BEST WORLD CLASS WRITING GUIDE-PART 7

4. Writing Tips

● Avoid Colloquialisms

● Do not misuse colon and semicolon:
- Colon [:] is used before a list or an explanation that is preceded by a clause that can stand by
itself. Think of the colon as a gate, inviting one to go on.
- Semiocolon [;] is used to connect two independent clauses together into one sentence, or
serves as a super-comma.

● Capitalization :
- Capitalize personal, geographical, company names, days of the week, the names of the
months and holidays, (World War II, the Coca Cola Company, the United States, Spanish
class , First National Bank);
- Capitalize titles when they are accompanied by proper names. (Major Smith, President Jones);
- Capitalize the first word of a direct quotation;
- Capitalize “east,” “west,” “north,” and “south” when they refer to particular sections of the
country but not when they merely indicate direction. (The South has produced many excellent
writers, including William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. [“South” here refers to a
section of the country.]) 

● Abbreviation :
- Abbreviate the titles “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” “Ms.,” “St.,” and “Dr.” when they precede names;
- Abbreviate titles and degrees when they follow names. (David Hall, Ph.D).
You may abbreviate the following in even the most formal writing: A.M. (ante meridiem, before
noon), P.M. (post meridiem, after noon), A.D. (anno Do- mini, in the year of our Lord), B.C.
( before Christ), C.E. (common era), etc. (et cetera, and others), i.e. (id est, that is), and
e.g. (exempli gratia, for example);
- In formal writing, do not abbreviate the names of days, months, centuries, states, countries, or
units of measure. Do not use an ampersand (&) unless it is an official part of a title.
- Do not abbreviate the words for page, chapter, volume, and so forth, except in footnotes and
bibliographies, which have prescribed rules of abbreviation.

Avoid pronouns:
The convention in much academic writing is to write with minimal reference to yourself as an
author. The reason for this lies in a tradition of needing to present your work "objectively", as the
work of a dispassionate and disinterested (that is, unbiased) researcher. So, one of the features
of academic writing is a general absence of the first person pronoun "I".
One way is to let the assignment "speak for itself": for example:
- "I show..." becomes "The report shows..."
- "I interpret the results as..." becomes "The results indicate..."
Another way to avoid the first person is to use the passive voice construction:
- "We administered the questionnaire..." becomes "The questionnaire was administered..."
- "I surveyed the literature" becomes "The literature was surveyed

● Avoid generalizing :

If you cannot come up with specifics or be clear, the generalization may not be obvious, it may
be worse, it could be inaccurate. Use of the words always, all, every, everyone, many, never,
nobody, none can create inaccurate statements, and even factual errors. These inaccuracies
could produce false statements about people, places or things. (e.g. “Marketing will solve the
problem for an organization.” - that does not tell the reader anything about the solution - be
more specific about your statements.

● Use credible resources :
Resources must be identified from reliable sources - nothing from Helium, Wikipedia or
businessballs. Sources must be less than 10 years old. Do not use outdated references of
1980s etc. In most cases, you should stay away from Internet information that doesn't list an
author. While the information you find may be true, it is more difficult to validate information if
you don't know the credentials of the author.
Also do not use blogs, forums and likewise web-pages as a reference for an academical paper.Most educators these days will absolutely check the Web sites that you choose to include, and if
these sites do not meet the minimum requirements of credibility, you might lose crucial points on
an assignment (or even have to do it over again). Trustworthy sources that stand up to healthy
criticism are essential

● Create an outline if you have difficulty hitting all your points - missing points is obvious to
the teachers - many use outlines to grade their students.

● Carefully proofread your papers several hours after completion. It will help you identify
mistakes and parts that need to be fixed. While urgent papers need to be completed within a
very short deadline, most of writing assignments that you will work on have extensive deadlines.
We suggest switching to other than writing activities. After a break you will be able to give a
fresh look to your writing and easily spot mistakes, unclear statements or awkward phrases.

● "I ran out of things to write so I just sort of babbled to get past the last half of the page."
Try summarizing, try increasing your introduction, but do not babble. Coherent language,
even if a little bit of repeating, is better than nonsense.

● "Well, I was sick of people telling me they couldn't figure out what my paper is talking
about, so I tell them. This paper is about how to prevent social stress from interfering with your
family." If you are being told that your reader does not understand the "point" of your paper,
then you are not writing clearly, you are able to explain your point without telling your reader
- "HEY! In case you don't get it, this is what you should understand when we are done." You
aren't a teacher, you are a student, you are not repeating your lessons, you are demonstrating
that you learned something in class. In our case, we are demonstrating that someone learned
something at some given point in time.

● Turnitin and other companies have started developing resource checking tools -
students using made-up resources will begin to have points taken from their work, this means
that you will start hearing back from your customers if you use resources that they cannot verify.

This means ALL resources that would not be found available to people in the US, Canada, or
Europe. Don’t use unknown or made-up resources

● At least 1 source per paragraph - When you are required to use reference materials, one
source per paragraph is the best combination. Do not put couple of arguments in the same paragraph.

● Stick to your topic - the process of writing may lead the writer to exploring various
aspects of a topic. This is good as long as you are not diverging from your topic too much. Print
out your topic at a separate sheet of paper and keep it in front of you in order not to roam
astray.