Raritan Valley Community College Writing Guidelines
CONTENT:
- Your paper must have a thesis (main idea). You should be able to state it in one of two sentences. The purpose of your essay is to explain this idea.
- Each paragraph should have its own main idea, one that supports the paper's thesis. Each paragraph is about one part of your essay topic, and should make a statement about that part and explain it, giving examples.
- The meaning of every sentence must be clear. Sentences can be free of grammatical errors and still be confusing. Good writing is clear, not fancy. The best method of checking for clarity is to read your paper out loud slowly, and to hear it read out loud to you by someone else.
ORGANIZATION:
- To see if your essay is well-organized, try to outline it.
- A series of one- or two-sentence paragraphs may be a sign of poor organization. If the idea expressed in a short paragraph can't be combined with another paragraph or expanded into a longer one, consider the possibility that it should be left out.
- Generally, it is best to present the strongest evidence for your point last.
GRAMMAR AND SPELLING:
- Write in whole sentences, not fragments or comma splices. A fragment, an incomplete sentence written as though it were a whole one, like this. A comma splice is two complete sentences linked with a comma, this is an example.
- Be sure the number of the verb-- singlular or plural-- agrees with the number of the subject. The word before the very is not always the subject; look for who or what is doing the action or being. Incorrect: Air pollution at very high levels damage the public's health Correct: Air pollution. . .damages. . .
- Keep verb tense consistent and logical. Much of what you write can be worded in either the present tense ("The experiment shows. . .") or the past tense ("The experiment showed. . .") Choose one tense and stick to it throughout your paper. Proofread carefully for inappropriate tense switches.
- Be sure that a pronoun clearly refers to its noun. Pronouns-- words like me, it, this, and you-- are words that refer to nouns. Be sure the noun that a pronoun refers to is clear and nearby. Unclear: On the financial form, they ask about your income. This is difficult to fill out. Clear: The financial form has questons about the applicant's income. This part is difficult to fill out.
- Use the appropriate pronoun case and number. Two common mistakes: The man that hired me has retired. The man who. . . Use who and whom to refer to people, and that to refer to things. She went to the lab with John and I. To figure out if the I is correct, imagine the phrase without the other item: She went to the lab with me. So the sentence should end, John and me.
- Use language appropriate to the discipline. Your business professor may want you to sound conversational when you write, while your history instructor may demand that you sound formal. Be sure you know what your instructor finds acceptable.
- Do not use the language of bias. Language that is sexist or racist, or which disparages ethnicity or sexual preference, is unacceptable. The sentence Every student has his own book should be changed to Every student has his or her own book or to All the students have their own books or to Every student has a book.
- Spell and type all words accurately. Your computer's spellchecker won't catch the wrong use of their or there, its and it's, to and too, and many other pairs.
PRESENTATION:
- Type your paper, double spacing the lines. Leave standard margins of about an inch on all sides. Indent the first line of every paragraph five spaces. Number your pages at the top, beginning with the second page. Put your name and the paper's title at the front of the paper.
PLAGIARISM;
- Plagiarism is academic theft. Although most students know that all material quoted directly from a source must be documented (cited in parentheses in the text), students are less clear about material that is taken from a source but put in their own words. Be clear: Material that you take from a source and put in your own words must be documented. Think of it this way: If thieves steal gold jewelry, then melt it down into a gold bar, is it theirs now because it's in a different form? Of course not. The same is true of information. You are supposed to put it into your own words. And then you have to give credit to your source. To do otherwise is plagiarism. If you are unclear about whether or not information you are using should be documented, see your instructor or a tutor at the Writing Center.
Revised Fall, 1997
Copyrighted Raritan Valley Community College
