Slovene Association for the Study of English

Want to make your writing splendidly dull? No problem. Just repeat words, preferably vague ones:

“The good thing about the novel is that it’s a good read.”

Less obviously:

“Something that we might consider is that some things are not anything special.”

For those into soap-box style rhetoric, near repetition through figura etymologica can add comedy:

“They poisoned him with poison.”

In this poisonous (ouch) example there is little doubt that the repetition is intentional. “Poison,” after all, is not a filler-word like “good” or “thing” or “dude.”

The longer your sentence, the greater the danger of unintentional repetition:

“Within the context of 21st-century considerations of how we are to configure varying and competing perspectives on the individual qua individual, it is crucial that we bear in mind the contemporary context.”

Admittedly, not many would follow that sentence to its sorry end. Still, the second “context” is grotesquely redundant.

ALL OF THE TIPS OF THE YEAR ARE AVAILABLE AT:
http://www2.arnes.si/~bjason/LW%20tips.pdf

1) Here’s a nifty construction that, for whatever reason, is underused:

“She was among the first to research…”

Students almost always opt for:

“She was among the first WHO RESEARCHED…”

2) Watch out for this type of methodological circularity:

“By comparing the two novels, I will establish what the differences are.”

“By comparing implies a process,” but how else can one find “differences”?

Less grandiose-sounding but more understandable:

“I compared the two novels and found many differences.”

More here: http://www2.arnes.si/~bjason/index.html#guides

A few things to avoid in academic writing:

1) Do not italicize the comma after a list of titles – that is, italicize only the novel title, not the comma that follows. This is a minor point, but it takes forever for the lowly proofreader to correct.

2) Try not to advertise private companies: if you can avoid Amazon (and refer perhaps to Worldcat), Google (and say “an internet search”), etc., do so.

Such avoidance is, of course, often unavoidable, but keep it in mind.

3) The Oxford comma. If you use it, use it consistently: “ham, eggs, and coffee” on page 4 should not be “ham, eggs and coffee” on page 10 (especially if the same terms are repeated verbatim).

4) Discursive and substantive footnotes and endnotes. Keep ’em short.

(I will add some examples over the next few days.)

This is less of a tip than food for thought.

Read this sentence aloud (slightly changed from a real, published example):

“And universities have similarly raised intellectual property concerns over ownership of the online courses their professors are now asked to assemble, indicating that ‘the future of their profession’ is at stake.”

The sentence is not gorgeous, which is excusable. It is needlessly difficult to understand, which is not excusable.

In class, I asked students to restore semantic order. The short but simple solution provided? “Add ‘that.'”

“And universities have similarly raised intellectual property concerns over ownership of the online courses THAT their professors are now asked to assemble, indicating that ‘the future of their profession’ is at stake.”

Much clearer and there’s no need to puzzle out the meaning.

NOTE:

This will be the last tip for a few weeks.

All tips for this year, as well as diploma thesis advice, are available at:

http://www2.arnes.si/~bjason/LW%20tips.pdf

You might also want to ponder:

http://www2.arnes.si/~bjason/LNW.pdf