Writing Tips

Students make common mistakes in writing. To help you remove these problems from your work, here are some writing tips based on problems found in student assignments. Check this list as it grows. It may be useful toward your success. For those of you who have not found this Web site's handouts on this topic, I have included the links again here. To return to the Table of Contents, click the bulleted list item.

Table of Contents

1. Handouts
2. Be specific
3. Incomplete sentences
4. Prepositions
5. Expletives
6. Problems with English syntax
7. Asking questions in copy
8. U.S. or United States?
9. Insure or Ensure?
10. Etcetera
11. Attribution
12. Nesting quotations
13. Third-person point of view and objectivity
14. Editorializing
15. Short leads
16. Short sentences
17. Short paragraphs
18. When the source hopes, wants, wishes, feels
19. Juxtaposition of ideas
20. His or her?
21. Full names or last names only?
22. Beginning senteces with numerals
23. Story leads

1. Handouts
2. Writing Tips
3. Writing and Copy Editing
4. Common Writing Errors
5. Be specific
6. Avoid generalities. They say nothing. If something is worth writing, it must be specific. Give clear answers to questions. Answer the five W's and H (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How) clearly with very specific information. If your source tries to deliver information to you in general terms, dig in with questions that will dig out specific information. When it is specific, information can be useful. General statements are seldom informative.
7. Incomplete sentences
8. These are often called sentence fragments. A complete sentence must have a subject and a verb. Sometimes the subject will be understood, as in a command form. Incomplete sentences reflect poor grammar skills on the part of the writer, and they fail to deliver complete information. That is hard on the reader.
9. Prepositions
10. This part of speech shows the relation between a word that comes after the preposition — the object — and another word in the sentence. Objects of prepositions must come after the preposition. Examples of prepositions follow: about, above, among, as, at, before, below, between, by, except, from, in, into, like, of, on, over, through, to, under, until, with. These words should rarely — if ever — end a sentence.
11. Expletives
12. This does not refer to naughty words. It refers to sentence structures that use there, here, or it followed by a form of to be. A sentence using this grammatical device masks the subject of the sentence as well as the action. Cut through it by rephrasing the sentence whenever possible. As a general rule, grammatical expletives are not part of strong writing. Avoid them. For example: There is a man biting his dog. Reword it to read thus: A man is biting his dog. It is more direct and much clearer.
13. Problems with English syntax
14. Some students whose native language is not English have syntax problems with their writing. They have good thoughts and an ability to word them in their native languages, but it may not be correct or clear in English. A partial remedy for this is to ask a native English speaker to read your copy and make suggestions to correct word order.
15. Asking questions in copy
16. Don't ask questions in copy very often. Your goal in writing is to answer questions rather than raise them. Unless it is a rhetorical question or a very important one that needs asking, simply skip right to the answer.
17. U.S. or United States?
18. Check The Associated Press Stylebook. It will tell you to spell out United States when used as a noun. Abbreviate it when used as a modifier.
19. Insure or Ensure?
20. Again, check the stylebook. It clearly explains the difference between the two words. Ensure means to guarantee. Insure makes reference to an insurance policy.
21. Etcetera
22. The word etc. means and so forth. When you use it in your writing, you are not saying anything. If you have more in the list, go ahead and specify it. The use of etc. indicates that you want the reader to think you have more to say than you really do. Don't use it at all except in direct quotations.
23. Attribution
24. Use lots of attribution to sources of information. As the writer, you know very little. You need to get just about everything — except for matters of common knowledge — from a source, and you must attribute that information to your source. The most unobtrusive speech tag is said. Here is an example:
25. "Most scholars feel that a death-qualified jury is a conviction-prone jury," said David Graeven, a jury consultant in the San Francisco office of Trial Behavior Consulting.
26. Clay Conrad, a Houston lawyer who deals with the issue in a book sponsored by the libertarian Cato Institute, echoed that view.
27. "The death qualification process does give you a biased jury," Conrad said. "Among academics, I don't think there is any disagreement."
28. Houston jury consultant Robert Gordon, however, disagreed.
29. "I see no reason why that should be true," Gordon said. "It's saying jurors could never be fair, and I don't believe that to be true."
30. Nesting quotations
31. When placing a quotation within a quotation, use single quotation marks for the nested quote. For more information and examples, see the "quotation marks" entry in the Punctuation Guide of The Associated Press Stylebook.
32. Third-person point of view and objectivity
33. Use third-person point of view, except in direct quotations. That means using the following personal pronouns: he, his, him, she, hers, her, it, its, they, their, theirs, them. Do not use first- and second-person points of view, except when quoting a source directly. Once you do so, you put yourself into the story, thereby sacrificing objectivity.
34. Make certain that pronouns agree with antecedents. Do not use the plural they as a neuter singular pronoun. Use he instead. The personal pronoun he is masculine when the writer knows the gender, and he is the neuter pronoun when the sex is unknown.
35. Editorializing
36. Unless specifically writing a commentary, you must stay away from opinionated writing. When you are reporting facts and events, keep your opinions to yourself. Write facts as clearly and objectively as possible. Let the reader decide on his own opinion. Save your opinion for editorials.
37. Short leads
38. When you are attempting to deliver information across the Internet, you have only seconds to grab your audience. Don't assume the readership is enamored to your rambling sentences. Keep leads short and to the point. Keep them under 22 words. Developing this discipline will give you a keen sense of when writing leads of greater length is appropriate.
39. Short sentences
40. The same goes for sentences in general. Keep them short. A long time ago, the American Press Institute conducted a survey to ascertain readability of sentences based on length. Take a look at the results:

41. Sentence Length	Readability
    19 words	90 percent
    21 words	85 percent
    22 words	82 percent
    23 words	70 percent
    24 words	68 percent
    25 words	64 percent
    27 words	60 percent
    28 words	49 percent
    30 words	39 percent
    33 words	31 percent

42. Short paragraphs
43. Now a word about paragraphs: Human eyes and search engines alike can scan short paragraphs more efficiently than they can see long ones. You are not writing novels or essays. This writing style communicates information. If neither machines nor humans read your stuff, then what is the point in writing it? Limit the length of all paragraphs — apart from the lead — to about 60 words.
44. When the source hopes, wants, wishes, feels
45. Give attribution to a source's hopes, wants, wishes. "The president hopes that all who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know...," implies that the writer is suggesting this. If the source does not say that it is his hope, then the writer cannot say so either. If the sources says it, then the writer must say the source hopes for something: "The president said he hopes that all who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know...." It may seem like a fine line, but it is an important one. A hope is something that comes from inside a person. If he has a feeling, he must say so. The writer must not imply it without attribution.
46. Juxtaposition of ideas
47. Be careful that you do not juxtapose one idea next to another without suitable transitions to clarify context. The juxtaposition of a source's words and ideas can lead to misinterpretation and outright misrepresentation of what the source intended to say.
48. His or her?
49. The English language, like other languages, poses a problem for a culture that works as hard at being gender neutral as American culture does. Grammar requires the use of he/his/him as masculine pronouns in their various cases when referring to males. It requires the use of she/hers/her for females. Where does that leave us when we don't know the gender?
50. Unfortunately, the use of "he or she", "he/she", "s/he" or simply "she" does not work for neuter pronouns in AP Style. While the pronoun "he" is masculine, it is also neuter. "She" is always feminine, never neuter. While the pronoun "they" is neuter, it is plural and does not work with singular antecedents. Therefore, if you don't know the gender of the antecedent, you must use the neuter pronoun "he".
51. To accommodate readers and writers whom this offends, try using plurals rather than singulars. Example: "The student needs to check his GPA often." Some people would call that sexist, although it really isn't. To avoid this cultural clash, use plural nouns: "Students need to check their GPAs often." That dodges the problem altogether.
52. Full names or last names only?
53. As a rule, use the person's full name on first reference, and surname only thereafter. One exception to this rule is the president of the United States. You may refer to him by title and last name: President Bush.
54. The names entry in the AP Stylebook has this to say:
55. "In general, use last names only on second reference. (See courtesy tiles.)
56. "In stories involving youngsters, generally refer to them by first name on second reference if they are 15 or younger and by surname at 18 and older.
57. "However, use news judgment and refer to children under 15 by their last name if the story is a serious one involving, for example, a major crime. With 16- or 17-year-olds, use the surname unless it's light-hearted story."
58. Beginning sentences with numerals
59. Spell out a numeral at he beginning of a sentence, unless the number identifies a calendar year. If necessary, recast the sentence. In most instances, spell out whole numbers below 10 and use figures for 10 and above. Exceptions include ages of people and percentage figures.
60. Story leads
61. Begin the lead with the "whammy" — the most important story element. When a story is of a timely nature placing the time element in the lead is important. However, it is seldom important enough to place at the beginning of the lead.
62. Remember the rule of life and limb. Where people die, that is the most important element. Second to that is injury to human life. Significant property damage comes after that. The fact that a plane crashes at an airport is not as important as the fact that six people died and 116 more were injured in the crash.

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