Writing Academic Prose

Writing Guidelines

• Use active voice sentences and avoid passive voice sentences.Active voice sentences have people doing things. They place the subject first and then the verb.
  • “F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby,” is an example of an active voice sentence; “F. Scott Fitzgerald” is the subject and “wrote” is the verb.
  • “The Great Gatsby was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald” is an example of a passive voice sentence.

Active voice sentences engage the reader. The subject and verb are closer together, which strengthens the logical connection between them. Passive voice sentences typically lead to wordiness. In the examples above, the passive voice sentence contains two extra words. Your sentences should be no longer than necessary to convey the required information; we don’t want readers to work more than necessary. Passive voice sentences are appropriate when the focus is on the object of the sentence. For example, we could say that a literary work “was released as a special edition.” In this example, we are not concerned with who released the special edition (which would be the subject of the sentence), but only that it was released. The most problematic passive voice sentences are those in which a subject is expected but is absent. For example, “The Great Gatsby was written” is a complete sentence but is inappropriate for a scholarly paper.

• Use logical connecting words to make the relationships of ideas clear to your reader. Logical connecting words include “because,” “since,” “therefore,” “although,” “however,” “thus,” “if . . . then,” “both . . . and,” “neither . . . nor,” and “from . . . to.”

• Avoid vague expletives (“It is,” “There are”). Such constructions create murky prose and make your reader work harder than necessary to understand your claims. Additionally, such constructions, usually placed at the beginning of sentences, lead to lengthy and weak sentences. Instead, start with the subject of the sentence (the person or thing doing the action) followed by an active verb.
  • Don’t write: “It is obvious that there are many ways in which Zora Neal Hurston’s childhood impacted her writing.”
  • Instead: “Zora Neal Hurston’s childhood impacted her writing in many ways.”

• Replace “to be” verbs (is, are, was, were, be, will be, etc.) with active verbs.
  • Don’t write: “It is important to know that there is a lot of interest in this text from scholars.”
  • Instead: “Scholars show significant interest in this text.”

• Avoid strings of prepositional phrases.
  • Don’t write: “In light of evidence from the end of the eighteenth century about the process of printing, an improvement in technological means was occurring.”
  • Instead: “Printing technology improved near the end of the eighteenth century.”

• Do not use “this” or “which” to refer to the complete sense of a preceding sentence or clause. “This” and “which” are adjectives, not pronouns. Using them as pronouns causes imprecision.
  • Don’t write: “Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby about a group of fictional characters, focusing on a millionaire (Gatsby) and his obsession with Daisy Buchanan in the Jazz Age. This (???) makes for a great meditation on the American Dream.”
  • Instead: Follow “this” or “which” with a specific noun as in “This novel makes for a great meditation on the American Dream.”

• In American scholarship, periods and commas always go inside end quotation marks.
  • Don’t write: “Fitzgerald also wrote ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’”.
  • Instead: “Fitzgerald also wrote ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.’”

Colons and semicolons go outside end quotation marks,unless they are part of the quotation.

• Do not use “their” when you mean “there” or “they’re.” Homonyms are words with the same sound but different spellings and meanings.

• Know when to put titles in quotation marks or italics. Titles of essays, short stories, songs, and shorter poems go in quotation marks. Italicize the following: very long poems, book titles, movie titles, television series, comic strips, record album titles, magazines, and newspapers. Do not put your own paper title in quotation marks. If your paper title includes the title of another work, such as The Great Gatsby, be sure to italicize or use quotation marks, using the guidelines above.

• When referring to people, do not use the pronoun “that” when you mean “who.”
  • Don’t write: “People that live in glass houses should not throw stones.”
  • Instead: “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

• Avoid comma splices. A comma splice joins two independent clauses (each of which can stand as a separate sentence), unconnected by a conjunction, with a comma.
  • Don’t write: “Gatsby is a man given to obsession, he thinks about Daisy without stop.”
  • Instead: replace the comma with either a semi-colon or a period, or you may simply add a conjunction (such as the word “and”) after the comma. “Gatsby is a man given to obsession; he thinks about Daisy without stop.”

• Avoid dangling modifiers. Modifiers, usually at the beginning of a sentence, must relate to the subject of the sentence or they will dangle.
  • Don’t write:: “Expecting an important call, the telephone was always at Gatsby’s side.” Telephones don’t “expect.”
  • Instead: “Expecting an important call, Gatsby stayed close to the telephone.”

• Sentence elements that are parallel in function should be parallel in grammatical form.
  • Don’t write: “Gatsby liked to play and winning.” (Mixes an infinitive, “to play” and a present participle, “winning.”)
  • Instead: “Gatsby liked playing and winning” or “Gatsby liked to play and win.”

• Substitute familiar for unfamiliar or archaic words.
  • Don’t write: “Gatsby was not fully cognizant of the dangers.”
  • Instead: “Gatsby was not fully aware of the dangers.”