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| The Writing Centre | ||||
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Writers'
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| Avoid slang, regional expressions,
and obsolete words Slang comes from a specialized, often colourful vocabulary that is related to the experience of groups with common interests, such as actors, astronauts, athletes, computer scientists, copywriters, musicians, street gangs, teenagers and so on. Eventually, some slang passes into standard usage. Jazz and Abomb were once slang words but are now part of standard English. More often, slang makes its appearance, increases in use, and then shifts its meaning or becomes dated. Generally, you should avoid using slang: It is imprecise and may be confusing or misleading to a reader. Avoid trite expressions A trite expression, sometimes called a cliché or stock phrase, is an expression that was fresh and striking at one time but by overuse has become stale. Trite phrases include exhausted figures of speech (hit the mail on the head), wedded adjectives and nouns (a well-rounded personality), and overused phrases (the finer thing in life). Trite expressions may come easily to mind when you feel rushed. But when you revise your writing and come across one, strike it out and reword your thought in a fresh way. These are common trite phrases to avoid: |
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Avoid redundant phrases
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| Use technical terms, or jargon,
with care When writing for a group of literature specialists, you may use the terms persona, verisimilitude and motif with confidence that your readers will understand them. These are technical terms that literature specialists freely use. Most fields and activities have technical vocabularies, and a person who studies a field or pursues an activity soon learns the specialized vocabulary that characterizes it. A person who has studied finance will use the terms put, call, and margin with ease. Avoid pretentious language Write simple English. Beginning writers often make their writing excessively showy, perhaps from a misconceived desire to sound impressive or even poetic. Unfortunately, the result is often pretentious. Placing Commas To test whether you need a comma before and, but, or or, the most frequently used coordinating conjunctions, place a period before it. Then reread each part, before and after the period, without the conjunction. If each part works as a complete sentence, write your sentence using a comma before and, but or or. If not, leave out the comma. Example The printing press was invented in 1450. [but] only a small percentage of the western world’s population could read. Because each part word as a sentence, the full sentence needs a comma before but. Revised |
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| Frequently Misspelled Words Learn to spell frequently misspelled words. The following is a list of one hundred commonly misspelled “demons”. |
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| Academic Integrity Many professors believe that the Internet is threatening academic integrity. They point first to term-paper mills that have established Web sites and give free papers to students, relying on advertising to make a profit. Currently, academic dishonesty is on the rise. At UC Berkeley, for example, reports of academic dishonesty have increased 112 percent since 1995, and of those, 35 percent involved plagiarism. To combat plagiarism, Berkeley, like many universities and colleges, uses a Web service, plagiarism.org, that has tens of thousands of college papers in its data bank, all gathered from term-paper mills. (Whenever a professor submits a questionable paper to be checked, it too is added to the data bank). In addition, plagiarism.org has developed a Web crawler that searches the Internet for phrases that match those in a suspect paper. Merely by submitting a key passage, a professor can launch an Internet search to identify its original source. Now, instead of viewing the Internet as a thread to academic standards, professors are beginning to use Internet resources, like plagiarism.org, to help them maintain academic integrity. Adapted from The Brief English Handbook E. Dornan and C. Dowe For more tips on writing, visit the comprehensive online writing base at: http://www.awi.com/daesdulus . |
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