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Tips for Student Authors in
Political Science
A report should have something to say, and it
also should say it well. Having something to say is a
function of your research and your thinking. Unfortunately,
the best ideas can be lost in the noise of a poorly written
paper.
What is your professor looking for? That
depends, in part, on the assignment. Be sure you understand
the assignment before you begin to write. Read it.
Break it down into its components. Ask questions. In
answering essay questions, it is particularly important to cover
all of the issues raised in the question.
Whatever the details of the topic, there are
several ways students can, and do, hurt their score. In each
case, the effect is to make the presentation sloppy or
ambiguous. The reader can’t know what you meant
to say, only what you put on the page. Common problems, plus
examples of each, include
• Confusing homophones
(sound-alike words)—your computer’s spellchecker
won’t catch these:
Accept-except
affect-effect complement-compliment
Dyeing-dying
eminent-imminent
principal-principle
Stationary-stationery
than-then
their-there-they’re
Quiet-quite
to-two-too
weather-whether
Morale-moral
were-where
your-you’re
Its-It’s
who’s-whose
• Misspelled
words—your spellchecker won’t work if you don’t
use it:
Analyze
definite
embarrass
existence
necessary
Neither
persuade
receive
similar
succeed
• Fused
words and wrong usage—the following words are not saying the
same thing:
Allot
A lot
Alright
All right
Anyone
Any one
• Sentence
fragments--sentences without both a subject and a verb:
Clinton’s
senate bid in New York, a state with a strong democratic base in
2001.
Well
within the time allotted.
• Possessives and
contractions—use the apostrophe only if you are replacing two
words:
It’s
(it is) or Its (possessive)
You’re
(You are) or Your (possessive)
• Padding
and redundancy—fewer words are often best:
In my opinion, although I do not claim to be the
ultimate expert on a subject of such importance, a subject of
concern to everyone, automobiles that travel at a rate of speed
well in excess of the officially-posted speed limit have what
appears to be associated with them a significantly, if not
unexpectedly, higher rate of serious injury when, as may happen all
too often, they suffer an unanticipated impact.
• Footnotes or endnotes
that don’t provide enough information to check the original
source:
James
Brown, My Life.
Encarta.
Avoid these errors, and you are not guaranteed an
“A”. Fail to avoid them, however, and your
grade is guaranteed to reflect it.
More serious failures can’t be summed up in
simple examples. They involve an inability to stick to a
topic, or to change topics, or to fail to have a unifying
thesis. This is why you need to review your work as a
whole.
To improve your work, take the time to do it
right. Your first draft may be sloppy, but never hand
in a first draft if you have the option to do otherwise.
Write, and rewrite, and let the paper sit for at least a day before
you read it and revise it again. Have your friends read your
work. If other people don’t understand what you are
trying to say, you need to fix it.
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