use of plural possessive. (Okay, we really just shamelessly stole it from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style).

The normal rule follows: possessive add ('s) i.e. “Frank’s car is in the garage.”

However, the forgotten exception rule is:

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names ending in –es and –is, the possessive Jesus', and such forms as for conscience’ sake, for righteousness’ sake. But such forms as Moses’ Laws, Isis’ temple are commonly replaced by:
the laws of Moses
the temple of Isis

Clearly, this is so confusing and hard to remember that they make the suggestion to simply change the word order. So why have the rule? We have no clue. We only find these things. Under no circumstances do we claim to have knowledge of why they are so. Why are “conscience” and “righteousness” considered to be in the same category as ancient proper names? And why “conscience” when it doesn’t even end in an “s”? Obviously, Prof. Strunk did not come to the Writing Center before he published The Elements of Style.

Rumor has it that there is also, somewhere in the ether of lost knowledge and forgotten theories, an obscure rule along this nature that has something to do with what syllable in a word is stressed or unstressed, but we are still looking into this matter.

The Grammar Charm of the Day

2007-05-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Possessive and Plural Possessive

So what’s the deal with possessives? Don’t you always just add an apostrophe? Yes, this is true; however, if the word ends in “s” or if it is plural, the position of the apostrophe will change.

In general, add an apostrophe (‘) and "s” if you are making a singular noun possessive. (See previous grammar charm for this rule)

The exception is when the noun ends in “s,” for which there are two possibilities.
For example:
• Severus’s potions are in the cupboard. (or)
• Severus’ potions are in the cupboard.
• Albus’s pensive is in his office. (or)
• Albus’ pensive is in his office.

Why the ambiguity of this rule? We’re not quite sure, but it most assuredly will soon go under investigation of forgotten theories at our museum. So far we have found one really archaic rule that makes no sense. For more on this subject please see our forgotten theories section.

Note that the confusing part of this rule is when a noun is plural possessive the apostrophe (‘) also goes after the “s.” (In normal English that means the name refers to more than one person and shows collective ownership.)
• The Gryffindors’ house robes, the house-elves are mending.
• The students’ wands are poised and ready.

Against Binary Thinking: How to Write X Number of Pages on Any Topic

2007-05-07T10:34:00.000-07:00

As you progress in your college career, and sometimes even as you progress through just one term of that college career, it's likely that you'll be asked to write longer papers. Many students, when first confronted with the challenge of writing a paper longer than what they've written before, think: "But that is not possible to do. It is already difficult for me to write a paper that last X number of pages. Now that I am being asked to write a paper that is X+more, certainly it cannot be done."

Now, obviously that's not true. If there's one thing you learn in college, it's that a lot of people write, like, whole books on, like, just one thing! All sorts of people do this! The bookstore is full of these whole books that are just about specific stuff!

How. Do. They. Doooo. It?

One strategy for strengthening the content of your writing, as well as for giving yourself options for writing longer papers of more depth, is to ask yourself at what point you are defaulting to binary thinking. Then, when you find that point: don't let yourself think that simply.

Binary thinking is essentially thinking that sees no shades of gray on a certain topic--it is the belief that something is either black or white. The world we live in is rarely this simple, but we often like to think about the world as if it is that simple, because that makes our thinking easier.

Example: If I decide to use binary thinking about fruit, then I don't have much to say about fruit. If you ask me if apples are good, I say, "Yep. Good." I could maybe describe why I think apples are good, but it seems unnecessary. Types of fruit, my binary thinking decides, are either "good" or "bad." Apples = good. Oranges = bad. Bananas = good. Kiwi = bad. And so forth.

That might seem like a silly example, but experts on fruit or on nutrition could certainly evaluate the qualities of fruit for many pages, in any number of ways, because they do not engage in binary thinking about fruit. To them, apples have certain qualities of taste, they have certain kinds of nutritional content, they are grown in certain ways and in certain places, etc. All of these factors are open to description, interpretation, and evaluation. Even writing about apples alone, if one isn't just going to try and immediately label them as "good" or "bad," could go on for many, many pages.

In college, you are often asked to write in response to the ideas of some kind of authority--your professor, perhaps, or whoever wrote your textbook, or whichever major historical figure you're studying. If you're asked to write about Ghandi, for instance, and you are engaging in binary thinking, then it's hard to write, because all you think is, "Well, Ghandi was good. Everyone knows that. What am I supposed to write? Just how what he did was good?"

Every person, theory, or event has complexities that can be explored, though, if you are willing to engage in complex thinking. If you don't just want to write about how Ghandi was good, that doesn't mean your only other option is to kind of crazily and desperately try to write about how he was "bad." It means you might describe his beliefs and his actions, and interpret how he came to those beliefs and why he might have taken those actions, and then evaluate the effectiveness of various beliefs and actions, and how they changed over the years, and why they changed over the years...and now the pages are stacking up. You can write a much longer paper on Ghandi that way than you can if you interpret your topic as "Ghandi: Good or Bad?"

Good or bad, all or none, cool or crap...binary thinking. Avoid it, and your writing will be stronger, more interesting, and more engaging. And you'll be able to write X number of pages on any topic, regardless of what X is.

2007-05-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Audio Zine, Podcast, Radio Show, Whatever

The Writing Center wants to play. The Writing Center thinks it might be fun to host a little get-together on Friday, May 11 from 11am to 2pm. The Writing Center imagines that everybody who shows up will conceive, write, record, edit, and otherwise produce a little radio essay together. The Writing center wants everyone to leave with a copy. The Writing Center does not charge for this sort of thing. The Writing Center encourages you to show up, and hopes you'll give notice that you'll be here. The Writing Center looks forward to hearing from you. Why don't you call the Writing Center once in a while? The Writing Center loves you. You know the number: 503 725 3570.

2007-04-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

Come... on... Down!
(The Colon is a Curtain)

Remember when you were sick, and you didn't have cable (or anything better to do)? Did you happen to see a show called The Price is Right? Well, let the Writing Center tell you about it. The Price is Right was a lot like a sentence, the prizes hidden behind the curtains were a lot like the second part of sentences, and the curtains themselves were a lot like colons. The Writing Center hopes that makes everything very clear.

Sometimes the game show voice would say something like, "We have three fabulous prizes: a boat, a car, and an all-expenses-paid trip for two to sunny Puerto Vallarta!" The colon in that quote occurs at about the same time that the curtains open. Sort of like opening a curtain, a colon says, "Those things I was talking to you about (the prizes)? Here they are."

If you're prone to occasional hallucinations, as the Writing Center is, you might even think that the colon looks sort of like a curtain.

Sometimes that colon/curtain comes before a list (like the three fabulous prizes). Other times it comes between two different ways of saying the same thing. It's really a list of one. "You're going to need that snorkel when you go on the vacation of a lifetime: a trip to Cancun for Spring Break with the Writing Center!" Here, the colon shows that the "vacation of a lifetime" = "a trip to Cancun." In fact, maybe that's a better way to think about it.

The colon isn't a curtain at all. It's an equals sign.

Fine Print: Consult your professor before using colons. Colons may not be right for everyone. Do not use colons while drinking adult beverages or operating heavy, heavy machinary. Colons are also used in lots of random places, like between the chapter and verse of Biblical passages ("John 3:16"), at the beginnings of formal letters ("Dear Sir or Madam:"), showing ratio ("the ratio of good-looking snorkelers to Writing Centers was 8:1"), and separating titles from subtitles in fancy academic papers ("Star Trek and Star Wars: A Study in Contrasting Views of Vulcan Feminist Theory"). It also makes a nice smiling icon :) , but the Writing Center would never endorse using icons in an academic setting.

Writing Center Factoids

2007-04-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

In the Writing Center today, we were looking at numbers. Yes, we write numbers, too! (We're using a base-ten system. Are you? It seems to work well.) The numbers we were looking at are numbers about the Writing Center from academic year 2005-2006. They are:

Number of one-on-one tutoring sessions: 3,539
PSU programs served (by student major): 34
Presentations Writing Center staff gave to PSU classes: 48
Number of PSU students directly assisted by the Writing Center: 2,020

Three thousand, five hundred and thirty-nine times, we sat down with members of the PSU community and helped them with their writing! We directly spoke to or worked with two thousand and twenty different PSU students! This makes us happy.

Three Tricks for Talking to Peers About Their Writing: Gravity, Summary, and More

2007-04-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

As an extension of yesterday's post on working effectively in peer response groups, we thought we'd offer some more specific descriptions of ways to respond to a fellow student's writing that are specific and helpful, but not aggressive or critical. (We've stolen these ideas from a book called A Community of Writers, by Peter Elbow and Pat Belanoff.)

1. Point out "Centers of Gravity." The idea here is that after reading a piece, it's helpful to any writer to find out what specific sentences, words, or images were most memorable or leapt out at the reader. This isn't meant to be a formal version of making bland compliments before attacking the writer, though. A writer simply needs to know which sentences worked well, what images readers reacted to, and what material stands out in the piece. When discussing centers of gravity, then, you should try to be as specific and as exact as possible. Point to which sentence, or where in the piece things are working. If a writer knows what works, it can help him figure out how to revise other areas in the piece so that even more works.

2. Use summary and/or "sayback." Most pieces of writing have rough spots in them where a reader is uncertain or confused. Rather than telling a writer, "Your fourth paragraph was confusing," the method of summary/sayback suggests that you go ahead and summarize what you did understand in the paragraph. When you "say back" to the writer what you guessed about in your reading, the writer can then hear what you got right and what you didn't. With that knowledge, the writer can make much more effective decisions about how to fix that spot. If all the writer knows is that paragraph four doesn't work...well, there's no starting point for revision. If the writer knows it's actually sentence three that throws that paragraph into confusion, because readers are guessing that the writer means hedgehods cheat on each other instead of understanding that hedgehods never make promises in the first place, then the writer knows which sentence to fix, and how to fix it.

3. Describe what was almost said, or where you wanted more. It's common in an early draft for some sections of writing to be more fully developed than others. But if you say to someone, "Your fifth paragraph is hardly a paragraph! It's just a little fragment," then they're going to get angry. It's helpful, instead, to point out sections of a paper where a writer seemed like she was about to make an important point, but then moved on too soon. Likewise, there are times that a topic is greatly interesting, but a writer decides she better move on, because she's afraid not everyone wants to hear more about that. It can very useful to writers to hear where in a paper you, as a reader, really wanted to hear more about something. In either case, you're helping the writer see where further development is possible in the paper.

One of the strengths of these methods of feedback is that rather than being evaluative (suggesting that material in a draft is either "good" or "bad"), they're instead descriptive. Centers of gravity are good, but if they're not in the appropriate place in the paper or aren't fully developed, there's still work to be done with them. Summary and sayback of a confusing point is just description of a reading experience--the writer can decide what degree of reader uncertainty is okay, and what needs to be changed. And pointing to areas where something was almost said, or where more could be said, is neither praise nor criticism. It's effectively a way of saying, "This is good, but not quite finished."

And that is true of any early draft! By using some simple feedback methods like these, students often find it easier to have an informative, specific, and open discussion about their writing--and no one gets frustrated or has their feelings hurt.

But Who am I to Say? (Working in Peer Response Groups)

2007-04-24T15:41:00.000-07:00

If you're in a course that involves a lot of writing, it's likely that you've spent some time in a peer response (or "workshop") group of some kind by this point in the term. Though peer response groups have all of the strengths and weaknesses of any kind of group work, there is the additional challenge in a writing group of feeling nervous about sharing your writing, as well as nervous about commenting on someone else's.

If this nervousness leads to people playing it safe, though--in other words, making only vague comments like "It was pretty good," or "Maybe fix the spelling on this one word here..."--then the time spent in your peer response group will feel unproductive.

Many students, however, say that they don't feel comfortable contributing to peer response sessions for yet another reason. They say, "Who am I to tell fellow students how to write? I'm not any more of an authority on writing than they are!" That's true, if you interpret your role in the response group only as that of a fellow writer.

If you'd like to have more valuable and more enjoyable peer response sessions, though--both as a commenter and as someone whose work is being commented on--you might think about your role in the group a bit differently. We have two main suggestions for working in peer respone groups:

1. Comment as a reader, not as a writer. No one wants to be told what to do, especially on their own work. That's why when a fellow student reads a paper you wrote and then starts to comment on it by saying, "Here's what you should have done...," you're likely to be unable to hear the rest of that comment beneath the roar of your own resentment. That comment is the comment of one writer telling another writer what to do.

When you comment as a reader, though, you can just say, "There was a paragraph on page 2 that confused me. I think the reason it confused me was..." Or: "I like the discussion you have about blind newts on page three, but it stopped too soon for me--I'd love to hear more about their mating habits." The writer is left free to make decisions about how she would like to address those comments, and the responder is able to simply describe his experience of reading the paper, without making value judgments as to whether the paper is "good" or "bad," or what "should" have been done.

And you don't have to be an authority on writing to describe your experience of reading something. If you made it into college, you're a perfectly good authority on reading.

2. Listen to comments as a writer, not as a reader. It's tempting, when receiving feedback on your work, to want to tell the group how they "should" have read your paper, or what your intended meaning was. That kind of response, though, is essentially a reader who knows the paper super-well (because she wrote it) correcting the reading of others. In psychology class, they call this "defensiveness." (Hint: The countermove to this is to say, "I find your labeling of my behavior as 'defensive' to be aggressively reductive of my thoughts and feelings, in that it defines my natural and healthy desire to defend myself as somehow 'abnormal' or 'unhealthy.'" Just please don't say that in writing group.)

It's more valuable as a writer simply to listen to the readers discuss your paper. Take some notes on what they talk about, and where they had thoughts in their reading of your work. It's highly unlikely that a peer is ever going to give a "false" description of their reading of your work--in other words, why would someone ever say, "The third paragraph confused me" if the third paragraph didn't actually confuse them? That would be bizarre. The members of your group will probably try their best to accurately describe their experience of reading your paper. If you listen, and take some notes, you can choose later how to address those issues when you revise.

We don't want to sound too radical here in the Writing Center, but let's just say this: If you're careful to keep track of when your role is that of a writer, and when it is that of a reader, you might actually find the peer response groups enjoyable and valuable. It's possible!

Spellcheck Stumbles Here!

2007-04-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

In the first in a continuing series, we list errors Microsoft Word's "spellcheck" feature will not catch.

its for it's
led for lead
groan for grown
addition for addiction
atone for a tone
yore for your
sail for sale
mane for man
painting your room "Gobi Desert" when you suspect you should have gone with "Nubby Wool"

Those first eight items can be caught through proofreading. The last one you can just let go. "Gobi Desert" and "Nubby Wool" are pretty much the same color--no regret necessary.

Phrenology: Know Thyself (or at least become a better writer)

2007-04-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

What is this contraption?

Will it really be possible to "know thyself"?
(Whatever that means.)
Will it possibly make me smarter?
Does it have anything to do with writing?
Will it hurt?

We cannot reveal the answer to these questions here. (We can only guarantee that the writing part will be painless.) The great knowledge and powers of the lost art of phrenology and how it relates to writing will only be answered if you come to our fabulously marvelously new and improved Writing Center and Museum of Hoaxes and False Knowledge today!!!

Exhibits coming soon include:
Cavemen vs. Dinosaurs
Sasquatch
The Bodily Humors

Make your appointment now before tickets run out! Our friendly consultants will tell all and help you with your writing beside.

Current hours of operation are:
Monday 9:00am - 8:00pm
Tuesday 10:00am - 5:30pm
Wednesday 9:00am - 8:00pm
Thursday 10:00am - 12:oopm &
2:00pm - 6:30pm

It is with greatest regret that we must inform you that we are closed on Fridays and Weekends.

The Grammar Charm of Today Is . . .

2007-04-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

“It’s” and “Its”

So what’s up with “It’s” and “Its”? Doesn’t an apostrophe (') mean possessive? That is, it shows that someone owns something? Yes, EXCEPT when it is a contraction as in “what’s = what is,” “doesn’t = does not,” and “it’s = it is.”

And here lies the common mistake confusing “it’s= it is” with “its= it + possessive “s” (think of it like “his” and “hers” which also do not use apostrophes).

Why is this rule confusing? Because proper names DO take an apostrophe.

For example:
“Harry’s broom is in the Gryffindor common room.”
“Ron’s wand is under the bed.”
“Hermione’s books are on the table.”
“The dragon’s wings are enormous.”

However with the possessive “its” there is no apostrophe.

For example:
“The phoenix rises from its ashes.”
“The animagus uses its magic to transfigure itself.”

Coming soon! Next week's grammar charm: plural posessive "s"

Lights, Cameras, Description!!! (Okay, we know that’s a really cheesy title)

2007-04-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

So the teacher has asked you to describe a place, but not use narrative. You may be thinking, “Dude, that’s so boring, what I did on my camping trip was so much cooler than just describing the place.” However, if the instructor has asked for description, it might be a good idea to try and stick to the assignment.

How to start? Everyone likes the movies, right? Is a movie boring? Okay, some might be, but that’s not the point. Think of how many movies you have seen. Think of how they start. A lot of times the first few minutes of a film has an establishing shot or a series of establishing shots that give you a brief idea of the setting and characters. A long shot of the place, or a close up of the character that is going to be developed are visual signals that hint at things to come. Your descriptive essay should give similar clues to your reader.

Think of your first paragraph as that long shot establishing place. Think about your place not as if you were entering the room and walking through it step by step, but as though you could see it at a distance. What are some of the general elements that you can see from a distance? What colors stand out? What shapes stand out? If you could compare this bigger picture to something, what would it be?

Now the camera is going to zoom in on something that is interesting and important in this bigger picture, perhaps a character or a thing that is important to this place. This may be a good time to start a new paragraph. Now that you have focused more closely on the details of something in your place start to describe it. Now hit the pause button. If you were watching a film there are probably many details in the frame, which the director has carefully placed there. You are creating a frame with your paragraph too. Only instead of visuals you will be using words.

So what catches your attention in a film? Bright colors? Fast cuts in the film? Noir lighting? A snazzy sound track? Sexy actors? The words you use are going to be doing this same kind of work to keep your reader interested. A film works on all of your senses; a good written description should also. So instead of saying something is blue, try something like electric blue, violet blue, hazy-cloud blue. Or instead of the metal door, try the metal door that looked like it belonged to a safe vault and gleamed under the streetlight like neon lights reflected on wet pavement. Okay, that might be overdoing it, but you get the idea.

How to Direct the Floating Mind, Or: Thoughts on Organizing Descriptive Essays

2007-04-13T14:31:00.000-07:00

Someone in The Writing Center made a good point yesterday that one of the problems with writing a descriptive essay is knowing how to organize it. When you're writing a narrative, you can always just go chronological with it, this person said. And rightly so! When telling a story, you can always just start with what happened first, then say what happened next, and so forth, until it's done.

It's not so easy to do that with an essay that's primarily descriptive, though, right? So here are a few quick thoughts on methods of organizing pieces of descriptive writing.

1. Start general, and get more specific as you go. If I'm writing about a neighborhood, for instance, I could describe the neighborhood in general, then some important streets, then some important locations among those streets, then the most important location, then the most important part of the most important location. (The tallest slide at the coolest playground?)

2. Start specific, and get more general. Like #1, but the opposite. I start on the tallest slide in the coolest playground, the describe the playground in general, then some other important places in the neighborhood, then streets, and so forth...

3. Be chronological anyway. (But don't lapse into narrative if you're trying to be descriptive.) In other words, I could describe stuff about the neighborhood the first time I was there, then some other stuff that was important later, then some other stuff in the neighborhood that I got to know even later...and so forth until I describe aspects of the neighborhood that exist right now.

4. Reverse chronological. Like 3, but opposite. This one's a bit tricky, but: You could describe the neighborhood now, then describe things about it from a little while back, then stuff from even before that, and then describe how it was when you first encountered it, on that very first day.

5. In order of growing importance or intensity. This utilizes the idea of growing suspense or intensity that is often used in narratives, but can still be applied to descriptive essays. The example I wrote above for strategy #1 moves general to specific, but also in order of growing importance.

6. Spatial. You could take the reader on a tour of the place or thing you're describing, moving through the space in words the way you would if you were walking or driving around. Travel guides are oftened organized this way, but the paragraphs of even a short essay could always be placed in a spatial order.

There are certainly other organizational strategies available to you, but the ones above are pretty common and useful. Happy writing!

Cavemen vs. Dinosaurs

2007-04-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

It didn't happen. There is something in the popular imagination that feels it did, though. Or perhaps we just want it to have happened. It would have been cool if cavemen fought dinosaurs. But trust us: it didn't happen.

A couple of times a term, in a loose or somewhat offhand moment, someone will write an essay about, say, nutrition, and in this essay there will be a sentence that runs something like: "People have been eating meat since the cavemen hunted dinosaurs, so you might think that..." Or someone else will be writing an essay about, say, hunting, and they will write, "Mankind has hunted animals from our earliest days: from cavemen throwing spears at dinosaurs to hunter-gatherers stalking the wildest berries, we have always..."

It's probably a combination of "The Flintstones," some cartoons in The New Yorker, and maybe some kid stuff like Dinotopia and so forth that gets this idea in our head early. It's a good idea, too: it's both fun and funny. But it's made up. And in a paper for a college class, you can't use anecdotes from an invented human/saurian culture as offhand evidence for anything.

It just didn't happen.

Answering a Challenge About Rusty

2007-04-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

So yesterday we wrote about being careful not to let narrative swamp description when a writing teacher gives you a descriptive writing assignment. (A lot of teachers give either kind of assignment--narrative or description--at the beginning of a term.)

Someone who reads this blog and who also knows the Writing Center in real life said that it's easy to make jokes about what not to do, but it's harder to give a "positive" example.

Okay--point made. But we're conflicted about that. We don't want to write anyone's essay for them. So here is an attempt at descriptive writing that isn't narrative. There are a lot of ways to do this and writers should feel free to explore what works for them. This is just one example written by one Writing Center Blogger. But okay. Here goes.

My Pal Rusty
A Descriptive Essay by The Writing Center

Rusty was the dog I had when I was seven. He was a golden retriever, and by golden retriever I mean a lot more golden than retriever, because he didn't retrieve. Sometimes I would throw a stick and say to Rusty, "Go on, boy, go get it!" Rusty would, in a state of great alertness, stand there looking at me as if he was thinking, What you just did was totally random and I have no idea what is going to happen next and I'm a little bit excited and a little bit frightened but boy what will you do next? His big brown eyes would get wide and his wet brown nose would twitch a little and he would kind of shift his weight back and forth without moving his feet, as if he were an outfielder just staying kind of really ready for the crack of the bat to happen at any second. But other than that he would do nothing. Rusty, I mean. Not the outfielder. I just made up the outfielder.

But as I said, Rusty truly was golden. On a sunny day when he was running like wild or jumping over fences with the sun glinting off his long shiny hair and his natural vivaciousness exuding just a kind of heavenly irridesence or what have you, he would actually be so golden that it made your eyes hurt. When he came running out of the irrigation canal behind our house, smelling of junk fish and old filth and stagnant rot, his wet hair would nevertheless have a kind of spun-gold quality to it--almost shampoo commercial-ish, if you know what I mean. If they made commercials for dog shampoo that featured dogs with wet lathered hair flipping their hair all around like they do with ladies in ladies' shampoo commercials, then I assure you Rusty would have been the dog for that. For the dog shampoo commercials, I mean. Not for the lady shampoo commercials. Though I guess you could kind of have a crossover-appeal commercial for men's shampoo where it was like a real tough lumberjack-type guy with a lot of stubble and an ax over his shoulder talking about how shiny his hair was because of his shampoo, and then he might say something like, "And it's great for Rusty here, too--his mane has never looked better!" The dog that walked into frame at that point would have to be my Rusty, because it would be true: he would be looking extremely good, just kind of kickin' it in the living room by the fireplace with his big happy pink tongue just hanging lazily out as if he were thinking, You know, I'm looking good, and life is good, and it's not so bad to be a dog when your mane looks this damn good, I can tell you that, my friend.

WARNING: That essay fragment has deliberately been written with some problems built into it, because the Writing Center doesn't want to get tricked into writing anyone's essay for them. There are paragraphing issues in that essay fragment, and there are issues of wordiness, chattiness, the appearance of comma splices and run-ons, some digression, and questionable use of a speculative anecdote. Let's just say that we write strangely on purpose so that you don't have to.

But that essay fragment is primarily descriptive. It utilizes some narrative strategies (Rusty not chasing a stick, Rusty in a commercial, Rusty thinking his Rusty thoughts, etc.), but only in the service of a descriptive essay. There is no overarching story that takes over the piece.

The Writing Center would also like to say that it may have gotten a little bit carried away today with that Rusty stuff. Sorry. We'll try to be better tomorrow.

Happy writing!

How Not to Just Write About What Your Dog Did

2007-04-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

A lot of instructors like to start a writing course with some descriptive writing. It gives students a chance to work on some writing skills that they often don't pay much attention to when they're super concerned about proving a thesis, and the ability to describe something well is often the first step in analyzing or discussing something. We've already begun to see students coming into the Writing Center this term with descriptive writing assignments.

Here's a common problem we see students encounter in writing descriptively. This Writing Center Blogger teaches writing courses, and often asks students to write a descriptive essay about a neighborhood they lived in. Here, in a condensed and a little bit silly form, is how that essay sometimes goes a bit wrong:

The best neighborhood I ever lived in was in southeast Portland. I lived there with my mom, my brother, and my dog Rusty, which is the dog I had when I was seven, which is when I lived in this neighborhood--did I mention that? Rusty was the greatest dog in the world. I used to walk him in that neighborhood all the time, and a lot of the time I would let him off his leash, because there was a lot of room in that neighborhood. Man, Rusty could run fast! And he was so beautiful when he was running so fast! Those were some of my favorite times, when I let Rusty loose in that neighborhood.

You know what else Rusty could do? He could jump super high. He used to jump all over that neighborhood. I remember a time that we had him in our backyard, and then some time during the afternoon I looked out the window and I was like, Uh...where's Rusty? He had jumped over the backyard fence. Then he had jumped over the fence of the people whose yard was next to ours, and then he had jumped over some more fences. I found him two hours later, jumping up and dunking basketballs at the park. Man, Rusty was beautiful when he dunked. He would storm right into the lane and just, BAM! Dipsy doo dunkeroo! He wasn't afraid. Rusty was awesome. And I haven't even started to talk about what he could do on defense.

The essay goes on this way. When you're writing naturally and with enthusiasm, it can often feel great, and before you know it you've filled up the required number of pages. But here's the thing: This essay has described almost nothing about that neighborhood. It might seem, while writing it, that it's about the neighborhood. After all, all of these Rusty stories take place in the neighborhood. But that's also kind of the problem: the essay features a lot of stories, but not a lot of description.

Description and narrative are different things. Narratives can include descriptions, and descriptions can include narratives. But there are times when a writer can easily let the narrative kind of swamp the description. If you're being asked to write something descriptive, make sure it's primarily descriptive, and not, secretly, pretty much just narrative.

Spring Schedule

2007-04-03T13:04:00.000-07:00

The Writing Center will open for spring term on Thursday afternoon at 2:00. (The door will be closed until two because we're having our first staff meeting of the term before then. But we promise we'll open the door as soon as our meeting is over.)

Our spring term hours are:

Monday: 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Tuesday: 10:00 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Wednesday: 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Thursday: 10:00 a.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Friday: closed

You can check the online scheduling system (the link is in the right column) for appointment availability.

Writing Hint: Visit Your Instructors. Soon.

2007-04-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

If you're going to be doing a significant amount of writing for one or more of your instructors this term, the beginning of the term is the best time to drop by during office hours and speak with them about writing.

Instructors aren't snowed under with grading yet during Week 1. They're interested in getting to know their students. You, as a student, aren't snowed under with coursework yet. You're still interested in buying books.

So: a good five or ten minute conversation about what your instructor hopes for from his or her students' writing can be very efficient and productive at this point in the term. You might ask what writing handbook or style of writing your instructor prefers. You might ask if there are any samples of writing--journals, books, websites, etc.--that your instructor feels are examples of what he or she likes. Maybe your instructor can give you some tips on reading or research you could start on for the first paper you'll write this term.

We are not suggesting being fakely complimentary of your instructor or otherwise brown-nosing in any way. We are simply suggesting an authentic five or ten minute conversation that can help you make some decisions about a handbook to buy, some reading to do, and maybe how to anticipate and schedule your workload over the next few weeks. That's it.

Maybe right now you are saying to yourself, "Dude. Nobody does that." Our response is: You mean almost nobody does that. But a few people do. And they usually do well on their writing assignments, because they know what the instructor is looking for from students.

Writing Handbooks: Choosing and Using

2007-04-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

It's the beginning of a new term, and if you're in a course that's going to involve a lot of writing, it's highly possible that the instructor has required or suggested that you buy a writing handbook. If the instructor has not, you might want to consider buying one anyway.

The Writing Center's experience is that many students buy a writing handbook and then never open it up. Some students--the very bad students--don't even buy the handbook. Oh, those very bad students! So bad!

In honor of book-buying time, here are some thoughts on purchasing a writing handbook.

1. You should. It's a tremendous value. Even the most expensive handbooks are rarely more than forty dollars, and those handbooks have tips on researching, formatting, structuring a piece of writing, checking grammar and punctuation, and various forms of citation. In other words, for forty dollars you could own a book that will help you in just about any writing situation you will encounter in your academic career. Let's say you buy a handbook your junior year for forty dollars and use it for your last two years of school. That's forty dollars divided by six terms. That works out to $6.67 per term. You're going to spend about that on lunch and coffee today, aren't you?

2. And it's actually kind of worth even more than that, because as the salesmen say, who can put a price on peace of mind? At midnight the night before an important paper is due, when you've forgotten how to format the citations and bibliography in your research paper, do you really want to wade into the flotsam and jetsam of the Internet? When your eyes are already bleary? Everyone knows the Internet is mostly just for dating. What if you had a good handbook sitting right in front of you? The answers you need! Right in front of you!

3. What if we did the math by number of classes? One forty dollar handbook divided by, say, two years of ten courses per year. That's twenty courses, which means you're really paying only $2 per course to have professional writing advice at your desk. If you buy a handbook as a freshman, you're paying even less.

Next topic: If your intructor hasn't required a specific handbook, which one should you buy?

Good question! We will respond to this question in as matter-of-fact a way as possible.

1. The handbooks at the desks in The Writing Center include The Everyday Writer by Andrea Lunsford, A Writer's Reference by Diana Hacker, and A Prentice Hall Guide to Grammar and Usage by Muriel Harris. These are all pretty comprehensive and user-friendly, and are examples of the kind of handbook I had in mind when doing the math above. HINT: You can find them cheaper at a used bookstore, especially Goodwill.

2. If you want to pay twenty dollars instead of forty, there are often slimmer, coil-bound versions of these books available. You lose some material in the cheaper versions, but they're still pretty good.

3. Someone will tell you that the classic writer's guide is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. The Writing Center is a fan of E.B. White, and The Writing Center likes The Elements of Style. The Writing Center also teaches writing courses, though, and knows that most students do not like The Elements of Style because they feel it is grouchy, and also: The Elements of Style doesn't have nearly as much information in it as more contemporary handbooks. The Writing Center suggests that you not buy The Elements of Style as an everyday handbook.

4. There are entire writing handbooks specific to particular documentation styles. There is an MLA handbook, an APA handbook, the Chicago Manual of Style, and so forth. The Writing Center feels you should buy one of these books only when you've chosen a major and know which citation style is used in your particular area of study. But also: these books are available for your free perusal in The Writing Center resource room, so you don't necessarily have to buy one for yourself. If you want to have it on your own desk for those late-night writing sessions, though, go for it.

5. If you'd like to look at any of these books, or ask any other questions about them, feel free to stop by the PSU Writing Center. We're in Cramer Hall 188F.

Hint: You Can't "Could of"

2007-03-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Today's proofreading hint:

Sometimes it sounds like we say, "I could of fixed it, but I didn't."
That's what it sounds like.
But that's not what we say.
We say, "I could've fixed it, but I didn't."
What we mean, of course, is: "I could have fixed it, but I didn't."

Wrong: "Could OF"
Correct: "Could HAVE"

When we talk, we talk fast, dude. It sounds like we say "could of." That's two days in a row we have used the word dude in this blog. What is happening to us, dude?

When you're done with your paper, you might use the "find" feature on your word processing program to search for instances of "could of" in your paper. Also search for "would of" and "should of." If you find any, they're wrong. You can change them. If you don't catch them, your paper might come back with red circles around those words, and you will think, "Damn! I should of proofread this!"

Finals Week Hint: The Power of Plain Language, Or: Avoiding the Tower of Babel

2007-03-21T11:51:00.000-07:00

Certainly one of the reasons you go to college is to expand your mind. That expansion involves learning new concepts, and new concepts are often delivered through new vocabulary, and new vocabulary can be a challenge to master.

The degree to which you will be expected to use new vocabulary varies from class to class and instructor to instructor. Because we are the Writing Center, though, and because we are trying to help you write during finals week, we will just say this: Don't bluff with those fancy words.

A common difficulty students face in writing for college courses is feeling that they need to use vocabulary and lingo in the same way their instructors use it. If you are in a course where an instructor mentions the ontological issues surrounding notions of the subjective self in our postmodern society, you might feel that when you write a paper for that instructor, you better use the terms "ontological," "subjective," and "postmodern." You might feel this even if you don't quite totally understand what each of those things means.

This can result in two dangerous moments in writing. The first is that you feel you need to write a sentence about ontology, but don't totally know what that is, and so you stare at your computer screen, stuck.

The second dangerous moment is the same as the first, except that you decide to just throw the word ontology into a few sentences anyway, and hope it sounds right. In other words: you bluff.

This never works. Staring at a blank screen doesn't get a paper written. Randomly tossing out some big words incorrectly never impresses an instructor.

So today our suggestion is this: if you're stuck in your paper because you want to use some fancy words but don't know how, just don't use them. If you understand the words and are comfortable using them, then cool, go ahead. But if you don't understand them and don't know how to use them, then just writing in plain language is a much better choice. Using plain language helps you continue writing your paper. Using plain language helps your writing remain clear to your instructor.

Here is The Writing Center bluffing as it composes: The sheer plasticity of postmodern narrative strategies occasions a kind of willy-nilly buffoonery of cross-cultural referencing that can't help but lead one to the recognition that multiple ontologies serve up multiple ideologies in a multiplicity of post-colonial structures, as noted by Foucault and Derrida when they met at the Potsdam Conference at Flushing Meadows.

That doesn't mean anything. Or it only barely means something, and that something is incorrect.

Here is the Writing Center just trying to write something in plain language: Using plain language helps your writing remain clear to your instructor. It doesn't guarantee you will get an A. It guarantees your instructor will understand what you are trying to say, though. And your instructor will appreciate that.

The Difference In These Words Is That They Are Different Words

2007-03-20T16:44:00.000-07:00

they're = they are
their = belongs to them
there = a place, as in "over there"

"They're going to put their nesting trio over there."

MEANS

They are going to put the nesting trio that belongs to them over in that spot across the way.

That sentence is about three tables.

Finals Week Hint: The Power of Formatting

2007-03-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

It's finals week, so we're giving practical hints on how to write well under looming deadlines this week. Today's hint: Format your paper in a boringly standard way.

This is a purely practical suggestion, and we will admit here that it has nothing to do with the content of your paper. But hear us out on this. Let's do a thought experiment.

Imagine two papers with exactly the same content. Same name at the top, same intros, same body, same conclusions--exactly the same. Now: imagine that for the font of what we will call Paper A, I choose Times New Roman, 12 point. Times New Roman 12 point font is pretty much the standard font used at American universities, probably because it's the default font on Microsoft Word. (It's probably the default font on Word because it's very readable, though, so that's as good a reason as any to use it.) So let's say that's the font on Paper A. Let's also say I use one-inch margines on left and right and top and bottom, which is also fairly standard. Let's say I have page numbers at the top right. My name is at the top of page 1, and so is my teacher's name (spelled correctly!) and the date. I have a title centered above my first paragraph. I indent each new paragraph. All of these formatting decisions are just the standard way this stuff is usually done.

Now imagine what we will call Paper B. Remember: it has exactly the same sentences as paper A. But let's say that I choose a cursive handwriting kind of deal for my font. Or maybe that wacky font people use on invitations to children's birthday parties, where each letter is kind of different from the others, and occasionally there are teddy bears. Yes, that font is looking sweet! And I want this paper to be long, so I use two inch margins on the left and right. I like the way it looks when the paper is a column that just kind of goes down the middle of the page, and now my paper is, like, way longer! I don't use page numbers, because maybe then my teacher will just guess at how long my paper is, and maybe the teacher will guess that it's even longer than it really is! That would be cool. And after I print the paper out, I'll just write my first name by hand at the top of the first page. Sweet. Done with Paper B.

Conclusion of this thought experiment: Paper A is going to get a better grade. It has the exact same sentences as Paper B. But in a big stack of papers the teacher is reading through, the use of an odd font, distracting margins, no page numbers, and other odd decisions add up to a difficult reading experience. If your teacher has a difficult reading experience, he will think that your paper is not as good as the paper that is an easier reading experience. That is just the truth, dude. I don't know why I wrote dude there. I mean: We in the Writing Center don't know why we wrote dude there.

Your teacher might have specific requests regarding the formatting of your paper. Our advice in the Writing Center is to follow these requests. The teacher is telling you what kind of formatting makes papers easy to read for him. So maybe just format the paper that way, because you want your paper to be easy to read. Teachers are human beings. They appreciate consideration taken on your part to make things easier for them. If you format your paper correctly, you will do better on the paper than if you format it wildly.

News Update! Weather and an Irregular Possessive!

2007-03-19T14:44:00.000-07:00

It's currently 60 degrees in Portland, Oregon. Expect rain on and off throughout the day, and the temperature cooling down tonight into the mid-40's.

In other news, remember that the word "it's" means "it is." The possessive form of "it" is "its" without an apostrophe. "It's probably its back right leg that makes it wobbly" means "It is probably the back right leg that is a part of it that makes it wobbly." That sentence is about a table.

Tomorrow we should see more rain and a high of 52. It's gonna be awesome.

How to Work in a Crazy Rush at the Last Minute

2007-03-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

It's finals week. The Writing Center is open and here to help you, but there are some things you should keep in mind. First and foremost: it's hard to do much in a half-hour writing session when the paper you are working on is due in an hour. So here are some guidelines for how to get the most out of a Writing Center session when your paper is due soon.

1. Try and come in at least a day before your paper is due.
During the rest of the term, coming in the day before a piece of writing is due is pretty short notice. It would be better if you came in a week before the paper was due, or at least a few days, because then you would have time to make substantial changes to your paper if you wanted to. In the crunch of finals week, though, you probably have an immediate deadline that is looming. If you can at least make it in a day before your paper is due, the things you discuss with your writing consultant are things you can then work on in the evening (or the next morning) before you have to turn the paper in. In other words: you still have time to work on the paper.

2. Come in prepared to help your consultant.
If your paper is due the next day, or later that same day, there is a limited number of useful and effective things you and your consultant can talk about in a writing session. If you can suggest a focus for the session, though, or a specific problem or challenge that you would like the consultant to discuss with you, then the session can still be productive and help you make some decisions about how to finish your paper. If you know you want to sharpen your introductory and conclusion paragraphs, for example, then you can work on those with your consultant, go to a computer lab to revise them, print out your paper, and turn it in. Voila! Effective session! If you sit down, tell your consultant the paper is due in two hours, and then say you're not really sure what you want to work on, well...your consultant won't know what you have time or motivation to do.

3. Don't expect proofreading.
The Writing Center is a tutoring center, so our goal is to have writing sessions that are educational. If you sit down and pass your paper to one of our consultants and ask the consultant to proofread it for you, that's not really an educational moment--that's asking the consultant to work for you while you relax. When they're not working in the Writing Center, our consultants teach writing courses themselves, and you wouldn't drop your paper off with your writing teacher and ask your teacher to proofread it for you. The Writing Center is a wonderful resource: actual writing teachers are available to discuss writing problems with you! But please arrive prepared to actively take part in a discussion and to work during the session. We'll arrive prepared to help you as well as we can.

4. If you can't come in for an appointment, check our online resources.
We have all sorts of helpful material in the resources section of our website. Just follow the links in the right column of this blog.

In Praise of Ragged Drafts, Or: How Not to Be a Figure Skater

2007-03-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

The end of term is nearing. There are a lot of final projects and final exams to deal with, and the deadlines are looming, and the deadlines are, for the most part, final. It's a time of heightened pressure.

It's hard to write under pressure. This is true even for professional writers. They get used to it and they develop strategies for it, but still: it's difficult. Students who have multiple classes, who might have a job as well, and who have various other responsibilities often have more pressure than even a professional writer. So today, we at the Writing Center would like to make a suggestion: Write a quick and ragged and imperfect and weird first draft of that final paper you're having a hard time getting started on.

We know. You have concerns about that. Or you just don't write that way. But hear us out.

First: If you let yourself write a quick, sloppy, ragged first draft, you will feel better on the day that you wrote it. If you stare at the computer screen for two hours and only have two paragraphs to show for it, it's frustrating and you feel like you still have that same writing task, only now you've lost two hours. If you write six ragged pages in two hours, you feel like you've produced some stuff.

Second: It's easier to get back into it when you come back to it again. (And yes, we're suggesting that you come back to it again.) If you come back to two paragraphs, you still have a mostly-empty computer screen in front of you. If you come back to five or six pages, you have a lot of writing there to work with. You can dive in and begin fixing, improving, moving, fine-tuning, and all of that, immediately.

Third: Most of the difference between "strong" writers and "weak" writers is that strong writers revise. They add, cut, move, refine, and correct. If you purposely write a quick and ragged draft that you know you won't turn in, then you know that you will engage in a revision process, as well. Because you have to. But that's good!

Fourth: You have less situational stress, should a "situation" occur. If you have some kind of unforeseen task arise or some other hitch in your plans, you know you at least have a draft of that writing assignment done. In an academic emergency, then, you still have choices. You could turn in your draft and know that although it's ragged, at least you completed the course. Or you could turn it in to your instructor and be able to show that despite your unforeseen stress, you truly HAVE been working on the assignment. (An instructor who can see that you've really been working on something is usually more comfortable granting you an extension than an instructor who can't tell if you've truly been thinking about it or if you're just making an excuse.) Or because you know that you have the ragged draft, you also know that if you suddenly have limited time, you can just clean that up as much as possible as quickly as possible, and be done.

Many student writers report a writing process that is fairly high-stakes: they write one draft, one time through. If something goes wrong in it they think, "Oh well--looks like this isn't going to turn out that great." This is essentially the model of a high-stakes figure skating competition: if the skater falls during the big routine, there's nothing to be done about it. The announcers lament how awful it is that the skater fell, but then speak about how she'll just have to pick herself up and try and go on and complete the routine as well as she can. No chance for gold now!

But writing does not need to be like figure skating. If you stumble through an awkward paragraph in your first draft, you can still go back! You can fix it! Gold is still possible!

If you're stuck, then, or you're staring at the screen, perhaps consider giving yourself permission to just write a ragged first draft. You'll know that the draft will only get better as you work on it more. And you'll be writing.

With So Many Sources to Choose From, What's a Writer to Do?

2007-03-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

As a last post for this week where we've talked about sources and how to judge their reliability, we should also mention that even among reliable sources there are varying degrees of credibility. The magazine US Weekly, for instance, might report some accurate information about a star's movie deal, but the same information reported in The New York Times will carry more weight when used as a source in an academic paper. This may not be right. It may not be fair.

But usually it is. Certain publications have greater demands for accuracy than others, and therefore greater credibility. Even if in an individual instance there's no difference in the information between two sources, US Weekly probably reports more not-quite-true stuff in its pages than The New York Times does.

So some things to think about:

There is a huge variety of types of sources: book, periodical, scholarly journal, magazine, broadcast, visual, electronic media, etc.

It may seem obvious, but you should ask yourself what type of source it is. Is it print, electronic, or visual media? Defining the source may help determine its credibility. Where did you find it – at the library, in a bookstore, on television, in a museum, or on the Internet? Maybe you want to use a visual or audio source, such as a film, a painting, or a recording (symphony, song). As every source is different, remember to research the source itself.

For instance, if you use a journal, periodical, or a magazine, determine if the journal or periodical is scholarly, academic, or simply a mainstream, popular culture magazine. As we noted, there exist various levels of complexity and clarity in conveyance of ideas and information. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) differs greatly from People Magazine.

There aren't hard and fast rules--you may, in certain situations, be able to use People Magazine as a source of information. But there are sound guidelines and problems to be aware of when doing research for an academic paper, and it's good to keep them in mind.

Grilling Your Source: The Questions to Ask

2007-03-08T12:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we wrote about Wikipedia and why it's not usually considered a reliable source in college writing. The discussion raises the question, though, of just how a writer is supposed to evaluate what IS a reliable source.

In evaluating sources, you must be critical in discerning the credibility, reliability, and accuracy of any given source. Ask basic questions of a source:

1) What type of source is it (print, database, electronic media, etc.)?
2) Who is the author? What credentials does the author have? Where has the author been published? Is the author a scholar, a professor associated with a reputable institution, or a known and respected researcher or authority in the field?
3) Is the source current in the field or discipline? When was it published, and where?
4) Who is the intended audience?
5) Is the source primary or secondary?
6) Does it suit your particular writing project's needs? Will it lend support and credence (or be a useful alternate view) to your own project (essay, thesis, dissertation, freelance article, etc.)?

These are the questions that lead students and teachers to regarding online sources with caution. With the onslaught of electronic media and the Internet in particular, many people can now operate in ways that make them appear to be a pundit, an expert, or a scholar. Anyone can post online or put up his or her own website, and online material is especially mutable and ever changing. Careful evaluation of such sources is important.

A more extensive discussion of source evaluation and other writing issues can be found among the resource pages on our website.

Wikipedia! Or: Sometimes Things Didn't Happen, and Some People Don't Exist

2007-03-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

For many students, when sitting at a computer and thinking about doing some research, the first stop is Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia. It has tons of information on tons of topics. It's fast and easy. So why, when you are asked to do a research paper in classes at school, do professors often forbid you from using Wikipedia as a source? Are they totally behind the times? Are they paranoid of how cool the Internet is? Are they grumpy about how easy it is to do research these days, seeing as how they probably spent entire days in libraries before Wikipedia came along?

It's possible, depending on the age and grumpiness of your particular professor, that the answer to some of those questions above is yes. But there are also many extremely GOOD REASONS that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source.

Let us say, for instance, that you're doing a research paper on the cartoon Tom & Jerry, and let us say that when you look at Wikipedia, it says there was once an episode of Tom & Jerry in which Tom had too much to drink and bought a huge amount of Brady Bunch memorabilia on eBay. And let us say that you mention this in your essay, citing Wikipedia as your source for this information.

Now your professor might suspect that this information is inaccurate. A good thing about Wikipedia is that the entries are monitored by people, so there are probably people at Wikipedia who will see that entry and also suspect it is inaccurate. Here is what could happen:

1. Someone who uses or works for Wikipedia could challenge that information. They could say that they doubt this Tom & Jerry episode ever actually existed, and they suspect someone made this up.
2. The people who manage Wikipedia could decide that the episode of Tom & Jerry didn't actually exist, and could delete that information from the entry.
3. Your professor, looking up your source, could read the entry for Tom & Jerry and not see a single thing there about the Tom & Jerry episode about drinking, the Brady Bunch, and eBay.
4. Your professor could ask you to please show her where you got that information.
5. You could go onto Wikipedia, look up the exact entry where you got the information, and find...it's gone.
6. And now you are not feeling so good, and everyone is confused. Was there ever a Tom & Jerry episode about eBay? Was there ever a Wikipedia entry that referred to a Tom & Jerry episode about eBay? If there was an episode, when was it made and aired? If there was a Wikipedia entry, when was it published, and when was it changed? It's possible to try and track down the answers to some of these questions, but it's not easy, and it's not fun, and wouldn't you rather be doing something else?
7. Even more confusing: everyone who adds text to or subtracts text from entries on Wikipedia uses a user name. In other words, we only know the writers and editors by aliases, and often have no idea who these people really are.

This is why, in a research paper, Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source.

Consider this: The New Yorker magazine, which employs vigilant fact-checkers on its articles, wrote an article about Wikipedia last year. In it, they quoted a Wikipedia site administrator who went by the user name of Essjay. He was responsible for overseeing the accuracy of site content. According to The New Yorker, he told them he was “a tenured professor of religion at a private university” with “a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon law.” His degrees and knowledge were, theoretically, why he was someone entrusted with monitoring the accuracy of the site. It has recently come to light, though, that this person is NOT a professor. He doesn't even have any advanced degrees. He is twenty-four years old and has never taught anything.

This person, by the way, is still employed by Wikipedia. The co-founder of Wikipedia, according to The New Yorker, said about this person's fake name and credentials, “I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”

Wikipedia might be a place to START looking for information and for other sources about a topic. But due to situations like those above, most professors don't consider Wikipedia itself to be a credible source. They would prefer that you use articles written by people who use their real names, and which are edited and published by people who use their real names--articles that don't suddenly change or vanish overnight.

Do Professors Have Bad Handwriting?

2007-02-21T09:25:00.001-08:00

Profs go nuts when students seem to make the same mistakes over and over. What a lot of these teachers don't realize is that students can't decode those scribbled comments in the margins.

Sometimes, profs give students the chance to revise a paper for a better grade. When they do that, it's a good idea for the student (like yourself, perhaps), to read through the teacher comments as soon as the teacher hands back the papers. I know it's a tense time, with some people freaking out about their grades while other people just shove their papers in their folders without seeming to even look at them. Heck, when I was an undergraduate student, I thought it would be considered tacky or bad manners to check my grade in front of people--sort of like counting money in front of an old friend. Nonetheless, it's very, very important to let your professor know that you're reading (or trying to read) his or her comments. Trust me. Teachers want to feel useful.

So... when you get a paper back, read through the comments right away. If there's anything you don't understand, get in line or crowd around the professor's desk at the end of class. When the instructor tells you what those weird comments mean, write that stuff down in the margins. It will save you time if you decide to revise that paper for a better grade, it will make your professor happy with you, because it will show that you actually want to improve, and it just might improve your writing.

If you want to check out some common proofreading marks that professors like to use, try this link, courtesy of Capital Community College in Hartford, Conn.:
http://wwwold.ccc.commnet.edu/writing/symbols.htm

Analysis and Critical Thinking

2007-02-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

Do you have assignments asking for a "Critical Review," "Critical Reading," or "Analysis Paper"? Confused about what these "academic" terms really mean and what the Prof. wants? The process of analysis is not so much simply summarizing the subject, but to evaluate what that material means.

You may be thinking,"How can I possibly evaluate something when I'm not an expert?" You don't have to be an expert. If you are in a class and the Prof. has asked you basically to "think" about the material you are reading, you already have all the skills you need to engage with the text. In other words, most of the time the Prof. is probably looking for how you think about the text. Terms like "critical," "analysis," "evaluate" simply mean to think about how something is working and why.

Some things to think about when approaching texts from an "analytical" or "critical" perspective.

• What do you think the text is trying to “say”? What seems to be the main idea?

• What are the points or ideas that the author uses to convey his/her main idea?

• How do these points work to show the main idea?

• Is there anything in the text that seems contradictory?

• If so, is this intentional? How does it possibly further the main idea?

• Are there any passages that stand out? How do these seem important to the main idea?

• What is the author’s point of view?

• What are other possible perceptions? (i.e. how does the text fit a context or a larger cultural perception? (If applicable))

• What is your perception? How is your view influenced by society and/or the text?

• Why does this subject seem important? Why or why not?

• How is this subject possibly relevant to other ideas you have been discussing in class?

You need not answer all of these questions, but they may be some things to think about if you get stuck. If all this seems too complicated, try this.

*What do you find interesting or important in the text?
*Why?
*Now explain the "why" through examples in the text.

Welcome

2007-02-16T09:42:00.000-08:00

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