Writing Guide: Common Mistakes
Before you begin a paper, of course, you should have read the relevant material carefully, and compose an outline of your argument.
- Use a title page; do not put on page one information that belongs on a title page.
- Underscore or italicize titles of books or monographs. Articles belong in quotation
marks.
- Give references to the text to support your argument, not only when you quote an author,
but whenever you are presenting an author's thoughts. In this way, your reader will
know where to look to discover the basis of your interpretation. Failure to give references
to the text will reduce your paper to a series of mere assertions.
- Avoid useless words: "In his Second Discourse, Rousseau argues...," not "In the Second Discourse, written by Rousseau, he argues...."
- Sentence fragments and comma splices are the most common serious grammatical mistakes
found on papers. With sentence fragments, the problem is usually that subordinate
clauses are presented as complete thoughts. Remember that a participle (claiming,
being, etc.) cannot be the main verb of a sentence, and a subordinating conjunction
(while, since, etc.) introduces a subordinate clause, not a complete sentence. ("While
presenting the life of man in the state of nature as brutish and short, Hobbes argues
that....")
- Pay particular attention to the need for singular rather than plural pronouns when writing about government. Often such writing requires
the use of collective nouns like government, committee, group, company, family, clergy, public, team. Collective nouns must be represented by singular pronouns. Governments and institutions are staffed by many people, so it is tempting
to use plural pronouns to represent such institutions. Avoid that temptation. Remember
that each government or each institution itself is a unit, and when it acts as a unit,
it must be represented by the singular neuter pronoun "it." So a country (Egypt, Iraq,
Israel, the United States), or its government (e.g., the Egyptian government), or
its regime, or its political system, is an "it," not a "they." So too, any one of a government's or country's institutions, such as its
cabinet, parliament, political party, or army (e.g., the Israeli cabinet, the Palestinian
parliament, the U.S. Army), is an "it," not a "they." A short-hand metaphor for an
institution, like the "White House" (short-hand for the "Office of the President')
is an "it." A newspaper (such as the New York Times) or any other news source (such as Al-Jazeera or the BBC) is an "it." Finally, if
you have represented any of these entities by the words "each" or "every," that entity
is still an "it."
- The word "institution" should be reserved for a single entity within a political system,
culture, or regime. It must not be used to describe an entire political system. Better
to call a political system a "political system," a "government," a "governmental system,"
a "governmental structure," or a "regime."
- Proofread your work. Make sure that it says what you wish it to say, that subjects
and verbs agree, that pronouns and their antecedents agree, that you have not been
careless with spelling or syntax. Friends and writing labs are helpful for those whose
grammar or spelling is shaky, but you should by no means rely on them as crutches
or training wheels. Learn to walk; learn to ride; learn to write.
- Always include a bibliography, even if you are presenting an interpretive analysis of one book and have relied only on that book. Page numbers will vary from edition to edition.
