Some Writing Tips For Students in History 600
Below are some tips that I hope you will find helpful. I would like to thank Dr. Robison, whose syllabus contains some of these tips that I have borrowed as a starting point and upon which I have built.
The following are useful tips that have no bearing on style, but are very important nevertheless:
Back up your computer files: Back up your files regularly. Frequent backups are the key to successful completion of work. It is useful to backup your work to several sources since catastrophes can happen to any one source, but rarely to a multiplicity of them. I could tell you horror stories, and probably will. Loss of a computer file has rapidly come to replace, “My dog ate it” and “My printer mysteriously refused to print” as an excuse for late work. Loss of a computer file will not be accepted as an excuse for not turning in work on time.
Plagiarism: Written work will be checked for plagiarism. It is your responsibility to know what plagiarism is and to avoid it. Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, using text from a book without proper citation (quotation marks and footnote citation or page number in parentheses in the case of reviews) or using material from other books, encyclopedias, journals, or websites without proper citation. The American Historical Society provides an explanation of plagiarism in its "Statement On Standards of Professional Conduct" (Item #4) and a few more specifics HERE. They are both worthy of some study. Rest assured that your instructor knows plagiarism when he sees it, and if you can find a source to plagiarize, he will find it, too. Anyone turning in plagiarized work will fail the course and will be reported to appropriate university officials. Honesty is the best policy. When in doubt, ask me.
Some Basic Style Tips
Style tip 1: Avoid using passive voice, which is wordy (thus wasting space) and confusing, since the passive voice often fails to identify the actor, which is important in analyzing works of history. An example of passive voice that fails to identify the actor is “Richard III was defeated at Bosworth.” An example of passive voice that identifies the actor but is too wordy is “Richard III was defeated by Henry Tudor at Bosworth.” An example of active voice is “Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at Bosworth.” As illustrated by that active sentence, English prose conventions dictate that the structure of a good sentence should follow the pattern: Subject, Verb, various Objects. Hence, “Robin shot an arrow at William.” (Subject, verb, direct object, indirect object) “An arrow was shot at William” (passive voice) does not identify the initiator of the action.
Style tip 2: Never use twenty words where one will do. Avoid wordiness and unnecessarily flowery language. If an adjective will say the same thing as a prepositional phrase or a dependent clause, use the adjective. The more succinct your sentences are, the more you can say and the more clearly you can convey meaning. Make every word count. A splendid essay on how to do this right is Mark Twain, “Cooper's Prose Style.” That said, please note that I do not expect prose in the mold of “See Spot run.” Sometimes a writer cannot avoid using a fairly long and complex sentence, especially when two or three ideas must be sewn into a whole.
Style tip 3: Avoid repetition. While you are not writing freshman English papers in which you need a thesis statement, three paragraphs that support your thesis, and a conclusion that sums up the three paragraphs, the famous “Five Paragraph Format” can still give you a starting point for thematic subsections of your research paper. Generally, the fifth paragraph in which you repeat your thesis and stuff as summation is unnecessary and superfluous.
Reviews tend to follow a very different pattern from freshman papers. A savvy review should include an interesting opening paragraph that introduces the subject of the text to the reader, a brief summation of the author’s main arguments, and, as a professor of mine used to say, “a sentence or two in which you tell me why this is the best book you have ever read, and also a sentence or two telling me why this is the lousiest piece of junk you have ever read.” And a good review generally must do all of this in 500-750 words! The bottom line: Say it once and say it well.
While we are on the subject of repetition, I should also add that you should also avoid repeating the same word or phrase numerous times in the same sentence or even paragraph. Be creative. Pronouns are your friends. If you are discussing an author, say, Joyce Appleby, you may use, “her,” “she,” “the author”—thus avoiding repetition and yet conveying the point rather than repeating “Appleby” over and over. As you proofread your prose, look for such repetition and try to find ways to cut such repetition. Note the overuse of the word "repetition" (and its various cousins) in this paragraph as an example of the problem of repetitious word use.
Style tip 4: Be specific. Identify individuals, institutions, and events that are not universally known. Explain specialized terminology. Use dates and pay attention to chronology. Avoid the plague of vague. Remember that you are writing an original piece of historical prose and, thus, your reader may be unfamiliar with times and places and people within the context of your work. Introduce them within that context. Make sure that when and where you use pronouns the reader will have no choice but to connect them with the persons, places or things to which they refer. The following represents a case in point:
Solon's reforms were aimed at lessening the economic, and thus, the political authority of the aristocratic element of Attica, the Eupatridae; Peisistratos’ innovations were meant to bolster the economic success and the focus of activity — religious, economic and political — upon the urban center of Athens itself, much as Solon's reforms had at an earlier date. His reforms were more long lasting and important to the future development of Attica.
Which Athenian reformer is referenced in the last sentence? It is difficult to tell. Better to have have said “The reforms of the later ruler,” or, if you have differentiated between the positions of the two, you could say “The tyrant’s reforms,” or simply say “Peisistratos” again.
Style tip 5: Use correct tenses. Use past tense when talking about events in the past, e.g., “Henry VIII ruled England from 1509 to 1547.” Use present tense when talking about assertions and interpretations by the author in the text even if the author is deceased, e.g., “Professor Elton states that Henry VIII preferred pleasure to work.” This distinction is sometimes trickier that it seems, especially when you are talking about (A) the historian himself, or (B) an action that a figure in the book took during the course of the narrative. So, let's take a look at both of these uses of the past:
(A) As a simple rule of thumb, if the historian is associated with a physical action that he executed in the past, use the past tense. "After she finished her morning shower and dressed, Professor Appleby made a pot of coffee." That one is easy, but, "Joyce Appleby wrote Capitalism and a New Social Order in 1984." Like Professor Appleby's showering, dressing and coffee making, the mechanical act of writing is an activity, both physical and intellectual. It happened at a particular time in the past that is now over and done, and so you use the past tense when writing about it. But the arguments, insights and interpretations that the historian wrote exist in the book for all time. Therefore, "Linda Kerber argues that women of the Revolutionary Era were expected to fulfill the roles of republican mothers in order to inculcate the virtues of the Founding Generation into the character of future American generations." Let's try some more: "Historian Frederick Jackson Turner presented his 'Frontier Thesis' during his keynote address to the American Historical Association in Chicago in 1893." But, "Turner argues that the 'American character' was shaped through repeated generational confrontation with the American wilderness—in effect, the frontier molded [something that happened over time in the past] European immigrants into Americans." Oh, one other note on this tense business, when in doubt, it is always safest to simply use the past tense. It is doubtful that you will encounter much wrath from a professor for statements like, "Shakespeare gave Falstaff a decided bravado that few Elizabethan characters possess," or "In effect, Plato argued that humans can never completely understand the nature of the 'real universe.'" Neither of these sentences approach the sheer perversion of the language of "On September 2, 1864, Atlanta, Georgia falls and Sherman marches his victorious troops into that once proud city."
(B) If the historian describes the past action of somebody, essentially presenting a narrative to the reader, you refer to that action in the past tense. So, "Professor Russell notes that Charles I collected taxes and duties that no English monarch had collected since the 1300s." Observe that the author "notes" (present tense) while the actor "collected" (past tense). Similarly, "Thucydides tells us that during this period of civil insecurity, 'words changed their ordinary meaning,' manipulated by demagogues and factions to fit their agendas." The author's assertion is in the present tense--Thucydides tells us, while the actions of the demagogues and factions took place in the past.
Style tip 6: Avoid misspellings. While these may cause the instructor much amusement for himself and his friends, they will, nevertheless, result in a lower grade. Some common mirth-worthy errors involve confusing “Calvary” (place of Christ's crucifixion) and “cavalry” (horse soldiers); “led” (past-tense of “to lead,” pre-fix to “Zeppelin”) and “lead” (a heavy metal that sounds like “led”); “thrown” and “throne”; “Wales” and “whales.” Don’t even get me started on the problems of “to,” “too,” and “two,” or “there,” "they're" and “their.” It should also be noted that your spell checker cannot tell the difference in any of these words, because, being basically stupid, it only spots words that it cannot find and offers words that it can find. So if you decide that “King James VI of Scotland ascended two the thrown off England inn 1603,” your spell checker is perfectly “down with that.” I, on the other hand, will not be.
Style tip 7: Avoid archaic words. There are a number of words that creep stealthily into our vocabulary when we are writing formal prose—perhaps out of some misplaced assumption that they make us seem more erudite — that decidedly do not belong in modern writing. The words that I see the most often, and therefore dislike the most, are “amongst” and “whilst” in place of “among” and “while.” Since I see them the most, I tend to regard them with dread. [Do not fill me with dread, please.] “Unbeknown” (or any of its cousins) runs a close second. “Oft” or “oftimes” are right out. Archaic abbreviations should also be avoided: “&c” for “etc,” or viz., for instance. On the other hand, of course, if these words or any other archaisms, appear within a quotation that actually is archaic, you may, and, for my money, should use them as they appear. Some historians like to tweak quotations, changing words in order to simplify them for the modern reader. This is both unnecessary, and in some cases, a palpable, and even dishonest, intrusion into the text.
While we are on the subject of archaic words, let's digress for a moment to look at the use of foreign words. When using a foreign word, generally the rule is that the word should be italicized. In American usage, if a foreign word has an entry in Merriam-Webster, it need not be italicized. According to that rule of thumb, "perioikoi" and "nan" would be italicized; retsina and puja, not. This rule is a bit bothersome, since you would have to pull the Merriam-Webster Dictionary off the shelf every time you wanted to write a foreign word. A better rule of thumb is, if the foreign word has been in regular and frequent usage in English for a long time, like, say, "ad hoc," or "vice versa," then it doesn't have to be italicized. If you are using a foreign word that is not in regular English usage, like "suttee," or "decemviri," "the pietas of Augustus," or "Geschichtswissenschaft," which is frequently the case when writing history, italicize it. You can leave the dictionary on the shelf and rest assured that your professor isn't likely to pull Merriam-Webster down to check, either. One more word: If you CAN avoid extremely long German words, please do so… …with extreme prejudice.
Style tip 8: Use the appropriate pronoun. Once upon a time, this warning was unnecessary, but in the age of “gender-neutral” and post-modern expression, the proper use of pronouns has become more difficult. Once, “Having parried his attacker, the fencer may then make his riposte,” was appropriate and sufficient, even though there were women who fenced as well (in both meanings of the phrase "as well") as men. Today, however, we must introduce gender neutrality to the sentence. While the use of “his/her,” as in "Each passenger should make sure that his/her seatbelt is securely fastened," is, I'm sure, perfectly acceptable in an office memo or an airliner safety spiel it is unwieldy and wordy in formal prose, and, unless the individual in question is anatomically odd indeed, also terribly imprecise. So the entire sentence must be changed in a way that still preserves the concise meaning, yet makes no one uncomfortable in themselves. Thus, the well engineered and acceptably gender-neutral, “the fencer, having parried the attack, may riposte.” Never, under any circumstances start a sentence with a singular noun and end it with a plural pronoun in order to avoid giving offense! “Having parried, the fencer may then make their riposte” is an abomination, not only mangling the syntax, but muddling the meaning of the sentence. I have seen sentences in work by respected contemporary historians that are, in some misguided attempt to be as politically correct as possible, completely preposterous. A great example might be, "Each monk who lived in the Lindisfarne monastery was required to spend some part of his/her time working in the refractory." Can you spot the problem here?
Style tip 9: Quality control: Proofread! If you have grammar-check and spell-check, by all means use them, but remember that they will not catch everything. There is no substitute for eyeballing the text or having a fellow student read your work. Superlative prose is not easily achieved! It is the product of both inspiration and perspiration. A first draft, even produced by a great writer, is not a finished work, and requires proofreading and re-editing until it sings. A diamond in the rough is only a very hard rock.
A really good paper is the product of a writing, reading, editing over and over, until the work is perfect. I recommend the following process: write, read, edit, read OUT LOUD, repeat. Often when we read text out loud, we hear oddities of repetition and grammar that we might not catch reading to ourselves. I further recommend that, after you have gone through this process a few times, you ask a fellow student to proofread it.
Although this concludes a very brief list of style tips, the list is by no means exhaustive, and I am sure that I will be adding to it over the course of the semester.
Dr. Benjamin L. Price