Kem's Utterly Merciless Guide to Essay Writing

Please Tell Me What Has Led You to Believe that Apostrophes are Optional

2010-06-23T18:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, first of all:

I don't know if this really counts as me being back in the strictest sense of the word. I shouldn't actually even be writing this post because I have far too much marking to do and, in fact, should probably have finished it weeks ago. I'll be working on this post in between my increasingly desperate attempts to mark the last six papers in a pile of a hundred and twenty. It isn't even a "pile" because--somewhat against my will--I am marking online. Marking online is an agonising procedure I would not wish on my worst enemy.* I am about to go mad, and one of the reasons I am about to go mad will be fuelling today's Document of Puppies and Happiness.

Hello, undergrads. Did you miss me? I expect you didn't. While I was gone, did you post on Internet message boards every day? You did? That's wonderful! Did your posts contain plurals? They did! Did your posts contain possessives? Fantastic! Did you mix up the goddamn plural and possessive forms in every bloody post because you had never ever bothered to learn a single blessed thing about apostrophes?

I know the answer to this one. Do you know why I know the answer to this one?

I know the answer to this one because every single one of you is apparently in my class right now. That is why. Damn it all to Hades.

I am shocked to glance back over my index page and realise that I have apparently never ranted about apostrophes. The omission must be remedied. I am back, my dear, dear friends, so that I can terrify you into learning to use apostrophes properly. This is my quest...to follow that star...no matter how hopeless...no matter how far. I feel a lot like Don Quixote sometimes.**

The apostrophe is a strange little beast. It has been around for a fairly long time, but it is still a relatively recent arrival to the English language and has probably been misused since its first appearance, which was likely--according to this Random Paper I Have Found on the Internet, at least--at some point in the sixteenth century. It has two main functions in English: 1) to indicate that something is missing from a word or phrase and 2) to denote possession in combination with the letter "s."

Simple? You would think so. However, if undergrads treat commas like the chocolate sprinkles of written language, they treat apostrophes rather like dessert forks: unnecessary utensils that only snobs learn to use properly. Undergrads, your reckless refusal to internalise two or three simple, necessary rules is driving me completely mad. Apostrophes are not dessert forks. I wish they were steak knives so that I could intimidate you with them.

Since you, O Undergrads, should not be using contractions in formal writing,**** I shouldn't really have to explain the "omission" rule of apostrophe use, but what the hell. If you're leaving letters out of a word or yoking two words together in abbreviated form to make a single term, you replace the missing letters with an apostrophe. Cannot becomes can't and I have becomes I've. In fiction, you will often see authors adding verisimilitude to their dialogue via apostrophes, turning because into 'cause, of course into 'course, or looking into lookin'.***** Undergrads who are prone to flaunting the rules of formal writing and using contractions may also be prone to leaving the apostrophes out of those contractions. They need to realise that can't and cant are, in fact, two entirely different words. One is what you say when your sister asks you to babysit her triplets; the other is what politicians and religious leaders fling at your head for fun. You may be able to see how the apostrophe clarifies matters in this case. It is also useful when distinguishing between 'cause and cause, I'd and Id, 'course and course, she'd and shed, she'll and shell, he'll and hell, and so on. Apostrophes clarify, people. They are not dessert forks.

However, the more usual error in formal essays involves the possessive form. As I sincerely hope every schoolchild learns, 's denotes possession in English. The language is quite unusual in this regard. I know some Swedish, a language that is related to English via their shared Germanic roots; in that language, the possessive is denoted by a plain "s" without a preceding apostrophe. I believe German itself does the same thing, though like English, it also has a form roughly equivalent to "the X of the Y" ("the eyes of the dragon" instead of "the dragon's eyes"), just like French. Way back in the Middle Ages, English had the plain s possessive as well.

At any rate, yes, modern English is weird. That doesn't mean that you don't have to follow the damn rules. I am seriously doubting that the students who consistently leave apostrophes out of possessives are sitting there thinking, "The Germans do it, so why shouldn't I?"

Simple, simple rule: if you are talking about someone or something possessing something or someone, the possessor gets an apostrophe. Period. (One small note: this rule does not apply to pronouns, which are governed by their own rules. You need to learn those rules as well. I'm just saying.)

The problem is that we use that final s (without the apostrophe) to denote something else in English: the plural form. If you bother to take ten minutes to learn the difference, you are only going to mix up the two forms when your fingers are typing more quickly than your brain can handle, but a lot of people don't take those ten minutes. Thus, instead of Felicia's cats--with Felicia (possessive) owning at least two cats (plural)--we may get the abomination Felicias cat's. Just typing that made my head explode. There is absolutely no reason anyone should pluralise Felicia or turn her cats into a singular beastie that owns something unspecified. There is also absolutely no reason anyone should make this mistake when the plural form of a word differs substantially from its singular form. For instance, I have seen students writing about "the families secret" instead of "the family's secret." Ow. My brain.

Please learn this rule. It is simple. It is effective. If you know it, I shall have fewer reasons to scream and hit things.

Note of interest: the insertion of an apostrophe into a plural is prevalent enough that the error has its own name: the greengrocer's (or greengrocers') apostrophe. This name has come about because grocers are unfortunately prone to selling apple's, pear's, carrot's, and other maddeningly mangled pluralised fruit and vegetables (or, perhaps, vegetable's).

I have had students who consistently mix up the plural and possessive forms and others who use the apostrophes randomly, sometimes sticking them into possessives and sometimes into plurals. Others simply don't use apostrophes at all, ever. I realise that this error goes back hundreds of years, but I still blame the Internet.****** My dear, dear students, do you know how tired I get of typing, "Apostrophes are your friends. Please do not neglect or misuse them. Please read up on the difference between plurals and possessives"? I get almost as tired as I get of typing, "Avoid discussing authorial intent," "Please double space all university essays," "What is the significance of this observation?", and "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH." That is how bleeding tired I get.

Another source of confusion is the plural possessive and/or the possessive form of words ending in s. This issue is a controversial one, and for once, I am not going to stand up and declare that my way of approaching it is the right way, mostly because everybody disagrees so strenuously on what the rule actually is that I really don't know what is true any more.******* However, I'll eventually reveal my favourite version of the rule. I do think you need to pick a version and stick with it.

The guy over at Motivated Grammar has summarised the issue succinctly; his rant is worth a read. Basically, the debate is over how to make words ending in s possessive. Such words include singular nouns such as dress, plural nouns such as puppies, surnames such as Dickens, first names such as James, and historical first names such as Jesus. The basic rule, and the one to which I try to stick, is that singular nouns (including proper nouns) ending in s are made possessive with 's, whereas plural nouns ending in s are made possessive with ' alone. Therefore, the list above gives us the following possessives: dress's, puppies', Dickens's, James's, and Jesus's. I like this rule. It is easy to remember. However, as the Motivated Grammar guy informs us, there are several possible variations on this rule; some people advocate using the plain ' for all names, for names that would be difficult to pronounce with 's, or for ancient names such as Jesus and Moses. My personal belief is that these variations make things too freaking difficult, but I'm willing to accept them if you follow a given rule consistently. I am not willing to accept dress' as the possessive of dress. Singular non-proper nouns ending in s are subject to the same rules as singular non-proper nouns not ending in s.

However--darling undergrads--none of the variations allows for Dicken's being the possessive form of Dickens. I have even seen Mr. Dickens's name itself--neither pluralised, which would properly be Dickenses, or as a possessive--being written as Dicken's (as in, "Charles Dicken's is the author of Great Expectations"). Despite the fact that common sense would seem to indicate the SHEER UNMITIGATED FOLLY of this error, people still make it.

I realise that in order to follow these rules consistently, you will have to spend a few minutes proofreading each essay you write. My heart bleeds for you, albeit not really all that much. Remember: proofreading may be a minor inconvenience for you, but if you do it, and do it well, you will improve your markers' lives immeasurably. You have to read only your essay. Your markers have to read your essay and the essays written by all your classmates. When thirty-five students in a class of fifty do not understand how to use apostrophes, tears happen.

I am now finished the six essays I mentioned at the beginning of this document. I believe four of the six students made apostrophe errors. I am going to go sit in a corner and wail softly now. Go forth, young undergrads. Go forth and apostrophise.********

*Unless, of course, my worst enemy were a Batman plagiarist, which, to be frank, he or she probably is.
**The rest of the bridge of "The Impossible Dream" is even more appropriate here, actually.***
***Guess what I just did? I just played "The Impossible Dream" on the pennywhistle so that I wouldn't have to go back to marking. Unfortunately, now I really have to go back to marking, and my neighbours probably want to kill me.
****Even though you bloody well do.
*****Unless the author is Stephen King, at which point looking becomes lookin. We generally just let Stephen King do whatever the hell he wants.
******Plus possibly the greengrocers.
*******Sob.
********In all senses of the word. Look it up. It's an interesting word.

I Am a Bad, Bad Person

2008-10-15T20:42:00.000-07:00

I am going to post again properly. I swear. Someday, somehow, I shall free myself from the Tyranny of the Paying Job that Requires Me to Give Myself a Headache Marking and post a real post on this blog. Lately, I've simply had too much to do. I'm currently in the middle of marking one hundred midterms. My brain is throbbing, and it is probably not really going to let me sleep much tonight. I'm not even sure this post is going to be coherent at all.

However, I did promise to post on Blog Action Day, which will be over in thirteen minutes (I finished tomorrow's lecture five minutes ago, by the way). The theme this year is "poverty." As we are allowed to approach the topic from any angle we like, I shall be all ornery and write on poverty of coherent thought.

Undergraduates don't mean to write essays that deserve to be fed immediately into the shredder, then cursed with eternal life and scattered to the four winds. For the most part, students remain unaware of the horror they are visiting upon their markers. They are well-meaning, chock full of good intentions, and tripping merrily down the road to Hell.* When they reach the gates, they are appalled. How did they get here? Why are their marks so terrible? They're doing everything right; what's going wrong?

Dear Undergraduate and/or High-School Student:

You have the ability to think and write coherently. You are intelligent, motivated, and possibly even moderately creative. Now you must learn to follow a few extremely simple rules. They will improve your life immeasurably. If you are really lucky, they will usher you off the road to Hell and onto the road to Good Analysis and Pretty Decent Grades.

Here they are:

1) Read the damn instructions. Seriously: read them all the way through. I know you're tired/stressed/busy/way too confident in your own psychic powers/etc., but if you don't read the instructions, you are probably not going to follow them. When I am setting a midterm...and I provide you beforehand with a rubric that emphasises in boldface the fact that I want you to do a close reading of the passage provided and not simply use it as an excuse to wander off on a vague and garbled repetition of those of your lecture notes that pertain to the text as a whole and not, in fact, this particular passage at all...and then I mention in class that you should pay particular attention to the bolded section...and I read it aloud very slowly and tell you exactly what it means...and we practise close reading for forty-five minutes...and I read out the bolded section again...and I provide it once more on your actual midterm...then if you completely ignore the bloody bolded section, you are not going to get a good mark. The instructions are right there in front of you. I fail to see how I could make them more apparent. I suppose I could scream them loudly in your face.

2) Buy a style guide. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. You are responsible for knowing the fiddly little rules of essay format. You are expected to understand when to underline a title and when to put it in quotation marks. I am trying to teach you about Geoffrey Chaucer. I shall sketch out the major rules if you are first- or second-year students, but I don't have time to go over them all. They are not difficult. Figure them out, then use them.

3) It isn't an argument if it is so obvious that if you said it to Homer Simpson, he would respond, "Well, duh." In other words, your huge essay on why The Castle of Otranto is a work of Gothic fiction leaves me cold. I know it is a work of Gothic fiction. It is the freaking definition of a work of Gothic fiction. It does not take a working human brain to formulate an "argument" on why it is a work of Gothic fiction. Deal with meaning, not observable fact. An essay is not a piece of busy-work; it is meant to make you think. So think.

4) I am not the devil because I insist that you back up your points with evidence.** You think you're being creative; I think you're making stuff up. You can be creative and still analyse the text via what is actually in it. You can be downright weird as long as you have evidence to support your weirdness.

5) If your handwriting is illegible even to you, I shall not be able to read it. My inability to decipher a sentence that seems to read, "In duck blorgia Hamilton, the pruit somed it crrgulatiory ciruins, ta," does not give you licence to hate me forever. My own handwriting can be...difficult. I print. Oh...and please stop complaining because I ask you to write double-spaced. You simply have to remember to skip every other line for the duration of the midterm. I'm the one who has to squint her way through reams of single-spaced, illegible, comma-splice-heavy plot summary written by someone who can apparently not follow instructions at all.

6) Ooh...look...look! You've had a good idea! It's simple...effective...relevant...and full of--no! No, don't leave it! Don't move on until you've--

Festering Hades.

If you come up with a good idea, deal with it. Dwell on it. Explore its implications. Follow up on it. Provide evidence to support it. Love and cherish it forever. Don't simply blob it briefly onto your paper, then wander away without comment. I would rather read an essay that dealt minutely with one solid idea than an essay containing six scattered gems of brilliance, none of which was explained or elaborated upon.

It's nearly 12:30 a.m., and I have to teach a lot of people a lot of things tomorrow. I'm sorry I've been absent, and I promise I'll be back. Write well, my children...write well.

*My personal Hell, generally.
**I am the devil for completely unrelated reasons.

A Ranty Post for the Batman Plagiarists

2008-07-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Members of a Certain (High-School?) Class in Delhi, New Delhi, India or Thereabouts:

Your teacher has set you a very interesting assignment. He* has, in fact, asked you to write a paragraph on what it would be like to be Batman for a day. I would like to have been set this assignment in high school myself. There are many things I would do if I could be Batman for a day, though I am not going to tell you what they are because you little freaks of nature are trolling the Internet in an attempt to plagiarise the Batman assignment.

What the hell is wrong with you? Your entire class has googled this phrase and stumbled upon my website. Are you really all going to hand in the same paragraph? I hope you do. I hope your teacher googles the phrase and comes across this blog entry. Hey, teacher in India! Guess what? Your students are a bunch of spineless cheaters! They are completely incapable of independent thought. If you told them to jump off a cliff, they would jump off a cliff, though perhaps not before googling the best cliff locations worldwide.

Hey, students in India! You are cheating. You are stealing. You are taking credit for work that is not yours. You are Avoiding. Writing. A paragraph. On Batman. Your teacher is not asking you to describe a room or explain how to make a sandwich. He wants you to write on Batman! Batman! Batman! My God...are you really that lazy? Are you truly incapable of spending fifteen minutes thinking about what you might do if you were Batman for a day? Okay, so not everyone likes or knows very much about Batman.** If you must go straight to the goddamn Internet as soon as you get your assignment, why not, you know, use this fantastic resource to find out what kind of person Batman is and what sorts of things he might do in the course of a day? This sort of research is creative (not to mention fun) and will give you the background to come up with ideas of your own.

However...nooooooooo...you plug the title of your assignment into Google and hope against hope that someone else has already completed such an assignment and posted it online. Your laziness truly knows no bounds.

I lied earlier. I shall tell you what I would do if I were Batman for a day: I would work my little armoured butt off to figure out who you guys were and rat you out to your teacher. Boring, I know...but Batman could certainly do it.

Love,
Kem.

*Or she, but let us simplify our pronouns.
**I do, though.

Commas are Not "Pauses"...not "Pauses" at All

2008-07-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

About a hundred and fifty years ago, a reader sent me a link to this useful site, which lists--and I quote--"50+ Open Courseware Writing Classes from the World's Leading Universities." If you want to learn how to write essays, stories, poetry, plays, terribly boring business documents, even more terribly boring scientific articles, or blogs that do not insult their readers in every other paragraph and go off into pointless rants about comma splices, this site is for you. If you do not want to learn any of the above, I am not sure why you are reading these words. Go away.

I am still not Officially on My Break and am, in fact, supposed to be marking twenty exams right now, so I shall still not be returning to my regular scheduled railing quite yet. I realise that it has been a long, long time since I claimed I was going to deal with the narrative mode. I am a bad person. I deserve to have to mark twenty exams. I also deserve to have lost at Scrabble to a man who got a bingo* with the word "mariner." He always gets a bingo with the word "mariner." How does he? Why can't I? Why do I always end up with two "v"s, four "i"s, and a "u"?** Is "ivuivii" a word? ("Aalii" is. Use this information well, my friends.)

At any rate...it may be time for another Grammar Moment. It may especially be time for another Grammar Moment because the bleak and sordid fact of the matter is that I have never actually had a real comma-splice rant in this blog. Oh, I mention comma splices in passing occasionally, but I haven't explained what a comma splice is and why the very thought of it makes me try to gouge my own eyes out with my teeth.

I shall deal with commas in general, then work my way up to the comma splice and, incidentally, into a righteous fury.

Here we go:

I have already explained--here--the extraordinarily simple but almost universally ignored fact that a comma is not "a pause" and a semi-colon is not "a longer pause." Punctuation marks, believe it or not, have particular functions. If they didn't, I would not scream and punch my desk when confronted with something like:

He was; a good student who, liked to finish! his work. On time...

If you use a comma, it had better be in your sentence for a reason. Otherwise, I shall have to hunt you down and personally terrify you into learning the punctuation rules.

Let's start with a basic sentence:

John laughs.

Only someone with the grammatical sense of a lemming would write this sentence as follows:

John, laughs.

Why? You don't separate the subject from the verb with a freaking comma...that's why. There's no need to do so. The subject and the verb are connected. A comma between them implies that they need to be separated for some reason.

At any rate, I know that you are right now staring in bafflement at this sentence and thinking, "Why is Kem explaining such a simple rule? Has she finally lost it? Has the marking destroyed her sense of proportion? If she goes mad and jumps into a ravine, can I have her piano?"

I am explaining "such a simple rule" because people break it all the time. They may not do so in sentences as tiny as the one above, but I cannot get through a batch of marking without encountering a shudder-inducing construction such as:

In Beowulf, the title character is a hero because he, is able to expel the monsters from Heorot.

Gosh...the sentence is longer than "John laughs"! It must need more commas! Let's stick 'em any old where!

The whole separating-the-subject-from-the-verb-with-a-comma thing baffles me. Even the erroneous "pause" rule doesn't work here; who besides William Shatner would pause between "he" and "is"? For crying out loud, people: common sense does quite frequently work fairly well with regards to punctuation. By the way, that sentence would also not work with a comma following "In," "the," "title," "character," "is," "a"," "hero," "because," "is," "able," "to," "expel," "the," "monsters," or "from." Commas are not the chocolate sprinkles of written language.

Someone else might write the Beowulf sentence above as follows:

In Beowulf the title character is a hero because he is able to expel the monsters from Heorot.

In informal writing, the comma that follows an introductory word or phrase is sometimes optional. In formal writing, it isn't. The comma after "Beowulf" fulfils a certain function: it separates the initial modifier ("In Beowulf") from the clause ("the title character is a hero") that follows it. Leaving out the initial comma can sometimes lead to confusion. For instance, in the sentence:

Once we had finished sorting out the quilts our cousins made us cookies.

the reader may experience a short period of bafflement while trying to figure out whether the cousins had made the quilts or the cookies. Sure, the meaning does eventually become clear, but in that moment of bewilderment, the reader's concentration is broken. A comma after "quilts" saves her a headache and a small amount of despair.

Another common comma problem arises in the following two examples:

Bob was an excellent ninja assassin, and Rosemary had taught him everything he knew.

Bob was an excellent ninja assassin and had learned everything he knew from Rosemary.

Many writers would leave out the comma in the first sentence and add one after "assassin" in the second. I would then grow to monstrous size and stomp on their heads.**

Two simple rules:

1) If you have two complete clauses joined with a coordinating conjunction, a comma must appear before the conjunction.

2) If you have two phrases joined with a coordinating conjunction, leave the comma out or risk Kem's wrath.

Think of it this way: "Bob was an excellent ninja assassin" can be a complete sentence, as can, "Rosemary had taught him everything he knew." They may be joined with a semi-colon or a comma and coordinating conjunction; alternately, you can leave them as two complete sentences. However, "had learned everything he knew from Rosemary" cannot be a complete sentence.*** The "and" there is actually joining "was an excellent ninja assassin" (a phrase) with "had learned everything he knew from Rosemary" (another phrase). There are two sentences in here, but they are, "Bob was an excellent ninja assassin," and, "Bob had learned everything he knew from Rosemary." Because you omit the second "Bob," you are squishing phrases, not clauses, together, and you can (nay...you must) leave out the damned comma.

A major function of the comma is as an indicator of parenthetical words or phrases: i.e., bits of a sentence that don't actually have to be there for the sentence to make sense. Some examples:

The gilded baseball bat, which was falling to pieces, was probably not going to last much longer as a trophy.

Claire, my sister, is completely insane.

The boy slid down the roof, his fingers scrabbling vainly for purchase.****

It was, however, not a good day to die.

The commas clarify the functions of the parenthetical constructions. The parenthetical pair of commas also, by the way, allows you to separate the subject from the verb...but with two commas (with words in between 'em), not one.

If you write, "It was however not a good day to die," I shall metaphorically flay you.

There are many other tiny comma rules, but these ones will do to go on with. One more huge one remains. It is time, ladies and gentlemen, to discuss my least favourite error:

The Comma Splice.

O comma splice, how I hate thee. How I wish published authors hated thee too. When I am reading happily along in a book by J. K. Rowling or Terry Pratchett, both of whom should really know better, and you suddenly rear your hideous head, I feel like retiring to a corner to weep. Why do people love you so? Why do they not realise that you are promoting terrible laziness? What is wrong with everyone?

A comma splice occurs when a writer joins two independent clauses with a comma. An example might be:

The evil overlord was at the end of his tether, he was tired of destroying planets and wanted to write a novel.

"The evil overlord was at the end of his tether" is a sentence. "He was tired of destroying planets and wanted to write a novel" is a sentence. Together, joined only by a comma, they are still two freaking bloody sentences.

Stop using comma splices! Stop it now! There are so many perfectly legitimate ways to join independent clauses that you have no excuses for your lazy rule-flaunting. Write the sentence like this:

The evil overlord was at the end of his tether; he was tired of destroying planets and wanted to write a novel.

...or this:

The evil overlord was at the end of his tether, for he was tired of destroying planets and wanted to write a novel.

...or this:

The evil overlord was at the end of his tether. He was tired of destroying planets and wanted to write a novel.

Look at all the options. Look at them just sitting there, waiting for you. Pick one, damn it. Don't abuse the poor comma.

Another capacity in which I sometimes see comma splices is in the introduction of quotations into a paragraph. Students get all frightened***** when I jump up and down and scream about the need for them to incorporate quotations into sentences of their own. They end up "incorporating" the quotations as follows:

In King Lear, Edmund is motivated to revenge by his own illegitimacy, "Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land. / Our father's love is to the bastard Edmund, / As to th' legitimate" (1.2.16-18).

Dear fictional student...you are not incorporating the bloody quotation by sticking it onto the end of your sentence by means of an illegal comma. You may as well just be plunking it down into the middle of the paragraph without explanation; you're really doing the same thing here. The only difference is that you've substituted a comma for a period. Make the quotation part of your actual sentence, please. You haven't even realised that the quotation you have chosen is not really appropriate to your point. If you had actually made an effort and incorporated the quotation properly, you could not have failed to notice. Try:

In King Lear, Edmund's observation that his "father's love is to the bastard Edmund, / As to th' legitimate" (1.2.17-18) spurs his attempt to rise above both "Legitimate Edgar" (1.2.16) and the father whose fault his illegitimacy is.

There: the quotations have actively become part of your argument, and the monstrous comma splice is gone forever. The Forces of Half-Decent Writing have Prevailed.

That's enough about commas for now. I shall leave you with some Filthy Plagiarism:******

composition on hold your blue gold

...the hell? I don't even know what this moron means. I hope he accidentally bites a hole in his tongue.

write a paragraph describing your best friend

example of paragraph describing your best friend

How many times do I have to say this? It's your best friend. Sit the hell down and describe her, you putrefying rat corpse.

writing an essay describing plot eternal present

The Eternal Present seems to be a film. Perhaps you could go and watch it, then describe its plot. Just a suggestion.

narrative paragraph on making a sandwich

Are there really that many people out there who are incapable of describing how to make a friggin' sandwich? Dude: make a sandwich, then write about it. You can eat the sandwich afterwards if you like. If you steal the description off the Internet, you don't get to eat the sandwich.

essay writing on fame

I'll give you fame, you pustule. I'll make you famous for being a cheating piece of slime. HEY, TEACHERS WHO HAVE SET TOPICS ON "FAME": AT LEAST ONE OF YOUR STUDENTS IS CHEATING! NAIL THE LITTLE FREAK!

essay writing about different ways a person is "smart"

It is understandable that you would need to "cheat" on this "topic," as you are clearly not "familiar" with the whole "smart" thing.

write an essay on fault is within me not in the world

You are an essay on fault is within me not in the world.

paragraph writing about if i were batman for a day

I am still completely incapable of understanding why anyone assigned an essay or paragraph on Batman would not want to write it. Admittedly, I do enjoy the opportunity to imagine what Batman would do to someone he caught stealing an essay about him.*******

My brain is bleeding, and I need to go to bed. I'll be back when I've finished marking and thus honed my bitterness to a fine point.

*A "bingo" is what you get in Scrabble when you use all seven of your letters and earn a fifty-point bonus. It is not what I get in Scrabble when I use all seven of my letters and earn a fifty-point bonus, since I never actually manage to do that. A "scream of frustration" is what you get in Scrabble when you can't come up with a bingo and continually lose to someone who keeps spelling bloody "mariner."
**Just like Dr. Horrible, though admittedly, he only gets to do it in a wish-fulfilment musical number.
***...no matter how sincerely you wish it could.
****This sentence is pretty clumsy (you want to get the modifier as close to the subject as possible); the problem is that "The boy, his fingers scrabbling vainly for purchase, slid down the roof" is also clumsy in a different way.
*****I can't imagine why.
******New readers: the Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour records Google searches done by idiots who stumble upon this site while searching for material to steal.
*******It would involve batarangs and the words, "Fear me."

Out for Blood: My Immoderate Response to the Garbage of Dale Spender

2008-07-16T06:01:00.000-07:00

Before you read the following, please go here and try to get through this article without wanting to kill somebody. Then pick up your sword and return to the Kemzone.

Dear Dr. Dale Spender:

I hesitate to respond publicly to the festering crap you have been spouting to The Australian, if only because I would really rather that your views not be spread and therefore legitimised. However, there's a fine line between trying to prevent the dissemination of poison by ignoring it and trying to prevent the dissemination of poison by administering an antidote. I think I'll go the antidote route this time around. I'll probably do it by yelling a lot.

So you, madam, are "in touch" with the youth of today, yo? Your deep experience with "educationalism" has obviously prepared you for your new and exciting role as a proponent of cheating. Don't you roll your eyes at me! How on earth is cutting and pasting random material from the Internet and presenting it as original work any different from cutting and pasting random material from printed books and articles and presenting it as original work? Are students who lift whole papers from the Web just "learning"? Are the little bastards who troll my site looking for "free essays" on subjects ranging from The Hobbit to Batman to descriptions of their own aunts simply educationalisming themselves in their own ways? Or are they, in fact, attempting not to do any bloody work? You decide, O Educationalist.

All right...let's assume, for a moment, that you're not insane enough to be talking about students who steal entire papers. Let's assume your warm glow of benevolence extends only far enough to include students who take ideas, sentences, and/or passages from the Internet and pass them off as their own. Let's explore this practice in light of my particular discipline, English literature. Please stop me if you've heard this one before:

A student walks into an Internet cafe, essay assignment clutched in his hot little hand. He has a choice of five topics; let's say he's decided to go with #2, which is:

Discuss the motif of the journey in at least two of the texts we have studied this term.*

At the top of the instruction sheet is a blurb in which the prof explains that the student will be expected to narrow the topic down, finding a unique analytical angle from which to approach it. He will also be expected not to refer extensively to secondary sources but to "close-read" the texts; secondary material should be used for back-up only (i.e., secondary sources can help confirm points by providing necessary information, but they cannot themselves make points).

Let us pause for a moment and explore why the assignment is set up in this way. Is the prof "out of touch" with the ways students learn? Is she attempting to stifle the creativity one accesses when one goes onto Wikipedia and lifts a few paragraphs from an article on As You Like It? No, actually. She wants her students to learn how to analyse. She wants them to realise that analytical writing is not a cut-and-paste process, even with proper citation; it doesn't consist of reading other people's opinions and repeating them in an essay of one's own. Instead, it involves students using evidence from the texts at hand and coming up with their own (informed) opinions.

Last year, I was starting a group of students on a poetry unit when one young woman raised her hand. "I don't like poetry," she said. "I never get it. When I write essays on it, I always know I'm not going to have anything smart to say about it; that's why I like to read stuff about it online. Those people are much smarter than I am, and I can never come up to their level, so I need to read their stuff first."

Those people are much smarter than I am. This student was smart. She made intelligent comments in class; when she was pushed to it, she could find meaning in the poetry we were analysing. However, someone had made her feel as if her analytical opinions weren't valid because they "weren't as good" as the stuff she'd seen online. Well, no...possibly they weren't. She was a first-year student approaching poetry at the university level for the first time ever. However, she certainly had a chance to learn to be "as good" as these other critics if she was not bashed over the head with the idea that poetry was incomprehensible to anyone but experts and that she would be penalised for writing anything other than what these experts themselves had written.

First-years tend to see analysis as this great big magical process that is completely inaccessible to them. Some view it as "making stuff up." Some think they're simply "not smart enough" to understand it. Some buckle down and figure it out...but members of the first two groups may gravitate towards the ultimately harmful process of going to the critics first and deriving information from their work without fully understanding it. If students don't cite the sources properly, they're cheating. If they do cite the sources properly, they're filling their essays with other people's ideas and therefore losing out on the original-content marks.

To return to the theoretical student in the theoretical cafe with the theoretical assignment on the journey motif:

This student, whose name may as well be Siegfried, is baffled by the assignment. Journey motifs? What does that mean? He takes a look at the two texts on which he wants to write, the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Book I of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. Both texts involve physical journeys, but he can't really think of anything to say about that. They're just journeys, right? What's to say?

Siegfried sits down at a computer and logs on. He types "Canterbury Tales" and "essay" into Google. Oh, hey: here's a whole site full of papers on Chaucer! He checks, but none of them seems to be about journeys per se. That's all right; here's an essay on estate satire. Isn't it true that life itself is a journey? Don't people take metaphorical personal journeys all the time? Aren't we really going on a journey every time we make a decision about what to have for breakfast? Couldn't it be said that Chaucer himself is going on a journey when he makes the decision to write his poem as estate satire? That sort of thing is much more interesting than actual physical journeys, and look at all this ready-made analysis right here on the Internet! Siegfried is ecstatic. That's half his essay right there.

Now...Spenser. Siegfriend googles "Faerie Queene" and "essay." Damn...nothing on journeys...but here's a paper on allegory, and here's another one on the Redcrosse Knight and the stupid choices he makes. Maybe, Siegfried thinks, he can combine the two approaches and write about how Redcrosse's dumb choices take him on an allegorical journey of decision-making! Brilliant!

Siegfried gets to work and busily lifts ideas (and sometimes even full paragraphs, since they fit so well) from the online papers. He adds a generic introduction and a conclusion that repeats it almost word for word. Voilà: an essay...and he's hardly had to think about it at all.

Oh, Siegfried, you cheating, lying little idiot. Even if you had been honest about your sources, you would have shot yourself in the foot here.

Dr. Spender, tell me true: do you think Siegfried has learned anything from his little online adventure? I think he has learned a great deal about misinterpreting his set topic, but very little else. Students who go online for "answers" often do end up lifting inappropriate information because they can't find anything else; they try to make their stolen paragraphs fit into the topics provided, with the result that the prof finds herself blinking in puzzlement--and growing suspicion--at a paper that is supposedly on the role of women but actually on the masculine qualities of heroism...with the word "women" plugged in once in a while. Another major problem with Siegfried's approach** is that he has found three different essays on three different topics; he is therefore going to have a hard time actually comparing the texts he is discussing. He will probably write two mini-essays in one, joining them together only with a flimsy transitional phrase such as, "As well, in The Faerie Queene...."

Oh, I'll grant you that some students approach plagiarism much more intelligently than Siegfried, finding appropriate material and integrating it smoothly into their texts. If they don't understand the material, they shouldn't be incorporating it; if they do, they are bright enough to think up original ideas themselves and, well, shouldn't be incorporating it. Students don't learn to analyse when they steal. They simply learn to steal. Sure, some of them will internalise and learn from the new information they have pilfered, but they won't thereby figure out how to create such information themselves using their very own brains.

Dr. Spender, O Thou Well-Known Educationalist: perhaps you should descend from the heady heights of educationalism and actually spend some time in a classroom. You may think you are hip and with it when you validate students' cheating, but you are actually just ignoring the fact--extremely obvious to many of us--that students who cut and paste off the Internet are no different from students who copy information from books and articles...or from their friends...or from their parents or siblings or guidance counselors. Such students, my friend, have been around since the Dawn of Students. Internet plagiarism is not "just part of the way students learn"; it is a relatively recent permutation of the way students have always cheated.

Yours with great sincerity and quite a lot of uncontrollable fury,

Kem the Merciless

*This one's a pretty standard topic in English classes, actually; I've seen it used several times. If any of my students have stumbled across this site, however, they should note that though many of them wrote on a similar topic last term, none of them is implicated in the story of Siegfried. The most problematic of their essays were simply a bit off topic. It is, of course, entirely possible to write off-topic papers without the aid of plagiarism.
**Aside from the fact that he is plagiarising, that is.

Rules Are Made to Be Broken, but Not the Little Annoying Ones

2008-06-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

I'm really not sure I'm going to be able to keep up with the once-a-week thing I seem to be forcing on myself--especially as I should really currently be marking, writing a lecture, drawing four comics, and cleaning my apartment in anticipation of my parents' visit, which will coincide with my convocation this Friday (the 13th, of course)--but it's hot, and it's Saturday, and I feel like complaining about stuff.* Before I begin ripping into you, however, I have a few comments to make about Other Business:

1) I've been neglecting PFROD. It's admittedly kind of exhausting to maintain; however, I'll get back to it eventually. I've stuck a few entries at the bottom of this post, though you should note that these entries constitute only a tiny fraction of what I get every day.

2) If you haven't seen the comments on the last post, check them out. Two Instigators of Filthy Plagiarism have infiltrated the site, and I and a reader named Kyle have declared war on them. Will you join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade is there a world you long to see?**

3) I sometimes amuse myself by googling this blog's name and trying to figure out who has noticed it, mostly because I like it when people get funny ideas about it or, well, me. A case in point: the nice people at Blogged have filed KUMGEW under "Entertainment." What? Entertainment? Essay writing is not entertainment! It is deadly serious and can destroy you if you do it badly! Would it be entertaining if you started an essay with a quotation one too many times and your marker came after you with a hatchet? Would it be entertaining if you repeated your thesis statement word for word in your conclusion and inadvertently started a nuclear war?*** I. Think. Not.

As well, a StumbleUpon user has described KUMGEW as "hilarious, British, spicy, educational." Note the "educational" (not "entertaining"). "Hilarious" and "spicy" I'll give you (and thank you, sir), but it's the "British" that gets me here.

Blimey, mate...why do you think my blog is British? It's sodding Canadian, innit? Bloody hell. I go out of my way to project a bracing northern sort of character, and what do I get for it? Suddenly, I'm British! That's bollocks! Too right I've gone off my nut on this one. Give us some credit, will you, love? Cheers.****

Seriously, though: do I sound British? I don't mind sounding British, but do I? I don't sound British in real life.

4) KUMGEW is possibly the worst acronym ever. Well, oops.

Now that all that randomness is out of the way, I proudly present:

Stupid Essay-Writing Rules and Why You Should Follow Them

In my postwriting post, I spent a lot of time explaining in great detail the ten thousand important things you needed to do to your essay between the time you finished writing it and the time you handed it in. I neglected the ten thousand and first: after you have read for sense, content, form, spelling, flow, consistency, and logic, you also need to make sure you have followed the formal conventions that are keeping your markers from losing their brilliant but fragile minds.

You see, it is possible to grow tired of writing, "Underline or italicise titles of novels," in the margins over and over and over again. It is possible to come to loath the sight of the words, "Incorporate quotations into sentences of your own," "Use double quotation marks consistently; single quotation marks should appear internally only,"***** "Indent twice for block quotations," "Take block quotations all the way to the right margin," "Double-space block quotations," "READ UP ON THE RULES FOR BLOCK QUOTATIONS!", "No comma between author's name and page number," "No 'p.' before page number," "Use parenthetical citations, not footnotes," and, "Use footnotes, not endnotes." It is extremely possible to hate writing these comments so much that one will eventually, when faced with the prospect of an essay riddled with such errors, begin to cry.

Some of the comments above apply exclusively to MLA-formatted essays. Other styles involve other rules. The important thing is that you know which rules you are meant to be following, then follow them. Ignorance is no excuse. If you don't own a style guide, acquire one; if, for some reason, you can't acquire one, find one at the library or check out one of the many websites that cover these niggling little rules.

Why do I care? Am I anal? Well, yes, I kind of am. Do I hate you and want to mark up your essays in evil and unnecessary ways? No, I do not. I would prefer not to have to mark up your essays at all. I would love to receive papers so pristine and beautifully argued that all I could really do was swoon and award them "A+"s. I don't enjoy writing the same bloody comments thirty times in a row. I do it because I am trying to cure you of sloppiness, laziness, and a propensity to regard essays as busy-work.

You're not just learning to read, write, and argue; you're learning to present yourself and your ideas. If published authors aren't allowed to format their pieces any old how, you shouldn't be allowed to do so either. Following conventions is tedious, but it creates damned professional-looking essays. If you go on in academia and submit journal articles in which you haven't bothered to italicise titles--or, worse, if you are blithely italicising the wrong titles--editors may reject your work, no matter how brilliant it is. If you take an office job and demonstrate an unwillingness to stick to the formal rules necessary to reports and presentations, you may be branded as lazy, sloppy, or irresponsible. Sure, these rules are "petty." They're still rules. Make an effort to learn them; they are really not all that difficult to remember.

I won't claim the rules pertaining to titles are absolutely universal, but here are the ones I have always been taught to follow:

1) Underline or italicise titles of books, plays, long poems, or websites. Choose either underlining or italics; they mean the same thing. Underlining is a convention dating from the days of the typewriter. As typewriters could not italicise words, writers would have to use underlining as a sort of shorthand for italics. I would recommend sticking to italics in typed work, while underlining titles in in-class essays.

2) Put quotation marks around the titles of short stories, articles, short poems, web pages (belonging to larger websites), lectures, and unpublished books (such as dissertations).

If in doubt as to whether your professor subscribes to these rules, approach her and ask. With luck, she won't even bite your head off.******

The Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour

Today's selections from FPROD are:

free discrition essay written by a student on myroom with a bay window

As I have said time and time again, why don't you simply walk into your room and describe it? It's your freaking room. Why do you need to steal someone else's description? Could it possibly be because you can't spell "description"? You are evil, and I hate you. I don't know whether or not I should be encouraged (or less angry) because after you found my blog, you actually spent the next fifteen minutes reading various bits of it. Have I shamed you out of being a Filthy Plagiarist? Please say yes.

How Do You Write An Essay About Aliens

It is possible that this person is simply looking for very specific instructions about how to write an essay that happens to be about aliens. It is also possible that I am British.

opinion essay example hobbit

Honestly...does anyone write an original essay on The Hobbit any more? The impression I get from FPROD is that there exists, somewhere on the Internet, one essay******* about The Hobbit, and everyone else is constantly stealing it and handing it in.

need good sentence in English describing a room

describing a room essay without telling a story

It is also my theory that all students asked to describe a room have been copying the same essay off the Internet and are thus describing the same room countless times for countless different markers. I'm tempted to write a really bad description of a room and post it online somewhere. If I did, I think the failure rate in English classes around the globe would probably go up.

sample narrative essay primates

A narrative essay is often simply a (true) story. You are going to steal a true story about primates? How? Are you going to claim that your name is Jane Goodall and that you have been living with the chimps?

My temple is throbbing, and I am continually beating back the urge to kill. That's probably enough for now.

Until next time, I remain,

Kem the Merciless
(beating up plagiarists since 2007)

*It's true that only the first two of these circumstances do not apply all the freaking time.
**I cite my sources. Those last three questions are lyrics from Les Miserables.
***It's possible.
****I am so, so sorry.
*****There: I just proved I wasn't British.
******Much.
*******To rule them all.

I Have a Headache, and Other Essay-Related Stories

2008-05-31T19:44:00.000-07:00

Today is not this blog's first anniversary, but for some reason, I thought it was, and so I wrote this post as if it were. Now I am realising that there may be something wrong with my head, and I have changed this post. Somebody slap me.

At any rate, I have guilted myself into returning, over five months since my last post, to write something, at least, and avoid living with the shame of being the Negligent Blogger from Hell. I really do want to continue with the blog; I just keep on having to, well, teach stuff to real people in classrooms. It's the whole rent thing. Every thirty-odd days, my landlady starts getting this look in her eye...the sort of look that conveys the following idea: "If you don't write me a cheque for a ridiculous amount of money and shove it through the slot in my door right now, I shall threaten you with eviction, neglect to inform you the next time your rent increases, and behave like the injured party because you are not psychic."*

Therefore, I have been ignoring the blog. I am a terrible, terrible person. Bad Kem. Bad...Kem!

There we go. Let's talk about essays.

In celebration of my blog's anniversary, and in further celebration of the headache I have given myself by marking for six hours straight, I proudly present the following unreasonably vitriolic rant on:

Quoting Stuff in Essays

Hello, undergrad. I know you are a wonderful person. I know you have a beautiful, fresh, untutored mind that is begging and pleading for enlightenment. I know that every time you enter a classroom, you think, "I am an empty vessel, waiting to be filled to the brim with wonderful, terrible knowledge! Fill me, professor! Fill me!"**

I am going to fill you with knowledge.*** I am going to fill you with knowledge you should really already possess. I am, in fact, going to teach you how to quote sources without passing yourself off as an absolute freaking idiot.

I mark a lot of papers containing passages that look rather like this:

In "The Day John Ate Six Raspberries," Sarah is a very shy person. "She shrank behind the potted plant, knowing it didn't hide much of her, hoping she was not such a beacon as she felt, bulking in the corner in her bright red dress" (12). This quote shows Sarah's shyness.

As I have already screamed and ranted here, "quote" is not, in fact, a noun and would not be a good word to use in this context even if it were. However, even replacing the word "quote" with a less stupid word--"sentence" or "passage," say--would not help this "analysis" much. The only thing that would really help this "analysis" much would be a flamethrower, or possibly two. The writer has, in these three sentences, told me absolutely nothing and made me want to bounce my fist up and down on top of her head.

Let's start with the most egregious error here: the treatment of the quotation itself. The writer has decided to write a "floater"; in other words, she has simply stuck the quotation into her paragraph and left it to its own devices. In doing so, she has failed to contextualise it at all. The reader has no idea exactly where in the story the quotation is from or what the writer's purpose is in bringing it up. The quotation is just sitting there, grinning smugly at the reader. Moreover, the sentences that surround it are also doing quite a lot of smug grinning. Sarah is shy. Whoop-de-doo. Why do I care? Are you even going to let me know? So what? So what? So what?

Dear Writer:

Are you demonstrating Sarah's shyness? Are you demonstrating a particular aspect of Sarah's shyness? What portion of the quotation strikes you as evidence that Sarah is shy? Why is this shyness important? Why would you be making such a big bloody deal of this character's shyness unless you had an actual point? Do you have an actual point? What is your actual point?

"Love," Kem.

When you quote a text, do not plop the quotation down in the middle of things and run away, giggling. Make it feel wanted by incorporating it into a sentence of your own, and make sure that this sentence allows you to launch directly from the quotation into a meaningful discussion of it. Try:

In "The Day John Ate Six Raspberries," Miller uses Sarah's shyness as a symptom of her alienation from her family; her behaviour around her classmates is related, through repetitive imagery, to her inadvertent position as the family black sheep. At the school dance, she "shr[i]nk[s] behind the potted plant, . . . bulking in the corner in her bright red dress" (12); the image is a direct echo of her favourite hiding place in her own garden, "behind an apple tree too slender to hide her lumbering form" (10, cf. 13). Sarah is continually attempting to disappear behind plants too small to hide her. When she does so in the vicinity of her family members, who see her as a "withered branch . . . of a withered tree" (9), she does vanish, a vegetable among vegetables. At the school dance, however, the familiar method of hiding in plain sight only makes her more conspicuous, and the "latent animal behind her eyes" (12) begins to show beneath her shyness as her body becomes visible, and bright red, on the other side of the potted plant.

Yes, boys and girls: here we have analysis. Analysis is a very good thing, albeit not the easiest one to accomplish, and quoting effectively is an important part of it. Note that the quotations in the paragraph above are not simply shoved unceremoniously into the text. Each one is--grammatically, structurally, and thematically--part of the larger sentence that contains it. If the writer needs to change the tense of a word, she does so, using square brackets to denote the alterations. Most importantly, she follows each quotation with analysis. Each quotation--each piece of evidence--leads the writer deeper into her own argument. She does not shove evidence at the reader and then wander away, never to return...for she knows, as you will soon know too, that

an example is not a thesis point.

As per usual, let me just repeat this revolutionary idea:

An example is not a thesis point.

Quotations are examples. They are not thesis points. They are not stand-alone chunks of text that boost your word count. They will help you get your idea across, but they are not that idea itself. Treat them with respect, and stop making me want to box your ears.

There are many more things I could say about quotations, but my long and unexpected conversation with the friend who happened to be at a wedding held just upstairs from the library in which I am now seated has ensured that I have missed my own deadline and failed to complete this entry on the 31st, even though Blogger claims that I am lying at the moment. Besides, it's twenty after twelve. I need to go home and cry. I shall save other quotation-related comments for some other time I decide to get off my butt and write rude things about undergraduate essays.

Perhaps I shall even do so relatively soon. I'm hoping this next break won't be five months long, at any rate.

Farewell, my friends. Thanks for reading. Go write something intelligent. If it contains comma splices, I shall know.****

*All true. I should probably move.
**Okay, actually, I hope you're not thinking that. That's kind of gross.
***But not in that way.
****I have powers.

I'm Not Dead Yet (or: Marking Comments Made Simple)

2007-12-25T11:23:00.001-08:00

Hello, everyone. Merry Christmas. I'm sorry I've been ignoring this blog since, well, October, but I've been busy marking. And marking. And marking some more. I do not think I shall ever escape from this hellish wasteland of essays without thesis statements, arguments, analysis, complexity of thought, or even simply page numbers; in fact, I still have forty to mark before January 4. When those are done, maybe I'll finally be able to say something about narrative and even update the Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour, which I have been neglecting shamefully.*

For now, as a special Holiday Present, I give you:

How to Interpret Your Markers' Cryptic Comments

Markers write in code. They have to; if they wrote what they were actually thinking about your papers, they would probably be fired. However, if you are truly anxious to improve your essay-writing skills, you can learn to crack this code and apply the resulting real messages to your work. Here are a few typical marking comments,** followed by translations from Markerese into English:

Actual Note: You make many interesting points in this essay. However...

Translation: I have nothing good to say about your paper but have been forced by the leaders of the feel-good TAing workshops I have been blackmailed into taking to start with a positive comment, damn it.

Explanation: It is always wise to begin your comments on a high note. The best papers merit comments that are almost all on a high note; the worst can drive markers to start out with, "You have very nice handwriting," or, "The first word of your paper is quite strong." The "interesting points" comment constitutes an act of desperation and often appears on papers that do, in fact, contain no interesting points at all. If a marker tells you your essay is interesting, it probably really isn't.

One caveat: if a marker labels a paper "very interesting" or actually goes on to mention specific points that have impressed her, you're probably all right. It's only when the word "interesting" appears on its own without explanation or elaboration that you're in trouble.

Actual Note: You tend not to delve deeply enough into the significance of the observations you make.

Translation: There is no analysis in this essay! There is no freaking analysis in this essay at all! What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you expecting me to do all your work for you? Grab a clue and actually interpret the text, you lazy, lazy person!

Explanation: The "no analysis" problem has really been getting appallingly bad lately; every literature marker I know brings it up incessantly. When you have to mark a batch of fifty essays and forty-five of them turn out to contain no analysis, you sort of lose it a bit. However, you can't scream at the students; screaming is not productive, and again, it will probably get you fired. The "significance" comment is a polite but perfectly accurate way of describing the problem.

Actual Note: Your writing is often difficult to understand; you tend to lose control of your sentences.

Translation: English has this beautiful thing called "grammar." Please learn it. Once you know what a bloody freaking verb*** is, you may be able to structure your sentences in such a way that they are actually comprehensible to most speakers of the language.

Explanation: As much as I hate to become a grumpy old lady and start in with the "When I was an undergrad, the roads were paved with gold, and we all wrote magical essays that turned into dryads and sang in mystical voices every time we handed them in" kind of garbage, I do have to say that when I was an undergrad, we were actually penalised when we made grammatical and structural errors. If I took marks off my students every time serious errors cropped up, most of my students would fail very, very badly. Many of them don't even proofread. They write these essays at home--on computers--and they don't even proofread. What am I supposed to do with a paper in which Robinson Crusoe's name is spelled in three different ways? Why should I tolerate your apparent inability to tell the difference between Aslan the Lion and Lord Asriel? If that sentence doesn't make sense to me, someone who has been reading this sort of stuff for the last ten years, how can it possibly make sense to you?

Actual Note: Your word choice is sometimes problematic.

Translation: Put your hands in the air and step away from the thesaurus. If you insist on continuing to cling to it, I have this wonderful book you can use in conjunction with it. It's called a dictionary. Do not choose words if you do not bloody well know what they mean!

Explanation: Yes, it's nice to read an essay in which a student doesn't use the word "significant" six times in the same paragraph. No, it's not nice to read an essay in which a student has substituted cogent, compelling, convincing, denoting, eloquent, expressing, expressive, facund, forceful, heavy, important, indicative, knowing, meaning, momentous, powerful, pregnant, representative, rich, sententious, serious, sound, suggestive, symbolic, telling, valid, and weighty**** for "significant" without thinking about whether or not the supposed synonyms really fit. The thesaurus is a wonderful tool, but only in conjunction with a dictionary.

Actual Note: This essay has a lot of potential, but at the moment, it still needs work.

Translation: This essay is terrible. It is really, really terrible. It has "potential" in the same way that a rock has the "potential" to move extremely quickly; however, if you just leave the essay and the rock lying there, they will both remain inert. Please, please, please put more work into your next paper. Think about what you are writing. I know you can. If you don't, you're just going to keep on handing in these stupid damned rocks.

Explanation: No matter how much we moan and groan (and rant and scream) about your essays, we don't think you are stupid. What infuriates us is that we know you're not stupid...and yet you still insist on handing in terrible essays. You seem to us to be expecting knowledge to seep out of the woodwork and fill you up without you putting in any effort at all. At the same time, we know you will have to work hard to learn how to analyse properly. You sit there and wait for the knowledge to come; we sit there and wait for you to discover that you have to go to the knowledge. The gap between these two sets of assumptions is the Land of the Essay from Hell.

Your paper does have potential. It has the potential not to be bad. We can see the seeds of thought glimmering among the chaff of plot summary. We can sense that if you stopped simply writing down that Alice did go down the rabbit hole and considered for two or three minutes why she went down it, you might discover the wonderful world of Interpretation for yourself.

Merry Christmas, undergrads. I am about to do a number on the essays of some of your comrades. Do not join their swelling ranks.

And have a happy New Year, too.

*There are just too damn many Filthy Plagiarists. They're everywhere. I get dozens a day. I've had to stop writing them down; if I hadn't, I wouldn't have got anything else done this fall. I'll see about revising the way the Roll works and start it up again in January.

**Some of the comments apply mainly to analytical essays on literature, but many of them fit other sorts of papers as well.

***Ah, verbs. Everybody knows what a verb is, right?......Right?......Wrong. Most undergrads will happily describe a verb as "an action word," but many have no idea how to identify one. When I give my students the following sentence:

There is a book on the table.

the majority will identify "on" as the verb. Why? Well...it comes after the subject ("Verbs always come after the subject, right?"), it tells us (they claim) what the book is doing ("It's on the table. What other word could be the verb?"), and, for some reason that really, really escapes me, nobody thinks of "to be" as a verb any more. The whole shape-shifting nature of verbs also eludes students. They don't think of "is," "was," and "to be" as different versions of the same word, and they fail to notice that "on," unlike actual verbs, does not ever change its form.

Yes, I sometimes think that I may soon go mad.

****I admit it: I cut-and-pasted these words from a thesaurus website. The students probably did too.

The Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour: September 2007

2007-10-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

[This post is today's second. See below for the real October 15 post.]

The 25 September 2007 inductees into FPROD are:

an observations essay about parakeets birds
examples of introdction [sic] of an essay on how to begin writing a essay describing a room to someone who has never s
expository essay on the importance of having integrity
4 page concept essay on aliens
thesis statement of batman essay
process analysis essay on sandwich
descriptive essay about my aunt
hobbit thesis
elizabethan photo paragraph of writing describing it
essay show how bilbo is a hero
essays on the impact of writing and speech
subjective and objective words describing a girl
descriptive writing, describe a woman
useful narrative essay writing phrases
bilbo such a hero transition to next paragraph in the hobbit
essay thesis on batman
5 paragraph essay aliens
all that is gold does not glitter analysis
descriptive writing ants
descriptive essay about dinner
essay in support of colloquialism
write a three to four-page essay that explains what writing and/or reading can mean in a person's life
essay on fear
thesis statement and example in body paragraph about bilbo hobbit
explain frodo and his friends relationship

Friends Don't Let Friends Use Ad Hominem Arguments

2007-10-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

As I predicted on September 30,* my defence sort of took over my life for a bit there, and I was unable to post, substantially or unsubstantially. However, the defence is now over, and Corrections loom on the horizon. I still haven't managed to find time for the narrative mode (soooon), but I think I can manage another logical fallacy today.

A few issues before I begin:

1) I am, at long last, a Doctor of Philosophy. You are therefore obliged to call me Dr. Kem and grovel whenever I enter a room. You should also note that whereas before I was just some nut with a Blogger account and a vendetta, I am now some nut with a Blogger account, a vendetta, and a doctorate. Tremble before me, O Ye Nations.

2) Today is apparently Blog Action Day, when the millions of bloggers out there are meant to unite and write about the same issue (in this case, the environment). Now, I am the proud owner of a nastily suspicious mind. I see two possibilities here:

a) The originators of Blog Action Day are sweet, innocent people who do not understand acronyms.

b) The originators of Blog Action Day are criminal masterminds bent on exposing as many blogs as possible as being, well, BAD.

Both possibilities please me quite a lot. I have thus cheerfully signed up for the resulting praise and/or humiliation, and I shall be using an environmental example below. I feel strongly that both sweet, innocent people and criminal masterminds should be encouraged in all their endeavours, sometimes simultaneously.

3) Over the course of the last two weeks, so many Filthy Plagiarists have come sliming out of the woodwork that I'm not going to be able to comment individually on every entry. I caught fifty-seven plagiarists in the past fortnight. When you consider that these idiots possibly constitute about 0.000002% of the plagiarists out there--"these idiots" being the ones who 1) use Internet search engines to 2) enter words that 3) turn up on my blog, then 4) click on the resulting link(s)--you just have to throw yourself violently down and cry. I'm going to empty September's FPROD and stick it in a post (accessible through a link in the margin), then fill up the Roll with October's entries. They will make you scream and weep.

See below for slightly less individual comments on the new inductees.

Today's featured logical fallacy is one of my favourites. Well...technically, they're all my favourites. I'm probably going to be trotting out the "one of my favourites" line every time I introduce a new logical fallacy. What's fantastic about these suckers is that they're so very easy to use and sometimes seem to be good ideas. If you ever want to witness logical fallacies used skilfully, watch a political debate. Politicians think in logical fallacies. They do it so well that no one realises until hours afterwards that the entire debate has consisted of four people passionately, forcefully, and devastatingly not saying anything at all.

You do not want your essays to resemble politicians' speeches. Trust me. A student approached me the other day and asked if it wouldn't be better for his argument to be forceful than accurate. I advised him to leave forceful inaccuracy to the Prime Minister's Office. Yes, persuasive essays need to be convincing in tone, but they also need to be convincing in facts.

Consequently, you should really avoid the ad hominem fallacy. "Ad hominem" is a Latin term that translates as "against the man"; an ad hominem argument is therefore one that attempts to refute a threatening counter-argument by launching a personal attack on whoever has proposed it. An example might be:

The hysteria over global warming is completely unwarranted. Liberals rant and scream about this issue but cannot present any hard evidence to suggest that human-induced global warming even exists; their bleeding-heart, flip-flopping tendency to leap madly and indiscriminately upon various environmental bandwagons has caused this whole non-issue to be blown completely out of proportion.

On the surface, this passage is effective; the writer directs withering scorn at his opponents in an attempt to discredit them. However, look at how little he is actually saying. Some of his tactics are subtle and some obvious, but all of them work together to ensure that he "refutes" his opponents without having to present any evidence at all. He begins with the word "hysteria," a biased characterisation of the issue at hand that paints his opponents as unreasonable and out of control, then connects it to a hyperbolic inaccuracy that is nonetheless technically true (if his opponents were really "hysterical," they would probably need to calm down a bit). The word "liberal" has, over the last few years, become an insult in the mouths of (American) conservatives,** though if you look "liberal" up in the dictionary, you'll see that it's not really an insult at all. It can be used, nowadays, to characterise large groups of people as not worth listening to. "Liberal" has, in fact, become an ad hominem argument all on its own.

The "[Members of group X] rant and scream" accusation is a very common one and is much in evidence on Letters-to-the-Editor pages everywhere. By implying that his opponents are unable to converse quietly and reasonably about this issue, the writer further discredits them. He goes on to mention that these ranting and screaming liberals cannot produce any hard evidence to support their position, but he doesn't explain what he means by "hard evidence" and moves quickly into a seemingly slight modification of his own argument (he has turned "global warming" into "human-induced global warming") that nonetheless has huge implications (few people seriously deny that "global warming" is taking place, but some contest the idea that humans are causing global warming). He is hiding this rift in meaning behind his contempt for his opponents.

"Bleeding-heart" and "flip-flopping" are two adjectival phrases often appended to the word "liberal" by ad-hominem-oriented arguers. In this context, they make no sense and add no evidence to the argument (such as it is); they are present simply because the writer identifies them strongly with the word "liberal." Note that a tendency to leap indiscriminately upon various environmental bandwagons is certainly not "flip-flopping"; it may even be the opposite of "flip-flopping." "Madly and indiscriminately" implies, again, that the writer's opponents are unreasonable; it also suggests that they are somewhat mindless and react to issues in a knee-jerk manner. Accusing an opponent of "leaping upon a bandwagon" is another way of characterising him or her as unthinking and liable to follow trends simply for the sake of following trends. The fact that someone would leap "madly" upon the bandwagon of a "non-issue" makes the entire situation even more egregious.

The passage is full of information. Very little of it pertains to global warming. Instead, the writer attacks his opponents. He sets them up as straw men a little (through the word "hysteria"); his main strategy, however, is to discredit them by making them look like fools.

If you are not a politician in full-on Election Mode, you're going to want to avoid ad hominem arguments. They are effective for perhaps three or four seconds; then your readers will wake up and realise that you are presenting insults, not arguments. If "The spotted owl is not endangered because you are a boo-boo-head" doesn't work as an argument, the more subtly worded piece of useless libel above won't either. Your job is to refute the counter-argument, not glare at the person making it and say, "Your momma!"

The Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour: Mammoth Edition

Today's FPROD*** list is so soul-destroyingly long that I'm going to have to divide the inductees into categories. Please note that all spelling errors and typos are the fault of the Filthy Plagiarists themselves.

J. R. R. Tolkien is Spinning in His Grave

thesis statement for The Hobbit

the hobbit thesis statement

WHAT'S A GOOD THESIS STATEMENT FOR THE HOBBIT

I DON'T KNOW MAYBE YOU SHOULD READ THE BLOODY BOOK YOU STUPID PIECE OF GUTTER SLIME! You may also want to lay off the caps lock. Gosh, I hope that these three morons are all in the same class and steal the same thesis statement...

1 to 2 paragraph summaries of each chapter in the Hobbit

the hobbit one paragraph summary

two paragraph sumary paragraph from the hobbit

I have a great idea. Why don't you guys sit down and spend ten minutes summarising The Hobbit? Perhaps you will even use your mushy, neglected brains in the process.

debatable question for the hobbit

sample student essay the hobbit revising

Doesn't anyone have any original ideas about this novel? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Hook sentence for Fellowship of the ring essay

"Hi! I'm writing an essay on an engaging work of fantasy! However, I am extremely lazy and cannot think of a way to start! Perhaps I shall attempt to steal one! What an excellent idea! Too bad I have no idea how to use Google!"

everything thing is glitter not gold--essay topic

all that is gold does not glitter critical analysis

Granted, only the second of these entries may actually be related to The Lord of the Rings; the first may be an extremely mangled version of the saying "All that glitters is not gold." Yet it's kind of hard to tell. This plagiarist is lazy and incompetent. What a great combination.

You Want Me to...Read...the...Book?

Lead a discussion on Hamlet's interior indecision

You have to lead a discussion on Hamlet's interior indecision, and you're checking the Internet for clues? How do you expect to lead the freaking discussion if you don't actually think about the text?

One Thousand and One nights Thematic essay

...'Cause your search terms are terribly specific and will probably help you find exactly the right essay to steal.

essay on lather and nothing else

Piercing the Darkness Essay THesis Statement

"Lather and Nothing Else" is a short story; Piercing the Darkness is a novel. The teachers who assigned both of them should have provided their classes with specific topics. Enjoy the stolen goods, silly teachers.

don't panic thesis

I'm assuming this essay may be on Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book about which, please note, it is actually bloody fun to write.

I Live in the City; I've Never Seen a Tree!

vivid description nature

examples of descriptive writing sunset

description of a tree for an essay

description sky trees air moment

I have a strangely revolutionary idea. Why don't you four stupid idiots leave your bedrooms, stroll out into the wide world, sit on benches somewhere, and describe nature? Nature is not exactly hard to find. I live in Toronto, and I can still see a tree any time I want. You people are unbearably lazy. For crying out loud.

I Live in the Country; I've Never Seen a Room!

describing a room you like essay

describing a room essay

example essay writing about a descriptive a room

free descriptive essays on on my room

It's. A. Room. There. Are. Rooms. All. Over. The. Place. Go. Into. One. And. Describe. It. You. Freak. Of. Nature.

I Live in a Box; I've Never Seen a Person!

examples of writing describing a woman

So...many...students unable to describe a woman...

description of an ugly person

description of an ugly man an essay

These last two entries came courtesy of the same Filthy Plagiarist, ten minutes apart. I expect she took pause after reading the description of Marian from The Woman in White and realised that she had to be more specific. Gosh, I do hope someone tries to steal that WW description, though.

essay of description of an ugly man

Woman! Woman! Describe Marian and get caught!

describe an angry person thick description

..."thick"...?

write an essay describing your favorite teacher

Four days before he submitted the above entry, this Filthy Plagiarist searched for "thesis implied or stated in descriptive and narrative essay." In other words, he started off with a legitimate search, the results of which could have helped him decide how to construct his essay, then returned half a week later to steal stuff.

essay describe feature of the face

Look in the mirror, pizza-brain.

But That Would Take Way Too Much Work

free essay on how to describe a picture

write a describing essay on a picture

There's just no way these assignments are ever going to be easy enough for you guys, is there?

But Isn't It More Fun When You Get to Eat the Object of Your Description?

descriptive dinner essay

descriptive essay on dinner

writing essay on dinners

There's really just no way these assignments are ever going to be easy enough for you guys, is there?

Nope...There Isn't

a descriptive essay about my camera

It's your camera.

writing an essay describing my skills

They're your skills.

descriptive writing about somebody's experience

You mean "my experience," right? Except you're stealing somebody else's experience and pretending it's yours? Right? Right?

descriptive essays on prejudice

sample object descriptive essays

When you're done, you can add some stuff about that thing you saw at the place.

EXAMPLES OF A NARRATIVE, DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS ON NIGHTMARES

WHAT THE BLEEDING HECK IS WITH ALL THE SHOUTING?

I Am Completely Incompetent and Reside in a Deep Black Hole

description essay about how to make sandwich

writing essay process analysis how to end a relationship

process analysis essay fishing hunting

Perhaps you could draw on your personal experience and produce a genuine document enlivened by your own wry, witty observations?......No?......

Feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings...

how to finish of essay on fear

Have you considered figuring out how you started it and kind of going from there?

paragraph example about friendship

expository paragraph of what is frienship

If you can't deal with this topic, I completely wash my hands of you. Go away.

an essay thesis statement on road rage

I am having plagiarist rage. Give me a call; we should talk.

Your Laziness Truly Knows No Bounds

useful phrases narrative essay

beautiful phrases used in essays

essay writing-phrases

You may be interested to hear that a phrase markers love is: "my boneheaded readers." They are also quite fond of: "a tree like a giant icicle of gargantuan beauty from the dawn of time," "my lovely horse running through the field,"**** and "hot! hot! hot! girls! girls! girls!"

This One Doesn't Fit Anywhere Else

elizabeth I thesis essay

I hope your razor-sharp Google search, which found you 1,540,000 relevant pages, led to your successful acquisition of a stolen thesis that your teacher recognised and used to get you freaking expelled.

...the Hell?

a conclusion in a essay to three knights

teacher has students write one paragraph boy writes about aliens girl writes about tea

I'm pretty sure these people are trying to plagiarise, but I have no idea why or how.

I Still Have a Nastily Suspicious Mind

essays on having integrity

my aunt descriptive writing

These two entries appeared not long after similar ones turned up in the last FPROD list. I'll allow them because they came from first-time visitors, but I'm a bit sceptical. I think someone may be playing silly buggers with me.

If they're real, they make me very sad.

In my next blog entry, perhaps there will really be something on the narrative mode. I do wish I had more actual time. Ah well.

*Actually, it was October 1, but Blogger does this weird thing where if you start a post on one day and finish it on another, it'll publish the date of the starting day, not the finishing one.

**"Liberal" means something rather different in Canada. In fact, it means a number of things. In fact, the issue is so complicated that I'm just going to sweep it under the metaphorical carpet and stroll away, whistling.

***Yes, I know "FPROD" sounds rather dirty in a vague and undefinable way. Unlike the creators of BAD, I do understand acronyms. I just don't care when they sound rather dirty. I've mentioned this issue before, haven't I? Memory...going...
****So I'm fond of Father Ted. So sue me. Go on. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on...

The Straw Man Will Get You Every Time

2007-09-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

If I weren't bloody damned freaking out about my dissertation defence on October 11, I would apologise for the erratic posting schedule. However, I am bloody damned freaking out about my dissertation defence on October 11 and can't promise frequent or lengthy posts until the hideous two-hour Examination From Hell has come and gone. I certainly won't be able to deal with the narrative mode until the middle of October at the earliest. Blame academia. I usually do.

In the meantime, I have pulled myself together just enough to bring you the first in a series of posts on logical fallacies. Like the grammar posts, the fallacy posts will turn up now and then when I need something less horrifyingly long to write and/or want to take a break from the modes. An understanding of fallacy will come in handy when you're writing persuasively, so pay attention.

A logical fallacy is a sort of tool that helps a writer cheat on an argument, filling in holes with falsities, evasions, or truly imbecilic bits of "reasoning." Many writers believe they have presented well-reasoned arguments when what they have actually done is litter a paper with fallacious statements that deserve to be clubbed about their ears until they stop moving. The most common of the fallacies have names: red herring, straw man, ad hominem argument, circular reasoning, and so on. Politicians know and love them all. You should know them too, though once you do, you should probably leave them to the politicians.*

Today, I'm going to discuss my, and probably your, favourite: the straw man fallacy. The straw man is beloved of all undergrads everywhere, probably because it is so bleeding convenient. Unadulterated evil often is.

Imagine your prof has set you an essay on global warming.** You happen to believe that what you think of as the "fuss over global warming" is much ado about nothing,**** and you construct an argument that revolves around this belief. In your first paragraph, you include the sentence:

The idea that the planet is liable to be destroyed any day now because of the simple existence of the SUV is absurd.

You are here presenting a counter-argument and preparing to pick it to pieces. There's only one problem:

What sane person would argue that the "simple existence" of the SUV will cause the planet to be "destroyed any day now"?

The straw man fallacy constitutes the presentation of a counter-argument that is absurd, easy to refute, and usually non-existent. Think of it this way: if you were a medieval squire and your master-at-arms decided to train you in sword-play by having you hack at a man constructed out of straw, you would soon become very good at stabbing scarecrows to death. The first time you had to fight a real opponent carrying a real sword and actually doing his best to behead you, you would be in trouble.*****

Straw-man arguments are tempting to create because they make proving a thesis so damned easy. It is not difficult to argue that the SUV is not going to cause Earth to explode tomorrow. It is not hard to claim that a strong Canadian dollar will not lead to a second Great Depression. Setting up your imaginary opponent as hysterical, unreasonable, and wrong is a simple process, but it is also an unfair one and will lead to your readers taking you--not the opponent--less seriously. To refute a straw-man argument, a real opponent will only have to say, "I've never claimed any of that garbage."

Make sure that you have a real counter-argument. If it's a convincing one, you'll have to work hard to refute it. Many writers rely on straw men because they simply don't want to work hard. Wake-up call: there are no short cuts. You want to learn how to argue convincingly? Stop trying to cut corners. You're not fooling your readers; you're fooling yourself.

Other Business:

1) I've finally got around to creating an e-mail address that a) doesn't have my real name in it anywhere and b) does not include the name of a character from Winnie-the-Pooh.****** You can find the contact link in my profile (at least one person already has). Those who long to tell me what a horrible person I am for metaphorically slapping poor undergraduates upside their metaphorical little heads but don't want to leave public comments can now get started.

2) It's that time again. It is, in fact, time for some updates on

The Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour

The plagiarists have been busy this week. They are making me really, really angry.

essays on the impact of reading writing and speech

To be fair, this person could simply be doing perfectly legitimate research for a paper. To be considerably less fair, she probably isn't. Most legitimate researchers would search for articles, not essays, and they would do so on article databases designed for the purpose. This little toad is searching for essays. She also has no idea how to do a Google search. Most of the plagiarists don't (see below for one truly wonderful example).

Hello, people: the words "on," "the," "of," and "and" are not helping you here. Why are you including them in your search? Are you insane as well as evil?

essay show how bilbo is a hero

This one comes from the young gentleman who gave us "thesis and example in body paragraph about bilbo hobbit" and "bilbo such a hero transition to next paragraph in the hobbit." He hit the main page again. If he actually read it, he probably saw me insulting his search terms. Hello, Hobbit Boy: do you ever give up? Why has it taken you two weeks to find anything on this subject to steal? The Internet is strewn with information about heroism in The Hobbit. You are not simply a cretin; you are a persistent cretin. Go away, sir.

elizabethan photo paragraph of writing describing it

What the hell is an Elizabethan photo? There were no cameras in the Elizabethan period! Y'know those pictures of Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and Sir Walter Raleigh and all those people you see all over the place? Those are paintings.

hobbit thesis

Admittedly, this person could quite innocently be searching for dissertations on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. I'm expecting probably not, however.

descriptive essay about my aunt

You, Ms. Plagiarist, are the human incarnation of Laziness. She's your aunt. Go have tea with her. Take her for a stroll through some garden somewhere. Describe her yourself. Why would you have to steal a description of your aunt when you could actually write it yourself in about thirty seconds, you oozing, bottom-feeding piece of animate slime?

process analysis essay on sandwich

The process analysis essay on the construction of a sandwich is a favourite first-year set topic. It is probably fairly easy to plagiarise. That said...it's a sandwich. All you have to do is describe how to make one. Why are you incapable of going to the kitchen, making yourself a sandwich, and recording the steps? It will probably take less time than it will for you to find and plunder someone else's description, and you'll get a sandwich out of it.

thesis statement of batman essay

This wart is the second Filthy Plagiarist who has been set a Batman topic and has decided not to use his brain. You get to write on Batman. On Batman! What is wrong with you? Why are you not writing on Batman? I shall smack you!

4 page concept essay on aliens

The "aliens" topic is almost as popular as the "Batman" topic. This idiot has actually specified how long her stolen essay has to be. Have fun with that, Nasty Thing Stuck to the Bottom of my Shoe.

expository essay on the importance of having integrity

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA *snort* *gasp* HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

examples of introdction [sic] of an essay on how to begin writing a essay describing a room to someone who has never s

This search term goes on for so long that it actually exceeds my statcounter's ability to contain it. I expect the last two words were originally "seen it," though given this plagiarist's capacity for long-winded Googlocity, there may have been more.

Dear little plagiarist...you don't know how to use Google, do you? You are trying to steal your essay, and you don't even know how. I wish you luck. You're going to need it.

an observations essay about parakeets birds

Here's an idea for you:

Go observe a bloody parakeet.

One further note:

Inevitably, people are starting to play with my statcounter, entering ludicrous search terms just to see whether they can bring up my site. Some of the searches above may be from such people, though I don't think so; I can generally tell when someone is a repeat visitor. A couple of my online acquaintances did spend a happy half-hour fiddling with Google one evening; they found my blog with search terms ranging from "kem abuses sandwich devotees" to "kem is really batman and bricks sandwich devotees resulting in their impending doom," not to mention, "kem is canada's merciless monster."*******

However, my favourite of these attempts came from a person from Pennsylvania who had visited the site nine times before. This enterprising reader found the blog with a number of fairly ordinary searches such as "plagiarize frodo friends" and "useful descriptive essay writing phrases," then ended with, "mock Kem the Merciless plagiarize."

This search record may constitute the first ever instance of Satire Via Statcounter.

Nicely done, faithful reader...nicely done.

*A rather learned drinking game might involve a political debate during which all the watchers took a sip every time a politician used a logical fallacy. Everybody would be roaring drunk in no time.
**Profs and teachers are always setting essays on global warming and the abortion debate and other such hot-button issues.*** They only realise how terribly foolish they have been once they are two or three sentences into the first paper.
***Long, long ago, when I was in high school, the hot-button issue of the day was euthanasia. When I trotted this example out before a bunch of high-school students last year, they looked at me as if I had gone mad. I had to explain the term, which they had never heard. I must be Getting Really Old.
****An opinion I do not share, by the way. Like many fervent Canadian environmentalists, I was brought up in BC. I learned to recycle cardboard before I learned to walk. When I went to Kalamazoo for a conference a couple of years ago and found myself in a university that had no recycling bins, I suffered. Oh, how I suffered.
*****Probably the really fatal kind.
******Not that I have anything against Winnie-the-Pooh. I love Winnie-the-Pooh. Mostly, the problem is that I never check that address.
*******One of the terms was much, much dirtier than any of the others. Let's just say that it involved the words "fingers" and "wet" and leave it at that.

Qualify This "This" or Face the Consequences

2007-09-23T16:37:00.000-07:00

I don't have time to tackle the whole narrative mode tonight, but I can at least fit in a Grammatical Moment, plus an introduction of an exciting new feature that will allow me many opportunities for sarcasm. Actually, however, "Grammatical Moment" is not the right phrase here; this post constitutes a Structural Moment or an Anti-Vagueness Moment or a Moment in Which Kem Can Rant about Syntax, but it does not, strictly speaking, deal with grammar.

I would like to spend some time screaming about the word "this."* "This" is a useful little word. It is also a lazy little word. Writers use "this" as the syntactic equivalent of a Swiss Army knife. Want to refer to a vague, general concept you have covered somewhere in your last three sentences? This is not unusual. Want to avoid actually having to tell your readers what your subject is? This is easy. Want to drive your poor readers around the freaking twist?

This is what you are doing by using "this" as a demonstrative pronoun.

"This," "that," "these," and "those" can be used as pronouns. In informal writing and speech, they work well. If someone tells you that your sister is very good at spelling, you may reply, "That's true." Everyone listening will know that "that" here stands in for "your sister is very good at spelling," the utterance to which you are directly and obviously responding. Replying, "That statement is true," would add an unnecessary word to the conversation and convince your friends that you were an absolute idiot.

In writing, demonstrative "this" is problematic because it's not always possible to tell what it's standing in for. Take this passage:

Maria's boot-heel was lodged firmly between the ties. She tugged at her laces, but they were wet and tight; her fingers slid over them uselessly. Closer, now, the train whistle blew. This was not going well.

What was not going well? Maria's walk as a whole? Her problem with the boot? The blowing train whistle? It sounds as if "this" refers to the whistle, but if it does, the passage doesn't make very much sense. The "this" must refer to events before the blowing of the whistle...but which ones? All of them? Some of them? Could "this" be Maria's entire life?

"This" is a vague word. Moreover, "this" is a cheating word. If you want to gesture wishy-washily towards your last few sentences without specifying exactly which ones you mean, you use "this." Informally, the method is acceptable in moderation. Formally, it isn't, mostly because formal writing must be crystal clear. Every unqualified "this" is another fraction of a second the reader will spend going back over the writing to figure out exactly what is being said. The more backtracking the reader does, the harder the essay will seem to read.

I have marked passages that looked rather like, well, this:**

In "Something Different," Joyce is an attorney with a dark secret. This is important because the story revolves around the fact that the legal profession is not as honest as it sets itself up to be. This contrasts with the theme of "Impact," in which a lawyer's honesty provides the key that unravels the central mystery. If one takes this into account, one realises that the second story is actually a sort of sequel to the first. This means that Harper is moving gradually towards a personal trust of the law.

This "analysis" is actually horrible dreck that deserves to be flushed down a toilet that hasn't been cleaned for twenty years.*** The writer**** jumps to conclusions, makes huge leaps of logic based on sparse or no evidence, does something bizarre in the bit about the second story being a sequel (why is it a sequel? How do you know? Good grief, Fictional Kem), assumes she understands the author's intent, and simply doesn't say anything intelligent at all. However, her idiocy is helped along by the constant "this"ing. The first "this" could refer to Joyce being an attorney, Joyce having a dark secret, Joyce being an attorney with a dark secret, or "Something Different" being about an attorney named Joyce with a dark secret. The second "this" could refer to the first "this," the fact that the first "this" is important, the story revolving around the dishonesty of the legal profession, or the dishonesty of the legal profession itself. I could go on, but you probably get the picture. The writer***** isn't entirely sure what she's talking about, so she sticks a few gigantic, meaningless "this"es into her text and hopes that the reader gets the right idea, whatever it may be. The reader, in the meantime, ends up lost in a sea of confusion.

What the bleeding hell is "this"? Answer the bloody question!

If you must use "this," qualify it. You can cite "this passage" or note "this concept"; you may discuss "this character" or critique "this sonnet." Better yet, get rid of the "this" altogether. Write about "the concept Harper introduces here" or "Joyce's idea"; refer to "this sonnet" by its name (if it has one). Do not use "this" unqualified in formal writing. All it tells the reader is that you are too lazy to write more precisely.

The Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour

In my last (unexpected)****** post, I railed against the filthy little plagiarising jerkwads who had been searching on Google for material to steal and had in the process stumbled across this site. Since that post--three freaking days ago--I have caught seven more filthy little plagiarising jerkwads. We seem to have entered hunting season. Very well. It is time, say I, to start a Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour******* on the left-hand margin of this page. On this roll will be recorded all the disgusting bottom-feeders I have noticed being stupid on the Internet. I hope they are chased by very fast zombies and forced to defend themselves with cricket bats that they do not have.

I should explain that people who may not be plagiarising--for instance, those who simply enter the titles of certain novels or plays--will not be included on the roll.

Today's inductees are:

all that is gold does not glitter analysis

This young parasite apparently feels quite strongly that thinking for yourself takes too long and involves far too much, well, thinking for yourself.

5 paragraph essay aliens

You have to write a 5-paragraph essay on aliens, and you're going to steal it? Your teacher is letting you write on aliens, and you can't think of anything to write? What is wrong with you? Do you need a brain transplant? I shall happily give you one.

essay thesis on batman

Okay...again: your teacher is actually encouraging you to write on Batman, and you are planning on stealing your ideas? Are you completely insane? I would happily write essays on Batman for the rest of my natural life. May I slap you? Please?

bilbo such a hero transition to next paragraph in the hobbit

This walking, talking rodent dropping is the same person who searched for "thesis statement and example paragraph about bilbo" a few days ago. Our friend here is actually going through his essay section by section, searching for extremely specific bits to pilfer. He is writing a Frankenessay. I want to eat his brain.

I am happy about the fact that this guy's second search led him directly to the main page of my blog, on which was prominently displayed--you guessed it--the anti-plagiarism post.

useful narrative essay writing phrases

You freak of nature. I don't suppose you have ever considered dreaming up a few original phrases yourself? No...didn't think so.

descriptive writing, describe a woman

I hope this person steals the Wilkie Collins passage. Holy mackerel, do I ever hope that. It is a fairly famous passage. It would also be considered rankly sexist by most modern high-school teachers and university professors.

subjective and objective words describing a girl

This search turned up a few hours after the "woman" one. I'm beginning to get the sense that all the writing instructors in the world are setting the same assignments this week, and that all of them are due on Monday. At any rate, I hope this moron tries to steal from the Collins as well, though she will be much harder to catch if she does.

Honestly: you have to find words that describe a girl. Why can't you do so on your own? Are you less intelligent than the average four-year-old?

Next time, there will, I'm sure, be many new and exciting plagiarism attempts to mock. For now, just direct your righteous fury at the ones listed on the Roll. I wish I could say that I didn't think there would be many more of them, but that--unqualified--would be a lie.

*The words "that," "these," and "those" fit here as well.
**I am writing informally and can use "this" as a pronoun if I like. Neener-neener-neener.
***Don't worry. I wrote it just now. I am insulting only myself, and frankly, I deserve it.
****I.e., me, but role-playing as a first-year undergrad.
*****Me again, still role-playing.
******Even to me.

Attention, All Plagiarists: I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING

2007-09-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

You know what really bugs me?

You know what really, really bugs me?

You know what makes me so freaking furiously and utterly irrationally angry that I am tempted to cast everything aside, find a lance, and ride around the countryside tilting at particularly offensive-looking windmills?

You do. Yes, you. Yes, I am talking to you, Evil Person Who Has Been Attempting to Plagiarise an Essay and Has Somehow Stumbled Across This Blog. I know exactly what you're up to, and I am not bloody amused.

I have a statcounter. It counts stats. It also tells me where all my readers are coming from, as well as--get this--listing the search terms they have used on Google to find the blog. Some of these search terms are quite enlightening. Let's take a look at them, shall we?

explain frodo and his friends relationship

Gosh. Hello, little student. You wouldn't possibly be plugging an essay topic into Google, would you? I'm sure that your interest in this topic is completely innocent and that when you have glanced studiously over my blog and noted the information about friendship in The Fellowship of the Rings, you will cite me in your bibliography!

thesis statement and example in body paragraph about bilbo hobbit

Even better. You, my friend, are clearly so determined to write an exemplary essay that you are combing the Internet for documents that involve not only your topic but its very structure. You are an inspiration to us all, sir.

essay on fear

...'cause I'm sure you're just looking for stuff to cite.

write a three to four-page essay that explains what writing and/or reading can mean in a person's life

What an enterprising little grasshopper you are. Look at that: another entire topic inserted into Google! I am terribly, terribly sorry that I cannot provide you with the essay for which you are searching, and I do hope you eventually find something to steal. Er, cite.

essay in support of colloquialism

Dude, ur sooo awesome! I hope ur like able to like find some info to like hand in and stuff!

descriptive essay about dinner

I feel your pain. How difficult it would be to write a descriptive essay about dinner all by yourself! Who can describe dinner? Dinner is rare and mysterious and cannot, in fact, be described by a mere undergraduate or high-school student. No wonder you are looking for inspiration online.

descriptive writing ants*

Ants! Those elusive, elusive creatures! The people who expect you to describe them are cruel and unreasonable. Steal away, little student; steal away.

There have been other such entries, but alas, they have fallen off the bottom of my stats list. I do remember a lot of Lord of the Rings material and at least one query regarding Edmund Spenser, but I did not think to record any of this information for posterity. In the future, however, I'm going to write all these babies down.

STOP. FREAKING. PLAGIARISING.

What the hell is wrong with you? Can't you spend an hour brainstorming instead of wasting the same time stealing from the Internet? Do you have any idea what an idiot you're being? Oh, sure, you've managed to "complete" your assignment in a fraction of the time it would have taken you otherwise. Well done. Have you learned anything? Well, you're probably pretty damned good with Google now...but have you learned anything else? You think you're pulling the wool over your marker's eyes. If you get away with it,** you are...but you're also doing an excellent job of pulling the same wool over your own. Won't it be wonderful when you stroll out into the real world after cheating your way through high school and university and suddenly discover that you have no skills at all? Stop. Cheating. You aren't helping yourself in any way.

What's that? You were just borrowing ideas from a website? Web content is free to all, and you should be able to borrow as much of it as you want?

WRONG ANSWER.

If you "borrow" an idea from your best friend, you are plagiarising. Plagiarism constitutes the unacknowledged use of words or ideas that are not your own. "Common knowledge" is rarely an excuse unless you're working at a sky-is-blue kind of level. It doesn't matter where you have found "your" ideas; you always have to cite them. Your teachers are going to back me up on this one, so don't go whining about how noooobooooody eeeeveeeerrrrr toooooooolllld yooooouuuuuu. IIIIIII DOOOOOON'T CAAAAAAARE.

Teachers, professors, and markers:

Certain of your students have been coming to this blog in search of information on The Lord of the Rings, The Faerie Queene, and other sundry subjects. Some of them may try for The Woman in White soon. Other of your students have been very good and have simply been searching for information on how to write essays well, but a few aspiring cheaters have made it here.

I am a terribly vindictive person whose great loathing for plagiarists is legendary amongst the undergrads of my home institution. I am thus going to blow off steam by setting a trap for the pestilential little maggots who wander the Internet, searching for material to rip off. If you are not a plagiarist, feel free to watch. If you are, be aware that the Wrath of Kem is currently heading rapidly in your direction.***

Google away, plagiarists. I hope that your searches pull up the following sentences:

In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth stands as an example of steadiness and good sense, whereas Jane is flighty and embodies both the "pride" and the "prejudice" of the title.

Hello, Demonic Plagiarising Student. Go ahead and steal this sentence. I dare you. I double-dog-dare you. No...I triple-dog-dare you. Laugh at me and base your essay on this statement.

Few know that the title character of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is actually the protagonist's dog, which accompanies the monster on his journey of self-discovery.

Hello again, you swine. Go on...take it. There it sits, inviting theft.

Statistics Canada confirms that 86% of high-income Canadians are likely to raise morbidly obese children.

Miscreant, greetings. Accept this nugget as my gift to you.

The badger typically builds nests in trees and feeds almost exclusively on fungi.

It's yours, my hideous little canker-blossom. Use it in an essay. Put it in the introduction.

I'm onto you, plagiarists. I'm following you with my insanely glaring electronic eyes. I do not like you, Sam-I-am. I do not like your essay scam. I do not like it here or there. It should not happen anywhere.

*You may be gathering by this point that a lot of people are writing descriptive essays right now.

**Plus if you're stupid enough to hand in an essay you've found through Google, you're probably not going to get away with it. I'll let you in on a little secret: markers know how to use Google too.

***The Wrath of Kem is a physical entity with knives for eyes and extremely large, painful Fists of Inescapable Doom.

Bibliography

2007-09-19T21:13:00.000-07:00

Just a note: today's real post is just beneath this one. It is much, much longer. Much. Much. Longer.

Collins, Wilkie. The Woman in White. London: Penguin, 1974. Description.

Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. 1719. London: Penguin, 1965. Body.

Finnbogason, Jack, and Valleau, Al. A Canadian Writer's Pocket Guide. Second edition. Scarborough: Thomson Nelson, 2002. Formality.

Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene. Ed. A. C. Hamilton. London: Longman, 1977. Conclusion.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring. Second Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. Nothing.

Yes, It's a Tree; WHAT ELSE Is Important?

2007-09-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

I'm back. No, I'm not dead. Marking took over my life for a bit there, as did procrastinating and prevaricating and running with scissors. I was going to write this entry last Friday, at which point a new character leapt full-grown into my comic strip and demanded that I pay attention to her. She had better be bloody well worth it; that's all I can say.*

However, here I finally am, whether you like it or not. It's time to talk about the descriptive mode.

Unless you are stuck in a first-year essay-writing course, you may never have to write an entirely descriptive essay. First-year essay-writing courses are famous for forcing students to learn types of essay writing they are never going to use again and skimming over types of essay writing they are. However, learning how to write a good description is not a useless endeavour. There are descriptive elements in most essays. Students excel at writing extremely bad descriptions, and most of them probably have absolutely no idea why their markers are constantly scribbling "Vague," "Wordy," "Inaccurate," and "Could you elaborate...?" in their margins. The truth is that a mastery of concise, accurate description can improve both an individual paper and a writer's rhetorical skills in general.

Description is an important element of fiction, but it is also essential to non-fiction. Descriptions of processes, objects, people, and works of art are often necessary if a writer wants to give his audience background on his chosen subject; some essays do assume that the audience is familiar with the subject at hand, but those that don't can rely on description to fill the gaps in the reader's understanding. This gap-filling does not substitute adequately for first-hand knowledge; no matter how accurately a writer describes a sculpture, the image she creates in her reader's mind is probably going to differ at least slightly from the real thing. A picture is worth a great deal more than a thousand words. Nonetheless, if a thousand words is what you've got, you had better learn to use them as best you can.

Here is a picture I took myself a month or so ago. I do not know the name of the person in it, though I do know that she is 1) an astrophysicist and 2) braver than I am. Pretend, for a moment, that I have asked you to describe this picture to me:

A lot of people would describe the photograph as follows:

A person is sitting on a log between two cliffs.

Gosh. You've got me there. A person is indeed sitting on a log between two cliffs. Ta-da. End of story. Can we go home now?

No. We. Can't.

If I walked up to you and said, "Picture a person sitting on a log between two cliffs," would you imagine this exact photograph?** Would your imaginary "person" be positioned just like the real one? Would this person be male or female? Dressed or undressed? In the foreground or in the background? Clear or hard to see? How big would the log be? What would the cliffs look like? Would they be close together or far apart? Would there be anything else in the picture? Trees? Moss? Sky? Where would the light be coming from? What season would it be?

The art of description depends quite a lot on the art of seeing: of noticing not just what is there but how it appears in relation to what surrounds it. Looking and seeing are two different things entirely. We tend to take in general details and edit out specific ones; many of us*** have a hard time recognising even people we have met recently or see frequently when these people appear in unfamiliar contexts. When I go to draw a particular scene, I like to have it in front of me because I know that no matter how well I think I know it, if I try to draw it from memory, I will leave something out.

Yet to write in the descriptive mode, you have to work against the impulse to edit out details. You may have the object you are describing in front of you; your reader won't. Your objective is to create a strong, lasting, and relatively accurate impression in his mind. You actually want to show him whatever you are describing.

There are many ways to accomplish this sort of thing; different ones are called for in different situations. The two main branches of the descriptive mode are the subjective and objective forms of description. Both are useful, and both can cause the reader to form vivid impressions of the object of the description. However, they have different purposes.

An objective description of the photograph above might be:

The picture was taken by someone standing in a gorge; the camera points up between two dark grey cliffs. The cliff on the left extends about a third of the way into the photograph. It has moss growing sparsely on its lower portions. The cliff on the right also extends about a third of the way into the photograph, and the way the light is striking it makes its extreme rightmost portion appear light green. The tops of both cliffs are visible; the left-hand one is silhouetted against a white sky, but the right-hand one gives way to a canopy of bright green leaves belonging to several trees growing from the top of it. One thick branch extends from the right-hand cliff to the left-hand cliff. It forks about halfway across the gorge. In respect to the frame of the photograph, this branch appears about a third of the way from the top of the picture. Smaller branches, covered with leaves, surround this larger limb. In the distance, extending along the right-hand cliff-top, are many other trees, though they seem to blur into one another. About a third of the way from the bottom of the photograph--behind the extended tree limb but in front of the trees in the distance--is a log that bridges the gap between the cliffs. It seems to be about the breadth of the waist of the person sitting on it. She is framed against the white sky; the light is behind her, making her difficult to see clearly. However, the proportions of her body--large hips and slender arms--argue that she is female. She is straddling the log quite close to the left-hand cliff (perhaps three-quarters of the log is behind her to the right and another quarter ahead of her to the left). Her head is obscured by a clump of leaves, but she appears to be looking towards the left-hand cliff. Her legs swing free, and her left arm--the only one visible--extends slightly ahead of her and down to where her hand (hidden behind her left leg) may grip the log. She is wearing dark blue knee-length trousers and a white sleeveless shirt.

I could go on (about the cliffs, the trees, the exact position of the moss, etc.). I could describe this scene so thoroughly that you wouldn't even want to see the picture. However, I think we've got enough to work with.

Notice that the objective description relies entirely on the writer's observations: not his interpretations or speculations, but his observations. When he is not sure exactly what he sees, he explores why (for instance, note the bit in the passage above where the writer discusses the human figure's obscured head). His observations have no particular emotion behind them; they are as unbiased and neutral as possible. He is painting his word-picture through accuracy of observation. In fact, his main objective is to be as accurate as possible.

Yet the above description is pretty bloody boring. I just proofread it, and I zoned out five or six times in the process. Its relative accuracy would help someone who needed to paint the scene; it would make everybody else throw the description violently against the wall.

A subjective description provides a vivid impression of whatever is being described through the object's personal relation to the writer. A subjective description of the scene in the photograph above might be:

There were three of us in the gorge when I snapped this photo of Liane's friend crossing from one cliff to another on a log bridge. Only the friend is visible here, but there were others on either side of the cliff, egging her on and warning her back. We stood and watched apprehensively as the girl--seemingly fearlessly--scooted across to safety. She was dressed in a white shirt and blue pants, and she appeared to us outlined against a white sky and a spreading canopy of leaves. The dark, damp cliffs loomed over us, throwing us into shadow while the girl sat in the sun, her legs dangling into the empty air. My camera caught the one moment of danger; then she was gone, safe beyond our sight, and we were left hearing the others laugh above us as we gazed at the trees and the sky.

Here the writer, in describing the photograph, speaks of the experience of taking it. Many details are left out, but she still creates a version of the scene that will leave an impression on the mind of the reader: she mentions the perspective from which the photo was taken, the position of the girl on the log, the presence of the trees, the colour of the sky and the darkness of the cliffs, and so on. However, she also gives details that relate, personally, to her interpretation of the scene. She says she and the others are watching "apprehensively" and that the girl is crossing the bridge "seemingly fearlessly"; she feels that the girl is in "danger" and later "safe"; she describes the cliffs as "looming" (personification: cliffs do not, in reality, "loom"); she keeps drawing our attention to her own position down in the gorge, though she herself does not appear in the photograph. Because she is describing the original event itself, she can also access details that the writer of the objective description cannot: for instance, the sounds of her friends' words to the girl. She also focusses on the girl, giving only a brief impression of her surroundings. The objective writer starts at the edges of the photograph and works in towards the middle; he might also have chosen to start at the left and move right or at the top and move down. He does not privilege one element of the photo over another. The subjective writer does.

This passage is more vivid than the other because it offers the writer's personal connection to the scene. However, it is also less exact. Though it leaves the reader with a clear mental picture, it is a picture of the writer as much as it is of the scene. A painter who created the photograph from the above description would probably come up with something whose details differed from those of the original, though the subject--and the spirit--of the picture would remain intact.

When you are writing a description, you need to negotiate between objectivity and subjectivity. Sometimes one is more appropriate than the other. Sometimes you need a mixture of both. Circumstances dictate what sort of description you need to write. However, in an essay-writing situation, it is usually safer to err on the side of objectivity. "That girl looks almost exactly like my aunt" may be an extremely accurate description that would hold great meaning for someone who knew your aunt. Someone who didn't would find it subjective to the point of uselessness. You are not describing the girl for your own benefit. Even if you are writing a largely subjective description of her, you should go on to explain how the girl looks almost exactly like your aunt. In the process, you will cover the details of her appearance, and even people who have never met your aunt will be able to picture her.

Be aware that comparing anything to anything else can be useful but also dangerous. "A ukelele looks like a small guitar with four strings" will give many people a pretty good idea of a ukelele's appearance...but not those who have never seen a guitar. Don't get complacent and assume that others' experiences are identical to yours.

Another mistake that writers sometimes make is to forget that the good old axiom "Show, don't tell"**** does not simply apply to short stories. Take the following "description":

Robert was angry.

We all know what it means to be angry, right? When you're angry, you smash china figurines in the fireplace and rant about how much you hate your mother.

...Or you close doors very gentle and firmly behind you, and when you speak, your voice comes out in a flat, dead-sounding tone.

...Or you smile and pretend to be delighted while you clench your fists so hard that your knuckles whiten.

...Or you bottle it all up inside and let loose hours later in a profanity-laden e-mail to your sister.

...Or...?

"Angry" is an abstract word. It means something slightly different to every person who uses it. "Beautiful," "huge," "contemptible," "soft," "terrified," "horrible," "ridiculous": all of them are telling words, not showing words. A planet can be huge. So can a house. So, in fact, can an ant...compared to other ants. Some people see flowers or trees when they think of "beauty"; others see certain types of women; yet others see guitars or buildings or eighteenth-century shoes. If you want to describe Robert's anger, describe it. Tell your readers what he does or says or looks like. As a description, "Robert was angry" has about as much value as "The building was tall." Angry in what way? How tall? Compared to what? If you use an abstract term, follow it up with an explanation.

As well, don't forget that you actually have five senses, not one. If you describe the bleeding hell out of an alpine meadow but forget to mention the smell, you are neglecting an essential element of the scene. Such an omission is just as serious as the one a student of mine made when she described the yellow flowers in a painting but forgot to mention the human figure in the foreground. Give the reader the whole picture, not simply the portion of it you noticed when you were only looking and not seeing.

A good example of a description that successfully mixes subjective and objective elements to create a memorable picture in the reader's mind is this passage from Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White (1860):

My first glance round me, as the man opened the door, disclosed a well-furnished breakfast-table, standing in the middle of a long room, with many windows in it. I looked from the table to the window farthest from me, and saw a lady standing at it, with her back turned towards me. The instant my eyes rested on her, I was struck by the rare beauty of her form, and by the unaffected grace of her attitude. Her figure was tall, yet not too tall; comely and well-developed, yet not fat; her head set on her shoulders with an easy, pliant firmness; her waist, perfection in the eyes of a man, for it occupied its natural place, it filled out its natural circle, it was visibly and delightfully undeformed by stays. She had not heard my entrance into the room; and I allowed myself the luxury of admiring her for a few moments, before I moved one of the chairs near me, as the least embarrassing means of attracting her attention. She turned towards me immediately. The easy elegance of every movement of her limbs and body as soon as she began to advance from the far end of the room, set me in a flutter of expectation to see her face clearly. She left the window--and I said to myself, The lady is dark. She moved forward a few steps--and I said to myself, The lady is young. She approached nearer--and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!

Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more flatly contradicted--never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing, resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually low down on her forehead. Her expression--bright, frank, and intelligent--appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive is beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set on shoulders that a sculptor would have longed to model--to be charmed by the modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features in which the perfectly shaped figure ended--was to feel a sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and contradictions of a dream. (58-59)*****

Collins was writing his serial novel right after--and for the same periodical in which was published--Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities,****** so the extreme length of this description is probably not surprising. What is interesting about it is how Collins creates the picture of the "ugly" woman, Marian Halcombe. He begins with a brief but clear description of her surroundings, then effectively "zooms in" (this was before film, but the effect is similar) to the woman framed against the window. The subjectivity of the description comes through in the sequence in which the narrator describes the scene; he does not move objectively from left to right or top to bottom, but starts large and then focusses on the element he views as being most important. He also doesn't describe Marian all at once. His description is limited by the angle from which he can see her, and his first impression of her is summed up both in the abstract terms "beauty," "grace," and "perfection" and in the narrator's descriptive elaborations on these abstractions. By withholding the detail of her face, he centres the reader's anticipation and attention upon it and creates a certain mild suspense, which is relieved when he finally reaches that surprising abstract word: ugly.

At this point in the description, every reader should visualise what is, to him or her, an ugly woman. The shock value lies not in Marian's actual appearance but in the unexpected introduction of a subjective word that holds a specific personal meaning for each individual. However, the narrator doesn't leave it there; he outlines Marian's looks in detail, in the process showing us what she actually looks like and what he considers ugliness to be. He ends with a subjective but memorable comparison of Marian's contradictory beauty/ugliness to a dreamer's inability to reconcile the dream world with the real world. This final comment does not add to the description, but it does contribute to the reader's overall impression of the encounter by positioning this beautiful-ugly woman as almost monstrous: an unsolvable nightmare conundrum who is trapped between categories.In other words, every word counts. It's sometimes a little too easy to regard essay writing as "functional" and believe that as long as it gets your general point across, any combination of words will do. Descriptive writing demonstrates the falsity of this idea. Word choice, word order, sentence construction, order of ideas, emphasis of words and phrases, repetition, punctuation, figurative language: everything works together to draw a picture. Different configurations create different pictures. Using more words is not always ideal, either; remember how horribly boring the huge objective description above was. Concise and evocative is often the way to go.

You think I'm talking out of my rear end when I say that "Since the dawn of time" is not an acceptable phrase with which to begin an essay? Stop thinking out of your rear end. Words are important. "Since the dawn of time" means "since the dawn of time"; it is not code for, "Don't pay attention to the first sentence of this essay, which is formula and not really important." If you use stupid words and phrases, your writing will seem stupid. If you use vague words and phrases, your writing will seem vague. If you jumble words and phrases together any old how, your writing will be confusing, and your markers will tear out their hair and eat it.

The descriptive mode is a good one in which to work on preciseness of expression because it is, in a way, the mode behind many of the other modes. A pure description is not an analysis, but it is often a jumping-off point for analysis. When my art students begin to learn to analyse works of art, their first job is to describe these works; only when they have learned to see do they move on to meaning. An incomplete description makes for an incomplete analysis. The student who missed the human figure for the flowers would have had problems analysing the painting without acknowledging that figure; if she had, her interpretation would probably have constituted a misreading. Clear and accurate description is more likely to lead to clear and accurate analysis.

Descriptive essays are often termed "expository"--they are meant to inform the reader rather than to argue a point--but the truth is that even descriptions can contain arguments. They are not, however, always as structured as the arguments in persuasive papers; a descriptive thesis is sometimes implied rather than stated outright. Some of my students have just been asked by their prof to provide descriptions of imaginary rooms that they themselves must design. These rooms must make their occupants feel safe. Each student will therefore have to create a thesis revolving around why and how her room's design conveys safety; this thesis will be stated in the introduction. However, other students with a different prof are going to have to describe significant experiences in their lives: experiences about which they felt differently years later. These students will probably embed their theses in their descriptions themselves, conveying why and how their feelings changed through subjective details about their reactions. Descriptions allow scope for creativity. Adhering to sandwich method will not help you here; you would do better to fall back on your creative-writing skills. Remember that your main objective is--for whatever reason--to create a clear, memorable picture.

The next time I somehow manage to get my butt in gear and write in this blog, I'll probably be dealing with the narrative mode, which is quite like the descriptive mode, except with more action scenes. I may take a grammatical detour first, but we'll see.

*I can't ask you if she is because I am once again months ahead of myself, and she won't be appearing until November.

**Assuming you hadn't seen it yet, of course. If you had, you would probably say, "What an amazing coincidence! I was just reading this blog that went on and on about a photo of a person sitting on a log between two cliffs. I think our minds are connected." Then I would hit you.
***Me included. I once failed to recognise my second cousin when we met accidentally on a bus perhaps two days after we had had dinner together. The poor guy talked to me for twenty minutes before I was able to discern from hints in our conversation exactly who he was.

****Writers of fiction have been bludgeoned over the head with this one almost literally since the dawn of time.

*****For the full reference, see the bibliography, which I am about to create.
******The novel with the famous opening. You know: the one that goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on about times being good and bad and wise and foolish and light and dark and all sorts of other stuff that basically adds up to absolutely nothing at all, deliberately.

Put Your Hands in the Air and Step Away from the Semi-Colon

2007-09-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

One of the things about the sandwich method that makes me want to scream and tear out other people's hair* is that it fools writers into believing that there is only one type of essay. While sandwich theory is relatively sound in essence (many good papers are structured sandwich-fashion, with an introduction and conclusion bracketing a number of body paragraphs), in reality, Devotees of the Sacred Sandwich often rely so heavily on the formula that they don't know how to react when asked to write a type of essay that does not work as a sandwich. These people then panic, break down, and write off-topic essays.

You do not want to write off-topic essays. Your markers will bludgeon you with C minuses if you write off-topic essays. Write on-topic essays. They are much prettier and will not enrage your profs.

For the next little while, I'm going to be dealing with the modes of essay-writing: the different varieties of essay that you may eventually have to try, whether you like it or not. You should note, however, that in a sense, these "modes" are artificial categories. A professor may ask you specifically for a cause-and-effect essay or a process paper, but she is just as likely simply to hand you a topic and expect you to work out for yourself what kind of essay you need to write. Generally, only first-year writing instructors demand certain modes. These instructors also may neglect to explain that the modes can be mixed together or conflated. The categories are nice to have, but don't mistake them for rigid, unbreakable rules.

From this point onwards, I am also going to be bringing more external sources into the blog. I can't keep making up stupid little essays about The Fellowship of the Ring forever; I want to show you some examples from published papers. Unfortunately, I don't have permission to reproduce any of these papers in full unless they are no longer under copyright. I can quote short passages from them (for the purpose of critical comment) as long as I include a bibliography.** I shall therefore be providing examples at the sentence or paragraph level rather than the essay-as-a-whole level.

I'll be dealing with the first of these modes--the descriptive--in my next post. I want to save a whole post for the descriptive mode because I expect I'll be doing quite a lot of yelling about observation and learning to describe what is actually there instead of what you think you see. However, never fear; I have some ranting for you this time as well. I hereby bring you another grammatical interlude, this one dealing with:

THE SEMI-COLON.

That felt good. That felt very good. Let me do it again:

THE SEMI-COLON.

Why am I writing "the semi-colon"**** in great big bright red capital letters?

I am trying to impart to you the importance of this misused and much maligned piece of punctuation! I am trying to return the semi-colon to the position of greatness it deserves! I am mad with power because I can turn my words different colours and make them all pretty! Insert evil laugh here!

I have had the following conversation, almost word for word, with several different first-year classes:

Me: What role does a comma have in a sentence?

Student 1: It marks a pause.

*I try not to develop the power of super-strength and leap furiously upon Student 1*

Me: Okay...what role does a semi-colon have in a sentence?

Student 2: It marks a longer pause.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

I'll deal more thoroughly with commas later. For now, I'll just say that they bloody do not denote bloody pauses. Well...sometimes, they do. They also have specific grammatical functions that cause those pauses. If you inserted a comma every time William Shatner paused, you would get:

I, am the, captain, of the, Starship, Enterprise, and I, am now, going, to make a, speech about, how, noble my, purpose, is, especially, since you, are a hot, alien, babe, and will probably, die, in, my, arms.

I don't freaking well think so.

For now, just take it from me: those commas you are flinging madly about are actually in your sentences for a reason. Stop sprinkling them randomly over your essays. Better yet, read up on the comma rules. Yes, you! Yes, you can! If you know what a sentence is, they really aren't that difficult.

The problem is that a lot of people don't know what a sentence is. The semi-colon suffers from this gap in knowledge; it may suffer even more than the comma.

Look! Look! I just used a semi-colon! Why did I? Was I pausing? Was I doing something other than pausing? What does it all mean?*****

To answer this question, I must return to How to Write an Independent Clause 101. In a moment, you will see why.

An independent clause consists of two bits: the subject and the predicate. The subject is the element that does stuff (usually a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase). The predicate is the verb (i.e., what the subject is doing) plus everything else (i.e., words and phrases that modify the verb). An independent clause can (and often does) stand on its own to form a sentence. No other type of construction can do so. A phrase (a collection of consecutive words lacking either a subject or a predicate) cannot be a sentence. A relative clause (a clause--containing a subject and a predicate--that begins with "whom," "which," or "that": for instance, the bit including and following "that" in "I had to protect the carrot that I had eaten") cannot be a sentence. A subordinate clause (a clause that can't stand on its own but depends on the rest of the sentence for its meaning: for instance, the bit including and following "while" in "He ate breakfast while she took a nap") cannot be a sentence.

In this clause:

John ate the cat.

"John" is the subject; "ate the cat" is the predicate.

The predicate has to contain a verb (in this case, the third-person singular past-tense version of "to eat"). Everything else is just window dressing. A predicate that contains no verb is not a predicate at all. If a construction lacks either a subject or a predicate, it is a phrase, not an independent clause.

The shortest sentence in the English language is probably:

Go.

It is in the imperative, meaning that the subject, "you," is implied; the speaker is giving a command to the listener. "Go" itself is the predicate.

Yes, I am about to return to semi-colons. Watch me. Here I go:

A semi-colon is not a bloody long pause. In fact, it can only be used in two situations:

1) To separate two independent clauses.

2) To separate the items of a complex list.

The first situation is both the most straightforward and the one that people mess up the most. Think of it this way: if the words to the left or the right of your semi-colon cannot stand alone as a complete sentence, your semi-colon is incorrect. For instance, in this sentence:

Danielle went to the ball; because her mother forced her to do so.

the semi-colon separates an independent clause and a subordinate clause. "Because her mother forced her to do so" is not a complete sentence. You don't actually need any internal punctuation in this sentence at all. However:

Danielle went to the ball; her mother forced her to do so.

is fine, as both parts of the sentence form independent clauses.

In other words, the semi-colon is rather similar to the period. Some people call it a "weak period"; it functions more or less as a full stop, but it also implies a connection between the words that precede and follow it. The following sentence:

Danielle went to the ball; on Saturday, James had a date with Meredith.******

is not problematic grammatically, but content-wise, it seems jarring. Though the semi-colon implies a connection between the two statements, no connection appears to exist.

The second use of the semi-colon is a less common one, though it can be quite useful at times. Usually, the elements of a list are separated by commas. If you are a Sandwich Devotee, you'll know about this rule, as your thesis statements generally consist of lists. A typical list might be:

James is stupid, lazy, and slow.

Commas work perfectly fine here. However, not all lists have single-word elements. A list whose elements themselves must contain commas needs more than simply commas for separation; otherwise, the list can become just about this confusing:

Janet needed a new bed, which she was planning to buy on Thursday, a refrigerator, though not the one her sister wanted her to get, since it was fairly expensive, and a potted plant, for which she had been saving for years, she claimed.

*Shudder*

Yes, it's just generally a horrible sentence. Yet if you really needed to write it, it would probably work a bit better with semi-colons:

Janet needed a new bed, which she was planning to buy on Thursday; a refrigerator, though not the one her sister wanted her to get, since it was fairly expensive; and a potted plant, for which she had been saving for years, she claimed.

Ta-da.

Semi-colons do nothing else.******* They are not pauses...or not only pauses. Use them wisely, and don't go on about how the rules surrounding them are tooooooooo haaaaaaaard to leeeeeeeaaaaaaaarn. They are not too hard to learn. They are not hard at all. If you are not writing a list, make sure there is what could be a complete sentence on either side of your semi-colon. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. The end.

Next time, there will be Description. I am not entirely certain when next time will be, as my TAing year officially begins tomorrow; however, it will come.********

*Not mine. That would hurt.
**Guess what the next blog entry but one is going to be? That's right, boys and girls: a bibliography!***
***And there was much rejoicing.
****"Semi-colon" is also sometimes spelled "semicolon." I like the version with the hyphen because the other one sounds like some sort of rare and rather embarrassing disease.
*****Forty-two.
******You'll notice that the second clause here begins with a short introductory phrase. It is not a clause in and of itself, but it is, in fact, a modifier in the clause that follows it.
*******Except maybe the winky emoticon.
********If you build it. Sorry. A lot of you were probably actually not born when that movie came out. I was fourteen. Yes, I am older than you. Shut up.

If You Skip the Postwriting Stage, I Shall Eat Your Mind

2007-08-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

It is 2:45 on Sunday morning. You have just spent several hours churning out a thousand-word essay for a second-year English class. You run the paper through your spell-checker, make sure you've spelled your own name correctly, and print the essay out. You're free!

Then you wake up and find that it was all a dream.

I am dreadfully sorry, but spell-checking is not the same thing as proofreading. Spell-checkers are useful, but they can't tell the difference between "rein," "reign," and "rain," they don't fix your grammatical errors, they don't point out gaps in your logic, and they will not scream and rant at you when your conclusion is weak. If you're used to skipping the editing stage because you feel the spell-checker will do all your work for you, you need to stop deluding yourself. Your spell-checked paper is still full of errors. Your readers will not look kindly on these errors. In fact, they are more likely to forgive you the misspelling of your own name than they are the substitution of "dentist's" for "dentists."*

Several Ranting Hours ago, I explained that each of the three stages of essay writing should take a similar amount of time. Ideally, the postwriting (or editing) stage should be as lengthy and complex as the writing stage, though it is also the bit of the process that many writers find it easiest to neglect. When you finish an essay, you want to be finished, not have to spend hours fiddling with verb endings and transitions. However, a good edit will, if done properly, jack your grade right up** while simultaneously ensuring that your essay attains (and retains) basic coherence and logic.*** Editing is about more than catching misspellings and tense shifts; it allows you to tweak your paper in subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle ways in order to make it--as a whole--a better piece of writing.

Everyone approaches editing differently, partly because everyone approaches writing differently. I, for instance, am a completely anal-retentive writer. I need to make my essays bloody damned perfect in their first drafts; I find it very hard to make changes during the editing process. In the last few years, dissertation work has taught me to be a better editor, as no dissertation is bloody damned perfect in its first draft. I have learned how to eliminate entire sentences and even paragraphs...and how to add entire sentences and even paragraphs. However, I am still a completely anal-retentive writer. I write very, very carefully, agonising over wording and imagery, and every time I take a break, I get back into the essay by reading everything I have written thus far.**** Half my editing is done while I write; writing and postwriting alternate with each other.

Other people have different methods. Some puzzle out their essays paragraph by paragraph or even sentence by sentence before they begin to write. Some fling themselves headlong into the writing process, hurtle through to the end without paying attention to spelling, grammar, or structure, and then completely rewrite the paper six times. Whichever method works for you is perfectly fine with me. What you've got to remember is that revision is necessary, whether it occurs before, during, or after the writing process. No matter what method you use, you will make errors. You will leave holes in your argument. You will write grammatically functional but hideously ugly sentences. Sometimes editing lays down a whole new layer of concrete; sometimes it simply smooths out the bumps in the pavement. Either way, it still needs to be done.

Many methods work; you will need to find the ones that suit you. Here are a few:

1) Read the paper aloud. Writers tend to shy from this method because it seems cumbersome or, for people with roommates, downright embarrassing. Declaiming, "Hamlet's indecision puts a strain on the revenge plot, causing it to shift in an unexpected direction," in front of your university's six-time beer-chugging champion may not be the best way of proving that you are not a geek. However, it may also make you realise how silly that sentence is.***** Reading aloud is a way of forcing yourself to pay attention to every word you have written. If you read silently, you'll get through the essay more quickly, but your eyes will also skip over words and phrases. I have gone back to stories I wrote years ago and have edited scores of times, and I'll still find typos; I am familiar enough with the text at hand that my brain assumes it knows what I have written, and my eyes slide past the errors.

Reading aloud will also draw your attention to awkward or nonsensical sentences. Someone who has to work his way--aloud--through this sort of thing:

The hermeneutics of the opposition to the position proposed by Hutchinson was the cause of Darry's support of the leader of the people of the Tor; nonetheless, when John Bartleman discovered the perfidy of the wife of the leader of the people of the Tor, the binary opposition between idiocy and chocolate amalgamated with the clients of the north, south, and crimson lake.

will probably end up either scrapping the sentence entirely or throwing the essay violently against the wall. Read aloud for grammar but also for comprehension. If you confuse even yourself, something needs to change.

2) Read once for grammar and structure and once for content. Some writers find that breaking the editing process into bits can be useful. I copy-edit for some of my friends, and I have noticed that I have a tendency to concentrate almost exclusively on grammar; in the process, I neglect what the writer is actually saying. If you start with a slow, careful grammatical read-through, then do a swifter one in which you try to figure out whether the argument holds together, you may find that you catch more holes and errors than you would if you went for the walking-and-chewing-gum-at-the-same-time option.

3) Read the essay from the perspective of your theoretical opponent. I haven't discussed counter-arguments in detail yet--I'll get to those when I cover the persuasive mode--but as I have said in earlier posts, an essay is an argument. It therefore necessarily has a counter-argument: a point of view (or, usually, several points of view) that opposes it in some way. Holes in an argument happen when a writer does not defend herself successfully from her theoretical opponent.

Debaters often have to argue from points of view that are not really theirs. Be a debater. Put together a convincing counter-argument, and read your essay as if you believe this counter-argument. If you find that the counter-argument is defeating the argument--if you have left so many holes in your paper that your "opponent" is winning the debate--you probably need to find more evidence and/or analyse it more convincingly.

4) Ask a friend to read through the paper. I do not recommend that you allow this friend to correct your grammar, change all your sentences around, and suggest new and exciting thesis points to you. If the friend does too much of the work on the essay, you will be guilty of academic misconduct. Even if you think of yourself as really bad at grammar, do not ask a friend to help you in this way, especially if you are in a first-year essay-writing course and thus being marked specifically, and only, on your essay-writing skills.

However, you should feel free to let a friend read your paper for content and point out holes in your argument. This process is called peer editing; some high-school and first-year classes use it as a learning method. Your friend will notice when bits of your argument don't work and point out repetition and lack of clarity. He is not as invested in the paper as you are; his brain doesn't subconsciously fill in the gaps as he reads.

5) Turn your essay into an after-the-fact outline or mind map. A good way of checking for logical holes is to take notes on your own essay as if you are planning on analysing it. Figure out not what you were planning to say but what you did say by re-outlining your essay. In the process, make sure that all your points are connected and relevant.

Some common problems to watch for while you are editing are:

1) A weak or non-existent thesis. Does your thesis answer a "how" or "why" question? Does it present a controversial but potentially convincing idea?

The thesis statement does not need to include three thesis points. It does not need to be only a single sentence long. It does not need to include formulaic words or phrases. It needs to exist, and it needs to lead to a satisfying argument. All the little formulae that go with the sandwich method are holding you back. If your thesis is complex and must be expressed over the course of two sentences--or three sentences--or an entire paragraph...fine. Conciseness is good, but not at the expense of comprehension. Just make sure that you have something to argue.

2) Clumsy or non-existent transitions. Are your body paragraphs connected? Does the argument flow smoothly from point to point?

As with the thesis, make sure transitions exist. They can consist of words, phrases, entire sentences, subtle references to preceding bits of the argument, or anything else that lets you move logically through the argument. No one is going to kill you if you don't use the word "consequently."

Don't make the common mistake of thinking that the end of a paragraph is a good place for a transition. Students sometimes finish one paragraph with what appears to be the topic sentence of the next in an attempt to provide a transition. This method is confusing for the reader, who expects a switch of topic in the next paragraph, not in this one.

3) Sentences so convoluted that the reader has to go back and examine them again simply to figure out what they say. Complex constructions can be useful, but if they are obscuring your meaning, go with simplicity every time. Your goal is for the reader to be able to get all the way through your paper without having to go back and puzzle out what the hell you mean every time you lose control of a sentence.

4) "Minor" errors. When a reader comes upon a spelling mistake, grammatical error, mangled sentence, or incorrectly defined word, she pauses briefly and sometimes subconsciously in the reading process.****** You want to avoid causing such pauses. Grammar and spelling may seem insignificant to you, but if you find something such as this enjoyable to read:

Theres lot of thing we could discuss and this point but insted Ill talk a bit about cow's and horse's which can be found in sicily!

you probably spend far too much time in chat rooms.*******

5) Introductions and conclusions that don't correspond to one another. Try reading your introduction and conclusion back to back. If your thesis seems to have changed radically between one and the other, you may have a problem.

You should also try to ensure than your conclusion does not repeat your introduction exactly.

6) Colloquialisms, pointlessly huge words, and awkward modes of expression. As you (should) know, colloquialisms have no place in formal essays. As you may not know, idiotically enormous words shouldn't be there either. Why say, "The titular hero utilises the subsequent ostentatiousness of his grandiose wardrobe" when "The protagonist then unnecessarily dons his best clothing" will do just as well? The word "utilise" is especially overused in this regard. Is anything wrong with "use"? Has some mysterious essay-writing society banned it? No? Use "use." "Utilise" is a silly word.

Not all sentences are created equal. Good writing has a certain rhythm to it; it is interesting to read not simply because of what it says but also because of how it is said. Reading your papers aloud will allow you to hear this rhythm...or a lack thereof. If a sentence seems awkward to you, it will seem awkward to your readers as well. There is not only one way of expressing any given idea. Don't be afraid to restructure your sentences.

The editing process, if properly done, often takes quite a long time. It should. If you skimp on this step, your papers will be the poorer for it.

You may have noticed that my posts are becoming less frequent. The school year is fast approaching, and I am beginning to have to prepare for it; I'm therefore probably going to be posting less often from here on in. However, I am going to keep going until I've covered everything I want to cover.

I've now finished with the basics of the essay-writing process. Future posts will deal with essay writing in more detail, covering the rhetorical modes, subtleties of language use, ways of constructing watertight arguments, grammatical and structural issues, research methods, citation, and anything else that occurs to me along the way.

*I should note right now that my proof-reading of this blog is not going to be perfect, as much as I wish it could be. I don't print out the entries and edit them on paper because I write the blog somewhere I don't have access to a printer, and my proofing is much more accurate on paper than it is on screen. As well, I desperately need to get my eyes checked but currently can't afford new glasses. I apologise for all errors and encourage you to point them out, though not if you're going to gloat.
**For those of you who are just in it for the marks.
***For those of you who see beyond the marks. Yes, such people do exist.
****Except not with the dissertation. I know it has taken me eight years to finish my Ph.D., but I'm not entirely insane.
*****How does it put a strain on the revenge plot? What unexpected direction? Are you just writing down random words and hoping they sound intelligent? Analyse. The. Play.
******Often to cringe and go, "Eeeeeewwwwwww."
*******I am not a snob. I like chat rooms. I have also seen how people spell in them.********
********Okay, maybe I am a snob.

Active. Bloody. Voice. Damn it.

2007-08-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

The following post may not be entirely useful for people studying the sciences. Science papers have their own rules and conventions, and many of my scientist acquaintances have remarked that their professors encourage them to write almost entirely in the passive voice. Others insist that this convention is changing. Scientists: check with your profs.

Humanities students:

You use the passive voice too much. Yes, you. Yes, you do. It's hard to blame you; passivity can be useful at times, and to discount it entirely is to remove a certain richness from the English language. However, that is no real excuse for your blatant overuse of it. An essay that relies heavily on the passive will seem uncertain and sometimes unclear. You need to learn to stick with the active voice as much as you can.

Before I go on, a clarification may be in order:

"Passive voice" and "past tense" are not synonymous.

That's right, Person Who Carefully Went Through All His Papers and Changed the Passive Constructions to the Present Tense: "voice" and "tense" are different things altogether, as, not incidentally, are "passive" and "past." If you're writing a literature paper, you should be writing in the present tense anyway.* Here, in case you're still confused, is an illustration of the difference:

Past tense:

John built the store.

John's little adventure with the store occurred in the past. The past singular third-person form of the verb "to build" is "built." The present singular third-person form would be "builds." Elementary, my dear Watson.

The above sentence is in the active voice. It contains a subject (John), a verb (built), and a direct object (the store). The subject is acting on the object.

Passive voice:

The store was built (by John).

It doesn't matter when John built (or builds or will build) the store. "The store will be built (by John)" is still a passive construction. The "by John" is optional; the sentence makes grammatical sense without it, though it sounds a bit stupid. Here the sentence starts with an acted-upon object (the store) and is followed by a verb phrase (was built). The subject is implied.** If the "by John" is included, the subject is stated, though as part of a prepositional phrase. The order of the sentence is thus twisted on its head. The object is given the place of prominence; the subject is erased or rendered incidental.

An Internet personage named Stefan has pointed out in the comments section below that intransitive verbs (verbs that don't take direct objects) are less likely to appear in passive constructions than transitive verbs. This comment merits a bit of explanation.

"To build" is solely a transitive verb. It needs to take a direct object; "John built" is not a complete sentence. "To drink" can be either transitive or intransitive. "John drank" (intransitive: no object necessary) is a complete sentence, but so is, "John drank the water" (transitive: object required). The sentence "John drank from the stream" employs the intransitive sense of this verb, and it can thus only take an indirect object. "To go" is an intransitive verb. "John went the store" is nonsensical; the verb needs a following preposition. "John went to the store" includes an indirect object ("to the store").

[Note to Stephanie, whose comment below led me to revise the above paragraph: I actually think the rules must be slightly different in English and French. I'm not sure that English has such a thing as an indirect transitive. I've certainly never heard the term before, though that may not mean anything. I'm not infallible, you know! I get stuff wrong and then have to pretend I was being edgy! I can't do long division! My socks all have holes in them! I shall never learn to play the bagpipes!

Moving along...]

To use an intransitive verb in a passive construction is possible but discouraged, as it makes the resulting sentence unnecessarily convoluted and involves a dangling preposition. This sentence--

The store was gone to (by John).

--is functional but very awkward. I'll discuss dangling prepositions at some point in the future, but for now, I'll just advise you to avoid them. Try not to let your prepositions hang off the ends of your sentences; make sure that they always have objects to take.

Experimental scientists tend to like the passive because it allows them to avoid using the word "I" all the time and thus gives them a way to make their papers sound less subjective. However, experimental scientists are often writing process essays; they are describing how they (or others) have accomplished certain experiments. Students of literature, history, and philosophy should never be in danger of writing something such as:

I analysed this poem by opening my book and running my finger slowly along each line. I noted important words, including "heart" and "chicken"; I also determined that the first three verses were written in iambic pentameter and the fourth in dactylic hexameter.

If I had to mark an essay written in this fashion, I would probably eat it.***

Humanities essays are not process papers. The reader assumes that the writer is engaged in the process of analysis; any explanation of the finer details of the analysis itself is unnecessary. There is therefore no real danger of overuse of the "I." Overuse of the passive, however, is still a problem.

Look at the following passage:

The poem is written in blank verse. In the second stanza, it is implied that the narrator is a parakeet, as bird imagery can be seen throughout. A sly allusion to the structure of the Parthenon is also hinted at.

BY...

...WHOM?

Who has written the poem in blank verse? The poet? The audience? Fairies? Who implies that the narrator is a parakeet? Bird imagery can be seen by whom? Who hints at the goddamn allusion to the structure of the Parthenon? Why is nobody doing anything in this passage? Where are the actors, for crying out loud?

The main problem with the passive construction is that it eliminates the actor, leaving only the action and the acted upon. Even a passive construction that includes a "by John" sort of element is shoving the actor to the outskirts of the sentence; it is also unnecessarily convoluted.**** By failing to mention the actor, you are once again expecting your readers to do all your work for you. Be clear and concise. The above passage would be less vague and meandering if it read:

Geoffrey Rathers writes the poem in blank verse. In the second stanza, he uses subtle bird imagery to imply that the narrator is a parakeet; he also hints that he is alluding to the structure of the Parthenon.

The passage still doesn't make any damned sense, and I would still blast any student who wrote it for not explaining how Rathers has alluded to the structure of the Parthenon.***** However, grammatically, it is much clearer. Note that though the two passages are almost exactly the same length, the second actually seems shorter; it has fewer stops and starts, and its sentences are rather more straightforward.

The passive voice is not always a bad thing. I use it quite often in informal writing and even occasionally in formal papers; sometimes, there simply isn't an actor. However, do try to eliminate it from your writing. Once you have mastered writing without it, you can allow it to creep back. Yet for now, practise stamping it out. Too much passivity will have your markers screaming in frustration and scrawling, "BY WHOM?" in your margins, and no wonder. Don't. Erase. The actor. The actor is your friend. Embrace the actor. Give him chocolate. Let him act.

You may have noticed that the original passage above also contains an expletive ("it is implied"). Expletives often act much like passive constructions in that they eliminate the actor. Who implies it? Kill your expletives too.

The next post will probably be much longer than this one. It will deal with postwriting, the most neglected and possibly the most vital portion of the writing process.

*And not slewing back and forth and back and forth and back and bloody forth from the present to the past. There is absolutely no reason you shouldn't know by now that it is silly, grammatically and structurally, to change tense in the middle of a freaking sentence for no particular reason. Stop doing it.
**"The subject is implied" is itself a passive construction. Actually, much of this paragraph is passive. However, the example is general; there is no actor here.
***Without salt, even.
****Why write, "The poem was written by Charlton Heston" when you can write, "Charlton Heston wrote the poem"? Of course, Charlton Heston probably didn't write the poem, as Charlton Heston seems more like the sort of guy who believes in his heart that poetry is for jumped-up nancy boys, but you get the general idea.
*****Whatever the hell that even means.

Conclusion, Conclusion, Conclusion

2007-08-25T17:23:00.000-07:00

The conclusion of an essay is one of the easiest bits to screw up. By the time a writer reaches her conclusion, she can taste freedom; she has only one measly paragraph to get out of the way before she can fling the paper aside and frolic off into the sunset, happy and carefree.* She really, really wants the conclusion to take only about four or five minutes to write.

Consequently, even if she claims she is not a devotee of the Order of the Sandwich, she will often write quite a sandwichy conclusion that consists mostly of a nearly word-for-word repetition of the introduction. If she is truly in a hurry, this conclusion will begin and end with her thesis statement. It will contain nothing new or particularly interesting.

This writer is not being very wise at all. Do not be like her. She is shooting herself in the foot, and then some.

The general belief that the conclusion should be a restatement of the introduction is a false one. A conclusion that restates an introduction is not simply boring; it also implies that the writer has spent the entire essay treading water. A paraphrased conclusion turns an essay into the equivalent of a paragraph that begins with a restatement of a thesis point and ends with a sentence that starts, "Therefore...", then restates the thesis point again. Yes, the thesis constitutes your argument--in effect, the conclusion to which you are going to come in the course of the essay--but by the time you reach the end of your paper, you should have turned this one basic idea into a complex interweaving of smaller related ideas and demonstrated how, exactly, you have arrived at it. If the conclusion repeats the introduction without paying any attention to the body paragraphs, those body paragraphs may as well not be there. The body of an essay adds enough complexity to its thesis that a failure to acknowledge it constitutes a failure to acknowledge the argument that you have just constructed.

Your essay should be more than the sum of its parts. The thesis is the sum of these parts; the conclusion acknowledges the greater import of the argument as a whole. It gathers all the bits of the argument together and examines their overall significance. Sometimes, it hints at larger related issues. It sums up the essay's ideas, but it does not repeat the thesis statement word for word. It should also leave the reader with a memorable image or idea; after all, the conclusion is the last part of the essay that he will see.**

Giving advice about conclusions is almost as difficult as writing them, mostly because there is no conclusion formula. Every conclusion must be tempered to the needs of the essay to which it belongs. I can provide an example and some general advice, but most of the latter is going to consist of warnings about what you shouldn't do rather than explanations about what you should. Taking my example for a model will do you no good; a different strategy is necessary for every conclusion.

My example is taken from a seventeen-page graduate term essay I wrote many years ago. It is not perfect, but it demonstrates the points I want it to demonstrate. Try not to be put off by the relatively dense language; I am writing in a style considered acceptable for a graduate student in English.*** I'm going to provide both the introduction and the conclusion so that you can see how the two paragraphs interact. I am not going to publish the fifteen pages in between. You really don't want to read this essay.

You should also note that these paragraphs are much longer than your introductions and conclusions should be (if you are writing short undergraduate essays, that is). As your papers grow in length, your introductions and conclusions inevitably will too.

The subject is Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene, an extremely long English poem written during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Introduction:

At the beginning of Book IV of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, the lady knight Britomart, having just won a joust at a tournament, unlaces her helmet and lets her telltale golden hair fall free. The spectators are amazed and confused: some believe that Britomart’s appearance is "faygned" by enchantment (IV i 14.5), some that she is a war-goddess, and some that her face is not a face but "a maske of strange disguise" (14.8). The simple truth–that Britomart is a woman dressed as a man–occurs immediately to none. [Starts with a relevant example from the text.] These people see reality in Britomart’s mask and falsity in her true identity; they are so thrown by the presence of the woman’s face beneath the visor that they would rather accept the visor and not the face itself as an indicator of who and what the knight really is. [Comments on the example.] In a way, this scene, with its odd theme of reversed masking, is emblematic of Spenser’s strategy in Faerie Queene IV. [Begins to connect the example to the thesis.] The book is one in which the so-called chivalric ideal, borrowed by the Elizabethans from popular romance and a sort of neo-medieval tradition of honour and service as knightly necessities, both comes to the fore and is shoved to the rear. [Elaborates on the theme emblematised by the example.] The poet paints picture after picture of what seems, at first, an almost Edenic "antique age" (IV viii 30.1) in which honour is all, then reveals the supposed paradise to be not just a mask hiding the "true face" of Elizabeth’s court but the "true face" of chivalry hidden behind the mask of that court. [Illustrates the theme and connects it to the initial example.] In Spenser’s elaborately constructed, obviously artificial fairyland is the same truth that Britomart bears in her undisguised being, and in his audience may be the same unwillingness to see that truth as anything but a splendid play. [Heading towards the thesis statement.] The allegory in Faerie Queene IV is thus also, and paradoxically, an explosion of the "chivalry" of the Elizabethan court-world and a stripping-off, through the medium of the mask of poetry, of that world’s allegorical mask. [Thesis statement: related, imagery-wise, to initial example.]

Conclusion:

Such a concession makes his tournaments strange beasts indeed. [Transition from final body paragraph, which deals with Spenser's tacit concession of romance's**** almost complete detachment from reality.] Though set about with the trappings of romance, they are too Chaucerian to be conventional; though apparently not concerned with Elizabethan-style pageantry, they are full of masks; though imbued with romance chivalry on the surface, they hide harsher emotions beneath. [Sums up Spenser's tournaments in all their glorious contradictoriness. Relates directly to last body paragraph, but also to several preceding body paragraphs.] In a sense, Spenser is reaching back to an ideal world that he knows is not really there and, when he has removed layer after layer of costume, revealing not Britomart’s face but Ate’s.***** [Not an observation that has been made before...but one arising from the material in the body paragraphs.] His tournaments show up Elizabeth’s chivalry as a return to "chivalric old days" that have never been. The queen is reaching for her symbolism not into the past but into the safer world of literature: a world in which Sir Thopas and the Squire’s numerous characters can wander around endlessly, unable to finish their own meaningless stories. [Ditto on the last red observation.] Spenser’s tournaments are allegories of Elizabeth’s in the same sense that Britomart’s face is an allegory of her visor. [Getting to the point. Relates back to the example in the introduction.] If that visor is removed–if one gets in behind Elizabeth’s pageants rather than Spenser’s and examines the allegory of her own preeminence that the queen is constructing around herself–one finds merely a fiction in which chivalric honour and courtly love themselves are implicated because they are based on the ideal of an impossible past. [Elaboration on last comment.] When Spenser rewrites romance tournaments as events of too many–or too few–masks, he is mirroring Elizabeth’s rewriting of chivalry. [This is the point. Again, it arises from material in the introduction and body paragraphs, but it also sums up fifteen pages of argument.] For political reasons, she has embraced the ideal of discordia concors and attempted to apply it to the social codes of her England. Spenser’s Faerie Queene IV removes the concord from the equation and lets Discord lurk, unacknowledged, behind the chivalric helm as a "maske of strange disguise." [This is really the point. It is basically the thesis statement over again, but with an essential added element: the idea of Discord being the face behind the visor. This identification of Discord as the "maske" is essential to the essay, but while it is only implied in the introduction, it is blatantly stated (after fifteen pages of proof) in the conclusion].

Some strategies I use here:

1) Presentation of a central image to which I can return in the conclusion. The example of Britomart pulling off her helm at the tournament provides the idea of the "maske of strange disguise" that I use as a metaphor for Spenser's allegory of Elizabeth's court.****** A central image can be eminently useful. It gives you an idea to which you can always return, thus giving your essay some structure. "Circling back to an idea in an intelligent manner" is not the same thing as "repeating an idea mindlessly, just because it's there."

2) Direct connection between the final point and the conclusion. Remember how I earlier railed against the whole "In conclusion" deal? I have not changed my mind on this one. "In conclusion" is no more a real transition than is "Secondly." If you're going to use a transition, make sure it's a relevant, useful one.

However, transitional words are not always necessary in conclusions. Not every essay merits a smooth slide from the last body paragraph to the conclusion. Sometimes, a pause between the final point and the conclusion can be effective as well. The conclusion of one of my dissertation chapters begins:

Kyng Alisaunder involves enough contradiction that it can be a baffling poem and may occasionally seem a poorly constructed one.

This sentence returns directly to an idea discussed in the chapter's introduction; it does not relate directly to the preceding paragraph. However, the ideas that follow this (controversial) statement relate back to the chapter as a whole and encompass the idea just covered. The pause (inherent in the apparent lack of transition) between the important final idea and the conclusion draws the reader's attention to the paragraph as at conclusion.

Sometimes, a pause is effective; sometimes, a smooth transition is. It's up to you to decide which to use, and when.

3) Introduction of seemingly new material that nonetheless arises direction from the essay's body. My comment about Discord/Ate's face being the "maske" is an apparently fresh comment that nonetheless both echoes and elaborates on the thesis statement. I am, in fact, restating the thesis here, but I am doing so in such a way that it now seems bigger than it did in the introduction. In fact, what has happened is that the body paragraphs have lent the thesis a richness and complexity that are not yet apparent in the introduction. A plain restatement would have negated or dismissed this complexity. Make sure that you acknowledge and take into account your own argument.

4) Memorable last sentence. In this case, my conclusion derives from my initial example, and it is "memorable" because it offers the reader an image that can be visualised. You should always aim for a memorable last sentence, but you can do so in a variety of ways: through imagery, a clever and relevant turn of phrase, a thought-provoking comment about the conclusions you have drawn, a thought-provoking hint about the implications of the conclusions you have drawn, and so on. Again, it's up to you. Note, however, that a simple repetition of your thesis statement is not going to stick in the reader's mind; her eyes are fairly likely to skim impatiently over it.

You will have noticed that my introduction and conclusion above are by no means identical or even all that similar to each other. I can't stress enough that a conclusion that paraphrases an introduction tells the reader that the essay's argument has gone nowhere. The introduction cannot encompass all of an argument's complexities; if it could, it would be the length of an essay. Acknowledge these complexities in your conclusion. Acknowledge that--with luck--the reader has learned something from your essay. Don't parrot your own words so that you can toss the essay into your backpack and go watch a geriatric Bruce Willis blow up terrorists. Your conclusion should not introduce brand new material, but it does need to contain something new, if only a connection that you haven't yet drawn explicitly in the course of your essay.

In the end, your conclusions are your own responsibility. No model is going to help you here. Actually, models will only hinder you. Ignore them. Do not follow the Yellow Brick Road. The conclusion is the bit of the essay that offers the most scope for creativity, so bloody well be creative.*******

Next time, I'll take another short break from the whole essay-structure thing and talk a bit about active and passive voice.

*Actually untrue. She hasn't done her proofreading yet. If she doesn't do her proofreading, I shall kick her into the sunset.
**Unless he is anal and goes back to read the introduction again.
***Also, it could be worse. My professors are always complaining that my writing is not dry and scholarly enough. If you think these paragraphs are boring, you haven't read 99.9% of the stuff out there.
****"Romance" is not, here, the hideous mushy garbage that Hollywood is always forcing upon us in the diabolical forms of Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan. Medieval and Renaissance romance generally involved knights on quests, quite a bit of fighting (with flying body parts and rivers of blood), the occasional magical damsel, and hairy beast-men roaming the landscape, hitting people with clubs.
*****Ate is the classical goddess of discord. That whole thing with the Trojan war and the thousand ships and the twenty years of death and sex and despair and betrayal and slaughter and extreme difficulty getting back to Ithaca was basically all her fault.
******Yes, it is an example that becomes a metaphor for an allegory. Aaaaaaaaagh.
*******Do no be so creative that your conclusion becomes scattered and unfocussed and suddenly begins discussing camels for no particular reason. Be creative in a controlled way.

Table of Contents and Index

2007-08-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'll have a real post for you tomorrow or the next day; for now, take this contents/index page. It is organised alphabetically by subject; each item is followed by a link or links to the relevant post(s). At the top of the entry, I've listed the name of each post and its short form. The index itself will be linked in its own special little space on the left-hand margin of the blog. I'll update the index every time I post a new entry.

Contents:

Tremble in Fear, O Ye Students: Tremble
How Not to Write a Thesis: Thesis
Sandwiches Are Not Freaking Beautiful: Sandwiches
Yes, Formality Matters, Damn It: Formality
If You Skip the Prewriting Stage, I Shall Haunt Your Nightmares: Prewriting
Organise Your Thoughts; Win Eternal Fame and Glory: Organise
Since the Dawn of Time, Students Have Sucked at Intros: Intros
I, We, You, They, Argh, Argh, Argh: Argh
(Don't) Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Yellow
How Not to Say Nothing in One Thousand Words: Nothing
Don't Abuse Your Body...Paragraphs: Body
Conclusion, Conclusion, Conclusion: Conclusion
Active. Bloody. Voice. Damn It.: Voice
If You Skip the Postwriting Stage, I Shall Eat Your Mind: Postwriting
Put Your Hands in the Air and Step Away from the Semi-Colon: Semi-Colon
Yes, It's a Tree; WHAT ELSE Is Important?: Description
Bibliography: Bibliography
Attention, All Plagiarists: I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING: Plagiarists
Qualify This "This" or Face the Consequences: This
The Straw Man Will Get You Every Time: Straw
Friends Don't Let Friends Use Ad Hominem Arguments: Hominem
The Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour: September 2007: September
I'm Not Dead Yet (or: Marking Comments Made Simple): Marking
I Have a Headache, and Other Related Stories: Headache
Rules Are Made to Be Broken, but Not the Little Annoying Ones: Rules
Out for Blood: My Immoderate Response to the Garbage of Dale Spender: Garbage
Commas are Not "Pauses"...not "Pauses" at All: Commas
A Ranty Post for the Batman Plagiarists: Batman
Please Tell Me What Has Led You to Believe that Apostrophes are Optional: Apostrophes

Index

abstract words: Description
active voice: Voice
ad hominem fallacy: Hominem
anecdote, starting essay with: Intros
analogy, starting essay with: Intros
analysis: Nothing, Headache

apostrophe: Apostrophes

argument: Thesis
“author of this essay, the”: Argh

Batman, plagiarising assignment on: Batman

brainstorming: Prewriting
branching: Prewriting, Organise
body paragraph: Nothing, Body
body paragraph: examples: Nothing

clause: Semi-Colon
clause, adjective: Formality
clause, essential adjective: see clause, restrictive adjective
clause, independent (main): Semi-Colon
clause, non-essential adjective: see clause, non-restrictive adjective
clause, non-restrictive adjective: Formality
clause, relative: Semi-Colon
clause, restrictive adjective: Formality
clause, subordinate (dependent): Semi-Colon
“clearly”: Yellow
colloquialism: Postwriting
comma: Semi-Colon, Commas

comma splice: Commas

conclusion: Conclusion, Postwriting
conclusion as restatement of introduction: Conclusion, Postwriting
conclusion example: Conclusion
contractions: Formality
controversial statement, starting essay with: Intros
cookbook method: see sandwich method
coordinating conjunctions, starting sentences with: Formality
copyright: Semi-Colon
counter-argument: Postwriting

dangling preposition: Voice
debate as postwriting method: Postwriting
debate as prewriting method: Prewriting
definition, starting essay with: Intros
descriptive mode: Semi-Colon, Description
dictionary, importance of: Marking

editing: Postwriting
essential adjective clause: see clause, restrictive adjective
evidence, listing of: Nothing
example is not thesis point: Thesis, Nothing, Headache
example, starting essay with: Intros
exclamation mark: Formality
expletive: Argh, Voice
exposition: Description

Filthy Plagiarists' Roll of Dishonour: Plagiarists, This, Straw, Hominem, September, Rules, Commas
“firstly”: Sandwiches, Yellow
five-paragraph method: see sandwich method
freewriting: Prewriting
formal language: Formality
formulae: Intros, Yellow

gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun: Argh
generalization: Intros
grammar, necessity of learning rules of: Formality

hamburger method: see sandwich method
hasty generalization: see jumping to conclusions
“he” and “she”: Argh
hook: Intros
“how” question: Thesis, Nothing
humanities vs. sciences, writing styles as regards to: Body
humour: Formality

“In conclusion”: Yellow
"interesting" essay: Marking
intransitive verb: see verb, intransitive
introduction: Intros
introduction example: Conclusion
informal language: Formality
“In this essay, I will discuss”: Yellow
“I”: Argh, Voice
introductions: Intros, Postwriting
“it”: Argh
“it is”: Argh
“its” vs. ”it’s”: Argh

jumping to conclusions: Yellow, Nothing

“lastly”: Sandwiches, Yellow
listing points in thesis statement: Thesis
list, separating the elements of a: Semi-Colon
logical fallacies: Straw
looping: Prewriting

marker: Yellow
marking comments: Marking
Metaphorical Shoe Horn of Death: Body
mind-mapping: Prewriting, Organise, Postwriting
modes of essay-writing: Semi-Colon
my mission statement: Tremble
non-essential adjective clause: see clause, non-restrictive adjective
non-restrictive adjective clause: see clause, non-restrictive adjective

objectivity: Description
observation is not analysis: Nothing
off-topic writing: Semi-Colon
“one”: Argh
outlines: Organise, Postwriting

paragraph: Body
passive voice: Voice
past tense not the same as passive voice: Voice
peer editing: Postwriting
plagiarism: Organise, Plagiarists, Garbage, Batman
plot summary: see summary
plural vs. possessive forms: see the next entry
possessive vs. plural forms: Apostrophes
postwriting: Prewriting, Postwriting
present tense in essays about literature: Voice
prewriting: Prewriting, Nothing
process essays: Voice
pronouns: Argh
proofreading: Postwriting, Marking, Rules

question, starting essay with: Intros
quotation, incorporation into paragraph: Headache, Commas
quotation, starting essay with: Intros
“quote” vs. “quotation”: Yellow, Headache<>reading aloud as edition strategy: Postwriting

repetition: Yellow, Nothing, Body
restrictive adjective clause: see clause, restrictive adjective
revision: Postwriting
rules, petty: Rules

sandwich method: Sandwiches, Yellow, Body, Semi-Colon
sandwich paragraph: Body
“secondly”: Sandwiches, Yellow
semi-colon rules: Semi-Colon
“s/he”: Argh
shortest sentence in the English language: Semi-Colon
"show, don't tell": Description
“Since the dawn of time…”: Intros
sky-is-blue argument: Prewriting
spell-checker: Postwriting
split thesis: Thesis, Sandwiches, Body
straw man fallacy: Prewriting, Straw
Strunk and White: Formality
subjectivity: Description
summary: Nothing

tense shifts: Voice
thesis statement: Thesis, Sandwiches, Prewriting, Intros, Nothing, Postwriting
thesis statement, placement of: Intros
"that" as a demonstrative pronoun: see "this"
“that” vs. “which”: Formality, Prewriting
“that” vs. “which”: NA vs. UK rules: Prewriting
“there is”: Argh
thesaurus, usefulness of: Marking
"these" as a demonstrative pronoun: see "this"
“they” as a singular: Argh
“thing” words: Formality
"this" ("that," "these," "those") as a demonstrative pronoun: This
"those" as a demonstrative pronoun: see "this"

titles: underlining/italicising vs. putting in quotation marks: Rules
topic sentence: Body
transition: Yellow, Body, Conclusion, Postwriting
transitive verb: see verb, transitive

unification, lack of: Thesis, Sandwiches
unified thesis: Thesis, Sandwiches
universal statement, starting essay with: Intros
"utilise": Postwriting

verb, intransitive: Voice
verb, transitive: Voice

“we”: Argh
“what” question: Thesis, Nothing
“which” vs. “that”: see "that" vs. "which"
“why” question: Thesis, Nothing

“you”: Formality, Argh

Don't Abuse Your Body...Paragraphs

2007-08-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

One note arising from the last post:

The style of my second sample body paragraph on The Fellowship of the Ring (and yes, I composed both paragraphs myself) has caused some contention among readers. The humanities people have no problem with the paragraph, but at least one of the scientists finds it unclear and kind of pretentious.

Now, I have never claimed not to be pretentious,* but the accusation of lack of clarity bears some discussion. Another reader, whose Internet name is "quasihumanist," has made the following observation:

Arguments in the humanities are unlike those in the sciences. In the humanities, one takes a relatively small amount of evidence and makes intricate, novel arguments, going through many steps to reach a distant and often surprising conclusion. In the sciences, it is at least preferred that one takes a large amount of evidence and uses a standard, well-known method of analysis to arrive at a conclusion which** is relatively obvious given the evidence. If you write a biology paper and all the other biologists while reading it carefully just nod their heads and agree, you have done a good job. If you write a history paper and all the other historians while reading it carefully just nod their heads and agree, you have written a very boring paper.

Quasihumanist makes a good point here. Someone who writes a scientific paper and someone who composes a work of literary criticism are aiming for very different objectives. Both are assimilating and interpreting evidence, but the former focusses on the assimilation and the latter on the interpretation. Humanities papers should be clearly phrased,*** but their style of argumentation can sometimes seem overly subtle or obscure to experimental scientists, who are used to stating that x=yz without stopping to mull over the metaphorical connotations. Humanities arguments can become pretty complex. Don't be put off by the complexity. It's not "pretentious" so much as it is simply a different way of thinking.

Back to body paragraphs:

An extremely easy mistake for a writer to make is to regard the body paragraphs of her essay as entirely separate entities. It's also a rather tempting mistake for a writer to make. People like creating categories. What does Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe do when he finds himself marooned on an island with only a faint hope of rescue? Well, he does quite a few things, but most notably, he sits down and makes lists of the good and bad aspects of his situation. The man is in mortal peril, and he makes lists. Essay writers often experience the same impulse.**** In the earlier stages of the essay-writing process, this impulse is quite useful. The writer lists points...categorises them...recategorises them...and makes strange and wonderful connections. Prewriting is all about lists.

By the time you begin to write, however, you should be left with only one category: your thesis. If you have three (or four or seven or twenty-one thousand) categories connected only by a vague, broad idea, you're going to write a sandwich essay in the worst possible way.

Part of the problem is that it's not particularly difficult to think of a paragraph as an autonomous unit. In a sense, it is an autonomous unit. High-school teachers will often explain to their students that a paragraph consists of a topic sentence, three sentences that provide support for that topic sentence, and a summing-up sentence. These teachers are not actually wrong; they are simply mistaking the model airplane for the real airplane again. The topic-sentence/support/summation model is a useful one, but it is not the only kind of paragraph out there, and it need not be used every single time without modification. Slavishly following what you might call the sandwich-paragraph model will land you in the same difficulties as will slavishly following the sandwich-essay model: you will be so hemmed in that you will leave your argument no room to grow.

A paragraph is a unit of writing that generally deals with one concept or idea. An idea can run over more than one paragraph, but a single paragraph should not cover more than one idea. Sandwich-method devotees often find themselves with so many ideas that they are forced to cram three or four into one paragraph in order to avoid going over the three-body-paragraph limit.***** Their essays tend to read as scattered; a lack of division between sub-points means that the reader is frantically trying to keep track of the bouncy ball that is the writer's argument as it careens without warning from point to point. If you are writing on a particularly complex idea, consider using a series of paragraphs instead of one busy, confusing one. As well, don't feel that your paragraphs all have to be hugely long. When I mark a four-page paragraph, I am constantly flipping back through the pages to figure out where the damned point started. If one of your points is a short, simple one, write a short, simple paragraph.

Some paragraph myths:

1) The topic sentence always comes first. No, it bloody well doesn't. The topic sentence--the sentence in which the writer reveals the paragraph's main point--often comes first because first is a pretty logical place for it, but occasionally, a paragraph begins with a little lead-in or example arising from ideas covered in the last paragraph. If you can't put your topic sentence first, don't get hysterical; improvise.

The idea of the topic sentence is, again, the fault of high-school teachers. As usual, these teachers mean well; they are trying to get their students to make each paragraph's purpose as clear as humanly possible. I applaud these efforts. I do not applaud the formulaic writing that often results. You may do better to forget about the topic sentence and concentrate on the topic. In other words, don't devote all your efforts to ensuring the existence of a single sentence that tells the reader what the paragraph is about, then relax and assume that the rest of the paragraph's content will fall into place. Try thinking of it not as a necessary sentence but as a necessary paragraph element: that is, you need to make the paragraph's purpose clear. I don't care how you do it. I don't care if it takes more than one sentence. I would advise you not to save it until the end, since then your paragraph is going to be doing a lot of aimless wandering, but I would suggest you not panic if you can't come up with a sentence that follows the Yellow Brick Road. State the topic...somewhere...somehow...as clearly as possible.

2) The topic sentence must be followed by three pieces of evidence, each one sentence long. Okay. Before you continue reading, please scroll up the page a little and go through the paragraph above this one again. You'll notice, first of all, that its topic sentence appears five sentences in, after a short section of explanation. You'll also notice that the sentences that follow the topic sentence do not carefully lay out three pieces of evidence one by one; instead, they explain and justify the topic sentence. These sentences follow logically upon one another; each idea leads to the next. Eventually, the paragraph ends with a summary of the paragraph's main point.

There are not three bloody sentences in the middle of the bloody paragraph, and they do not go, "Firstly"..."secondly"..."lastly." Nor, I must say, did I sit down and think, "Okay...I'm going to put the topic sentence here, and then I shall follow it with exactly x number of sentences, the first of which will have this purpose, and the second of which will have this purpose, and the third of which..."...and I'm sure you get the idea. I just wrote the thing. I knew what I wanted to say and where I wanted to go with the paragraph; I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take me to get there. I let the logic of my thoughts carry me from the beginning of the paragraph to the end.

If you are the sort of person who writes an ultra-detailed outline, go ahead and plan your paragraphs sentence by sentence, but make sure you are planning their content as well as their structure. Someone who adheres to the sandwich-paragraph method is planning the structure exclusive of the content, then shoehorning****** the content in any old how.

Do not succumb to the Metaphorical Shoe Horn of Death. Let your paragraphs be as long, as short, as complex, or as simple as they need to be.

3) The final sentence begins with the word "Therefore" and repeats the topic sentence. No. No. No, no, no, no, no!

What have I said about repetition? Do I have to repeat myself? Again? A paragraph is even shorter than an essay; don't clog it with pointless repetition. You have travelled in your argument over the course of the paragraph. With luck, by the time he finishes your paragraph, the reader will know more than he did thirty seconds before. Your final comment should generally constitute an intelligent observation arising from the analysis you have accomplished in the paragraph.

Your last sentence does not have to encompass the entire paragraph. It should provide a succinct comment that leads straight to your next point (or, in the case of complex points that stretch over more than one paragraph, your next sub-point). Remember: your argument is moving forward. A "Therefore..." + topic ending sends you backward and does not prepare the reader for your next point.

A transition is not simply a silly convention, a relatively meaningless word linking one paragraph to the next. A true transition is thematic; the "However," "Nonetheless," or "Therefore" is a mere surface indication of an essential connection between points. Someone using the sandwich method might argue that a certain painter uses extreme contrast between light and dark, deliberate lack of balance in composition, and the visual suggestion of androgyny in his central figures to create an atmosphere of uncertainty as well as a seemingly contradictory suggestion of impending doom,******* but if she deals with each point alone and does not explore how they work together to create this atmosphere, she is not creating meaningful transitions, no matter how many "However"s she uses.

A paragraph is not, in fact, an autonomous unit at all. A unified argument should move logically and with an apparent lack of effort from point to point, much as the unified paragraph moves logically and with an apparent lack of effort from sentence to sentence. In constructing an argument, you are chasing an idea through from conception to final proof. Each point is a link in the chain of analysis. If you neglect to include one of these links, the chain will fall to pieces. A mark of the sandwich essay is that it often fails to construct such a chain. Its points are independent of each other and, more importantly, interchangeable with each other and with other points that the writer does not have room to include. The writer dealing with the fictional painting in the last paragraph could probably add several other examples (and yes, she is really just listing examples here) to her list of elements that create the painting's atmosphere of uncertainty/impending doom; she could also swap them for the three she mentions. Her argument does not follow a logical trajectory. It consists of a number of examples, each of which separately proves her thesis. As she has neglected to tie these examples together meaningfully, her essay may easily end up remaining on the surface of the issue at hand.

Go deep, not wide. It's better to deal with a narrow issue******** comprehensively than to struggle to encompass the entirety of human experience in the space of three and a half pages. Let Douglas Adams cover Life, and Universe, and Everything. Take one small but important idea and run with it, pursuing it through paragraph after interconnected paragraph until you have covered all the essential issues surrounding it. This approach will actually help you to avoid leaving holes in your argument. If you build an argument around three random, loosely related, interchangeable points, you will be leaving gaps. If you build it around one point, you have more of a chance of creating a watertight, convincing essay.

My next post will discuss conclusions. It will not, however, be a conclusion. I still have many, many ideas to scream at you all.

*Except once in a while at parties.
**Yep...quasihumanist uses restrictive "which"es. He is allowed to do so because he knows the difference between restrictive and non-restrictive adjective clauses and has deliberately chosen to shun "that" for "which." I wouldn't do it myself, but luckily, I am not assigning his passage a mark out of one hundred. He can thus do whatever the hell he wants. If he had used a non-restrictive "which" without a comma, however, I would have stomped all over him and screamed a lot.
***You hear me, Homi Babha? You hear me?
****Without the mortal peril. Most of the time.
*****WHICH. DOES. NOT. EXIST. DAMN IT.
******If you don't know what a shoe horn is, I actually kind of envy you. At any rate, Google will tell you what you want to know.
*******I don't think this painting exists. If it does, I sort of want to see it.
********Albeit not too narrow. Unless you are a medievalist graduate student with nothing better to do, you probably don't want to write a ten-page paper on the provenance of a single Old English word.

How Not to Say Nothing in One Thousand Words

2007-08-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

In the last post, I mentioned a student who repeated herself so many times in each essay that her papers contained almost no original content. This student had what is unfortunately not all that rare a gift: the ability to say nothing at length. Many students are, in fact, past masters at ensuring a complete absence of content.

If you are one of these students, you probably mean well. You have to hand in five essays in the space of two weeks; you are tired, overworked, and running mostly on caffeine; you fall back on the comfortingly rigid sandwich method and let the structure do the work for you. I understand why you write great big empty cotton-candy-like papers, but I do not forgive you for it. Everybody else has to hand in five essays in the space of two weeks as well. Everybody else is tired, overworked, and running mostly on caffeine. Stop pretending that your "unusual" schedule has "forced" you to cut corners. Oh...and stop beginning brainstorming for each paper the night before it's due. It isn't working for you.

You would think this problem would be relatively easy to fix; if a paragraph says "nothing," surely it should be recognisably lacking in content. Unfortunately, such is not the case. Many writers think they are providing vigorous, convincing arguments when what they are actually doing is providing tedious, random evidence unconnected to any analysis at all. An essay's body paragraphs are where this problem becomes most apparent, but it really starts with the thesis. A weak thesis (one that answers a "what?" question or poses but doesn't answer a "how?" or "why?" question) will lead to a weak or missing argument. As I believe I have screamed several times already, a thesis must be controversial. A writer "arguing" an irrefutable fact is simply going to provide evidence without analysing it, as the mere existence of the evidence "proves" her (banal) point. A list of evidence is simply a list; it is not an argument.

I have noticed a lot of students "arguing" as follows:

Introduction: X is true. [=answer to a "what" question]

Paragraph 1: X is true: witness example 1.

Paragraph 2: X is true: witness example 2.

Paragraph 3: X is true: witness example 3.

Conclusion: X is true.

Let us return to a sentence from my second post for a minute so that I can yell at you all again:

An example is not a thesis point.

Okay? Shall we do this one more time?

An example is not a thesis point.

Description and analysis are not synonymous. Observation and analysis are not synonymous either. One of the reasons I hate the split thesis is that it encourages the listing of examples as a substitution for analytic thought.

Yet the difference between an "example" and a "point" is not always an easy one to see. Many thesis points are built around examples. Consider the following two, well, examples. Both are body paragraphs from essays on (you guessed it) friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring; each takes a different approach to the topic.

1) Topic: friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring

Thesis: Friendship is a central theme of the novel, and it can be seen in the relationship amongst the hobbits, Frodo's admiration of Gandalf, and the interactions of the Fellowship.

Body Paragraph:

The theme of friendship makes itself apparent in the novel through the relationship amongst the hobbits. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo, knowing that he needs to take the One Ring to Rivendell, tries to go alone; however, first Sam, then Pippin, Merry, and Fatty manage to join him. Sam is so worried about Frodo that he betrays him to the others. Frodo is at first angry, but then he realises that his friends and cousins are simply loyal to him. Remembering Gandalf’s words, he allows them to join him on his journey. Two kinds of friendship are demonstrated early on: Fatty agrees to stay behind in Crickhollow to drive off the Black Riders, while Sam, Merry, and Pippin follow Frodo into the unknown. By the time Aragorn joins the hobbits in Bree, the idea of the hobbits as firm friends is well established.

2) Topic: friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring

Thesis: By laying emphasis upon the idea of loyalty as a hidden property that gains its strength from its very obscurity, Tolkien establishes the idea of humble friendship in disguise–a contrast to the powerful, glittering, treacherous world of Saruman–as one of his story’s main images of goodness.

Body Paragraph:

Though the friendship amongst the hobbits is at first glance straightforward, a closer look reveals that this friendship manifests itself through deceit and even betrayal. Tolkien launches Frodo on his journey in an episode that sets up what seems to be a conflict between loyalty and deception; the protagonist here finds himself confronted with the treachery of his servant, Sam, and the untrustworthiness of Merry and Pippin, his cousins. However, in this segment, the author effects a reversal of both Frodo’s and the reader’s expectations, as the “betrayer,” Sam, turns on his master due to his unwavering faith in Frodo, while the steadfastness of Merry and Pippin manifests itself through disobedience. Like Aragorn in a later chapter, the young hobbits demonstrate that “All that is gold does not glitter.” Their friendship with the Ring-Bearer cannot show itself through more conventional attributes such as trustworthiness, appearing instead as a subversion of the idea that friends must never lie, disobey, or betray. Friendship that matters does not “glitter” in Tolkien’s world; on the contrary, it gleams through the murk. The topsy-turvy, “treacherous” behaviour of Sam and the others--behaviour that turns out in the end to be staunch friendship in disguise--shows up more clearly than the dazzling but corrupt version of comradeship that Saruman offers Gandalf.

Unpack these paragraphs a little:

Example #1 is from an essay whose thesis answers a "what?" question. The writer is attempting to prove that friendship is a central theme of The Fellowship of the Ring, not how it is. He* may as well be arguing that balls are spherical and proving it by throwing one at his reader. As well, his points aren't particularly unified, at least partly because they are simply examples. Whether or not they connect to each other is kind of immaterial. The writer could even, if he liked, add other points: Gandalf's friendship with Saruman, Boromir's treatment of Aragorn, Legolas' odd-couple relationship with Gimli, and so on. As the points are just bits of evidence for a pretty straightforward assertion, adding or subtracting them does not really affect his argument much.

His paragraph is quite well written, but look at its content:

The theme of friendship makes itself apparent in the novel through the relationship amongst the hobbits. [Topic sentence: states thesis point. Note: writer doesn't reveal how theme makes itself apparent.] In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo, knowing that he needs to take the One Ring to Rivendell, tries to go alone; however, first Sam, then Pippin, Merry, and Fatty manage to join him. [Plot summary.] Sam is so worried about Frodo that he betrays him to the others. [Plot summary.] Frodo is at first angry, but then he realises that his friends and cousins are simply loyal to him. [Plot summary.] Remembering Gandalf’s words, he allows them to join him on his journey. [Plot summary.] Two kinds of friendship are demonstrated early on: Fatty agrees to stay behind in Crickhollow to drive off the Black Riders, while Sam, Merry, and Pippin follow Frodo into the unknown. [Observation arising from plot summary. Minimal analysis in conclusion that example demonstrates two types of friendship. No discussion of significance of observation.] By the time Aragorn joins the hobbits in Bree, the idea of the hobbits as firm friends is well established. [Nips tentative bit of analysis in the bud by returning to the "what?" question. Ignores comment about two types of friendship: subsumes them both into the wide, vague category of "friendship."]

This student has written a substantial paragraph in which he has said very little. One of his sentences states the thesis point; four consist of plot summary (of a single plot element, though his topic sentence claims to deal with the "relationship amongst the hobbits," not with the "relationship amongst the hobbits in two or three chapters near the beginning of the novel"); one is a sparse observation with the potential to give rise to analysis; the last ignores that potential and sums up the paragraph. This sort of writing is frustrating to read. It looks as if it ought to be saying something interesting or insightful, but what it is actually doing is telling the reader what happens in the book.

The reader, dear reader, has read the book. You are not writing a book-review column for your local newspaper; you are analysing Tolkien. By all means cite examples from the novel, but don't go on and on and on about them and then leap to not-very-interesting conclusions. Summary is not a substitute for analysis.

Actually, summary is an interesting problem in essay writing. The ability to summarise a text, event, situation, process, or problem is a useful one; in many situations, summary is necessary. If you are writing a book-review column for your local newspaper, you'll be expected to sum up the story in a few brief paragraphs. If you're writing a how-to guide or describing an historical event, you'll want to be able to capture the important aspects of your subject clearly and concisely. Some essays and books also require summaries in order that their readers not be confused. However, a thousand-word analysis is not a how-to guide. Summary all on its own in an analysis is problematic because it doesn't really tell the reader anything new. In order to leap from the presentation of a passage of summary to a conclusion about what this summary means, a reader will have to analyse the text herself. She will have to fill in the gap between what the writer has observed and what he is asserting about his observations.

Do not force the reader to do your job for you. It is your job. As with the word "clearly," which I discussed in my last post, the presentation of summary or pure observation instead of analysis is unfair to the reader, whose brain should be going, "Yes...yes...yes...not sure...okay, then, yes...yes...wow!", not, "So this example could very well mean that x is true, but only if I also apply y and z. What about q? Why hasn't he discussed q?"**

Example #2 has a much more complex thesis, but there's nothing wrong with a complex thesis. Note that this writer answers a "how?" question. Look at his content:

Though the friendship amongst the hobbits is at first glance straightforward, a closer look reveals that this friendship manifests itself through deceit and even betrayal. [Topic sentence: states thesis point. Immediately sets up the idea of the hidden by revealing that friendship in the novel seems straightforward but is complex.] Tolkien launches Frodo on his journey in an episode that sets up what seems to be a conflict between loyalty and deception; [Sets up example with mention of its thematic importance.] the protagonist here finds himself confronted with the treachery of his servant, Sam, and the untrustworthiness of Merry and Pippin, his cousins. [Brief plot summary that clarifies the identity of the scene in question.] However, in this segment, the author effects a reversal of both Frodo’s and the reader’s expectations, [Deepens and makes more complex the central idea.] as the “betrayer,” Sam, turns on his master due to his unwavering faith in Frodo, while the steadfastness of Merry and Pippin manifests itself through disobedience. [Example. Includes mention of plot details but simultaneously comments on their significance.] Like Aragorn in a later chapter, the young hobbits demonstrate that “All that is gold does not glitter." [Pulls in comparative example (which sheds light on this one) from later in novel.] Their friendship with the Ring-Bearer cannot show itself through more conventional attributes such as trustworthiness, appearing instead as a subversion of the idea that friends must never lie, disobey, or betray. [Startling, controversial idea. Backed up by earlier mention of behaviour of Sam, Merry, and Pippin.] Friendship that matters does not “glitter” in Tolkien’s world; on the contrary, it gleams through the murk. [Back to what is probably one of the major images of the essay: one that embodies the idea of hidden friendship as good.] The topsy-turvy, “treacherous” behaviour of Sam and the others--behaviour that turns out in the end to be staunch friendship in disguise--shows up more clearly than the dazzling but corrupt version of comradeship that Saruman offers Gandalf. [Sums up point and connects it to a contrasting point (probably the next one).]

Note that though this writer does include examples from the text, he keeps them short and mixes them with comments that discuss their significance. His main example merits a mere half-sentence of summary; he immediately goes on to explain how this episode contributes to his thesis.

Note also that not every aspect of the thesis is covered in this paragraph; the writer does not discuss the idea of goodness. He will. He simply hasn't reached that portion of his argument yet. Writers who use split theses often seem to believe that they must sum up every paragraph with a return to the thesis statement, as if the paragraph itself--on its own--proves this thesis. Again, these writers are composing series of mini-essays, not one unified document. Don't worry if you don't cover the entire thesis in body paragraph one. You have an entire essay in which to create a convincing argument.

The difference between the two approaches above can probably be summed up as follows:

Writer #1 is observing. He attempts to make his point through a listing of the available evidence. This technique is not limited to literary criticism. Someone writing on the causes of the War of 1812 could recount certain historical incidents; someone writing on global warming could describe particular weather patterns or provide a collection of statistics. All of these bits of evidence would be essential to the argument at hand as evidence. On their own, however, they would not constitute an argument.

Writer #2 is analysing. He makes observations, then comments on them. His examples do not stand alone; they are accompanied by the writer's ideas about what the examples mean (in terms of his argument) and why they mean it. He does not say, "Sam betrays Frodo. This proves that hidden friendship is true friendship." He does not, in fact, jump to conclusions. He connects his evidence to his assertions, telling us that just as Sam's betrayal of Frodo turns out to be friendship in disguise, so do many of the other relationships in the novel fall into the same pattern; he goes on, through his comments on a series of examples, to draw conclusions about why Tolkien might portray hidden friendship as good and blatant (surface) friendship as evil. Writer #2 does not sit back and let his readers do his analysis for him. He observes, comments on his observations, and draws conclusions from his comments. Ta-da: analysis.

If you are used to writing like Writer #1, Writer #2's methods may seem foreign or even impossible to you. Don't give up. Learning to write--and think--analytically takes time. Not even a prodigy can sit down at a piano without ever having done so before and immediately pound out a Beethoven concerto; she will need time to familiarise herself with the instrument before she begins to play. It's a cliche, I know, but practice really does make...if not perfect...then a damned lot better than before. I can improvise music on the piano, but I have spent many years practising. My friends who can draw, juggle, play the violin, make films, and write stories are not magically competent; they have all improved over time. Getting frustrated and giving up on essay writing because you "can't think like that" is as unfair as getting frustrated and giving up on the yo-yo because you hit yourself in the face the first time you tried to go Around the World.***

The key here is, as usual, in the thesis statement. In order to come up with a solid, provable thesis, you will have to do a lot of thinking, and this thinking itself should get you both your observations and your analysis. As I said in the post about prewriting, the ability to plug the holes in your argument is important; you must keep the counter-argument in mind as you write. Writer #1 doesn't really have a counter-argument, and he is therefore becoming rather careless about the holes in his ideas. It is when an argument is under threat that a writer must work hard to defend it, and this defence comes through assertion, justification, comparison, and the drawing of conclusions.

At this juncture, I would like to jump up and down, screaming and pointing at my prewriting post. Remember when I told you prewriting was important? Remember how you nodded, smiled, and moved on?

Get your butt back to the bloody prewriting post and read it again. Read the bits about having an argument with yourself. Memorise these bits. Resist the temptation to avoid taking freaking notes in which you have arguments with yourself. Do not start with mind-mapping! No no no no no!

Develop your ideas in your notes. Don't write down just evidence; record your thoughts about this evidence as well. I recently had to mark a number of in-class essays. The prof allowed his students to construct one-page outlines ahead of time and consult them as they wrote. A lot of the students filled their outlines with quotations and observations but no analysis; these students tended not to analyse the texts on which they were writing. If you neglect the analysis stage in your notes, you may easily neglect it in your essay as well. If you cover it, you will find the analysis easier to incorporate because you have already done it.

In my next post, I'll continue my discussion of body paragraphs by dealing with the shape of an argument (in each paragraph and from paragraph to paragraph) and how to ensure that points connect to and flow into one another.****

*For the sake of Not Being Accused of Implying that Girls Are Smarter than Boys or Vice Versa, I am going to pretend that both of these writers are men.
**More people should discuss q. It gets you ten points in Scrabble and is therefore one of the best letters ever.
***Admittedly, failing at essay writing hurts less. Physically.
****Yes, this sentence constitutes a "marker." Yes, I am allowed to use it here because it also constitutes a "preview." Yes, I sometimes get too involved in shows that appear on "television." When I start going, "Previously on Kem's Guide..." and making the bink-bink noises from 24, you should probably put me out of my misery.

(Don't) Follow the Yellow Brick Road

2007-08-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

In this post, I will discuss: firstly, how terrible this sentence is; secondly, the reasons that it is so terrible; and lastly, various other random matters that come up in the process.

Formulae can be useful. There is a reason that many storytellers begin their tales with "Once upon a time": the phrase is familiar to the listeners, most of whom will immediately identify the story in question as a fairy tale and adjust their expectations accordingly. Formulae allow readers or listeners to figure out exactly what to expect.

Formulae can also be pretty bloody boring.

If I, as a writer, use a particular formula, I may be comforting the reader with its familiarity, but I am more likely going to be sending the reader to sleep with its predictability. I shall also be hemming myself in, limiting the scope of what I can accomplish by letting my writing style slip into a rut. Students who stick slavishly to the sandwich method have succumbed to the lure of formula. They have mastered a particular format from which they will not deviate, and they panic when their teachers suggest they try something different. They are stuck forever on the predictable, safe, tedious Yellow Brick Road.

I have already ranted and raved about the sandwich method. However, I have yet to deal in detail with some of the formulae that accompany it: certain words and phrases that are meant to guide writers (and readers) down a well-worn path but generally end up miring them in the mud. The following formulae tend to hinder less experienced writers, and I am hereby denouncing the damned things:

1) In this essay, I will discuss...: This sort of phrase, sometimes termed a "marker," involves the writer announcing his purpose in so many words. Variants are "This paper will cover" and, in longer documents, "In this chapter/section, I will deal with...." Some teachers and professors advocate markers, claiming that they clarify the writer's intent and give him a clear direction in which to move.

I hate markers. I have used them myself in longer documents*--when you're dealing with a 100,000-word dissertation, you can sometimes find yourself wanting to clarify the topic of an eighty-page chapter--but I feel pretty strongly that in short essays, they are worse than useless. Look: you have maybe a thousand words to convince me that your argument is an intelligent one. Why waste six of those words explaining that you're about to discuss something? Discuss it. Go on. I'm not stopping you. Does Stephen King begin his novels with, "In this story, I will decapitate..."? No, he doesn't; he just gets on with the decapitation.**

One of the major rules of fiction writing is: show, don't tell. If you want your readers to feel sorry for a character, you don't write, "Robert was sad. He was very sad. He was so extremely sad that he didn't think anyone, anywhere, could ever have been so sad as all that." Instead, you demonstrate Robert's sadness. If you are a very good writer, you can convey sadness without ever using the word "sad." Non-fiction is sometimes not all that different. Essays are often about telling your readers things, but--and here's the important bit--you are telling them about your subject, not about how you are telling them about your subject. You don't have to stop in your tracks and announce, "I'm going to talk about this now!" Just bloody do it.

2) Firstly/Secondly/Lastly, [restatement of thesis point 1/2/3].: I've touched on this one before; I'll be hammering on it now.

Though "Firstly" may technically be a word, it is a very, very ugly one. It may even be uglier than "s/he," which is, in fact, not a word at all. Stop using "Firstly." It makes you sound about twelve years old.*** If you must announce that a point happens to be your first one, try "First" or "First of all." Better yet, don't make the announcement.

"Firstly," "Secondly," and "Lastly" are transitions, but they are the worst transitions in the world. A transitional word or phrase is meant to connect a paragraph to the one preceding it. The word "However," for instance, suggests that paragraph 2 is going to present a point that stands in opposition to the final sentence of paragraph 1. "Consequently" suggests that point 2 is a consequence of point 1. "In addition"..."As well"..."Nevertheless"..."Subsequently"..."Yet"..."Also"..."In fact"..."Therefore"..."Thus": they all imply relationships between points. Whole sentences can also act as transitions. An example from my own bloated dissertation is:

What is intriguing about Cassodorien is not that she has a place in the story but that the poet has placed her where he has.****

This sentence uses no transitional words; however, it does refer to the content of the preceding paragraphs (which discuss the role of Cassodorien in the poem Richard Coeur de Lion) while simultaneously highlighting the topic of this new segment of the argument: the character's unusual position in a fairly conventional story. Here I both acknowledge the just-finished discussion of Cassodorien's role and give this discussion a twist by claiming that it is intriguing in one particular aspect. The sentence does not resort to formula, but it does manage to look backward and forward at the same time.

The words "Firstly," "Secondly," and "Lastly" do not allow for such nuances. "Firstly" tells the reader that a point comes first; "Secondly" tells her that it comes second; "Lastly" tells her that it comes last. The writer is appearing to connect the points without actually doing so.

Please don't use these words. Please. I'm begging you here.

3) Besides [restatement of thesis point 1], [restatement of topic] is also affected by [restatement of thesis point 2]., followed in the next paragraph by, Besides [restatement of thesis points 1 and 2], [restatement of topic] is also affected by [restatement of thesis point 3].: Holy repetition, Batman.

Leaving aside the fact that you shouldn't be listing your thesis points in your introduction anyway, what the hell is up with all the unnecessary reiteration? Do you really think my memory is that bad? You just covered point 1; why restate it right after you've finished dealing with it? Do you have any idea how many words you just wasted? Mindless repetition may make you feel better because you're following the Yellow Brick Road, but you don't need to be retracing your steps like this. Every topic sentence should not be almost identical to the last. Play around with structure. Use transitional words. Stop freaking repeating yourself.

4) Clearly, this/these quote(s)/example(s) prove(s) that [restatement of thesis].:

Before we go on, let's get one thing straight:

"Quote" is a verb. "Quotation" is a noun.

Okay, so I'm shaking the Fist of Defiance at the Oxford English Dictionary of Doom again. So what? Informally, "quote" can often equal "quotation," but in formal writing, it can't. Please refer to "quotations," not "quotes." Actually, you shouldn't really be referring to "quotations" at all. In the spirit of research, I just did a search on the word "quotation" in my 115,000-word dissertation.***** It didn't come up once. Call a quotation a "passage," a "section," a "sentence," a "line," or anything but a "quotation." Using the word "quotation" to refer to a quotation is generally considered amateurish, possibly because it falls into the "In this essay, I will discuss" category. The reader can see you're quoting. You don't have to point out that you are.

The even more problematic aspect of Formula #4 is its inclusion of that "Clearly." "Clearly" is one of those idiotic words that creep into a piece of writing whenever the writer doesn't feel like justifying his points. He gives an example, then immediately plunges in with a "Clearly." No analysis connects the example to this "Clearly"; the reader is left to do the work herself.

This lovely little technique is called hasty generalisation or jumping to conclusions. The "Clearly" formula only exacerbates the problem (by giving the writer easier access to it, more's the pity). I'll be discussing analysis in more detail in my next post; for now, I'll just note that an example alone does not prove anything. An example accompanied by analysis can. There is nothing "clear" about an example on its own; you need to explain why it "clearly" proves your point.

Another problem here is that you're restating your damned thesis again. Why? I really do know what it is. I recently had a student whose essays looked, in outline, something like this:

Intro:

statement of topic
statement of thesis and thesis points

Body paragraph 1:

restatement of thesis and point 1
evidence
restatement of thesis

Body paragraph 2:

restatement of thesis and points 1 and 2
evidence
restatement of thesis

Body paragraph 3:

restatement of thesis and points 1, 2, and 3
evidence
restatement of thesis

Conclusion:

restatement of thesis
paraphrase of introduction
restatement of thesis

Good...freaking...grief...on an ever-loving stick of flaming hell! What in the name of Zarquon is that thing? This student restated her thesis so many times that I memorised it. She did so in both her essays. I have vivid memories of staring in consternation at her conclusion, which began with exactly the same sentence she had used to end body paragraph 3. It was astounding. There was so little actual content in the essay that I honestly didn't know what to do with it.

Do. Not. Restate. Your. Thesis. Fifteen. Million. Times.

5) In conclusion...: "In conclusion" is a tough one. It's a useful little phrase, but it also belongs to the "In this essay, I will discuss" category of telling over showing. You've reached your conclusion. Don't tell me about it; just go ahead and conclude.

Another problem with "In conclusion" is that everybody and his dog has used it. It's boring. Find a more creative way to begin your conclusion. Refer back to an image that has permeated your essay, slip directly from your last point into a gathering-together of all your points, or just write whatever you were going to write after "In conclusion" without the "In conclusion." Try it; it works. Leaving out this formulaic little statement will make your essay seem more streamlined and less conformist. "In conclusion" suggests that you are sticking mindlessly to the Yellow Brick Road.******

It is also quite difficult to integrate seamlessly into a sentence. "In conclusion, x is true" sounds pretty stilted. "In conclusion, I believe y" sounds pretty subjective. Wouldn't your life be easier without the "In conclusion"? Well? Wouldn't it?*******

These Big Five Formulae from Hades have been the downfall of many an undergraduate. Don't feel that you have to use them. In fact, I would suggest that you should fling down your pen in despair and defiance rather than adopt a single one of the foul things ever again. These formulae are crippling you. You are thinking of them as brick walls that limit what you can write and how you can write it, whereas in reality, they are made mostly of air. Get rid of them. You need walls--limits that will keep your writing tight and focussed--but not these ones.

In the next post, I'll start discussing some of these walls. In particular, I'm going to talk about what makes a good body paragraph, as well, of course, as what makes a really, really bad one.

*Because I am a hypocrite.
**Or mangling or pyrokinesis or demonic possession.
***If you are about twelve years old, it makes you sound six.
****For interest's sake: I am discussing the Middle English verse romance Richard Coeur de Lion, which deals with the life of the English king Richard the Lionheart. In the poem, Cassodorien is Richard's demon mother.
*****Technically, it is 100,000 words long, but it also contains a 10,000-word appendix and a 5,000-word bibliography. I do not like talking about the absurd length of my dissertation.
******At this point, I am beginning to notice that I have adopted the image of the Yellow Brick Road as a metaphor for a formula-driven sandwich-type essay. If I were you, I'd try not to think too hard about this image, though I suppose that if you consider that the movie version of Dorothy (the book version has a bit of a different arc) follows the Yellow Brick Road in what turns out to be a life-changing journey back to conformity and domesticity, the metaphor fits fairly well.
*******I am allowed to ask unanswered rhetorical questions because I am 1) writing semi-formally and 2) pretending that I am standing in front of you, screaming madly into your face.

I, We, You, They, Argh, Argh, Argh

2007-08-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

Pronouns are the poor cousins of the English language; though they're definitely part of the family, everybody else considers them kind of embarrassing and wishes they would just go away. Without pronouns, our sentences would all be a hell of a lot longer. Yet their presence tends to send writers into agonies of doubt. One/you/we has/have to be awfully careful about which pronouns one/you/we deploy(s) in a given situation if one/you/we do(es) not want to get oneself/yourself/ourselves into hot semantic waters. The preceding hideous sentence is probably a case in point.

One of my acquaintances once informed me and several others that his teachers and professors had forbidden him to use pronouns--any pronouns--in formal writing. He tended to write as follows:

It is wondered why the people here feel that using pronouns is allowed. It was always explained that no pronouns were ever to be used. It is felt that this method is most professional.

It is believed that this person had either really bad teachers or a tendency not to listen in class. It is also considered ironic that "it" is actually a pronoun itself.

There is nothing wrong with pronouns. They are useful little beasts, though finding the right ones to use in particular situations is sometimes not easy. Avoiding them will leave you in the unfortunate position of my misguided acquaintance, tying yourself into knots to avoid the word "I" or even the words "he" or "she." Do not let this sort of thing happen to you.

Below is a rundown of all the pronouns and how they should (or shouldn't) be used in formal essays.

1) I/me/my/mine/myself: The first-person singular pronoun has quite possibly been responsible for more markers' headaches than any other word in the English language.* "I" is a fine and useful word, but high-school teachers hate it; as far as I have been able to gather, most of them forbid their students from ever using it in formal essays. They explain to their students that "I" is the ultimate in subjective words. An essay inundated by "I"s is a piece of personal opinion, not an objective, analytic work. Students should thus never, ever include "I" in an essay.

Like the sandwich method, this silly rule has a purpose behind it. Overly subjective essays are problematic, and a writer who sprinkles her writing with "I"s is certainly being overly subjective. However, again like the sandwich method, the banning of "I" is rather too much of a good thing. A student not allowed to use "I" may instead write:

The author of this essay believes that this method is less than useful.

"The author of this essay" is an ugly, ugly phrase. It also has more or less the same meaning as "I." Teachers have not expunged the "I"; they have disguised it.

According to a few of my far-flung friends and acquaintances, some university professors continue this idiotic forbidding of the word "I." All the professors I have met do not continue it. Check with your profs if you're in doubt, but generally, "I" is a perfectly acceptable word to use in a humanities paper. You shouldn't over-use it, but you shouldn't over-use any word. If you need to refer to yourself, use "I." Really. Do not refer to yourself as "the author" or "the writer." Do not resort to the passive voice ("It has been shown that this proposition is true"). The passive can be useful on rare occasions,** but a paper that uses nothing but the passive in order to avoid the word "I" often comes across as vague and uncertain.

I should add that people in the sciences may not want to be listening to me here. The sciences have their own writing conventions; some of my scientist friends tell me that their profs insist on them using the passive voice rather than resorting to "I" or "we." Others say that the convention is changing and the use of the active voice is coming back into vogue. If in doubt, check with your professors.

2) We/us/our/ours/ourselves: Students terrorised into never using "I" sometimes fall back on "we." "We" may appear as a blatant "I" substitute:

We believe that this idea is incorrect.

or as an "everybody in the whole world" substitute:

We are social beings. Our impulse is to yearn for others of our species.

Both usages are problematic. When markers come across a random "we" or "us," they tend to write, "Who are 'we'?" In the first case, there is no "we"; there is an "I." If you believe that this idea is incorrect, say so; don't hide behind a non-existent "we." A "we" may appear here if the paper has more than one author, but if you are an undergraduate humanities student, it probably doesn't.

In the second case, there is no "we" either. "We" are social beings, are "we"? Are "we" human beings? residents of a particular country or community? university students? nineteen-year-old Canadian male undergraduates from Guelph? To fall back on the "we" is to flirt with generalisation, and to flirt with generalisation is to risk your papers coming back dripping with red ink. A marker might ask the author of the second blue passage above if "we" are really a collective whole. Do all human beings yearn for others of their species? Are there no exceptions?

Where at all possible, avoid "we" in formal writing. It gives the reader the wrong idea about what "we" (who are we?) think.

3) You/your/yours/yourself/yourselves: Oh dear. Good old reliable "you." You like it, don't you? You often use it just as I am using it now: to refer to your reader as if he is sitting across from you, hanging on your every word. You believe that using the word "you" is a great way to avoid having to write "the reader," "the audience," or "one" all the time.

You are wrong.

I'm sorry, but I am writing semi-formally. You are writing formally. Most professors consider "you" a colloquialism: an overly familiar word that identifies a piece of writing as informal or amateur. Part of the problem is that the word "you" is gradually replacing the word "one" as a universal pronoun. Instead of "One may at first consider this poem to be trite," people tend to write (or, more likely, say), "You may at first consider this poem to be trite." The word "you" sounds, to our ears, less stuffy than "one." It also implies a rapport with the reader.

Again, I am allowed to establish such a rapport because I am writing semi-formally. You need to stay away from it. You are not writing formally so that you can get all chummy with your readers. You need to keep your distance from them. Avoid "you."

4) He/him/his/himself, she/her/hers/herself, and they/them/their/theirs/themselves: "He" and "she," the third-person singular pronouns, may not create as many headaches as "I," but not for lack of trying. As recently as half a century ago, "he" was considered a gender-neutral word; if you were unsure as to whether you were referring to a man or a woman, you could choose "he." Now, many people consider such language sexist. The reframing of "he" as exclusively masculine has left the English language without a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun.

Hundreds of years ago,*** English was a gendered language. It had three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. The distinction now remains almost exclusively in the language's pronouns; nouns are all neuter, taking the universal, non-gendered articles "a" and "the." The old genders are also still present, slightly disguised, in many noun forms, especially their plural and possessive variants (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably more or less better off not knowing, but trust me: English nouns used to change their forms depending on their roles in a given sentence).

Unfortunately, the whole business with "he" referring only to a male and "she" only to a female has left us with a gap in the language. A person is not an "it"...so what is "the reader" or "the writer"? What is "the child" or "the parent"?

If you know the sex of your subject, you are going to pick either "he" or "she" and not worry about the issue further.**** If you don't, you're in trouble. All of us are in trouble when we start scrabbling for a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. There isn't one. I'm sorry, but there isn't.

"They" is not a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun.

If I could make this sentence flash on and off in different colours, then leap from the screen and inscribe itself upon your eyeballs in letters of fiery death, I would be hunting up the necessary code right now. I don't care what the Oxford English Dictionary says. I don't care how many citations of "they" as singular you can find in obscure nineteenth-century newspaper articles. I don't care what your bloody high-school teachers have told you. "They" is not a goddamned gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun. If you use it as one, you are going to look unprofessional and sound colloquial. This sentence is not okay:

If someone who is hiking in the mountains comes across a bear, they should make themselves look as big as possible.

Neither is this one:

When one reads a novel, they should pay particular attention to its syntax.

"Someone" is singular. It does not take a plural pronoun. "One" is a distinct pronoun. It has nothing to do with the word "they." When one reads a novel, one should pay particular attention to its syntax. Not they. One. Not they. One. Not they. One. Are you getting this at all?

I forbid you to use "they" as a singular third-person pronoun. If you ever do so again, I shall know, and I shall track you down and make you change the word to something less completely wrong. I shall also correct all your commas and make you tell me the difference between "that" and "which."

I'll come back to this problem in a moment, but first, I should comment on the last two pronouns:

5) One/one's/oneself: "One" is an easy word to hate. If one overuses it, one's writing takes on a certain snooty quality that one probably does not want it to have. However, I am rather fond of "one." It allows one to avoid the colloquial "you" and gives one an out if one finds oneself confronted with the prospect of having to use a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun. In fact, "one" is the closest thing to a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun that the English language has.

Some people despise it. That's understandable. "One" has a certain nineteenth-century feel to it; it strikes many as archaic. However, don't scorn it, and don't abandon it for "you." "One" is acceptable--albeit an acquired taste--in formal writing.

"One's" is the only possessive pronoun that takes an apostrophe.

6) It/its/itself: The use of "it" as a conventional replacement for a noun is fairly straightforward; as long as you understand that most nouns that do not relate to human beings (or, in some anthropomorphic cases, gods, animals, monsters, boats,***** and so on) take "it" as a pronoun, you'll be fine. Yet "it" has another interesting function. Witness:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

That one is by Jane Austen, whose understanding of the role of the comma is not the same as mine.****** Her "It is," however, is a good illustration of the way writers will use "it" not to refer to a concrete noun but to emphasise a subject. The first bit of that sentence could easily read, "A truth universally acknowledged is that...." It doesn't. The phrase "It is" allows the writer to rearrange sentences so that they highlight different words and concepts and follow different rhythms. "There is" is another such phrase. In both cases, a reader asking the questions "What is?" or "Where is?" would get no answer. "It is" and "There is" are known, together, as expletives.*******

Many markers hate expletives for the same reasons that many markers hate the passive voice, the word "I," the phrase "in conclusion," and the opener "Since the dawn of time": these expressions are all over-used. Over-use of expletives will actually lead to a marker losing it and writing, "What is? Where? Why? How? What are you talking about? I am lost and confused, and I want chocolate!" in the margins of your papers. An essay littered with expletives will probably seem rather vague. If you are wise, you will actively try to eliminate them from your writing, not because it is horrible to have one or two expletives per paper but because it is horrible to have seventeen or eighteen expletives per page. Many writers use them without consciously thinking about what they are doing. Train yourself to recognise and get rid of expletives; once you have succeeded in banishing them from your writing, you can cautiously allow a few of them to return under controlled circumstances.

This segment may also be a good place to make the following point:

"It's" = "it is." "It's" also = a contraction. Unless you are quoting someone, you will never, ever use "it's" in a formal essay. If you do, I shall scream at you.

"Its" = the possessive form of "it." Use it as often as you like.

The question remains: what do you do when confronted with a situation in which you have to use a gender-neutral singular third-person pronoun? There are several options. None of them is pretty.

1) Use "one." As I said above, there is technically nothing wrong with "one." It may sound conceited to you, but it is not colloquial or overly awkward. Use it if you have to do so. Unfortunately, "one" doesn't always work; sometimes, you really do have to mention "the reader" or "the writer," and neither takes "one" as a pronoun.

2) Use "s/he," "him/her," and "his/her." Yes. I'm sorry about this one. These "words" are extraordinarily ugly, and I avoid them unless I have absolutely no other option. Yet I'll take the hideousness of "s/he" over the utter horror of singular "they" any day. "The reader must forget their assumptions" is wrong. "The reader" is singular. "Their" is plural. I know some people swear by singular "they," and yes, it is used a lot orally, but in formal writing, "they" is still freaking plural. "The reader must forget his/her assumptions" is cringe-inducingly awkward, but at least "his/her" is singular.

3) Use the plural. This solution is more elegant than #2, though as with "one," it is not always possible. Why must you write only of a single (inclusively representative) reader? What's wrong with, "Readers must forget their assumptions"?

4) Alternate "he" with "she." I am using this method here. I don't like it, but as I refuse to use the singular "they," it is just about the only halfway elegant option left to me. If you are using examples and find you must gender them (e.g., "When a writer goes to brainstorm ideas for her essay..."), call the first "writer" (or "reader" or "athlete" or "podiatrist") either "he" or "she"; use the other gender for the next "writer" (or whatever). Inevitably, people who use this method will find themselves accused of sexism ("Why is the 'teacher' male and the 'student' female? Are you working with gender stereotypes here?"). Ignore the accusations and soldier on.

5) Use singular "they," but only if you want me to denounce you. 'Nuff said.

Many readers are going to be unhappy with today's entry. I shall get people contacting me to tell me that by rejecting the singular "they," I am stubbornly refusing to go with the flow of a changing, growing language. I am going to have to say that I respectfully******** disagree with these people. The language can change all it likes, but "they" is not yet acceptable in formal writing as a singular third-person pronoun, and I'm not going to pretend that it is. Use it informally if you must; just keep it the hell away from your essays.

Next time, I'm going to talk a little bit about certain common essay formulae and how they deserved to be tied to bricks and drowned in the ocean.

*With, perhaps, the exception of "they."
**And eventually, I shall rant about how and why.
***I am allowed to use the phrase "hundreds of years ago" here because it happens to be true.
****Yes, deluded acquaintance who never uses pronouns in formal writing (or, in fact, in writing of any sort): you may use "he" and "she." Please do not ever compose such a sentence: "Shakespeare refers to Shakespeare's own history when Shakespeare writes in Shakespeare's famous Shakespearean sonnet: '[Shakespeare's] mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.'"
*****Yes, boats. Boats are female. Intriguingly, the Old English word "scip" is actually neuter. I suppose poets can probably be blamed for the whole boats-as-women thing. Possibly sailors as well, for different reasons.
******Jane Austen's understanding of the role of the comma, being an early-nineteenth-century one, does not count here.
*******Except not the kind you use when your landlord tries you evict you for paying your rent half a day late.
********Though not that respectfully. Damn, that's a lot of asterisks. I need a better footnoting method.

Since the Dawn of Time, Students Have Sucked at Intros

2007-08-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to claim that introductions are easy to write. To catch your reader's attention while simultaneously conveying, clearly and concisely, exactly what you will be arguing in your essay is difficult. If the process seems laughably simple to you, you are probably using formulae, and if you are using formulae, I am going to yell at you very, very loudly. A formulaic introduction is another one of those blasted "shortcuts" that allow students to write quickly, mindlessly, and entirely without useful results.

Sandwich theory encourages writers to start with a broad "universalising" statement, then move quickly to the thesis. I shall dance on the graves of the idiots who believe that this method is a good one. For crying out loud, people: you have driven generations of markers mad with unbearable rage! I want to punch you with my teeth! Fume fume fume fume fume!

I'm going to be discussing many aspects of introduction formation, but I'll start with a list of openings that you must never, ever use. These openings are popular amongst high-school students and undergraduates, all of whom think they are being daringly original. They're not. You're not. These openings are terrible. Stop using them.

Here they are:

Since the dawn of time...

Ah...the perennial favourite. "Since the dawn of time, people have written poetry." "Since the dawn of time, human beings have been artists." There were no human beings at the dawn of time. When the hell was the "dawn of time," anyway? The instant of the Big Bang, perhaps? Were people writing poetry fourteen billion years ago when the universe exploded into being from a densely packed core of matter? Were human beings painting art on the flaming and rapidly expanding vistas of newly created space? Do you not think about what you're writing? Do you never pause for half a second and say to yourself, "Wait a minute. 'Since the dawn of time'...?"

You should also consider this fact: you have been asked by your prof to write a short paper. Let's say that this paper will be between one thousand and fifteen hundred words. If you start at the goddamned dawn of time, how the hell are you going to narrow down your topic in time to write anything on it? If you were writing on the joys of peanut-butter sandwiches, would you begin with a history of food? No? Then keep your hands off the dawn of time. It is not relevant to your essay unless you are Stephen Hawking, and somehow, I don't think you are.*

Since the dawn of man...

Every time I come across this one, I get an image of a bunch of guys in monkey costumes shuffling about and hooting at each other as Thus Spake Zarathustra plays in the background.** Then I go sit in a corner and cry.

Again, you seem to be going back a bit too bloody far. If you are arguing that since the dawn of man, people have worn underwear, I want to see your citations. When was the dawn of man? Was it before or after certain varieties of primate began standing upright and hitting other primates with sticks? Did these primates wear underwear? write poetry? fight what we know now as wars? If so, I really need to see your citations, and you need to write a book. If not, why are you lying to me in the first sentence of your essay? Do you think I am not going to notice that initial asinine statement? You do not need to go back to the dawn of time, and you do not need to go back to the dawn of man.

Since the start of human history... or Throughout human history...

You are creeping slowly forward in time, but you're still too far back. One thousand words, remember? This paper is going to be four pages long. Why are you universalising it? Does it matter to your argument that people have written stories about food throughout human history? Would your essay be less brilliant without that piece of information? If I asked you when "the start of human history" was, would you be able to tell me? Are we talking about written history only? Have you been reading the grocery lists of the ancient Sumerians, or are you simply spouting another bit of meaningless cliche?

For hundreds/thousands/millions of years...

For crying out loud. You are writing a thousand-word essay. I don't care what happened hundreds, thousands, or millions of years ago! I care about the narrow, focussed subject of your essay. Please stop trying to distract me from it.

Since the world/universe began...

Right back to the dawn of time again. No. No. No.

All poetry/wars/food/people/authors/buildings... or Poetry/wars/food/people/authors/buildings always...

"All" and "always" are both beautiful words that are often (not "always") mauled and tortured by well-meaning writers who forget exactly what they mean. If you say that poetry is always difficult to understand, you mean that poetry is always difficult to understand. Please don't generalise. Generalisation is frequently both unnecessary and inaccurate. You'll also want to be avoiding the words "never," "obviously," and "clearly," which are just as misused as poor "always"; they are good words, but they should generally stay the hell out of argumentative essays.

In the whole of the field of English literature/history/philosophy/early childhood education...

What did I just say about generalisation? Cut it out.

Many horrible essay-writing guides claim that a good way to begin an essay is with a "universal" statement. These guides are lying to you. Your markers, who have seen such broad, vague beginnings time after time, know that they rarely work well. Students seem to feel that if they contextualise their topics, situating them as important parts of vast fields of universal human concern, markers will be impressed and give them "A"s. Markers are, in fact, very tired of hearing what has happened since the dawn of time. It is not necessary to universalise your essay. It is a short piece of writing on a narrow aspect of a very specific topic, and it has little to do with the vast sweep and scope of human existence. It does not need to be universalised.

Starting wide and then focussing is not a bad idea, but in a short essay, "wide" generally means "slightly less restrictively narrow than the thesis." For instance, if you are still working on the essay I mentioned in the last entry--the one on friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring--you might start not with a mention of how humans have been writing stories about friendship since the world began, but with a sentence or two on how Tolkien's novel is concerned with many aspects of friendship, though you will, in the end, only be dealing with one. Perhaps it is fair to say that you should start wider, not "wide" per se.

However, there are many ways to begin essays. The introduction is there to snag the reader's attention, engaging her as quickly as possible in the argument at hand. Teachers who tell you that there is only one viable way to draw in the reader haven't been reading enough essays. Some good methods are as follows:

1) Starting with an anecdote. Anecdotes won't work in all essays. Someone writing a paper on the political significance of the Wars of the Roses should probably not begin, "When I was a little boy...." However, in certain essay types, anecdotes can be effective at both engaging the reader and providing an early illustration of the argument. Someone writing an essay on wait times in Ontario's hospitals may try for maximum emotional impact by starting with the story of a real person who has been affected by these wait times. This story itself does not count as evidence; it is a single instance of the problem under discussion and proves only that one person in the whole of Canada has been affected negatively by the wait for surgery. Yet it provides a hook that will, with luck, interest the reader enough that she will go on to find the hard evidence provided in the rest of the essay.

Anecdotes work less well with literary criticism. "When I was a little boy..." would be just as startling in an essay about Hamlet as it would in one about the Wars of the Roses.

2) Starting with an example. The essay about hospital wait times could, if its writer wanted it to have less of a subjective feel, begin with a concrete example of the effects of lengthening wait times: some statistics, the citation of a government report or a newspaper article, or a brief description of a bill up before parliament. This example would probably turn up again later in the essay. However, the writer would also want it in the introduction because it would illustrate or encompass a central idea of the paper. The Fellowship of the Ring essay, which deals with Tolkien's treatment of friendship as a hidden property, could easily start with a mention of Tolkien's "All that is gold does not glitter" line: a line that conveniently acts as a metaphor for hidden worth. Beginning with an example can be tricky--it can seem abrupt or out of place if handled clumsily--but it can be a good way of highlighting a piece of evidence so important that it seems to sum up the paper's thesis in and of itself.

3) Starting with a controversial statement. This method is another tricky one because there are so many ways it can go horribly wrong. I could begin an essay about Harry Potter by writing, "Harry Potter is a tool of the devil; he corrupts our children and converts them to Satanism." Such a statement would certainly be controversial, but it wouldn't actually be true. As I have observed, "controversy" does not have to shock; it merely has to intrigue. A controversial beginning to the Tolkien essay might be: "J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring is not a novel in which friendship appears as an overt ideal." Since many believe the concept of friendship as an ideal to be one of the book's major threads, readers could take issue with such a statement. Yet the writer would go on to explain that the idea of subversive friendship--friendship built on betrayal or fear--gives the novel one of its themes: that of goodness as a hidden property, a type of "gold" that does not glitter. The controversial statement is the hook; the rest of the paragraph justifies it and leads to the controversial thesis.

4) Starting with an analogy, metaphor, or simile. The analogy method should be approached with caution. During my own ignominious undergraduate career, I once began an essay about Renaissance prose fiction by comparing a piece of writing to a sentient machine. I cannot remember now why I did so, but I spent an entire paragraph on this analogy. I could easily have cut the whole thing out.

However, starting with an analogy, metaphor, or simile can sometimes work rather well, as long as it is is concise and relevant. Similes are especially useful in this regard. A writer might reveal that in The Fellowship of the Ring, friendship is like a precious metal obscured by dirt; though it does not necessarily appear to be beautiful, its worth is no less than it would be if it gleamed in the sun. This statement connects nicely to the idea that "all that is gold does not glitter." Someone writing about hospital wait times might compare Canada's health-care system to the human body and observe that lack of nourishment (i.e., funding) will gradually starve this body and cause its systems to shut down one by one. This analogy could also easily take the form of a metaphor ("The Canadian health-care system is itself a living human body"). A good figure of speech will effectively capture the reader's attention and give the writer an image that he can milk throughout the essay.

The "universal" opener is not, unfortunately, the only stupid way to start an essay. Here are a few more tempting but forbidden*** openers:

1) Starting with a quotation. Certain essay-writing guides will tell you that it is all right to begin with a quotation. It is...but only in extremely rare instances and under extremely specific circumstances. I'm not talking about a quotation from a work you happen to be analysing; that counts as an example and works fairly well as an opener. I'm talking about essays that begin something like this:

"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."
-Oscar Wilde

Sincerity is an important issue in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.

Hello? Why are you quoting Wilde here? What does he have to do with Shakespeare? You googled "sincerity" and "quotation" and got this little Wildean one-liner as your first hit, didn't you? Do you even know who Oscar Wilde was? That is a cute, pithy little statement of his you have found, but you just have it there because it uses the word "sincerity." You are not going to build your essay around it, and if I ask you where it's from, you won't have the faintest idea.

If you manage to find a quotation that is absolutely essential to your essay--a piece of controversy written specifically about the topic on which you are writing, perhaps--you may begin with it. Don't begin with a random bit of whatever you have dredged out of the online version of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Starting with a dictionary definition. It is important to define your terms, and often, the introduction is a good place to do so. You should not define your terms by quoting the bloody dictionary. If I don't care what Oscar Wilde has to say about sincerity, I sure as hell won't care about what the huge team that put together the Oxford English Dictionary has to say about it either. You want a definition of sincerity? Give me your own. Tell me exactly what you mean when you use the word "sincerity." About twenty students of mine recently wrote on "the supernatural" in certain novels; not one of them started by defining "supernatural." Their essays suffered for it. However, their essays would also have suffered if they had plundered Webster's. Oxford, Webster's, Collins, whatever: every dictionary will have a slightly different definition of a particular term. You shouldn't stick with any one of these definitions; you really do need to use your own.

One qualification: it is acceptable to quote a dictionary--preferably a comprehensive one such as the Oxford English Dictionary--when you need to explain the etymology, past uses, or common uses of a word. For instance, in my dissertation, I had to go to the Middle English Dictionary for a definition of the word pouk, which was used in a slightly unusual way in one of the texts I was analysing.

3) Starting with an unanswered question. This method is highly frustrating for the reader. The writer gets away with sounding intelligent for posing a difficult question, but if he doesn't answer it, he is implying that he expects the reader to do his analytical work for him. As well, a lot of students who start with a question simply don't know when to stop. I have seen introductions that look very like this:

What is love? Is it just an emotion? Does it exist only due to body chemistry? Does everyone feel it? Is it the same thing as lust? What is lust? Can everybody love? Shakespeare wrote about love; did he understand it? What is love?

Gosh. I don't know. You tell me. No, really. You tell me.

If you pose a question, answer it. Better yet: avoid questions altogether. Too many questions make a writer seem uncertain.

Once you have your hook, you have to deal with the rest of the paragraph (or, in the case of long essays, paragraphs). Many writers wonder about thesis placement. One version of the sandwich method insists that the "thesis" (actually the "topic," but who am I to argue with the Devotees of the Mighty Sandwich?) be the second sentence, after the universalising statement; the rest of the introduction consists of the listing of thesis points. Some high-school teachers insist on the thesis statement being the first sentence of the whole essay. Other teachers and professors insist on it being the last sentence of the introduction. Everyone has an opinion on where the thesis should go.

The truth is that if the writer of the essay is skilful enough, it doesn't matter if the thesis is the essay's first sentence or its last. A good writer will ensure that her argument is clear throughout. Some excellent essayists deliberately avoid stating the thesis until near the end of the paper. Others include several paragraphs of explanation or definition before introducing the thesis statement. Narrative essayists--those writing true stories with points--sometimes never state their theses.

You are going to state your thesis, however. You are going to state it at the beginning of your paper, probably at the very end of your introductory paragraph or paragraphs. I, as your marker, am not going to mark you down for not stating your thesis; I am going to mark you down for not having a thesis. The odds are that if you don't state the damned thing, it won't be there. I have read very few undergraduate papers in which a vague or absent thesis statement is followed by a brilliant, incisive, unified essay. Students who have no theses have no arguments either, whereas those who save their theses for the ends of their essays tend to be the same people who don't prepare for essay composition but just make the whole thing up as they go along. Put the thesis at the beginning. It won't gain you marks simply by being there; it will gain you marks by guiding and focussing your argument.

The thesis need not appear as the last sentence of your introduction, but such a placement will allow you to move directly from the declaration of your argument into the argument itself. The middle of the introduction--the bit between the hook and the thesis--is up to you. I don't want to be any more specific on this matter because I don't want to limit your thinking. The sandwich method tells you exactly what to write; I believe that the sandwich method is eminently silly. The introduction is yours; it does not have to be filled with formula. Find a concise, engaging way to move from the hook to the statement of your argument. Expand on the hook. Explain it. Define your terms. Connect the hook to your topic, and narrow your topic to your thesis. Identify any pieces of literature on which you are writing and explain their connection to your thesis.**** If you have room and are so inclined, write more than one introductory paragraph. Your introduction should be as long or short as it needs to be. Avoid unnecessary padding***** or long, rambling analogies, but do not skimp on needed definitions. Make sure that your introduction contains 1) only relevant information and 2) enough relevant information.

A "good introduction" can take one of many, many forms. Don't be afraid to try out your own ideas or stray from what you think of as "the norm"; there is no norm.

In my next entry, I'm going to take a short break from my dissection of the essay and talk about pronouns (four or five in particular). You may think you know how to use pronouns in essays, but you may actually be kind of completely wrong about that.

*I may be wrong. If so: hi, Stephen Hawking.
**Plus sometimes I see a monolith and a gigantic space baby.
***By me.
****Which should mention them. If you have a topic such as, "Discuss the role of heroism in fantasy in relation to two of the course texts," your thesis should not simply be about the role of heroism in fantasy; it should be about the role of heroism in fantasy in relation to two of the course texts. Do not be afraid to be specific.
*****Unlike the student of mine who, in beginning a discussion of one of Shakespeare's plays, decided to tell the life story of Queen Elizabeth I, though she never did explain why she had.

Organise Your Thoughts; Win Eternal Fame and Glory

2007-08-12T14:42:00.000-07:00

I hate outlining. I never do it.

By stating this simple fact, I am not giving you permission to cry, "Ha-ha! Kem just told us that outlining was stupid!" and gambol victoriously off into the sunset. I don't think outlining is stupid. It doesn't work for me, but it does for many others. I use different methods of organising my thoughts. Which method you choose--or invent--doesn't matter. What does matter is that you do eventually put a curb on the chaos that is the brainstorming process. Disorder leads to creativity; order leads to logical reasoning predicated on creativity.

Both the disorganised and the organised stages of prewriting are essential to essay-writing preparations. Without the former, students tend to fall back on formula, organising "ideas" that remain entirely on the surface of the issue at hand. Without the latter, students end up with scattered papers that go off on tangents and just don't hold together in the end. You may find one or both of these stages boring, but...well...boo hoo. As I have said before, essay writing is work. Shortcuts exist, but if you take them, you may end up with a shoddy product.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate the organisation stage of prewriting is with a concrete example. Let's say an evil prof decides to torture you by giving you the following topic:

Discuss the role of friendship in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring.

The prof is evil because this topic is extremely broad. He may as well be saying, "Discuss the role of flowers in an alpine meadow." This prof is not spoon-feeding you beautifully worded "How?" questions; he is forcing you to narrow the topic down and find something interesting about it to discuss. Many students, seeing this topic, would panic and fall back upon the accursed sandwich format. Such a student might eventually end up with a "thesis" such as: "In The Fellowship of the Ring, friendship is important" or "In The Fellowship of the Ring, J. R. R. Tolkien demonstrates the role of friendship in the relationships between Frodo and Sam, Frodo and Aragorn, and Gandalf and Saruman." Why? How? Kill the bloody split thesis! You have a thousand words to make your point; you can't get away with vagueness. Narrow. The. Topic.*

Before I start in on the example proper, I should say that in what follows, I am going to be using ideas of my own about The Fellowship of the Ring. These ideas are, in fact, mine. They are not yours. If you like them and decide to use them in your essays, you are going to cite me. If you read them and find yourself thinking, "By golly...that's exactly what I was thinking about this novel!", you are still going to cite me. Your profs may take issue with you citing a blog. I would. I don't care. If you find ideas on the Internet, in printed material, or in your own grandmother's brain, they are not yours and must be cited, lest you be accused of plagiarism and cast from the hallowed halls of academe into a fiery chasm of doom. I'll be ranting on plagiarism eventually, but for now, let me simply say:

Don't freaking plagiarise.

Right.

Let's say that this is the first page of my notes on friendship in The Fellowship of the Ring:

Frodo & Sam (& Merry & Pippin?)
Bilbo & Gandalf?
what about Aragorn?--acts unfriendly at 1st--Bree
"All that is gold does not glitter" comes from common saying--"all that glitters is not gold"--why the reversal?
male bonding
Frodo & Sam are master & servant--is this "friendship"?--does their relationship transcend class structure?
Merry & Pippin show friendship through betrayal--hmm--& Sam
Gandalf?--true friend to Bilbo--shows this by intimidating him
Aragorn is a bully--scares the living daylights out of Frodo & co. in Bre
gold doesn't glitter = friendship disguised as betrayal and intimidation?
SARUMAN--disguises betrayal as friendship?
friendship gains strength from being hidden?--humble?--gold that doesn't glitter--Saruman glitters but isn't gold
in Tolkien's world, the humble is actually good--his approach to friendship: demonstration of this principle

Notice that I start with questions and seemingly random examples. The questions are not necessarily answered this early in the game; it is enough for me to jot them down so that I can, if necessary, answer them later. About halfway down the page, after the comment on Merry and Pippin showing friendship through betrayal, I begin to realise that I have found an aspect of the topic that interests me, and my notes focus on that aspect. They also return briefly one of the very early questions (the one centred on "All that is gold does not glitter") and attempt to answer it. I drop some of my first "chaotic" thoughts (on male bonding and the master/servant relationship): thoughts that are interesting but do not seem to have much to do with the idea of friendship as hidden or humble. By the end of the page, I am dealing with ideas that may very well turn into a working thesis.

I'm not finished. Stopping right after finding a possible thesis is a stupid thing to do. I have an idea but not really enough evidence to support it; what if a closer look at the evidence shows me that my idea doesn't hold up? Not all ideas do. Seizing on an early possible thesis and convincing yourself that it is the only possible thesis will sometimes get you into deep trouble. I have seen students cling disastrously to weak theses because they don't want to admit that there is not enough evidence to support them. No one likes having to go back to the beginning and start again from scratch, but sometimes the choice is between scrapping a weak thesis and earning a "D."

Imagine that my notes go on, getting more detailed and focussed as they do. Early questions are answered; new (related) questions are posed and examined. Eventually, several (yes, several) pages later, my thesis has taken a less tentative form, many tangents have been discarded, and some possible points and examples have emerged. The raw material of my essay is all down on the page. It needs to be organised.

This note-taking session, by the way, does not all have to take place on the same day. Ideas need time to mature and evolve. Write some notes, wait a day, read what you've written, and write some more. Think about your ideas as you are out for a walk. Bore your roommate by discussing aspects of the topic that puzzle you. Don't expect everything to come together in half an hour.

What you do at this point is up to you. I would continue taking notes, this time working forwards from the thesis instead of backwards towards it. What emerged probably wouldn't resemble my final essay all that closely, but it would echo it roughly in the manner in which the argument progressed. I would also think about the essay now and again--in the shower, while taking a walk--and in the process smooth out some of the rough bits in my argument. My thesis points would be emerging by now. I would not necessarily choose only three. In fact, I wouldn't choose the points at all; they would grow logically out of my thesis. I would end up with as many points as I needed.

You could use this method, which works for me. If it doesn't work for you, you have a couple of well-documented options:

Mind-mapping (or branching): I'm not fond of mind-mapping because, as I've said, some students use it as a substitute for brainstorming. I also have huge, sloppy writing, and I tend to reach the edge of the page a little too quickly. However, if you are a visual learner and have already brainstormed or freewritten your way to a thesis statement,** mind-mapping may help you figure out where all your ideas fit in relation to one another.

Write your thesis in the centre of the page. Do so in tiny letters. Do not bother with coloured sparkly pens. Circle the thesis.

Write your major ideas in the space around the thesis. Circle each one. Connect them to the thesis with lines. Put the damned coloured sparkly pens away.

Write sub-points (or, if you will, sub-sub-points) and examples in the space around each idea/thesis point. Circle each one. Connect them to the relevant major ideas with lines. Still no coloured sparkly pens.

Here's the clever bit:

Connect related points/sub-points/examples to one another with dotted lines or, if absolutely necessary, coloured sparkly pens.

If you don't do the thing with the dotted and/or coloured lines, I shall denounce you forever afterwards in the World of Academe. More importantly, you will be running the danger of presenting unconnected thesis points. Those dotted lines are essential because they force you to ensure that your points are connected. The act of creating these lines may even lead you to notice connections that you hadn't realised existed.

Outlining: Outlining is not a uniform process. Some people find that the following sort of thing works for them:

Thesis: [States thesis].
Point 1: A
Point 2: leads to B,
Point 3: which seems to contradict C.
Point 4: However, D clears everything up,
Point 5: and E clinches the matter.
Conclusion.

Others like to detail every sub-point and example in detail. Some virtually compose their essays in note form in the outline; when they write the essay, they simply get rid of all the little dashes and fill in the missing articles. If you are a devotee of the tiny blue format above, you'll need to keep your detailed notes close at hand as you write your paper; the sparse approach is attractive, but it is also incomplete. If you prefer the obsessively anal approach, try not to get carried away. Professors do impose word limits. Make sure that you are, in fact, writing an outline for a (let us say) thousand-word paper, not a six-hundred-page critical text.

I don't care what your outline looks like. I don't care whether or not you have one. I don't care if you prepare for essay writing by stripping naked, painting yourself neon pink, and reciting your thesis points while rappelling down a cliff into a fjord in Norway.*** All I want is for you to spend some time thinking...and some time organising...and some time writing...and some time editing...and some time receiving "A"s. It isn't much, really. Indulge me.

So far, we've been speaking mostly in generalities. I tell you to "make connections" or to "go deeper," but some of you may be unclear as to what the hell I'm talking about. Go deeper into what? Make connections where? Be patient. In the next entry, I'm going to start on the second stage of essay composition: writing. I'll work through the essay section by section, beginning with the introduction; along the way, I'll look at what makes an argument work and what makes it fail. This exploration is going to be a long one, so don't look for all your questions to be answered immediately. I'll also eventually be going through this whole process again with different types of essays; at the moment, I'm discussing "the essay" as if there is only one kind. A comparison and a cause-and-effect paper are very different beasties and have very different rules associated with them.

Next time, I shall explain in detail why "Since the dawn of man, people have been writing poetry" is such a horrible first line that if I ever see it again--and I shall--I am going to scream, mash the offending essay into formless pulp with my bare hands, and go get a job at a doughnut shop.****

*Or. I. Shall. Never. Forgive. You.
**If you haven't, do. Now. Before you finish reading this document. For crying out loud.
***Though if such is the case, I do think that you may have other problems.
****No, you cannot have the last honey cruller. It's mine. Mine, I say. Preeeeccciiiooouussss...

If You Skip the Prewriting Stage, I Shall Haunt Your Nightmares

2007-08-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

My marking is done, my comic is coloured and uploaded, and I am in a belligerent mood. Let's get ranting.

A note before I start in on the main rant: some people who read this blog have taken issue with the "that/which" post, mostly because, as they have noted, the conventions of formality in regards to this rule differ depending on whether you're in the UK or North America. North Americans tend to follow slightly stricter rules (yes, really) that the English see as nonsensical or depriving the language of nuance. According to one reader, UKers do not accept non-restrictive "that" (no one does), but they do accept restrictive "which" every once in a while. However, sticking with "that" for restrictive clauses and "which" for non-restrictive ones is not incorrect; it is simply not as "nuanced."

I'm going to have to side with the Non-Nuanced Club on this one, if only because my Philosophy of Learning to Write Well Enough That Your Profs Will Not Want to Kill You and Then Leap Despairingly from Their Office Windows rather depends on students internalising the strictest, most anal rules of formal grammar and structure inside and out. Learn the rules. Hate them as you're learning them. Rage against the rules while you're writing...but learn the damned things. Once you have pounded the "that/which" dichotomy, in its North American incarnation, into your head so completely that you will never, ever forget it and will probably actually have disturbing dreams about it until the day you die, you can choose to use "which" restrictively every once in a while if you really want to do so. By that point, you will understand why you are choosing "which" over "that"; you will not be choosing it because you have no idea which one is correct and are flinging words haphazardly at the page.

There we go. On to business:

One of the most maddening misconceptions about essay writing is that it is so formulaic that it involves little or no preparation. The stereotype of the frantic undergrad, snowed under by work, frantically scribbling out each essay the night before it is due is probably a pretty accurate one; hell, I'm a chronic night-before person myself. I'm not sure any of my grad-student friends aren't. There is, however, a difference between someone who writes an essay the night before it is due and someone who starts an essay the night before it is due. Writing is only the second stage of a three-stage process. If you want to produce something half decent, skipping two of the stages (as many do) is a bloody stupid idea.

Many students claim that they work better on the fly. They say that they write the body paragraphs first, in the process working out what the thesis is going to be; they then go back and cobble together an introduction. These people proudly proclaim that they don't need to prepare. Brilliant insights spring full-grown from their heads, and they jot them down, give the results a quick read-through, and hand the whole thing in. After all, every essay is structured in the same way, isn't it? How hard is it, really, to slot in topic sentences and support, sprinkle the conclusion with repetition, add a reference to the subject of the essay having been important since the dawn of time, and call it a night?

I would like to have these people in front of me right now. I would like to take them by the scruffs of their necks and rub their noses in their hideous, hideous essays. Then I would like to tell them about brainstorming. I would like to tell them about brainstorming very loudly, with claps of thunder punctuating my words.

Most chirpy and expensive essay guides call the stages of essay-writing "prewriting," "writing," and "postwriting." These names will do for now, though they are rather misleading for the simple fact that all of the stages involve writing. Prewriting is possibly the most neglected of the three. Outlining is taught in high school by the same well-meaning people who love the sandwich method; students are encouraged to detail their points and support carefully before they begin to write. There is absolutely nothing wrong with outlining--it is essentially a way of providing yourself with a map on the road to the Proving of the Thesis--but there is something wrong with starting with an outline: almost as much wrong as there is with starting with the essay itself. An outline is what you write once you know what your destination is. If you tackle it before that point, your map is going to contain a hell of a lot of blank space.

I like to tell unsuspecting undergrads that the essay-writing process is represented more or less accurately by the following diagram:

Yes, it is three coloured triangles sitting on top of each other inside a black rectangle. I like to colour stuff in Photoshop; so sue me. What the diagram represents is the shape of the essay-writing process. The writer starts with a broad, general topic and must narrow it down to that point between the red bit and the blue bit: a point that represents the formulation of the thesis statement. In effect, prewriting and writing mirror one another; the writer works from the general (the gathering of evidence) to the specific (the thesis), then expands outward to the general (the presentation of evidence) again. The postwriting, or editing, stage mirrors the writing stage as the writer once more works backwards, examining the presented evidence for flaws and holes as she attempts to ensure that it supports the thesis.

Notice that all three triangles are the same size.

Yes, they are. Yes, you are going to have to spend time preparing to write. I don't care how strenuously you claim you don't need preparation. I don't care how bored brainstorming and outlining make you. In my hand I hold the world's smallest violin, and it is playing just for you. Essay-writing is work. Deal with it.

Now:

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to take a hugely broad topic, find some way of constructing an argument out of it, and garner enough support for that argument that your readers do not think you are a freaking idiot. As I said earlier, one of the most important aspects of the thesis is its identity as a controversial statement: a statement that must be proven. During the prewriting stage, you need to find that thesis. If you start writing the essay without knowing exactly what you're arguing--and many do--you are going to end up with an unfocussed essay that wanders from point to point and may or may not make an attempt to pull itself together during the conclusion. Do not make the mistake of conflating prewriting and writing. The essential and often unacknowledged difference between them is as follows:

Prewriting is necessarily disorganised (in its early stages). Writing is necessarily organised (in all its stages).

Disorganised?

Don't you tilt your head at me. Yes, prewriting is "disorganised." It has to be. An essay itself is a piece of written logic, but in order to get to the point where you can be successfully logical, you need to give yourself over to chaos. Writers who make the mistake of organising their thoughts too soon are missing out on the creative connections that arise from spontaneity. Eventually, you will reach a prewriting stage at which you will be forced to get organised, but it is important not to limit yourself right out of the gate.

Prewriting itself can take many forms. Most of them have names. The most commonly flogged by essay-writing guides are:

Brainstorming: the process of jotting down random thoughts in note form. With brainstorming, you start with a topic, not a thesis, and work your way towards a viable argument; however, you should not begin by telling yourself that you need to find a thesis right now. Rather, you should free-associate, writing down whatever comes to mind when you think about your topic. The more interesting aspects will eventually float to the top of your brainstorming, and your notes will become less and less random. They will effectively begin to organise themselves.

Freewriting: the process of giving yourself a set time in which to write, in complete sentences but not with close attention to grammar or structure, random thoughts about your topic. Freewriting is essentially brainstorming in paragraph form. If you're one of the aforementioned people who claims that you find your thesis while writing your essay, you may enjoy freewriting. The timed aspect of it is important; time limits create panic, and panic creates inspiration.

Looping: the process of taking your piece of freewriting, extracting the most interesting or unexpected point, and freewriting on it, then repeating the process until you arrive at a thesis statement. Looping is, again, slightly more controlled brainstorming. It imposes a small amount of structure on the chaos (i.e., you're always going to be pausing to look for your most interesting idea), and it is surprisingly effective.

Mind-mapping: the process of writing the topic or thesis in the centre of the page...then drawing several lines out from it and jotting down a point at the end of each one...then drawing several lines out from them for your sub-points. Note that mind-mapping is a very structured form of prewriting.

Branching: the same thing as mind-mapping, but starting at the top of the page and working downwards in what looks like an upside-down family tree.

Unfortunately, by sorting aspects of the process into categories, we kind of imply that all the different prewriting methods are created equal and are mutually exclusive: in other words, that someone who mind-maps doesn't have to brainstorm. Unfortunately, mind-mapping and branching, though two of the most satisfying-looking forms of prewriting, are also two of the most pointless if done alone. Prewriting is predicated on disorganisation; mind-mapping and branching are eminently organised. As they don't allow the writer much room to expand upon his thoughts (since points have to be kept short in order that they might all fit on a single page), these two methods are useful mostly for the purpose of organisation after the writer has arrived at the thesis. A writer who only mind-maps in the prewriting stage has often convinced himself that all he needs to do is organise his thoughts; he doesn't need to develop them.

That's right, Student Who Always Starts with Mind-Mapping Because It Is Pretty and Takes Little Effort: you are still missing a stage. Put down the multi-coloured sparkly pens and back away slowly.

Development is what happens with brainstorming and freewriting. It doesn't matter which you prefer. You may even find you invent your own methods; I have (more on that in a moment). What is important is to write ideas down. They don't all have to be relevant ideas. Many of them will not end up in the essay. During the brainstorming process, you are not consciously organising your thoughts; you are riffing on them. Brainstorming is the jazz of essay-writing. It does have a structure--the quest for the thesis--but it consists mostly of improvisation. Some of what comes out of this improvisation can be surprising.

Write everything down. Write down even ideas that seem stupid or tangential; then write down why they are stupid and tangential. Jump to conclusions about your topic, but go back and work through whether such a leap is plausible. Sometimes, intuitive reactions to a subject are profitable, albeit only if you can pause after the intuitive reaction and puzzle out how you reached it. Don't expect to find a thesis or even to narrow down your topic a bit until you have been writing for a while. Don't worry if a good argument doesn't leap out and smack you upside the head. Keep writing. If you figure you don't need to write--that it will be enough for you to think about the issue--stop deluding yourself and start bloody writing. You can write and think at the same time, and unlike thinking, writing always sticks around. You are more likely to remember your ideas when you write them down, even if you never glance at your notes again. You are also more likely to find yourself making connections and chasing unusual points of view.

Remember: you are looking for controversy. It doesn't have to be shocking controversy--you don't have to argue that cannibalism is the wave of the future--but it has to be an idea that others can dispute. One of the reasons many people feel they don't need to take many notes before they start writing is that their "arguments" are too straightforward. I call this variety of thesis the "sky-is-blue" argument. It generally goes something like this:

Person A: The sky is blue.

Person B: How do you know?

Person A: [Points up.]

Person B: I bow before your brilliance.

You can't write an argument about the sky being blue because the blueness of the sky is an observable fact. Writing an essay that "proves" that Nunavut is sparsely populated, Frodo has to take the Ring to Mordor, Kiefer Sutherland is the star of 24, dogs have cold noses, or William Shakespeare uses irony in Macbeth is completely bloody unnecessary. You may as well argue that you are writing an essay and end the pretence that you are saying anything important or interesting.

By brainstorming--by forcing yourself to put your thoughts down on paper in a non-formulaic manner--you are using the chaos of unstructured note-taking to dig out the controversy. One of the reasons immediate mind-mapping is a bad idea is that mind-mapping, like essay-writing itself, is structured. Forget structure for now. Write. Think. Be disorganised. Make mistakes. Go in wrong directions. Find the wrong directions and make sure you know what they are. Write until your hand hurts, then go for a walk and let your mind sort out what you have written. Order will begin to emerge; seemingly random ideas will connect up and send you off in directions you didn't know existed.

Once you have narrowed the topic a bit (not necessarily all the way), start thinking about not simply the argument you want to make but also the counter-arguments readers could, theoretically, throw back at you. It may help to think of an essay as one side of a debate. Your opponent--in this case, your reader--is going to be trying to trip you up. She will be looking for holes in your argument. The prewriting stage is where you want to plug these holes. Every time you write down a point, think of a fair counter-argument. An unfair counter-argument, or straw man, may make you feel better about your thesis, but it won't help you plug the holes in it. The straw man fallacy occurs when a writer sets up an unreasonable and unrealistic counter-argument and then enthusiastically whacks at it with a metaphorical stick. Someone arguing that pro-choicers are wrong because killing a nine-month-old fetus is murder has created a straw man; no sane pro-choicer would claim that a woman should be able to abort a full-term baby. Make sure that your imaginary opponent is sane.

You may even prewrite a debate with this imaginary opponent. I like this method, which none of the usual essay-writing guides mention, because it forces me to approach an issue from all sides instead of simply one. When preparing for my essays, I will often write my notes in the form of a conversation between me and a fiendishly intelligent opponent who tries to shoot down every point I make. As I defend myself from him, I delve deeper into my knowledge of the subject and dig up some hole-plugging arguments I would not have been able to discover without the threat of the counter-argument running through my notes. This imaginary opponent often helps me arrive at a thesis; he opposes me every step of the way (i.e., I oppose me every step of the way), and I battle through to a watertight argument that refutes every point he has made.

You will find your own methods; you don't have to follow the prescribed ones. You need to write, and you need to write relatively chaotically, but you don't need to Follow the Yellow Brick Road. Find a note-taking style that works for you. Do not skip the note-taking stage. Do not skip it. By the time you begin writing your essay, you should have not only a thesis but page upon page of thoughts on it and evidence to support it.

Tomorrow or the next day, I'll deal with the second, more structured part of prewriting: organisation. For many, this sub-stage takes the form of mind-mapping and/or outlining; others simply continue brainstorming, though more slowly and in a more focussed manner. Not everyone finds outlining useful, but organisation--in some form--is an essential part of the process.

Yes, Formality Matters, Damn It

2007-08-08T05:54:00.000-07:00

I promised some grammar ranting, and I'll get to that in a bit. First, I should probably include an explanation of why I'm ranting about grammar.

Students love to whine. I am a student, and I love to whine; most of my friends are students, and they love to whine. I'm speaking from experience here. However, over the course of an academic career, the focus of the whining changes. Upper-year grad students whine about their lack of funding, inability to afford rent or food, indifferent supervisors, and slow progress. Mid-term grad students whine about their huge but apparently inadequate stipends, inability to afford three new DVDs every week, absentee supervisors, and complete lack of progress. Beginning grad students whine about their enormous stipends (subsidised by showers of parental monetary bounty), inability to afford private jets, tough courses, and qualifying or comprehensive exams. Upper-year undergrads whine about living with Mommy and Daddy, having to work part-time to subsidise their tiny scholarships, course load, and boys.*

Lower-year undergrads also complain about such things, but most of all, they complain about grammar.

I don't understand it. No one ever taught me about it in high school. What's an adverb? How should I know? Why do you stupid markers have a problem with me sticking in a comma to indicate a pause? A comma does indicate a pause! That's what Mrs. Ritchie taught me in grade four, and she was right about everything else, including that stuff I was doing behind the school with Stephen! Why does it matter whether I know what a misplaced modifier is? You can understand what I'm writing, can't you? Well, can't you? What's the point of me learning all these moronic ruuuuuuules?

Mrs. Ritchie was wrong.** Your other teachers were remiss. There aren't actually all that many rules. Stop freaking out and learn what a bloody comma does.

Native speakers of a given language learn many grammar rules intuitively. For instance, speakers of standard British/Canadian/American English know that when they want to use the pronoun "I" and the verb "to be" (in the present tense) in conjunction with each other, "to be" takes the conjugated form of "am." Dialects can vary, of course, but in standard English, "I am" is acceptable, whereas "I is" and "I are" sound rather strange. Most people never realise that when their brains automatically conjugate "to be" and attach the correct form to the subject in question, they are applying the rules of grammar. When students do the Grammar Whine, they are not complaining about these basic rules (which non-native speakers have to learn from scratch, by the way. Do you still think you're hard done by?). They are complaining about the less intuitive rules of written English: specifically, those of formal English grammar.

The dividing line between formal and informal writing is not always obvious; there are degrees of formality. I am writing this guide in what you might call a semi-formal style. I use complete sentences (except now and then for effect); I don't begin sentences with coordinating conjunctions; I tend to use what many people would see as too many commas because I am inserting them at all the syntactically correct spots. However, I am also addressing the reader as "you"; I am using contractions and colloquial words such as "freaking" and "bloody"; my tone is much more subjective than it would be in a true formal essay. Newspaper columns and works of fiction are often written informally, with writers relaxing rules of grammar that they have learned and could apply if they wanted to do so. This last point is key. I'm sorry, undergrads, but it really is possible for readers to tell the difference between writing that breaks the rules "for effect" and writing that breaks the rules because the writer doesn't know the damned things. Experienced writers are allowed to use sentence fragments. You're not.

Yet even an experienced writer who used a sentence fragment in a piece of truly formal writing would probably deserve to be hit upside the head with somebody's Strunk and White.*** Save the edginess for your latest novel, Experienced Writer; when you write an academic paper, you follow academic style.

Academic essays are formal. They do not contain contractions. They do not address their readers as "you." They do not use the words "guys," "awesome," or "stuff." They do not employ sentence fragments, even for effect. They do not--ever--contain any variation on the following "sentence":

And there's one more interesting thing here: the narrator has killed his wife!

No. No. Bloody. No. That "and" is a coordinating conjunction; it does not belong at the beginning of a sentence. The word "thing" is vague and could mean, well, anything (the words "anything," "something," "everything," and "nothing" should also be avoided in formal writing, by the way).**** "There's"? No! Contractions! Ever! What is that exclamation mark doing there? I hate exclamation marks! I am a hypocrite and use them a lot, but I also hate them! Exclamation marks are out of place in formal writing, in which the writer is trying to convince readers, not scare the hell out of them.

Formal writing is measured, sober in tone, and grammatically correct. Students who simply can't resist being funny should note that humour in a formal essay should be there for a purpose; it is not forbidden, but neither should it appear simply for the sake of appearing. Recently, one of my students, a brilliantly funny man with a talent for hilarious phrasing, submitted a comparison essay in which he dealt with one text very logically and intelligently, then wrote a parodic analysis of the other. The parody was nicely done; it just didn't fit. If he had retained the parodic tone for his discussion of both novels, he would have been on less shaky ground.

It may be worth saying a couple of words about the "no contractions" rule:

No contractions.

That is all ye know, and all ye need to know.***** Contractions do not belong in formal writing. Save them for your blog.

Some profs will allow you to relax the rules of formal English in their essays, but since most won't, it's safer to assume (unless someone explicitly informs you otherwise) that you need to be ultra-formal. Ignore the majority of recent essay-writing guides, too; they tend to provide sample essays that use contractions. These guides are geared towards high-school students, many of whose teachers allow them to write informally. In university, profs will crucify you if you use "isn't" and "wouldn't" and "can't" and "there's" and "I've" and "should've." Formal English--without contractions--allows a writer to project a certain professional, authoritative tone. You may not like this tone, but it is conventional, and refusal to use it will lead to your readers (and your profs) taking you less seriously. Suck it up. Formal writing can be painful to produce, but once you've mastered it, you will be able to write almost anything.******

I'll be covering various rules of formal grammar as this guide progresses; I certainly can't deal with them all at once. For now, I'm going to rant for a bit on a grammatical rule that haunts my dreams and occasionally tempts me to stab student essays with a tiny knife of pain.

The Difference Between "That" and "Which"

Yes, there is a difference. Yes, it is an important difference. Yes, I am obsessive-compulsive. Why do you ask?

"That" and "which" are both relative pronouns: words that introduce adjective clauses (clauses that modify nouns and pronouns). "That" introduces restrictive or essential clauses. "Which" introduces non-restrictive or non-essential clauses. Any grammar guide will explain this simple fact to you. If you are Canadian, I recommend Jack Finnbogason and Al Valleau's A Canadian Writer's Pocket Guide, which I have open in front of me right now so that I can be sure I get all the terminology right (my definition above is a paraphrase of Finnbogason and Valleau 89).

Why did I refer to the grammar guide? Why didn't I just tell you the difference between the words? Well...see...I can never remember the bloody terminology. I don't expect you to remember it either. If you are not gazing upon the paragraph above this one in bitterness and despair and crying aloud in the night, "Does she really think that's simple?", you probably have a very ordered mind. Forget the terminology. The difference between "that" and "which" can be demonstrated clearly via some examples straight out of a grade one reader.

The cat that sat on the mat was black.

The cat, which sat on the mat, was black.

Note the surface differences between the two sentences. One uses "that" and one "which," of course, but the second also includes two commas. These commas are not optional. If you are using the word "which" as a relative pronoun introducing an adjective clause, you are preceding it with a comma.******* If you read over a sentence you have just constructed and find that you have used "which" without a preceding comma, you need either to add a comma or to replace the "which" with "that." What is not always easy is figuring out which option to choose.

Look at the silly blue sentences above again. Try not to kill me for using these examples; they're useful ones. Ask yourself: in each case, how many cats are in the room?

In option #1, there is probably more than one cat in the room. The "that" is essential; without the "that" clause, the reader wouldn't know to which cat the writer was referring. The "that" clause identifies the cat.

In option #2, there is only one cat in the room. The "which" is non-essential; without the "which" clause, the reader would still know to which cat the writer was referring. The "which" clause provides unnecessary but interesting details--parenthetical details--about the cat.

Say you write the following sentence, then notice a bit later that you have not included a comma in front of the "which":

The dog which I bought on Tuesday later bit me.

How you correct this sentence will depend on its context. If you are here identifying the dog--if "The dog later bit me" does not give the reader enough information on its own--you should have written, "The dog that I bought on Tuesday later bit me." If you have identified the dog earlier in the passage and the statement about you buying it on Tuesday is there simply to provide some additional information about the dog, you should have written, "The dog, which I bought on Tuesday, later bit me."

So...first, find all your relative "which"es and make sure they have commas in front of them. If they don't, figure out whether or not they actually need to be "that"s. Live happily ever after to the end of your days. The end.

Tomorrow (or Friday if I find myself drowning in horrible marking tomorrow), I'll discuss brainstorming and why it is not simply a catchword thrown out by tired, desperate high-school teachers who want their students to stop asking them stupid questions.

*Or possibly girls.
**Though not about that stuff you were doing behind the school with Stephen.
***A well-known American writing guide. Its real title is The Elements of Style; Strunk and White are the authors. Interesting fact: "White" is actually E. B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. Plus he once co-wrote a book called Is Sex Necessary?, but that's probably not relevant here.
****Luckily, I'm not writing formally.
*****Hello, John Keats. As I told Mr. Pratchett yesterday, I only steal from the best. I would ask you to curb the florid imagery in your next poem a bit, but as you died in 1821 at the age of twenty-five, there likely wouldn't be much use.
******Except sonnets.
*******"Which" can be used in other contexts: in the expression "that which" ("He was destroyed by that which he had created"), as an interrogative adjective ("Which twin do you prefer?"; "I don't know which albino rabbit is prettier"), as an interrogative pronoun ("Which of you deserves to die?"; "You must say which you want"), or as a relative adjective ("during which time"). "Which" also appears in the expression "to which" ("the country to which he was travelling"), a rather convoluted construction that allows a writer to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition (it replaces the phrase "that...to").