Posts Tagged style
November 09
Headings
You know those people who are ultra-organized? The ones who put labels on all the drawers and cupboards and files. They amaze me; I’d never have the wherewithal to achieve that level of dedication. However, such blatant categorization isn’t appreciated by all people. Some would consider it obsessive, and some would consider it to be [...]
November 02
Prophecy
That’s what I called it: prophecy. No, the student responded, it’s foreshadowing. You can argue with the term prophecy, but it’s certainly not foreshadowing. The student’s essay began with “in this essay”. Each body paragraph began with “in this paragraph”. The conclusion began with “in this essay”, and also ended with it. If it’s not [...]
September 27
Entitling Your Writing
As the wise woman once sung, “Let’s start at the beginning; it’s a very good place to start.” Actually, I recommend starting just after the beginning, and coming back to the beginning at the end (translation: write your title after you have written your essay). Titles are vitally important. They’re names. Think about the information [...]
August 02
Cool Colons
Colons (the punctuation mark, not the part of the digestive system) are cool. They add that intellectual-yet-quirky feel to writing. I love using them in formal writing to break up sentences that are getting far too predictable. Most people know how to use a colon to make a list, so I won’t go into detail [...]
July 12
Reverse Psychology
I occasionally teach creative writing; last week’s class involved an exercise where we took the “World’s Worst Poem” (according to Google) and fixed it. One of the people noted that she was able to see many faux pas in the author’s style of which she, herself, was guilty. We all had a look at the [...]
June 29
Abbreviations and Acronyms
I assume you understand, by now, that the use of contractions in formal writing is frowned upon. There’s no particular reason for this other than contractions are a sign of laziness. Abbreviations should also be avoided specifically for this reason. Is it really so difficult to write “Professor” rather than “Prof.”? When writing was a [...]
June 14
To Footnote or Not to Footnote…
…that is the question. There is no one answer. Footnotes are those little blurbs at the bottom of the page, usually marked with superscript numbers (but sometimes with asterisks and other cool shapes). If you randomly take any three academic books from the library shelf, you’ll find each one of them uses footnotes differently. Some [...]
June 07
Passive Ain’t Bad
As an English tutor, I spend a great deal of time with people who don’t like English; the irony of this is not lost on me, so don’t worry about it. :) What I learn from my students is, mostly, perspective. When you can’t get the right verb tense, that’s a major problem. When you [...]
March 22
Writing Argumentative Essays
Writing Argumentative Essays This is a really cool little website from Australia. It focuses solely on how to write argumentative essays; it won’t help you much if you’re writing an opinion piece. However, the thinking process is one which could be applied to any number of situations…. The website covers every step of the essay-writing [...]
March 15
Adios, Strunk and White
Adios, Strunk and White, by Gary and Glynis Hoffman There are three chapters in this marvellous book: Style, Form, and Critical Thought and Research. After the first column of the Table of Contents, it gets interesting. The sub-chapters for Style are Flow, Pause, Fusion, Opt and Scrub. Form contains Time Warping, Encircling, Layering and Bursting. [...]
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I'm Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins. Currently, I am the primary blog
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