I have just finished grading a stack of 100 level history papers and a few graduate student book reviews. A looming stack of 200 level history tests await. The papers were generally pretty good, but I feel like each semester I come up with a little list of observations that not only would help the students write more efficiently, but also help my own writing.
So in the spirit of self-critique (as much as anything), I offer them here:
1. Make your thesis obvious. In this regard, I’m old school. I like to see a thesis at the end of the introductory section of a paper. For a short paper (<6 pages), the thesis should come at the end of the first paragraph. The best thesis statements are clear, explicit, and suggest the organization of the paper to follow.
2. Build your paper from paragraphs. I suspect that the art of outlining a paper is nearly lost. The rise of short paragraphs and a journalistic style may have made the tradition of outlining a paper somehow obsolete. I still encourage students to see paragraphs not as long forms of sentences, but as the place for making arguments that support their thesis. In short papers, I recommend that each paragraph carry one supporting argument. In longer papers, divide your argument into clearly demarcated sections of several paragraph. Then, make sure each paragraph support the argument present in the section.
3. Book reviews have three possible arguments. Almost all book reviews have only three possible arguments. (1) The book is good. (2) The book is bad. (3) The book is good, except for… The rest of the review should be evidence for these points.
4. The complex sentence. I know the complex sentence is hip these days. The rise of the semicolon has almost ensured that. I keep telling my students, however, to keep their sentences simple. This not only makes the task of composition easier, but makes papers easier to edit, proofread and revise. The simpler the grammar, the less of a chance of grammatical errors. I suggest that the exercise their desire for complexity at the level of the paragraph.
5. The three “Cs”: Capitalization, Contractions, and Commas. I feel like each year these three things cause me more and more grief, so I have come to accept that the rollback coming. First I started to let students use passive voice, then I became less and less concerned with which/that, and finally, I have given up on attempting to control comma use except in the most vital cases (e.g. in a compound sentence or in a complex series (I do try to insist on the Oxford comma)). So someday soon, I’ll have to accept that capitalization is a matter of individual taste and contractions reflect the changing rules of the language.
