Every so often, students ask me for tips about the most frequent problems I see in papers. Based on my observations over seven years of International Health concentration papers, here they are, along with suggestions for tackling them. The list is not complete, and neither are the remedies, but I hope these notes are helpful in writing any paper.
1. WHAT IS THIS PAPER ABOUT, ANYWAY?
Your reader isn't motivated to read the paper because she's lost. After two pages, she still can't figure out what it's really about and where it's going.
**Start the paper with a clear statement of the problem you are addressing and your purpose in writing the paper, keeping in mind the audience you're (ideally) aiming for. (There's time for background information and detail later.) Why are you writing about this issue? What is the position you expect to establish? How do you plan to do that? The reader needs to have a good idea from the very beginning (or at least by the end of the first page!) of why you think this topic is important and why the reader should also care about it. Don't assume the reader will figure this out as he/she goes along: state it explicitly.
2. THE OVERALL ORGANIZATION IS A MESS!
You've done a tremendous amount of research and the paper is filled with detail. Everything you want to say is in there -- somewhere. But in the first draft the points you're trying to make are utterly lost, and the reader can't figure out how parts of the paper are connected .
**Outlining can be most useful after you've written the first draft. Try constructing a new outline directly from the draft, identifying main section headings, then subissues, going through the paper paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence. Does each detail in each paragraph fit logically into the main topic of that paragraph? Do the main topics of each paragraph in a section fit logically into the overall theme of that section? Keep an eye out for details that don't fit, that should be moved elsewhere or don't belong at anywhere. OR....
**Put away your drafts and notes. Without looking at any of your material, quickly write a one-page summary, explaining what the paper is really trying to say, as if you were explaining it to a smart friend who's not in the health field, or as if you were asked to summarize it and teach the basics of it in only 5 minutes to a group of colleagues. Draw up a rough new outline on the basis of that summary, identifying the major issues. Does that outline correspond to the present structure of the paper? Would it be better to change the structure of the paper to correspond to this outline? Can you expand the outline so that major section headings are in complete sentences?
*Outlining in complete sentences forces you to think about the sections of the paper in terms of whole ideas, not fragments. Once you can express the overall point of a section in a sentence, it will be easier to (1) link one section to another and (2) cluster your details and plug your sub-issues into the most appropriate section.
**Give your reader cues to the structure of the paper. Clearly divide the paper into sections and related sub-sections, focusing on the paper's main issues and sub-issues, by using section headings and sub-headings, which are helpful guideposts (and can, of course, come directly from your outline). As you move from issue to issue, it's also helpful to add transitional sentences that tell the reader why you're making those moves.
Remember -- Americans are insistent on explicitness: the burden is always on the writer to lead the reader through the paper , summing up every now and then where you've been and where you intend to go. In many other cultures, the writer trusts the reader to be intelligent and to figure out these connections for her/himself. But not here!
3. PARAGRAPHS, PLEASE!
Paragraphs wander off from their topic into alien territory; or isolated sentences aren't combined into paragraphs; or there are no paragraphs, but page after page of text without a break.
**Readers of academic English are addicted to paragraphing as a way to organize and separate ideas. If paragraphs don't conform to their expectations, readers tend to get lost. (If they get lost, they're less likely to accept your position.) The expectations include (1) familiar forms of paragraph organization, (2) the coherence of the ideas within the paragraph, and (3) the physical appearance of a paragraph.
**Use topic sentences to introduce the main point of a paragraph, then make sure all the sentences in the paragraph relate to that point somehow. Think of a paragraph as a family, in which all the ideas are related in some ways. A nuclear family of closely related points may be easy to follow, but once you get into the extended family -- the second cousin from Madagascar or your sister's father-in-law's great aunt -- you need to introduce the newcomer and state the relationship, so everyone will get along. Just as it can be very exciting to meet a long-lost distant relative, it's good to bring together complex ideas that other people don't automatically associate -- that's called thinking. But don't leave it to the reader to make connections that exist, so far, only in your head. You, the writer, need to "spell it out" so that those new relationships and new ideas (which might be new health policies or interventions) can be established in other people's heads, too. (Now test this paragraph: are all the sentences related to the main idea?)
**Paragraphing is also established by the physical demarcation on the page. You need to either indent the line when starting a new paragraph, or double the spacing between paragraphs (one or the other -- not both). Otherwise the reader does not get the signal that a paragraph break exists and that something new is about to begin. And remember -- one sentence standing by itself is not a paragraph. It either has to be developed more fully with other sentences, or woven into what comes before or after.
**Sometimes writers substitute numbered lists of ideas in incomplete sentences, or sentences unrelated to one another, for paragraphing. This system doesn't work. The ideas need to be completed in complete sentences, and their connections established in narrative.
4. WAIT -- THIS JUST DOESN'T ADD UP.
The argument doesn't make sense. You may have made sweeping generalizations, made claims beyond the evidence you use in support, or disregarded research that takes an opposing view.
Here are some comments about argument I repeatedly make on concentration papers.
** Your argument, the real importance of what you are saying, is hidden, and in the reorganization of the paper in the second draft you need to reveal it. (My colleague Louise Dunlap often asked her graduate students at MIT: "What are you trying not to say?")
**When you know you have a problem in your argument -- serious exceptions, insufficient or partial evidence, gaping holes in the research, strong disagreements that you're aware of -- talk about it. That's right, discuss the problem. It will add interest and depth and credibility to your discussion. Bring it right into the open. If your readers know you're dealing with it, and what limits it might place on your argument, they will be more likely, not less, to accept what you're trying to say.
**You begin to raise very important issues that are related to your general argument -- and then drop them, without any development or analysis.
**Occasional transitional phrases and some "therefores" and "thuses" give the appearance of logical progression but don't quite add up, or need some more explicit statement of the links between the premise and the conclusion drawn.
**Your line of reasoning would be stronger if you recognized counter-arguments and dealt with them directly.
5. YOUR GRAMMAR IS ATROCIOUS. YOUR READERS DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE SAYING. GET HELP!!
Actually, I never say this. Well, almost never.
Grammar and punctuation problems exist, but not as much as you might think, even for students who don't feel 100% confident with English, especially once you've figured out what you really want to say. More serious are problems with awkward sentence structure, incorrect word choice and leaden or verbose prose style, which often reflect problems with thinking, with having a solid grasp on your own ideas and the confidence to state them.
6. YOU, NEED TO; CONSULT? A GUIDE: TO...PUNCTUATION,
Alas, American students tend to have the most problems with punctuation, using commas in places that don't need punctuation at all, semi-colons where colons should go, commas where there should be semi-colons, and nothing where there should be something. I do not attribute these problems to defects in character, intelligence or aptitude; instead, I blame trends--some of which I supported wholeheartedly--in U.S. education over the past couple of decades. (Now: please study the punctuation in this paragraph. Although some of it could have been handled differently, it is basically correct.)
7. USE SPELCHICK!!
In the 21st century, there's no excuse for spelling errors. Run drafts through Spellcheck (or an equivalent word processing function) before handing them in. But watch out: if you wrote "too" instead of "two," Spellcheck won't stop you. And think twice before accepting a word that Spellcheck suggests: if Spellcheck guesses that you meant "impotent" when you accidentally dropped the "r" from "important", the meaning of your sentence is likely to be altered dramatically when Spellcheck makes the change!
8. WITH PRUDENT EDITING AND NO CHANGE IN THE CONTENT, THIS 20-PAGE PAPER COULD BE 12 PAGES.
Early drafts usually have a lot of "lard", excess words that need to be trimmed. Awkward sentences also frequently result from trying to pack too many ideas into one sentence, because you haven't taken the time to sort out the different steps in the line of thought, leading to "lists" of little phrases that lose their focus (and probably their reader, too), like this one that you're reading now.
**Below are comments I've often written on student papers, which you might consider as you approach your own revisions.
"I've done some editing to demonstrate how you can tighten up the prose, weed out some of the passive-tense verbs, eliminate wordiness, combine sentences, get rid of redundant sentences, and make smoother transitions."
"I've drawn attention to some awkward sentence constructions and vague/confusing language and word order, as well as a few spots where the meaning of a paragraph would be clearer with the addition of some guiding words (cues) or transitional phrases that establish the cause/effect or chronology or interconnectedness of the elements. Just a bit more explicitness and more precise language would make a big difference in conveying your meaning."
See the following pages for tips on using the Paramedic Method of sentence editing.