Writer’s Workshop 1.4 Basic Style & Errors

To the right is a practical example from a student’s term paper on Antigone. The emboldened phrases contain the colloquialisms.

“She got one past Creon” – What was Antigone trying to get around Creon? “One” what? Why wouldn’t he let her pass him?

• A better version could be “Antigone felt like she had deceived Creon.”

“MLK wasn’t trying to pull a fast one on the people” – What was MLK attempting to pull onto the people? How does one pull something onto a group of people? Was it a large blanket? Why did he have to do this pulling so fast?

• A better version could be “MLK wasn’t trying to circumvent his supporters.”

“MLK was in the faces of his oppressors.” – Really? How did MLK climb into the face of someone, let alone a group of people? Did he take his shoes off first?

• A better version could be “MLK was candid and intractable before his oppressors…”

Note also that this excerpt contains quite a few platitudes, the worst of which is underlined. This excerpt also contains much needless verbosity, as seen in the first sentence. We will address verbosity later in this workshop..

Don’t be sesquipedalian!

Often to avoid colloquialisms, hide a deficiency in vocabulary, or just sound smarter, inexperienced writers will fall into sesquipedalianry. Don’t do this! Embellishing your writing with more advanced vocabulary can be nice and a break from monotony for an experienced reader reading your work. However, the insertion of such “precocious locution” should sound natural, being a present part of your style throughout and not overindulgent in any moment.

Use a thesaurus to find better words, but always double check their denotations and connotations. Sometimes while words might be similar, their definitions might have a critical difference: bake and scorch for example (a baked pie is great, but a scorched pie is not, though it was in a fashion “baked”).

Checking the denotation of your selected word can be important, since synonyms are not necessarily congruent and often contain important differences, which might drastically hyperbolize, mitigate, or transform your intended meaning.

Your Words Ooze Connotations:

Considering and/or checking the connotation of your selected word can also be important. For a classical example, consider the word “gay.” In a thesaurus, gay is a synonym for “happy;” however, most people in America no longer use “gay” to mean “happy,” and so you might either sound humorously antiquated or confuse your meaning by using “gay” as a synonym for happy due to “gay’s” cultural connotations.

A more prescient example today might be the word “discriminate.” Traditionally, one who is “discriminating” is one who can tell the quality of something or the lack thereof. One could be a “discriminating” wine connoisseur or art critic. However, due to the cultural baggage taken by this word when it was used to “discriminate” between the quality of a person based on the color of their skin, this word now has a cultural connotation that is quite negative. If you called someone a “discriminator” or “discriminating,” one might assume you are insulting this person or accusing them of some malfeasance. Thus, if you use the word “discriminate” or “discriminating,” you would be wise to consider the cultural weight placed onto the word (connotation), and not only its basic definition (denotation).

The use of a quotation is more than just a requirement that checks a box on some teacher’s checklist. A quotation should be useful, clarifying, and contextualized by your own prose, NOT merely inserted somewhere you think might make sense and to an end that no one is certain of.

Your use of a quotation should clearly have a purpose in furthering the case for your thesis as well as be contextualized by your own writing, not inserted as a stand-alone sentence. When a quotation is inserted as a singular sentence without author contextualization, it is not as clear for the reader how this quotation fits into the argument.

For example, consider your thesis and the argumentative essay like a court of law. In a court of law, there are two sides to an argument, each trying to justify the merits of their side to either some judge or some jury. Let’s consider that you are arguing for the guilt of someone accused of murder. Below is NOT a good method to convince the judge or jury of your evidence’s worth against the defense:

So first we know that King needs facts. Then, you present a quotation that, for me, shows how King was “confronted” by protests from “Negro citizen,” which were led by “outsiders.” What do these two pieces of information have to do with each other? Maybe there is a meaningful connection, but I can’t see it. Then, you say that the word “outsiders” is particularly noticable for King (note that “stands out” is arguably a colloquialism). How does this word “stand out?” Why is this point important to the prior two, seemingly unrelated, bits of information.

DON’T ENDLESSLY CONCATINATE UNCONTEXTUALIZED EVIDENCE. All things should have a clear purpose.

While there are many problems in this example, I want you to pay particular attention to the emboldened phrase. Here is an example of an unnecessary quotation, likely inserted to fulfill some requirement of quotation implementation. There was no need to use a quotation here. The quotation proves no point to a thesis, only providing quoted summary information. Your summary should not be via quotation. You should cite summary, but quotations are not necessary for this kind of information. Quotations are for important points of exemplifying evidence to the justifcation of your thesis.

To the left is a practical example from a student’s term paper.

I have no idea what the first sentence (a run-on sentence) means; it seems important, but I really can’t tell what this person is saying. This excerpt has numerous syntactical issues, not properly employing punctuation as needed.

“materialism being bad” – really? that’s the best wording you could do?

“suffrage” = right to vote. I think they mean “suffering.” Suffrage and suffering have two distinct Latin origins and are totally different in their meanings. Siddhartha was not about the “right to vote,” but that certainly will make an interesting thesis… (I hope they can prove it!).

“little to no items” – “items”? Again, word choice issue.

To the left is a practical example from a student’s term paper.

So by this subordinate modification after “decree,” we know that the decree is a woman and possibly a man, since by being a “woman,” “his” (the decree’s) demeanor was not lightened. Interesting!

While point-of-view mistakes happen all the time between the commonly used PoV’s, people who speak a first language that still has the “formal you” (such as Spanish and German) will also sometimes fall into this unusual archaism.

The use of “you” (informal second person) is also not great for professional writing, unless addressed to a very specific person (a letter, for example). Generally, attempt to use third person either with gendered or ungendered pronouns as appropriate (he/she/ze/they/one). Second person should be AVOIDED unless there is a clearly good reason to use it.

Take for example these worse and better options between RSP, SP, TP, and FP:

To the left is a practical example from a student’s term paper. A corrected version of this with the point of view changed could be:

While failure plays the role of an educator in life, one is left wondering if there is ever a point at which one disappoints one's self and others to an extreme that one cannot come back from it? Siddhartha finds fascination in the river as it is always moving yet always the same. Should one believe that one will always be the same inside despite how lost one becomes?

A wholly better, less garbled version of this passage could be as follows:

While we can learn much from our own failures, there is the potential that too much or too great a failure will irrepribly destory rather than teach. Is it reasonable to believe that one will never gown or change despite their failures?

Note that the sentence on Siddhartha removed since it is not clearly related to failure; the author has not explained this point of evidence. One should always explain their evidence and shgow how it relates or demonstrates one's point.

1. The Webster’s Dictionary introduction. This introduction begins by giving the dictionary definition of one or more of the words in the assigned question. Anyone can look a word up in the dictionary and copy down what Webster says. If you want to open with a discussion of an important term, it may be far more interesting for you (and your reader) if you develop your own definition of the term in the specific context of your class and assignment. You may also be able to use a definition from one of the sources you’ve been reading for class. Also recognize that the dictionary is also not a particularly authoritative work—it doesn’t take into account the context of your course and doesn’t offer particularly detailed information. If you feel that you must seek out an authority, try to find one that is very relevant and specific. Perhaps a quotation from a source reading might prove better? Dictionary introductions are also ineffective simply because they are so overused. Instructors may see a great many papers that begin in this way, greatly decreasing the dramatic impact that any one of those papers will have.

2. The placeholder introduction. When you don’t have much to say on a given topic, it is easy to create this kind of introduction. Essentially, this kind of weaker introduction contains several sentences that are vague and don’t really say much. They exist just to take up the “introduction space” in your paper. If you had something more effective to say, you would probably say it, but in the meantime this paragraph is just a place holder.

3. The restated question introduction. Restating the question can sometimes be an effective strategy, but it can be easy to stop at JUST restating the question instead of offering a more specific, interesting introduction to your paper. The professor or teaching assistant wrote your question and will be reading many essays in response to it—he or she does not need to read a whole paragraph that simply restates the question.

4. The “dawn of man” introduction. This kind of introduction generally makes broad, sweeping statements about the relevance of this topic since the beginning of time, throughout the world, etc. It is usually very general (similar to the placeholder introduction) and fails to connect to the thesis. It may employ clichés—the phrases “the dawn of man” and “throughout human history” are examples, and it’s hard to imagine a time when starting with one of these would work. Instructors often find them extremely annoying.

5. The book report introduction. This introduction is what you had to do for your elementary school book reports. It gives the name and author of the book you are writing about, tells what the book is about, and offers other basic facts about the book. You might resort to this sort of introduction when you are trying to fill space because it’s a familiar, comfortable format. It is ineffective because it offers details that your reader probably already knows and that are irrelevant to the thesis.