Watch out for these key mistakes this semester
The challenges of academic writing are not a monolith; the things that are difficult for you may be intuitive to another student, and an aspect of writing you do not give a second thought to may take considerable time and effort for someone else. The tutors at the Writing Resource Centre can help you identify your specific strengths and weaknesses in academic writing (book through Moodle today!) but there are many common errors that are helpful to watch out for.
- Run-on and Overly Long Sentences
When writing without a specific conclusion or end point in mind, it is easy to end up with a sentence that includes several related yet incomplete thoughts and/or is too long to be read and understood easily. This ‘thinking on the page’ can be fine for an early draft, as it generates raw material to be edited down; however, your finished product should be concise, complete, and meaningful. When reading a sentence aloud, do you need to stop and take a breath midway through? How many lines does it take up on the page? A simple editing practice is to reexamine every sentence exceeding three lines on the page, not counting compound sentences and sentences containing a parenthetical citation that pushes them over three lines.
In Wuthering Heights, the characters are largely portrayed as self-interested and archetypical, lacking deep characterization, with the exception of Catherine and Heathcliff whose love affair reflects class struggles, patriarchal attitudes, codependency, and other challenges of the Victorian era which ran from 1837 to 1901 and was marked by many political and electoral reforms in the United Kingdom.
The sentence above contains many details that may be useful but is too lengthy and may not be fully absorbed on an initial reading. Be sure you are not cramming too many different thoughts into one sentence. Ask yourself if there is any part that should be its own sentence, or if all the details included are necessary for the specific requirements of your assignment. Remember to punctuate correctly and avoid filler words (“that”, “of”, “a”, or “the” are common culprits) whenever possible.
- Comma Splices
Another common indication of ‘thinking on the page’ is the appearance of comma splices: when commas are used to join two independent clauses (clauses that can stand on their own as complete sentences). Sometimes we pause while writing and add a comma automatically, intending to continue a thought, but when resuming have pivoted into a different one without realizing:
It’s too late in the day, we cannot finish the project before dark.
“It’s too late in the day” and “we cannot finish the project before dark” are both grammatically and syntactically complete and should not be joined by a comma.
- Absolute Statements
We should be careful about the degree to which we assert our various points. It is good to make strong, well-supported statements that you have backed up with evidence and analysis, but be sure to avoid making a claim that cannot be sufficiently justified. For example, an essay discussing the merits of yoga might contain evidence supporting its mental health benefits, but it would be an overstatement to assert:
This demonstrates that yoga will improve everyone’s mental health.
The burden of proof for such a statement is impossibly high. Everyone in the world cannot have been included in studies about yoga, and even if they could it is unlikely that they would all report benefits. Consider the scope of the evidence you are using and the strength of what that evidence indicates:
This demonstrates that yoga helps maintain mental health.
This reasonably states that yoga is beneficial, but not that it is uniformly or automatically so. If you found the evidence to be particularly strong or overwhelming in support of yoga being beneficial in this way:
This demonstrates that yoga is a key factor in improving mental health.
Even this assertion, while a strong one, is not absolute. It tells the reader what kind of prominence yoga has and that it helps improve mental health, but not that it always will or always does.
While these errors are common in academic writing, there are countless ways to improve and many of these ways build on each other. Learning to write in the proper academic tone helps one write more concisely, writing more concisely tends to reduce the number of grammatical and syntax errors, fewer errors tends to mean more focused and understandable writing, and so on.
The many supports at Mt.A can also build on each other to help you succeed in your academic career: beyond the Writing Centre, there are also peer tutors, study groups, drop-in centres, writing and study skills workshops, and much more! First-year students can also speak to their Student Success Guides for additional support with questions or connecting with the right resources. Do not hesitate to reach out!
James Harvey (he/him) is the Writing Centre Coordinator at Mount Allison University. He can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].