Antigone essay

Do's and Don'ts of Writing

Welcome to Academic Writing

· Not business writing

· Not journalism

· Not creative writing

What’s unique about academic writing?

1. Avoid contractions: use "do not" instead of "don't."

2. Watch word choice: no slang, no cursing

3. no exclamation points!

4. Avoid words that have been so overused, they don't mean anything: "awesome," "great," "good," "bad," "thing," "certain."

5. Avoid "to be" verbs in the passive voice: is, am, was, were, are, be, being, been. Use active verbs instead.

6. Avoid second person "you," "us," "our,"   "we."

7. Avoid worthless words: use "because" rather than "due to the fact that."

8. Never over-write by forcing awkward words in place of common ones: "usage" instead of "use," "amongst" instead of "among," for example.

9. Do not use social media shortcuts. Write “before,” not “b4.”

10. Do not bother stating the incredibly obvious: ie, that Hitchcock is a "great," "talented," or "brilliant" film director.

11. Avoid sign post sentences: "What I'm about to do is...." or "This essay will...."

12. Avoid redundancies: "Throughout the entire..."

13. Avoid lazy sentence structure: "The reason...is because..."

14. Use gender-neutral language: “he or she” rather than just “he”

15. Do not limit yourself to the high school 5 paragraph essay format. Let your argument determine your organization.

Here’s your no-no list of words and phrases I should not see in your papers:

· a lot

· lady

· nowadays

· good

· bad

· awesome

· great

· thing

· certain

· you

· us

· our

· we

· due to the fact that

· What I'm about to do is...

· In conclusion...

· This essay will...

· Studies show...

· Throughout the entire...

· The reason...is because....

Do Write in MLA format:

· Word process your papers.

· Double space your paper and works cited page.

· Indent the first sentence of each paragraph.

· 1” margins all the way around

· Times New Roman 12 font

Universal Editing and Proofreading Marks

sp = spelling error gr = grammatical error p = punctuation error gr:frag = sentence fragment gr:RO = run-on sentence awk = awkward wc = word choice ww = worthless words

¶ = paragraph or indent / = make it lower case. A lower case letter underlined 3 times means to make it upper case (a capital letter).

Symbol	Meaning	Example
	delete
	close up
	caret
	insert a space
	let stand
	transpose
	begin a new paragraph
	set in lowercase
	comma
	apostrophe
	period
	semicolon
	colon
	quotation marks

Chart adapted from http://www.merriam-webster.com/table/collegiate/proofrea.htm.