English Composition Tips

From digmovements

Contents 1 Develop An Outline 1.1 Review Research Notes 1.2 Organize and Group Information 1.3 Rough Out Your Outline 1.4 Derive A Thesis Statement 1.5 Add Specifics to Your Outline 2 Draft the Paper 2.1 Start With A Joke 2.2 Add Each Content Area/Evidence Group 2.3 Repeat and Expand on Thesis Frequently 2.4 Print and Read Your First Draft 3 Revise for Clarity 3.1 Develop a Second Draft 3.2 Write a Conclusion 3.3 Print and Revise for a Third Draft 4 Polish for Style 4.1 Apostrophes and Possessive Forms 4.2 Apostrophes and Plural Forms 4.3 Weird Plural Forms 4.4 Homonyms 4.5 Who and Whom 4.6 Active and Passive Verb Forms 5 Examples of Bad Prose 5.1 Run On Sentence with Parenthesis 5.2 Run On Sentence with Passive Voice 5.3 Run On Sentence with Weak Verbs 5.4 Grand Daddy of Them All 5.5 How a Fine Conclusion Can Be Lost

[edit] Develop An Outline

[edit] Review Research Notes

• Lay out and review all your research notes and sources
• Look for patterns of information in the content
• Look for shared and conflicting ideas among authors

[edit] Organize and Group Information

• Group notes and sources according to patterns of information and ideas
• Jot down the main information and ideas in the groups to form possible area headings

[edit] Rough Out Your Outline

• Order area headings to tell a story
• Experiment with ordering and reordering your area headings for narrative coherence
• If you have trouble putting a story together, consider breaking down and reforming groups or patterns into different area headings

[edit] Derive A Thesis Statement

• Decide on the main point of your story
  • Consider what you want to say about your topic
  • Consider what your evidence will support
• State your main point in one or two strong, simple sentences
  • Save the complexities, exceptions, and qualifying remarks for later

[edit] Add Specifics to Your Outline

• Put your thesis statement at the top
• Add your area headings in the order that best supports your thesis
  • Derive and add the main points and ideas that each area heading adds to your over all thesis
• Add specific sources and information to be used under each area heading
  • State directly how each source can work as evidence for your points and ideas

[edit] Draft the Paper

[edit] Start With A Joke

• Choose an anecdote or insight that introduces your main point or argument (shown here in bold)

"In 2005, Trent Lott spoke at the retirement dinner for South Carolina senator, Strom Thurmond. As the younger man celebrated Thurmond's career, he speculated about how history might have changed for the better if Thurmond had won his 1948 presidential bid. This remark went largely unnoticed in mainstream media outlets in the days that followed, but it eventually exploded into a media scandal that cost Lott his position as the GOP Senate majority leader. The source of that explosion was The Daily Kos, a left leaning political blog created in 2003. The blogger made the point that Thurmond had run on a segregationist platform in 1948, and Lott's remarks implied that the desegregation of the civil rights movement had been a mistake. This observation reverberated throughout the blogosphere with such force that it penetrated the mainstream media and, within weeks, brought the powerful Lott down.

As Dan Gilmor observed in We The Media, this event marked the start of a revolution in journalism that we are only beginning to understand today. The blogosphere has begun to undermine the dominance of mainstream news media through the fact checking and watchdog activities of countless citizen journalists. This development is currently disruptive and messy but ultimately better for democracy."

• Signpost your reader
  • "This paper will demonstrate how the blogosphere is changing professional journalism today. It will examine the origins of the blogosphere, its current structure and political influence, its business model, and its possible futures. This paper relies on peer-reviewed publications in the field of journalism, as well as critiques of selected blogs and documentary and artistic illustrations."

[edit] Add Each Content Area/Evidence Group

• Title your main areas with area headings
• Make sure area headings support and remain focused on the main thesis
• Keep each area focused on its heading
• Add evidence from sources, patterns of information, in an order that contributes to a sense of story
• Add an idea, observation, or analytical point connected to your thesis for each major evidence set

[edit] Repeat and Expand on Thesis Frequently

• Restate, expand on, and clarify your thesis at the beginning of each area heading
• Specify in each area of the paper how the area adds to and further explains your thesis
• Restate your area's sub-thesis at the end of each area and use this as a transition to the next area

[edit] Print and Read Your First Draft

• Take a couple of days away from the project
• Print a copy and read it for clarity and organization
  • Are the main areas ordered effectively for narrative flow?
  • Is the use of information and evidence effective?
  • Are your thesis statements and restatements useful? Meaningful?
  • Do they build on each other?
• Mark it for revisions

[edit] Revise for Clarity

[edit] Develop a Second Draft

• Consider ordering and reordering of main areas for clarity and narrative flow
• Look for and add transition sentences or paragraphs were needed
  • Signpost your reader throughout
  • Explicitly tie one paragraph to the next, one area to the next, one idea to the next

[edit] Write a Conclusion

• Review and summarize the main points and idea statements in the paper.
• If it helps, replace or modify your original thesis statement with your best conclusion
  • If you do this, go back modify the repetitions and restatements of your thesis throughout, as needed

[edit] Print and Revise for a Third Draft

• Print and read your second draft
• Mark it for revision
• Revise

[edit] Polish for Style

[edit] Apostrophes and Possessive Forms

• Add an apostrophe s to nouns
  • the student's paper; the cat's meow; the pope's red shoes
• Add just an apostrophe to nouns that already end with an s
  • the girls' coats, the states' rights
• Same rules for proper nouns
  • Obama's campaign, Clinton's website, the Democrats' fiasco, the Clintons' style
  • Jules' website, Jesus' tribulation
• Possessive pronouns
  • His, hers, yours, mine, ours, theirs, its
  • Its is a possessive pronoun like his or hers; it's is a contraction for it is

[edit] Apostrophes and Plural Forms

• Apostrophes are never used just to create plural forms
  • the cats are in their hats
• Apostrophes are used to make already plural forms possessive
  • the cats' hats are on their heads

[edit] Weird Plural Forms

• phenomena means more than one phenomenon
• media means more than one medium

[edit] Homonyms

• affect is a verb; effect is a noun
• to is a preposition; two is a number; too means also
• more homonyms

[edit] Who and Whom

• use who for the subject of the sentence
  • Mary tolled the bell for John. It was Mary who tolled the bell for John.
  • use who when it sounds right to substitute he or she in the sentence
• use whom for the object of the sentence
  • Mary tolled the bell for John. It was John for whom Mary tolled the bell.
  • use whom when sounds right to substitute him or her

[edit] Active and Passive Verb Forms

• Active verb forms have this order: subject, verb, object
  • Mary tolled the bell.
• Passive verb forms have this order: object, verb, subject
  • The bell was tolled by Mary.
• It's called "passive" because the grammatical subject of the bad sentence (the bell) is passive with respect to the verb (tolled) - which is what an object of the verb should be in a proper sentence.
  • It's more than bad form. A writer can use the passive voice to deliberately hide an actor. This makes the passive voice a political issue.
  • The woman was beaten in her home.
  • Soldiers are forced to fight in Iraq without proper armor.
• A writer can also use the passive voice to avoid figuring out exactly what he or she is saying.
  • The Civil War was started in 1861.
  • Started by whom? And why?
• A frequent sign of a passive verb form is the use of "to be" helping words, like is, was, were, etc.
  • The bell was tolled by Mary.
• This sign is not foolproof, because of some complicated verb tense stuff
  • Mary is tolling the bell - an active form in the present perfect tense

[edit] Examples of Bad Prose

All of these examples come from, Wyatt Galusky, "Identifying with Information: Citizen Empowerment, the Internet, and the Environmental Anti-Toxins Movement," in Martha McCaughey and Michael D. Ayers, eds., Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and Practice (New York: Routledge, 2003), 185-208.

All prose starts out this way. The secret to good writing is to leave yourself time to edit what you write. When editing for clarity and style, there are a few simple rules:

• shorten sentences grammatically
  • separate independent clauses and make simple sentences
  • make dependent clauses independent and repeat above
• vary sentence length and word choice
• use transitive verbs (action words)
• retain as much original wording as possible
• do not change meaning unless you intend to.

[edit] Run On Sentence with Parenthesis

Elements of the environmental anti-toxins movement (an assemblage of individuals and groups interested in eliminating or at least abating the pervasive, dangerous effects of toxic chemicals in the environment) have begun to employ the Internet in the promotion of various forms of intervention. (185)

The environmental anti-toxins movement assembles individuals and groups interested in the pervasive, dangerous effects of toxic chemicals in the environment. Elements of this movement have begun to employ the Internet to promote various forms of intervention, from abatement to elimination of toxic chemicals and their effects.

[edit] Run On Sentence with Passive Voice

Individuals must seek scorecard.org out, then decide whether they are interested enough to try it out. They are then electronically guided to countywide information about emission levels and are porvided with some interpretations and analyses as to what those numbers imply regarding the safety of the area and the kinds of risks to be faced. (189)

When individuals seek out scorecard.org, the website guides them electronically to countywide information about emissions levels. It interprets and analyzes what those numbers imply regarding the safety of the area and the kinds of risks the area faces. This leaves individuals free to decide whether they are interested enough to try it.

[edit] Run On Sentence with Weak Verbs

There is no doubt that the site is an empowerment tool--it provides the visitor with an immense amount of information about chemicals and their potential effects and gives individuals greater access to data about those chemicals with which they share space. (191)

There is no doubt that the site can empower its users. It provides visitors with access to an immense amount of information about chemicals and potential chemical effects in their local environments.

[edit] Grand Daddy of Them All

With the danger of science becoming purely "performative" (Lyotard, 1984), not seeking any pretense of "truth" but simply performing a service for those in charge while still occupying its decision-making role in a technocratically dominated political sphere, critiques that challenge the persuasiveness of expertise and seek to revision certified knowledge production are vital, for activists of all stripes. (200)

Science becomes purely "performative" when it seeks no pretense of "truth" but simply performs a decision-making role for the technocrats who dominate the political sphere. (Lyotard, 1984). Under these conditions, critiques that challenge the persuasiveness of expertise and seek to revise certified knowledge production are vital for activists of all stripes. (200)

[edit] How a Fine Conclusion Can Be Lost

The "cybernetic" vision of environmental anti-toxins activism, this amplication of our perception of the problem to be one of information-poverty, hinders efforts to problematize all forms of expert mediation and escape expertise/counterexpertise stalemates and ties perception of the Internet to hierarchical dispensations rather than increased democratization. In this case, the coproduction of Internet technology and environmental anti-toxins activism tends more toward a form of consumptive empowerment, where the Internet becomes a speedier delivery service of the same old inequalities, in which "informed" activists are empowered to partake in a kind of emissions market. All the while, the expert-mediated digitization of toxins and risk denigrate real confrontations, by valorizing virtual experiences of toxicity over local, particular ones. (201)

The "cybernetic" vision of environmental anti-toxins activism amplifies our perception of the problem as one of information-poverty. This vision hinders efforts to problematize all forms of expert mediation and to escape expertise/counterexpertise stalemates. It ties perception of the Internet to hierarchical dispensations rather than increased democratization. Within this vision, the coproduction of Internet technology and environmental anti-toxins activism tends more toward a form of consumptive empowerment. The Internet denigrates real confrontation and becomes a speedier delivery service of the same old inequalities. "Informed" activists partake in a kind of emissions market, while experts valorize virtual experiences of toxicity over local, particular ones.