RICHARD'S GUIDE

I. ON WRITING

Maxims

Relax
	Relate
		Explore
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				Expound

Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

- Earl of Chesterfield, 1746

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

- Attributed to Kenneth Boulding, ca. 1968

There are limitations: some things dogs do would break your neck.

- Tom Maddox, 1990

Don't let anybody tell you it will be easy.

Tools

A writer needs more than paper and pen or typewriter. The most important tools beyond those essentials are guides to proper use of the language and advice on style. I recommend you purchase all of the following; they will serve you for the remainder of your writing career (in each case, get the most recent edition available):

A good collegiate dictionary such as Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary or Random House College Dictionary
A thesaurus
A handbook of English, e.g., J. C. Hodges and M. E. Whitten, eds., Hodges Harbrace College Handbook
William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 3rd Ed. (MacMillan, New York, 1979); 4th Ed. (Longman, New York, 2000); Illustrated Ed., illustrated by Maira Kalman (Penguin Press, New York, 2005)
Sheridan Baker, The Practical Stylist (or Baker, The Complete Stylist and Handbook)
Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations
A stapler
A typewriter or a computer, a good word-processing program, and access to a good printer--and be sure your program can create files that are compatible with the printing system you plan to use.

You should also become acquainted with:

Peter Elbow, Writing Without Teachers and Writing With Power
H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd or 3rd Ed.
Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, (Profile Books, London, 2003; Gotham Books, New York, 2004), a delightful read and guide to correct punctuation and what to avoid as well.
Bergan and Cornelia Evans, A Dictionary of Contemporary American Usage, W. Follett, Modern American Usage, R. H. Copperud, American Usage and Style: The Consensus, and/or other guides to American usage.
A standard style manual for the area that is of major interest to you. The University of Chicago Press, A Manual of Style, seems to cover most areas well and is one of the best general manuals available. Another standard manual is Slade, Carol, Form and Style: Theses, Reports, Term Papers. [Earlier editions by Slade et al. and Campbell et al.]
Brusaw, C. T., G. J. Alred, and W. E. Oliu, Handbook of Technical Writing, especially if you expect to do much technical report writing.
Prescott College Library Handouts at http://www.prescott.edu/Library/handouts.html.

Tricks

Write everything down; don't trust your memory to recall five days (or five minutes) later the neat idea you just had.
Date every piece of paper; number and/or title every page.
Don't throw anything away--at least until you're sure you are not going to have to make any more revisions, i.e., until your paper is turned in and accepted as final.
Don't fill up pages single-spaced, top-to-bottom, edge-to-edge. Write double-spaced with reasonable margins; you'll need room to edit and still be able to read your editing.
Write on only one side of the page; you can't cut up pages and move paragraphs around when something important is on the back. (This doesn't mean you can't use the backs of old dittos or other throwaways; they are great for drafts. Just write your draft on one side.) If you do cut and paste, label or number every section indicating the new order before you start cutting. A stapler is very useful for attaching sections together.

Writing

Start your writing process by writing down a tentative title. It will force you to focus on the big idea from the beginning.
Write directly to a particular individual, a colleague whom you know will be interested in what you have to say and will want to hear it. Don't write for me or for a generalized faceless and mindless audience.
Scribble out your ideas as fast as you can to start with. Let them flow from your brain onto the paper. Peter Elbow says scribble out your paper three times (yes, 3), starting fresh each time, and then go back and polish it up for the final, fourth draft.

...I have as much difficulty as ever in expressing myself clearly and concisely; and this difficulty has caused me a very great loss of time; but it has had the compensating advantage of forcing me to think long and intently about every sentence, and thus I have been often led to see errors in reasoning and in my own observations or those of others.There seems to be a sort of fatality in my mind leading me to put at first my statement and proposition in a wrong or awkward form. Formerly I used to think about my sentences before writing them down; but for several years I have found that it saves time to scribble in a vile hand whole pages as quickly as I possibly can, contracting half the words; and then correct deliberately. Sentences thus scribbled down are often better ones than I could have written deliberately.

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin (1876)

Pick one important idea, state it clearly in the beginning, and develop it, rather than writing a laundry list and leaving the reader to fill in the gaps. Baker stresses the importance of a thesis statement and has good advice on the overall organization of a paper and on paragraphing. Read it. Follow it. In dealing with seminar books, you should relate your idea to a major theme of the book and, whenever possible, to other books we have read. Try not to deal with trivial issues in isolation. Development can include a) argument against; b) supporting evidence for; c) relationship to your own personal experience; d) description of new insights and/or connections gained. Document your claims ("Slater said...") with short quotes, or, preferably, summaries and always with specific page references with footnotes or notes in proper bibliographic form. Support your generalizations with specific examples.
There are a number of types of errors that you should be aware of. I list them here to call your attention to them, rather than to write a handbook of English. It is your job to look up the right way to become aware of the problems and look up the right way to do them during the writing process. (I am prepared to give minilectures on these topics if you are still uncertain after reading about them in the available resources.)
Be conscious of your writing style. Read Strunk and White for the third time, if necessary. Use it, Baker, and/or a handbook of English to be sure you are using such things as commas, semicolons, and the various parts of speech (nouns, verbs, participles, etc.) correctly. Participles and gerunds (verbals) are especially troublesome. The colon is used incorrectly so often in contemporary writing that I am almost ready to give up correcting its misuse (but not yet).
Watch how you use words. If you have any doubt that a word means what you want it to mean, look it up in a dictionary. A thesaurus also helps in the finding of the proper word. Try not to invent words; alot is not a word, neither is how-ever. And don't use big words because they sound more impressive, when a little one will do the job easier and better (analysis, not analyzation). Remember the goal is communication.
Latin words and abbreviations are particularly troublesome. Look up the full term and meaning of those you use frequently. I often see etc.and et al. misspelled or mispunctuated. The word data is plural: "data are .." not "data is ..."
Spell correctly. Here are some words that I continually see misspelled in the context in which they are used (and/or misused) (Baker has a more complete list):

its, it's (it's is a contraction for it is; its is a personal pronoun like his and hers. You don't write hi's book, do you?)
there, their, they're
where, were
weather, whether

develop, (not develope), tomato (not tomatoe)
species (a biological term), specie (not a biological term)
discriminant, discriminate)
compose, comprise

Be sure to put in an apostrophe when writing the possessive, but when not writing a simple plural:

There were only five students on all of the college's DTFs in the 1980s.

Consult Turabian, Baker, and/or Slade on the overall form and organization of your paper, especially on the proper form for bibliographic citations. For more advanced technical work you may need to refer to the style manual for the specific discipline. Most journals indicate in the "Instructions to Authors" which style manual they use.

More on The Colon

The use of the colon in a sentence indicates a discontinuity of grammatical construction greater than that indicated by the semicolon. Whereas the semicolon is used to separate parts that are usually of equal significance, the colon is used to introduce a clause or phrase that expands, clarifies, or exemplifies the meaning of what precedes it:

The New World and the Old share the same monumental urban problems: their populations mount, and in all industrial nations the migration from country to city has become a flood.
People at present seek three main things through and partly from their governmental systems: peace, prosperity, and a more cohesively gracious form of living together.

A colon should be placed at the end of a grammatical element introducing a formal statement, whether the statement is quoted or not. It is usually placed after following or as follows or in sum when the enumerated items or illustrations come immediately after:
         His laws” are as follows:
         1. Books are for use
         2. For every reader his book
         3. For every book its reader

Here is another perspective:
        A colon is the strongest mark of punctuation within the sentence.
        1. A colon introduces an explanation or an amplification following an independent clause.
                  The organization has one objective: to satisfy its customers.
        2. A formal listing or an enumeration is introduced by a colon.
                  David's qualifications are these: honesty, dependability, and sincerity.
        3. If the list or enumeration grammatically completes the sentence, omit the colon.
                  David's qualifications are honesty, dependability, and sincerity.
        4. A colon introduces a quotation of more than one sentence [but if the quotation is a sentence or less, use a comma, not a colon].

Dr. Truemper said: “The fate of Velasco's chemical discharges will be determined by the judge. There are, however, two possible alternatives to the procedure now used.”

And a third:
        Incorrect:
                 The three primary colors are: red, yellow, and blue.
        Correct:
                 There are three primary colors: red, yellow and blue.
                 The three primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.
                 The three primary colors are the following: red, yellow, and blue.

More on Verbals

Verbals are forms of verbs used as nouns, adjectives, or adverbs; infinitives, participles, and gerunds are verbals. Verbals are not verbs, despite their apparent use as such by radio news reporters:

Many girls want to climb trees. [To climb is an infinitive, acting as an adverb, modifying the verb want. The object of the infinitive is trees.]
Cars parked in the traffic circle will be ticketed and towed away. [Parked, a participle, modifies cars.]
Students studying for their exam. [This is a sentence fragment, because it contains no active verb; the gerund (verbal) studying is an adjective modifying students.]
Students studying for their exam became very sleepy. [This is now a complete sentence, with students as the subject, the verbal studying modifying students, and became as the active verb.]

For additional advice on verbals, refer to the writing handbook you had to buy for English 101.

Computers

The development of modern computer-based word processors makes both the writing and the preparation of letter-perfect copy much easier tasks than they once were. Corrections can easily be made, words, sentences and paragraphs can be moved around at will, tables can be formatted properly, and pages can be quickly retyped as often as necessary. Learning to use a word processor and setting up your documents do take more time than just sitting down at the typewriter, but particularly for reports that are lengthy and may go through a number of revisions, taking that time is well worth the effort. It is a very satisfying feeling to see the final copy effortlessly being printed out as you sit there ready to fall asleep after a hard night's work!

Some strongly felt recommendations on the use of a computer:

Learn how to use the computer and the word processing program before you start typing your final draft; practice on your initial drafts as much as you can.
Learn the basics: read the instructions, do the tutorials, find out how to set the margins, the typeface (font) and size, page numbering (set these at the beginning of your document), underline, bold, center, indent, etc.
Learn more than the basics: skim the Reference Manual, try out at least a few of the tricks (italics, footnotes, columns, tables, etc.)
Check the program's automatic backup setting each time you use a different computer or one that is used by others. I recommend you set it to automatically backup your work every 5-7 minutes. Learn how to recover such a backup file in case of a computer crash or power loss.
Keep at least two copies of your document file, with at least one on a floppy disk--check to be sure the disk and files are readable. Some people save each draft with a new file name (DRAFT01.DOC, DRAFT02.DOC, etc.) so that nothing is overwritten until they're done. It is the computer equivalent of "Don't throw anything away!"
When all else fails, Read the Instructions! If you can't find them, ask someone.

Formatting

Sections and Subsections; Headings and Subheadings
[Source: Turabian, A Manual for Writers ...]

In some papers the chapters or their equivalents are divided into sections, which may in turn be divided into subsections, and these into sub-subsections, and so on. Such divisions are customarily given titles, called subheadings, which are designated respectively first-, second-, and third-level subheadings and differentiated from one another by typing style. The style of subheading with the greatest attention value should be given to the principal, or first-level, subdivision. On a typewritten page centered headings have greater attention value than side headings, and underlined headings, centered or side, have greater attention value than those not underlined. A plan for the display of five levels of subheadings in a typed paper follows:

First-level, centered heading, underlined or in boldface, capitalized headline style:

Biology As a System of Thought

Second-level, centered heading, not underlined, capitalized headline style:

Differences in Molecular, Cellular, Organismal, and
Evolutionary Approaches

Third-level, side heading underlined or in boldface, capitalized headline style, beginning at the left margin:

The Disappearance of Organismal Biology

Fourth-level, side heading, not underlined, capitalized sentence style:

Botanists vs. zoologists

Fifth-level, heading run into (at the beginning of) a paragraph and underlined:

Cellarius's opinion: In a recent article (Cellarius, 2001), Richard Cellarius described the demise of organismal plant physiology: "Most molecular plant physiologists can't tell a tree from a cantalope."

Note that first- and second- and third-level subheadings are typed in capital and small letters (i.e., first and last words and all other words except articles, prepositions, and coordinate conjunctions capitalized), and that lower-level subheadings capitalize only the first word, proper nouns, and proper adjectives.

If fewer than five levels are required, they may be selected in any suitable descending order, as indicated above.

Size and Spacing of Headings

Major headings. Begin every major division (i.e., contents, preface, list of tables, list of illustrations, introduction, each new chapter, bibliography, appendix) on a new page. Center the heading in capital letters ... If the paper is divided into sections termed "chapters," the chapter number appears alone (e.g., "CHAPTER I") ..., and the chapter title is centered on the third line beneath it. If the word chapter is not formally expressed and the sections are merely numbered, the number and title (e.g., “1. THE WORLD OF 1815”) are centered.... If the title is longer than 48 spaces, set it in two (or more) double-spaced lines, in inverted-pyramid form. Use no punctuation at the ends of lines. Begin typing the text or the first entry of a list (contents, etc.), on the third line below the heading.

Subheadings. A centered subheading of more than 48 spaces should be divided into two or more single-spaced lines, in inverted-pyramid form. A side heading of more than a half-line should be divided more or less evenly into two (or more) single-spaced lines, the runovers beginning at the margin. Paragraph headings should be underlined and should end with a period. All other subheadings should omit punctuation at the ends of lines.

All subheadings begin on the third line below text. If two (or more) subheadings appear together (i.e., without intervening text), a double space (blank line) should be left between them, and a double space left also between the subheading and the text following.

Graphs, Figures, Maps and Tables

Numerical results are usually presented in the form of graphs or tables (not both for the same data), and then a narrative statement describing what the graphs and tables show is included in the text. For example, let us suppose you studied the effect of rainfall on the price of tea in China over a period of five years. You would include a graph (or possibly a table) of the results. In addition, in the text, you would translate the graph into English: "As shown in Fig. 1, the average price of tea in China was directly proportional to the annual rainfall up to 100 cm/year, above which there was no increase in price."

It should be possible to understand the basic information in each figure and table without reference to either the text, although the text must contain a reference to each figure and table and a descriptive summary of what it shows. Do not include tables or figures without a number or legend/title and/or without specific mention of them in the text.

Graphs, charts, drawings, diagrams, photographs, maps, etc: Label graphs, charts, drawings, diagrams, photographs, maps, etc as Fig. 1, Fig. 2, (not Graph I, etc.), using Arabic numerals and numbering them serially including any drawings or sketches in the sequence. The label should go underneath each graph (or other figure) and must include a one-sentence or less-than-one sentence statement as a title (legend) indicating what it shows: "Fig. 2. Effect of annual rainfall on the price of tea in China. (Smith-Jones and Fitzgibbon, 1892)" Identify the source of the figure in the legend. On graphs, be sure the ordinate (y axis) and abscissa (x axis) are labeled to indicate the variable being presented and the units of measurement: "Rainfall (cm/year)." Both axes must also have their numeric calibrations shown. When more than one line or curve are displayed on the same set of axes--which is desirable both to save space and for easier comparison of data--each curve should be numbered and identified in the figure legend (not the text) or labeled directly, so that the reader can instantly determine which curve refers to which set of conditions.

Tables: Tables should be given a number (Table 1, etc.) and have a title or legend, just like figures. Table titles go at the top of the table, however. The content of each column and row should be clearly indicated, including the units for each set of numbers.

Finishing

Please treat the following as instructions, not just suggestions. They may seem stringent and formal. They serve two important purposes, however: 1) they indicate to readers that you are taking your writing seriously and that you would like them to take it seriously; 2) they make it easier for me to deal promptly with the many papers I will have to read.

Every paper should have a title to tell the reader what it is about.
Put your name and the exact date the paper is completed on the first page.
Number the pages. Learn how to make your word-processing program do it for you automatically.
If you are using a computer, find out early how you can save your file in a format that can be read by the computer facility that you will use to print your final copy.
Every paper should be typed or printed, and the typographical errors should be corrected. Correct them by hand with a pen in seminar essays; for important papers and reports that you will want to keep in your portfolio forever, make the page as picture perfect as possible by retyping or reprinting the page(s). If necessary, pay someone else to proofread your paper or even type it for you, but you still must check the final copy for errors.
Leave one inch margins (at least) on all four edges of the page. Use 1-1/2 or 2 line spacing. It's easier to read, and it provides room for comments.
Don't waste a page as a title page for a seminar essay. Longer papers and research reports often justify the importance and finished look a separate title page provides. To repeat: be sure your name and the date are on the title page. It's sometimes useful for future reference to note on the title page what class it was prepared for.
Longer papers should be broken up into sections, the sections should be titled. Prepare a table of contents that indicates both the section titles and the pages on which they begin.
Don't waste your money on plastic or paper report folders. I particularly detest those plastic things with a long 'clip' along the edge that always fall apart. Invest the money in a box of paper clips or a stapler. I like papers that are simply stapled together. I think people who turn down the corners and tear them a bit to make the pages stick together don't have much respect for what they have written. If you prepare your paper with the use of a computer, be sure and separate the pages. I do not read pages that are upside-down and backwards.
Please turn in an original typed or printed copy of your paper, but keep a copy for yourself. I will put the good things that need to be said on the cover page or attach a note. I will not mark up a good final term paper or major report extensively, but if important corrections need to be made, I will mark it up. It is your job to make the corrections before you put the paper in your portfolio or show it to others as an example of your work.

Epilogue

A lesson about writing your language may go deeper than language; for language is your reason, your logos. So long as you prefer abstract words, which express other men's summarized concepts of things, to concrete ones which lie as near as can be reached to things themselves and are the first-hand material for your thoughts, you will remain, at the best, writers at second-hand. If your language is Jargon*, your intellect, if not your whole character, will almost certainly correspond. Where your mind should go straight, it will dodge: the difficulties it should approach with a fair front and grip with a firm hand it will be seeking to evade or circumvent. For the Style is the Man, and where a man's treasure is there his heart, and his brain, and his writing, will be also.

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, "On Jargon" (1916)

* Jargon: obscure and often pretentious language marked by circumlocution and long words

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Last Updated January 30, 2007 (Richard's Guide, Revision 8i); minor format revisions April 26, 2011; typo corrected June 27, 2011