Writing Tips from Professors
By Stacey Himmelberger P’15,’22, editor, Hamilton magazine
“The book is entitled On Writing Well.”
The person who wrote that sentence certainly is not “entitled” to a prize for Grammarian of the Year. Entitled means a right to do or have something. The book isn’t entitled to anything … except perhaps a spot on your bookshelf. An easy fix is “The book is titled On Writing Well.”
This is one of my personal writing pet peeves and one I share with the student interns who assist us in the Communications and Marketing Office. We also talk about techniques such as how to write a strong lede, formulate interview questions, and weave quotes into news stories.
Likewise, professors at Hamilton challenge students to present themselves and their ideas clearly and persuasively. We asked a handful of professors for writing advice that they routinely pass along to their students. Here are their tips:
I include a “Writing Guidelines” sheet with every syllabus. It explains the coded letters I write in the margins of my students’ papers. “SVA,” for example, means Subject Verb Agreement, and “UCP” means Use Commas in Pairs. But nothing I write in the margins matters more than “KRIM,” which stands for Keep Reader In Mind. Every sentence, every clause, every phrase, every word ought to flow from a writer who is keeping the reader in mind. We write for others, not ourselves. Our words should not draw attention to our erudition but to the meaning we wish to convey to our reader. Most of the other coded letters I use relate directly to the prime directive. We avoid “PV” — Passive Voice — because it often obscures who is acting, e.g. “Mistakes were made.” We disdain wordiness because it obfuscates. We strive for clarity, precision. Write tight. KRIM — always KRIM.
“Huge.” There are many words in the English language that convey magnitude, yet this particular descriptor tends to be the one I find most commonly used by Hamilton students. Because sociologists are largely interested in disparities that exist across axes of race, class, and gender, many of our students attempt to quantify the scope of group differences by using this word in their writing. My main beef with it? Foremost, I acknowledge it’s my own idiosyncratic preference, but I find it wholly lacking in imagination. More to the point, it provides only a crude sense of the gravity of a given difference. My advice to avoid generic, plodding words like “huge?” Simple! Use a thesaurus, where one can find many viable alternatives including “sizable,” “prodigious,” “voluminous,” “monumental,” and on and on.
You should first introduce “an” object before talking about “the” object. Talking about “the” object assumes that the reader has already been introduced and knows that said object exists.
More general writing pet peeves for science:
• Be specific. Rather than “some” use a number if you have it.
• Everything gets an introduction: The book has an introductory chapter, the chapter has an introductory section, the section has an introductory paragraph, the paragraph has a topic sentence.
• Give a roadmap somewhere, rather than meandering through a logical argument, let the reader know where they are headed before you work through the details.
• Be concise and use simple words. Assume that your reader is tired and rushed and doesn’t have time to read a sentence twice to understand it.
I am generally wary of prescriptive rules for language use, since they tend to marginalize language communities that tend already to be marginalized. Still, there are a couple of things that irritate me, rational or not, and my students should know that.
Here are a couple of common writing tics that come from casual speech and that drive me bonkers when I read them. These are not errors. At worst, they are infelicities. They make me cringe involuntarily, though, and my students are well advised to avoid them. The first involves basing conclusions off of evidence, rather than on it. There’s no need for the extra word, and the “on” makes better sense, as when we base a house on a foundation. The second is when writers offer to break down a concept rather than analyze it. Again, the extra word is otiose, and “analysis” is usually more accurate and effective.
These days I spend a lot of time writing “‘however’ is not a conjunction, so it cannot combine two independent clauses. You could use a period or a semi-colon to help it, but the most elegant solution is to embed the ‘however’ after the subject of the new sentence.”
Also, I really don’t like it when people present me with a long (or short) quotation prefaced only by “so and so writes.” Then I have to read this passage not knowing what to pay attention to, after which they tell me why it matters, so I have to go back and read it again!
Here’s an abbreviated version of what Associate Professor of Classics Jesse Weiner shares with students in his writing-intensive classes.
Professor Weiner’s Writing Tips
• Stay organized and don’t get sidetracked: in principle, you should be able to point to every sentence in your paper and explain how it fits into your argument and how it supports your thesis. This is especially essential to abstracts.
• Terminate adverbs with extreme prejudice.
• Avoid superlatives. Things like “best example of X,” “most X,” etc. seem like strong claims, but these are the easiest claims to poke holes in — especially if you can’t claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of classical literature (or any given topic).
• Get to the point: I like a soft intro every now and then, but it’s easy to think you’re cleverer than you are and to bury your thesis in an unnecessarily wordy intro. If your reader must wait until page 2 or 3 to learn what you’re arguing, make sure there’s a damn good reason for it. Otherwise, get to the direct point as soon as possible so that your thesis is front, center, and impossible to mistake.
• As a rule, do NOT begin your paper with “When most people think of X …” Unless your thesis is about public perception of X, “most people” are almost certainly irrelevant to your topic.
• Avoid bullshit. Words, let alone entire sentences, should not be there just to take up space. Readers should not be left wondering what a sentence even means or how it relates to your argument. Privilege lucidity.
• Don’t split your infinitives.
• Proofread.
