Read Your Drafts Out Loud

It’s natural to want to slap your first draft on paper as fast as you can.  It’s also natural to shrug, say “good enough!”, and just turn that crap in.  The former is fine; the latter gets an F.

Lots of things get lost between brain and pen.  Oftentimes, words, phrases, even entire sentences get lost, forcing your reader to try to decipher gibberish.

Pro tip: We have umpteen thousand other papers to grade.  We’re not gonna try real hard to give you the benefit of the doubt.

To avoid this, read the first draft of your paper OUT LOUD.  Better yet, have a friend or roommate read it aloud.  Either way, though, if the reader stumbles over a phrase, immediately mark it and correct it.  This won’t improve your mastery of the material, but it will certainly help your presentation… and as we know, presentation is at least 80% of your grade.

The Spaghetti Incident?

An essay is not a plate of spaghetti – don’t just throw facts at the wall and see what sticks.

Inexperienced writers, especially inexperienced writers writing at the last minute, tend to flip through their notes and write down whatever seems kinda sorta related to the assignment prompt, like so:

Urbanization, when companies moved to cities in search of workers, infrastructure, and capital, also contributed to the economy.  This greatly affected citizens’ daily lives through sanitation practices, department store, and buildings.  In the less developed cities they still had problems with sewage disposal leading to outbreaks of cholera and rickets.  Urbanization contributed to the formation of Labor Unions in the 1860s.  They fought for better condition and workers’ rights.  The concentration of businesses also attracted more import and export of resources to keep up with demand.  The flow of goods and currency caused stocks and bonds to become increasingly popular.

How do “sanitation practices, department store, and buildings” affect citizens’ daily lives?* I have no idea, and clearly, neither does the writer.  That’s a spaghetti essay — the writer clearly just jotted down a few notes on a day’s lecture, or copied some phrases straight off a powerpoint, and strung them together in an approximation of a sentence.

Remember: the point of an essay assignment is to show me you understand the links between different aspects of the class material.  A spaghetti essay shows me you don’t.

 

*Credit where it’s due: This writer not only used “affect” correctly, but he also correctly formed the possessive plural (citizens’, with the apostrophe outside the s.  Given that most papers I get are mostly gibberish, that alone is worth a few points.  Ahh, American public education — the US spends more per student than any other developed country, and you see the results.

Outlining Basics (I)

The most basic part of outlining is, quite simply, doing it.

A caveat: There are some folks who just can’t outline.  Their DNA lacks the ability-to-outline chromosome.  I’m one of them, alas… and I do mean alas, because this means that I have to go back and prune my first draft down about 40% in my first revision, and then revise that another 10-20% before I get to something worth putting my name on.  So I suggest trying very hard to learn to outline.  Most people can pick it up with practice, and if you can, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort down the road.

Drop Already

It’s like this, y’all: You’re not going to do the work.  I know it, you know it, all your classmates know it.  After so many years in the classroom, I can smell a knucklehead from a mile away… and you, child, are a knucklehead.

This may or may not be your fault.  You might be from a small town.  You might have a sheltered background.  Or, you might just be a knucklehead.  But whatever — you’ve discovered beer and weed and not having to set your alarm clock.  All that is going to catch up with you PDQ, but it hasn’t yet, so if you want my advice, enjoy your three or four weeks of blissful irresponsibility while you can.  You really only get to do this once….

… and in the meantime, drop my class.  You’re going to fail.  There are easier classes out there, with softer instructors, where it’s just baaaaarely possible you can squeak by with a few weeks’ frantic effort around Finals time.  But not here.  So don’t take the F; just head down to the registrar’s, fill out the drop form, and move on.

We’ll both be happier.

Subject, Verb, Object

There’s lots of advice about “style” out there, and most of it is bogus.  Style can’t really be taught, so I hereby give you a full Papal dispensation to ignore it.  All you want to do is convey the maximum of information in the minimum time, so the best style is no-style.  It’s very Zen, grasshopper.

Every sentence in your first draft should follow this simple pattern: subject-verb-object.  You may not know what these are, so I’ll infuriate every grammar Nazi on the internet with these quick’n’dirty definitions:

The subject is what does the action.  It’s not what the sentence is about.  Both of the following sentences are about John, for instance, but “John” is only the grammatical subject of the first:

John threw the ball.

The ball was thrown by John.

In the second sentence, “the ball” is the grammatical subject.  It’s what does the action (for a very awkward value of “does”).*

The verb is the action itself (“threw” and “was thrown” in our examples).

The object is what receives the action (e.g. “the ball”).

Yes, I know, this all sounds awkward and clunky and horrible.  It is.  But combine it with the following tips, and it’ll make a lot more sense.

1. Make the sentence about the grammatical subject.  John is the guy who is throwing the ball, so make “John” the grammatical subject.**  “John threw the ball,” not “The ball was thrown by John.”

2. Never put anything in front of the subject.  If you worry about “style,” you’re tempted to throw in little curlicues like this:

A former baseball player, John threw the ball extremely fast.

Don’t.  If it’s important for your audience to know that John could throw fast because he’s a former baseball player, make it two (or however many) sentences, each one beginning with its subject.  Like so:

John is a former baseball player.  John threw the ball extremely fast because of this.

3. One subject, one object, one verb.  Yes, our two-sentence example up there is clunky.  But this is your first draft.  You’ll fix it when you keep the Fourth Commandment (Thou shalt REVISE thy work).  For now, stick to the pattern, as it will make revising a lot easier (trust me).  Obviously there are exceptions — you can’t really write “Lewis went down the river.  Clark went down the river.”  for “Lewis and Clark went down the river.”  But unless it’s that obvious, don’t do it.

 

* You — or, most assuredly, your graders — will also notice that “The ball was thrown by John” is also the dreaded Passive Voice.  There’s no surefire way to avoid passive voice — if there were, I’d be the author of the bestselling English composition textbook and be blogging this from the deck of my yacht — but there are some useful hints we’ll cover in a later post.

** Hey, whaddaya know — there’s Passive Voice Avoidance Tip #1!

Grandma Body Count: 2

The semester’s only a week old, and I’ve already killed two grandmas.

I didn’t actually pull the trigger, or hold their frail old heads under pillows, or anything like that…. but I killed them all the same.  See, I make attendance a part of the final grade, and I require an attendance-confirming assignment the first week.  It’s not even graded, mind you, but I’ve already killed two grandmas with it.

It’s gonna be a loooooong semester.

Dude, How’s It Hanging?

Mafia dons and Aretha Franklin agree that social life runs on R-E-S-P-E-C-T.  It’s less a writing tip and more of a life lesson, then, when I tell you to always address your professors properly, in person and especially in email.

Here’s the proper email salutation (that’s Literate for “first three words”):

Dear Professor [Surname],

Always address your professors as “Professor [Surname]” (“surname” is Literate for “last name”) unless they tell you otherwise.  “Doctor [Surname]” is usually ok, but as many classes are taught by graduate teaching assistants, it’s not always appropriate (though if you want to see how pretentious your TA is, call him “Doctor” and see what happens.  If he doesn’t correct you….).  “Professor” is safest.

Of course, lots of profs will tell you “call me Steve” (or whatever).  In which case, it’s fine to call him Steve (and if she says “call me Steve,” you damn well better, or you’ll get sued).

That goes triple for email.  Now, don’t feel bad about this, but most of you sound like drooling idiots when you email your professors.  It’s probably not your fault, as etiquette is barely taught anymore and the internet can turn even educated people feral.  But think about it: If you’re emailing me, you want something from me.  You want to do everything you can to make sure I give it to you.  Start the interaction off right, with some R-E-S-P-E-C-T.  “Dear Professor Cranky” is the way to go.

Do not, under any circumstances, begin an email exchange with no salutation.  Don’t just jump in:

When’s the paper due?

That shows me two things: You don’t have any R-E-S-P-E-C-T, and you didn’t read the syllabus.  Both will be noted, and both will be reflected in your grade.

And do not — do NOT, on pain of death — begin an email with anything like the following:

• yo
• hey dude
• ‘sup bro?

Etc.  Would you address your boss that way?  (If you have to think about it, you’ll never get a job).  Nobody writes letters to authority figures to chitchat.  Be pleasant, be respectful, and you’ll have a much better chance of getting what you want.*

 

*unless you’re asking about something that’s clearly covered in the syllabus.  That’s the kiss of death.  See Blog Commandment #3: Thou shalt READ THE SYLLABUS.

Jargon

Aristotle said something about not being more precise than the subject will bear.  You can’t use math to prove an artwork is good or bad, for instance.  All else equal, there’s nothing wrong with jargon, since it’s designed to bring precision where precision is needed.  But all else is never equal.  Have you noticed?

So you have to be very careful with jargon.  For instance, you go to the ER with a pain in your hand.  The doctor says you have a transverse fracture of the fourth and fifth metacarpals.  Which is fine; she needs to know that, and so do any surgeons, physical therapists, etc. who might do followup work on your hand.  The jargon is useful there.  For the rest of us, it’s sufficient to say you’ve got a broken hand (you can say “I’ve got a boxer’s break,” if you want to sound like a badass).

Jargon is probably unavoidable in the humanities, but do your best to limit it in your papers.  Remember what I said about throwing your thesaurus away?  This is a subset of that.  If you must use jargon — and again, you’ll probably have to at some point — be absolutely sure you know what it means.  This includes its function as a part of speech: The word “Other,” for instance, can be used as a noun or a verb when it’s capitalized (capitals indicate a proper name; i.e. that it’s jargon).  In the social sciences, “the Other” is the entity against which a group define themselves (for Yankees fans, Red Sox fans are the Other, and vice versa).  But it can also be a verb — “to Other” — which means casting another group as the outsider (if the Yankees weren’t living up to their part of the rivalry, Red Sox fans would have to find a different team to hate — they would “Other” the Baltimore Orioles).

Domo Arigato, Mister Roboto

If you follow my advice, you’re going to end up sounding like a robot.

That’s good.

Remember, everything they told you in high school is wrong.  High school is Schizo World, where everyone’s unique and special in their own way but there are a million little micro-regulations to make sure everyone’s the same.  College flips that.  You can do anything you want here, but you shouldn’t.

I’ve mentioned Blog Commandment #2 before: Strive for mediocrity.  The only thing harder to grade than excrement is excellence.*  Your job is to show me that you’ve mastered the material.  That’s it.  The quickest way to do this is by doing exactly what they told you not to do in high school: A nice five paragraph essay, written in a simple style, with an intro that tells your reader what you’re going to say, three paragraphs of saying it, and a conclusion saying what you just said.

Obviously most college papers are going to be longer than five paragraphs, but the principle is the same.  No flashes, no curlicues, no grace notes.  We’ll get into the specifics in later posts, but here’s a preview:

Throw your thesaurus away.  Evidently high schools are still preaching the same nonsense about never using the same word twice.  That’s why I get student papers jam-packed with highfalutin’ words they obviously don’t understand.  I’m all for having a big vocabulary, as it will make you more attractive to potential sexual partners, but you can’t just memorize a dictionary.  If you’re not 100% certain the word you’re using is the right word, CUT IT.  Yes, even if it means using the same word five times in five consecutive sentences.

For example, let’s re-write the preceding paragraph in typical high school “response paper” style:

Evidently high schools are still preaching the same nonsense about never using the same word twice.  That’s why I get student papers jam-packed with highfalutin’ verbiage they obviously don’t understand.  I’m all for having a big vocabulary, as it will make you more attractive to potential sexual partners, but you can’t just memorize a dictionary.  If you’re not 100% certain the colloquy you’re using is the right confabulation, CUT IT.  Yes, even if it means using the same chitchat five times in five consecutive sentences.

See what I mean?  If you hit the thesaurus as I did up there, looking for synonyms for “word,”you end up with that cluster bomb of nonsense.  “Verbiage” works, but it’s pretentious, and Blog Commandment #1 is: Thou shalt not annoy thy reader.  A “colloquy” is an academic discussion; “confabulation” means “tall tale,” and of course “chitchat” isn’t even close to the same thing as “word.”

We’re all dumber for having read that.  Throw your thesaurus away.

 

 

*”Grade,” of course, means “give useful feedback on.”  The act of slapping a letter on a paper takes no time at all.  I’ve slapped letters on a whole class’s papers during one instant replay on Monday Night Football.  The feedback, though… that took days.

Hey Dumbass, the Unemployment Line is Over They’re: Basic Proofreading Tips

The unemployment rate for new college grads these days is terrible.  The jobless rate in general is horrible.  Which means there are lots of more experienced people competing for every job you apply for.  Which means, in turn, that poor frazzled Human Resources people are sifting through bazillions of cover letters and resumes a day…. and since you’re always in the middle of the pack, they’ll be looking for any excuse to throw your application away.

Don’t give them one.

Typos and basic grammar mistakes will get your application trashed.  I’m going to be crude here, because it’s important that you get this: HR people and cranky professors call this the Give-a-Shit Test, and you just failed it.  If you don’t give enough of a shit to proofread your cover letter and resume — if you’re so careless, in other words, that you can’t even get right the one thing that will land you a job — it’s guaranteed you won’t give a shit how well you do any job I give you.  So I’m not going to give you one.

That’s why we practice this stuff in school.

Fortunately, basic proofreading is easy.  MS Word and similar programs do a lot of it for you.  Word puts little squiggles under certain mistakes: Red for typos, green for grammar, blue for usage.  It’s not foolproof, but it will catch most of the most egregious mistakes.  If you do nothing but eliminate squiggles, you’ll be almost good to go (pro tip: this is why I have my students send me their papers in a Word-compatible format.  If I click your file open and see squiggles, you’ve failed the Give-a-Shit Test… which means you’ve failed the assignment).

The other basic tip is: look out for homophones and homonyms.  Word won’t often catch these, so you’ll have to do it manually.

Homonyms are words that have the same spelling, but different meanings (pronunciation can vary).  “Lead” and “lead,” for example.  As in, “He used to play lead guitar for the Professor Cranky Quartet, until he drank too much lead-based paint and died.”  It’s easy to eliminate most of these from resumes and cover letters — unless you’re auditioning for Metallica or something, nobody cares that you play a mean lead guitar — but college papers can be full of them.

Homophones — words that sound the same but have different meanings — are even trickier.  The most common one is “there / their / they’re.”

• There is used for location: The classroom is over there.
• Their indicates possession: It’s their classroom, not mine.
• They’re is a contraction — they are — and you know what to do with contractions.

Their are others, of course (see what I did they’re?), and you’ll eventually just have to memorize them.  The most common ones are here.