Successful Writing in Modern English: Avoiding Common Mistakes and Improving Persuasiveness

1. On Writing

2. Examples • Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. modern English • I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Ecclesiastes

3. Examples • Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder. Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossia)

4. Problems • Staleness of imagery (incompetence) • Lack of precision (vagueness) • The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not.

5. Common mistakes • Worn out metaphors • play into the hands of • Phrases instead of verbs • give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of • In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption • I think.… • Passive voice • The gift was given by Santa • Nominalizations • by examination of instead of by examining • Pretentious diction • Utilize, constitute, inexorable, expedite

6. A good writer… • A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: • What am I trying to say? • What words will express it? • What image or idiom will make it clearer? • Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? • And he will probably ask himself two more: • Could I put it more shortly? • Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

7. Orwell’s rules • Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. • Never use a long word where a short one will do. • If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. • Never use the passive where you can use the active. • Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. • Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

8. College Writing Challenges • Problems getting started • Lack of motivation • Writer’s block • Time management • Problems with organization • Finding a focus • Getting sidetracked • Length • Problems with writing • Spelling • Grammar • Clarity • Specificity

9. Ways to get started Motivation: • Try to find one way the assignment is, or could be, interesting to you • Talk about the paper with someone Overcoming writer’s block: • Brainstorm • Outline • Begin in the middle • Turn off your editor

10. Organization • Outline, outline, outline.

11. Outline of Orwell’s essay • Thesis: The English language is dying, but can be saved by each writer avoiding common mistakes. • English writing is atrocious and meaningless. • Examples • There are several common problems • Examples • The problem is acute, and consequential, in politics. Vagueness covers up atrocities and lies.

12. Organization • Outline, outline, outline. • http://home.sandiego.edu/~caseydominguez/researchadvice.html • You can’t have good organization without a strong thesis statement. • You can’t have a strong argument without specific, concrete evidence. • After your first draft, outline what you’ve written.

13. Writing • Always spell check • Read aloud! • Read a lot.

14. Persuasiveness • Do not trivialize the opposition • Your argument is not obvious.

15. Plagiarism • Always present an author’s actual words within quotation marks and accompanied by a full and accurate citation. • Always paraphrase thoroughly by reshaping the original in accordance with your own vocabulary, syntax, and sentence rhythm. Paraphrases must be accompanied by a full and accurate citation. • Always preserve the context or intent of the original source.

16. Plagiarism example.Source text.Blech! • The sudden wild passion for private property in the realm of knowledge creation has given rise to a rather paradoxical situation (Foray 1999). The technological conditions (codification and low-cost transmission) may be right for individuals to be able to enjoy instant and unfettered access to new knowledge, but a proliferation of intellectual property rights prevent access to such knowledge in hitherto protected areas (basic research in general, life science, software). (18-19)

17. This is plagiarized. • Although, on the one hand, current technological conditions seem to be right for individuals to gain immediate and freeaccess to new knowledge, claims of intellectual property rights impede that access (David and Foray 18-19).

18. This is ok. • As David and Foray write, “technological conditions” allow “instant and unfettered access” to information, but legal maneuvers to protect “intellectual property rights” work against these freedoms (18-19).

19. This is better • David and Foray suggest that legal claims regarding the ownership of ideas conflict with expectations of “instant and unfettered access” to information (18-19).