WRITING COMMON ERRORS (AVOID THEM AND EARN A HIGHER GRADE!)
1. Past versus present tense. Typically, when writing about the past, it is best to use the past
tense. When making reference to a source, the present tense is preferred.
EXAMPLE: Fidel Castro met Che Guevara in Mexico City. Paterson notes that Castro and
Guevara differed in their approach to socialism.
This can be tricky. Remember that novelists have more latitude to play with past and present
tenses, while the goal of expository prose is clarity. Until you are extremely confident in your
writing, stick with the conventional approach. If it happened in the past (yesterday or 500 years
ago) describe it in the past tense. (i.e. Aristotle argued that politics was the most noble of
human activities, is safer than Aristotle argues that politics is the most noble of human
activities. Why? Both are technically correct, but Aristotle has been dead for a long time and
the meaning of politics has changed over the centuries.)
2. Subject/verb agreement. Singular subjects need singular verbs; plural subjects need plural
verbs. EXAMPLE: My aunt is a doctor. Both of my uncles are engineers.
(Since subject/verb agreement CAN be confusing, especially when pronouns are involved, if you
are in doubt and need guidance, check the following website:
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/sv_agr.htm
3. Plural/possessive, contractions and the devilish apostrophe.
Joan's dog is badly behaved (possessive)
It's a bad idea. (It is a bad idea - contraction)
Its GDP fell by 23% (possessive and does not require the apostrophe)
One way to be safe - AVOID contractions in formal writing. EXAMPLE: Instead of writing
"They're a bunch of jerks." substitute "They are a bunch of jerks." "I've decided to quit my job."
No - "I have decided to quit my job."
4. Avoid colloquial language it is fine in casual conversation but not in formal prose. Castro
did not bash Batista. People don't jell, things don't morph and lifestyle - ban it from your
vocabulary. It was a bad idea at the time and it still is. Do not use it. Do not refer to historical
persons by their first names. The first time you introduce a historical person, use their full name
and thereafter, their surname. Fidel Castro and Camilo Cienfuegos marched into Havana on
January 1, 1959. Cienfuegos was later killed in a mysterious plane crash.
5. Word choice. Do not invent words, and NEVER use a word unless you are certain that a) it IS
a word (check the dictionary) and b) you know exactly what it means.
6. Avoid, avoid, avoid using the first person singular. (It's not that I don't care about you. It is
that I am more concerned with and interested in your ability to make an argument, defend it with
evidence and say something original, while avoiding references to yourself.)
7. Avoid, avoid, avoid using the terms "I believe" or "I feel" when you are writing history papers.
Your personal beliefs and feelings are important, but they do not belong in formal, expository,
argumentative prose. They are especially suspect in history papers, which must be based on
evidence. We, the people who read your papers, want to know WHAT you THINK, and WHY.
Belief is an article of faith and can't be tested; feelings are subjective. It is possible to be selfreferential once in a while without falling victim to this, but you need to have a lot of confidence
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and be a skilled prose stylist. It is permissible to say, for example "On my last trip to Nepal, I
noticed an increase in tension as I crossed the border. This is reminiscent of the tensions that
Kiran explores Desai in her novel."
8. Never regurgitate material from a professor's lecture. You can use it, but you MUST restate it
in your own words.
9. Avoid over-reliance on quotations and do not simply "drop" a quote into the middle of a
paragraph. You must introduce quotations and they need to fit seamlessly into your prose.
10. Avoid broad, vague and general statements that can not be proved. "Throughout the history
of the world, people have......." ? "Her parents were typical Mexicans." ? (Is there such a
thing? No.) "Most Iraqi people believe....." ? How do YOU know what MOST Iraqi people
believe, think or feel? (I don't know what my neighbors believe, think or feel, unless they tell
me.) Be specific. "Many middle-class Iraqi people initially supported the revolution against the
Shah."
11. Do not refer to a country using the plural or as gendered. Cuba is not a "they." It is not a he
or a she. It is an IT. The United States is not a they. It is an IT. You might get away with
referring to ships as she. Cubans (as a people) are "they. In general - opt for the specific. It is
best to refer to "the United States foreign policy establishment decided to" rather than "the U.S.
decided to ...." (To my knowledge, I have never had any impact on the direction of U.S. foreign
policy and it is highly unlikely that you or anyone you know has either.) Therefore, be specific!
"Kissinger and Nixon (NOT the U.S. citizenry) authorized funding to opposition parties in
Chile."
12. Commas and periods should be placed inside quotation marks; semicolons and colons should
be placed outside quotation marks.
13. Be careful with quotations! Stringing together a series of quotations is a suspect thing to do.
Use your own words.
Quote only to illustrate a key point, or because the original quotation is juicy; i.e.
beautifully phrased or unusual or conveys something about the author.
Dont use long quotations extensively edit them down.
Quotations longer than three lines must be singled spaced, indented from both margins
and do require quotation marks.
14. Spell out centuries, i.e., nineteenth century NOT 19th century. Use the hyphen when the
term is being used as an adjective, i.e., While traveling in Peru, he found a seventeenth-century
armoire.
EDITORIAL MARKS.
A double underline under the first letter of a word means that the word should be capitalized.
A (the symbol for paragraph) means that you have started a new thought and that a new
paragraph is required.
A check mark in the margin means that you have made a good point.
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SF means sentence fragment. The phrase is not a complete sentence something is missing.
A question mark (?) indicates that the word is a) misspelled, b) not the correct word, or c) the
sentence as a whole does not make sense. This may also be indicated by a word or phrase being
circled.
Awk = means awkward, unclear, grammar or syntax are problematic and as a result, your reader
is not sure what you mean. (When your reader is a professor or graduate student, you can
assume that they are not sure what you mean because the writing is not as crisp, clear and
transparent as it needs to be.)
LAST BUT NOT LEAST:
1. PUT PAGE NUMBERS ON EVERY PAGE!!!!!!!
2. PROOFREAD YOUR ESSAYS BEFORE YOU TURN THEM IN. Read them aloud to
yourself. This is not foolproof, but if it SOUNDS wrong, it usually is.
3. Do not rely on the spellcheck function use it once to catch obvious misspellings, but
proofread. There, their, theyre, its too two to much to bear. The populace was not populous.
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