How To: Write

Even in this digital age, the venerable Elements of Style (1918) by William Strunk is still your friend. When in doubt, defer to Strunk's judgments on style. It will improve your writing. 

Below are some writing tips from a writer’s guide prepared by members of the English faculty at St. Lawrence University. Please work hard at avoiding these common pitfalls. Again, it will improve your writing: 

Too many students think of a writing assignment as something to “get out of the way” rather than an opportunity to express their consecutive thoughts about a subject assigned or chosen. They may spend hours assembling material and more hours filling up pages; and, having worked hard, they are understandably disappointed when they learn that their efforts have earned at best a mediocre grade and the comment “So What!”

Every piece of writing must have a plan, a purpose, and a central point. Before you begin to write, therefore, you should take time to work out the argument of your paper as well as the arrangement of its several parts. You should, in other words, think hard in order to avoid merely collecting sentences that add up to an aimless ramble in the vicinity of an ill-defined idea.

In expository or persuasive writing (of the sort most often required) you should be able to state the main idea of your paper in one or two sentences, called the thesis statement. Here are four effective examples, some of them from published essays.

“The distinctive traits associated with the American people today stem at least partly from the frontier experience of our ancestors.” — Ray Allen Billington

The short-sighted self-satisfaction of the Houyhnhnms, Gulliver’s misguided reactions to the noble Captain Pedro de Mendez, and Gulliver’s own unacknowledged pride at the end of his voyages – all suggest that Swift does not share his main character’s admiration of the community of horses.

“The battle between the tarantula spider and its arch-enemy, the digger wasp of the genus Pepsis, is a classic example of what looks like intelligence pitted against instinct – a strange situation in which the victim, though fully able to defend itself, submits unwittingly to its own destruction.” — Alexander Petrunkevitch

“Although peasant societies share many similarities, it is possible to assign such societies to one of three categories based on political and economic variables.” — Hamilton College Guide

 Although it is always best to write with a thesis clearly in mind, specific statements of this sort need not always appear verbatim your paper. Indeed in some cases they probably should not, since they can be rather mechanical, an extreme version being, “In this paper I am going to discuss three reasons why General Lee failed at Gettysburg.” A thesis statement, however, will help you to focus your attention on a particular topic, to avoid mere summary, and to clarify the overall organization of your essay. In the samples above, the first writer will probably identify a few uniquely American character traits caused by out frontier experience. The second suggests a division of reasons showing the extent to which Gulliver is an unreliable narrator in Book IV of Gulliver’s Travels. The third will probably illustrate and define modes of intelligent and instinctive animal behavior. And the fourth will classify three similar though different cultures.

Some writers are heavy-handed in organizing their thoughts. They begin by explicitly stating what they are going to say, they then say it (with illustrations along the way), and they conclude by briefly summarizing what they have just said – with a bang on the desk for emphasis. Such writing may have an organization of a sort, with everything laid out – embalmed – in the introduction, but it is often uninteresting to read, anti-climactic, and dull. A better organizational scheme often involves a question that is subsequently answered, or a problem followed by possible solutions and a resolution by the end.

Two suggestions: (1) With your thesis in mind, write the body of your paper first; then go back to the beginning and compose one or two paragraphs that will provoke interest, focus your reader’s attention, and not induce sleep. Any piece of writing that begins with “Webster’s Dictionary defines …” or “In this tormented age in which we have the misfortune to live …” is likely to be so boring that the reader will never finish it. (2) Save the best until last and try to make your conclusion actually conclusive without overstating your case. Some papers merely stop, all fagged out at 2 in the morning; at the other extreme are those ending with “Obviously …” or “Thus it can clearly be seen …” – expressions that often raise doubts in the reader’s mind. Think rather of ending with a final, vivid illustration of your thesis, an example that brings together the several threads of your argument; or restate (do not repeat) your thesis; or while being careful not to introduce completely new material, give your thesis a slightly broader application.

Finally, here are a few gentle reminders on writing mechanics:

1. Avoid mispelling.

2. Also using sentence fragments. And incomplete sentences.

3. A preposition is not a good word to end a sentence with.

4. Try not to unnecessarily split infinitives.

5. One of the mistakes that is frequently made are verb and subject disagreement in number.

6. And do not begin sentences with a conjunction.

7. Don't use contractions in formal writing.

8. Avoid run-on sentences punctuate sentences properly break them up.

9. Use the write word, not just the won your computer says is rite.