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English 1301 – Tips and Tricks Review Sheet for the Argument Section

As you work to polish up the Argument Section for submission, use the following list to help you think about your paper and review it some final times to ensure its success.

Things to avoid:

Any use of first person, which includes “we,” “our,” “me,” “my,” etc. They can only appear in quoted material, not in your own writing.

Any use of second person “you”. Use the computer’s CTRL F feature to find these “you”s. They can only appear in quoted material, not in your own writing.

Any use of contractions. They can only appear in quoted material, not in your own writing. If you turn your grammar checker on the highest setting “grammar and style,” it will point these things out to you.

Using quotes back to back. Your own words need to be in between quotes, even if it’s just something small like “The article goes on to say…” before the next quote.

Letting quotes stand alone as complete sentences. Introduce your sources and quotes. “According to CNN News, …”

Using extremely long quotes. I want to see what YOU have to say, not your source. If your quote is a whole paragraph long, it is probably too lengthy.

If your quote takes up more than four lines in your paper, you need to put it in block quote format. Use your Little Seagull or the OWL at Purdue for help on how to format that.

Things to be sure that you have done:

Ensure that your entire paper is formatted in MLA style. The Little Seagull / OWL gives an example of how a paper should look in the MLA section. Be sure that you also get rid of the extra spaces between paragraphs by setting the “Before” and “After” spacing to 0 in the paragraph function.

Ensure that you have properly credited and cited ALL sources, when you use them. Please be careful, as this could result in a significant lowering of the paper grade if sources are not cited correctly.

Stay in present tense when discussing source information. The correct way to talk about a show or an article is to say “Key writes in her article that the number of television shows is growing…”, NOT “Key wrote in her article…”

Followed the assignment instructions and presented a strong argument. It’s easy to slide over into an informational paper, but that will earn you a D, no matter how well-written it is, so be careful.

Use clear nouns, rather than depending on vague words. Ex: “They say that the amount of violence in video games…” Who is “they”? Use specific language so a reader does not need to guess at what you mean.

Tie each paragraph back to the thesis. Sometimes it only takes a sentence at the end of the paragraph to make sure it relates to the argument.

Introduce the topic well. Do not just jump into your argument in the paper’s first sentence. Realize that your reader does not know the nature of your assignment, so you have to ease him/her into the topic.

Your Works Cited page should have ONLY the sources you used on it. You might not have used all five from your Annotated Bibliography, and you may have added new ones, so just put in the ones you actually cited in your paper. Do NOT use the annotation information from the Annotated Bibliography, just the citation like a normal Works Cited page.