List of helpful hints

Hi everyone,

As I grade papers, read over research proposals and help student prepare for writing their dissertations I see the same challenges over and over. Here is a short and hopefully helpful list of the easiest challenges to avoid in writing up research:

1. Data ARE plural - I know this is not the way the word is commonly used and we hear data is but data really are. This leads to these data show …rather than this. Get your ear used to this one and you will go far towards saving hours of time on your dissertation. Watch for other instances where this is a problem - data have rather than data has is another example.
2. If you make a case for something once in your paper you do not have to take two more paragraphs later to justify the same idea again. This was common and partially a set up by the multiple assignments - but it helps when you are pulling something like this together to map your ideas in an outline - don't have the same idea under multiple headings.
3. Redundancies detract - redundant words in a paragraph, redundant ideas, etc. Don't do what I do and fall in love with a word and then use it three times in four lines. Some of you did this too (smile). It is even worse in presentations when you might have the same word three times on a single slide.
4. When we don't know precisely what we want to say our writing lags and our ideas are not easy to track. As you read other’s research, notice where you lose attention, that is the point where the author lost track of what was important. Be honest with yourselves - is your writing interesting for the whole article? If not, what can you take out?
5. It is not written anywhere, but generally if you go over 3000 words you have gone on past most attention spans - this is the length most publications allow. You can highlight the bits after the coversheet and table of contents and before the references and that is the body of your project or article - see how you did on words.
6. Passive sentences use are or is - try searching on these two and seeing how many passive sentences you are writing. Then take half of them and make them active. For instance, I could have changed the first sentence here to be active by saying instead: Readers prefer active writing to passive because it gives zest to your topic. Watch out for the use of “are” or “is” and try to rearrange your writing to get rid of them.
7. Also expel words like so, as in so important, or very or ....... you see what I mean even though you would say them for emphasis they detract from the sentence rather than strengthen it.
8. The use of the first person is tricky. I am not like some of professors, who simply say, "don't use it." This is because I see that when used sparingly and to bring your own presence into the article it can be effective. But when you use “I” in a sentence that describes your decision making path or where you are talking to your reader about any mental process..... then I would suggest you write instead about "the study" as though it were a thing separate from you. In a nutshell we don't want to confuse our beingness with our work. These projects are your work, the experiences you have in your schools or at your workplace are personal and that is where the use of "I" might be very effective.

I hope these are helpful, let me know in a comment by clicking that link below,
All the best,
Alana