ENGLISH 220 / BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS / WRITING PITFALLS

ENGLISH 220
BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS
WRITING PITFALLS

Whereas the 'Best Practices' document is about doing the right things, this document deals with composition errors that are commonly made on student assignments. Read these carefully and try to avoid slipping into these pitfalls.

Don't Write to Satisfy the Teacher
Most of the time, it doesn't work. A friend of mine says this kind of activity is crazy-making. If focus on the assignment and how to meet the requirements you'll do better. And you'll do even better if you focus on what you the assignment is trying to teach you.

Think of it this way. If you were taking golf lessons and paid no attention to what the instructor tells you with regard to your stance, your swing, and other aspects of your game, and simply spent the time trying to figure out what made me happy would you ever become a good golfer?

Avoid saying "WOULD"
"Shoulda, woulda, coulda" are in the same class when it comes to writing. The word 'would' implies a negative. If you ask me "Will you read my paper?" and I say "I would..." you then expect me to say "...but..." So statements like "I would say that this article was informative" sound wishy-washy. It's much stronger to say "This article was informative." (Another example: "My favorite part of this would have to be the part where he fell down the stairs." How about: "My favorite part is where he fell down the stairs."
How to catch this error? After you write your paper, do a search [CTRL-F] for "would".

Minimum Means "the least"
If an assignment says the minimum number of words is 300 that means that the instructor can't conceive of anyon being able to accomplish the assignment in less. It doesn't mean to write 300 words and then stop. It means that the best students might be able to do it in 300 words. And leads us to another rule...

Don't Count Words
Unless an assignment seems especially short, I don't count words, so neither should you. Focus on completing the assignment (use the checklists).

It's Not Like You're Really There
A phrase I see a lot on assignments is "It's like you're really there" or "It seemed real." Another one is "the writer paints a picture in your mind." The appearance of reality is one of the basic features of great literature. Those are the things we're studying this term, but phrases like this don't add anything to an analysis. In fact, they trivialize it. (I suspect they're leftovers from high school.) If you truly felt "really there" or that the author painted a picture in your mind, identify what the author did to cause you to feel that way and use the tools provided in the course to analyze that.

Avoid Excessive Verbiage
That means using too many words. For example, a student wrote "Mark Twain is known to have made many great contributions to American literature." when he could have said "Mark Twain made many great contributions to American literature."
Here are some other examples of unnecessary words and phrases:

REALLY
This is another word that that creates problems. What's the difference between "The writer really know his subject," and "The writer knew his subject."? Nothing...unless you're worried that someone might think you're lying. No...I really mean it. really...really I do.
How to catch this error? After you write your paper, do a search [CTRL-F] for "really".
ALMOST
A paper I received, talking about a description, said "you can almost hear the bird singing." If you can almost hear the bird singing, you can't hear it. So what does it mean to say you can 'almost' hear it? (And the problem with saying YOU is explained elsewhere on this list).
IN CONCLUSION
Saying "In conclusion" is trite. It sounds like something from a speech: "And in conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I'd simply like to say what an honor it has been to be here."
I THINK and I BELIEVE
If you are the writer, it's evident that the things you're saying are what you think. A statement like "I think the essay was well written," is weak. If you think the essay was well written, then simply say "The essay was well written."
And leave beliefs to matters of faith. It's equally weak to say "I believe that the essay was well written." If you believe that Mohammed received his revelations over a period of 23 years from the Angel Jibreel (Gabriel)," it's OK to introduce the sentence with "I believe," but saying "I believe the purpose of the essay is Referential," is a way of 'fudging' on the matter. If you say you believe it's referntial and I say it's not, you can reply that you said you "believe" it was, but you didn't really mean to say it was.

Is it a STORY or an ESSAY?
Don't confuse the two. A story is a a series of true or fictitious events; it has a plot, a conflict and characters. An essay is a piece of writing about a single subject, usually from the viewpoint of the writer. The Gettysburg Address is an essay; Little Red Riding Hood is a story.

Confusing Past and Present Tense
The rule is simple: stay in the same tense. I often see statements like "Hamlet was a play about the Prince of Denmark." 'Was" suggests it no longer 'is.' But it still is a play about the Prince of Denmark.

Delete My Comments
If I return a paper for you to revise, delete the comments that I usually put at the top. If i get a paper back and I see those comments I'll assume you didn't make any revisions and I'll delete it.

Don't Use YOU
This rule isn't absolute, but it's enough of a problem that it's easier to tell students to avoid it altogether. When we say 'you' we're talking to the reader. Do you understand? (See? I was talking to you when I said that...you, the reader of this paragraph. In this instance I wanted to talk to the reader. But most of the time, using 'you' becomes distracting. Take a look at this paragraph from a student's paper:

"I was really excited when this restaurant finally opened. I had been waiting close to two months for it to get under way and now the time had arrived for me to embark on a delectable seafood excursion. During this time you could see all the construction from outside going on every day, almost all day. It was building upward, now and was going to be attached on to the side of the tallest bank building in downtown Indianapolis and across the street from the RCA dome where the Colts played games. You couldn’t miss it." She starts out fine, using the first person to talk about her experience with the restaurant, but by the third sentence the subject has shifted from the writer ("I") to the reader ("you"). As the reader, my initial reaction to her statement that "you could see all the construction from outside going on every day" is "No...I couldn't."

Turn on the SpellCheck
Please...this is such an easy thing to do. You've paid for this expense program with its bells and whistles, so use them. The SpellCheck and GrammarCheck are invaluable.

Differentiate Your Quotes
Make sure you understand whose words you're quoting. When you quote something from an essay or story you're not always quoting the author of that essay or story. If a statement has quotation marks around it, the author is quoting it from somewhere else, so if you use that statement, you can't cite the author of the essay as the author of that statement.