Dr. Stanton’s Rules for Writing

Built upon the work of a long line of mentors and colleagues

Sentence Rules:

  1. Do not begin sentences in any of the following ways: “There are/is…”, “This is…”, “It is…,” etc.
  2. Do not use “this,” “these,” “that,” “those,” “which,” or “it” unless the word has a clear and unmistakable antecedent nearby. Never begin a sentence with “this” unless you follow it immediately with a noun that re-identifies the idea to which you are referring.
  3. Never publicly dangle a participle or misplace a modifier: write “Showing unmistakable signs of ignorance, the student did not persuade his professor;” NOT> “The student did not persuade his professor, showing unmistakable signs of ignorance.”
  4. Never write an incomplete sentence (participles -- “ing” words -- cannot stand as verbs). A verb must agree with its subject in person and number.
  5. Know these three rules about commas:

a. Join independent clauses (clauses with a subject and a verb) either by using (1) a comma with a conjunction (“Right-handers predominantly use the left side of the brain, so left-handers are the only ones in their right minds.”) or (2) a semicolon without a conjunction (“Right-handers predominantly use the left side of the brain; left-handers are the only ones in their right minds.”)

b. Separate items in a series by using a comma after every item before the conjunction (“The professor was arbitrary, arrogant, and heartless.”)

c. Never use a comma between the subject and the verb or between the verb and its object (except for interrupting clauses that use two (2) commas).

  1. Bury words like “however,” “furthermore,” “moreover,” “indeed,” etc. (conjunctive adverbs) in the clause or sentence; do not put them at the beginning. (E.g. “The students, however, learned something.”)
  2. Be consistent when you have two or more parallel structures. With adjectives: “He was pompous, picky, and terrorized freshmen” is wrong. “He was pompous, picky, and fond of terrorizing freshmen” is right. With prepositions: “A student could count on his bad temper and arbitrariness” is wrong. “A student could count on his bad temper and on his arbitrariness” is right. With correlatives: “He graded a paper not only for content but for style” is wrong. “He graded a paper not only for content but also for style” is right.
  3. Do not end a sentence with a preposition.
  4. Do not use the passive voice (“Careless students are failed by the ruthless professor”); use the active voice (“The ruthless professor fails careless students”). Because the active voice is direct and clear, this rule is the most important of style, but it has serious consequences for your meaning as well. Politicians, administrators, and those foolishly trying to avoid the consequences of their actions love the passive voice because it protects them from facts and responsibility: “Mistakes were made.”
  5. Adverbs should be adverbs. Do not do it different – if you know what I am saying.
  6. Every pronoun should have animmediate and clear antecedent noun to which it agrees in person, number, and gender.

Paragraph and Thesis Rules:

  1. Each paragraph must stick to the subject introduced by its first sentence. Most importantly, the first sentence of the first paragraph must establish the context of your paper. “John Wayne first appears in Stagecoach with a rifle in his hand.” NOT> “Duke has a gun.”
  2. Do not use one or two sentences as a paragraph.
  3. Make the transition between your sentences and your paragraphs clear and logical. This task is the most difficult in writing, but, as you know, life is hard.
  4. Give your paper a clear thesis sentence at the end of your first paragraph. If you can remember only one rule, this rule is the one you must remember. The first paragraph should also demonstrate how the rest of the paper is organized.
  5. Avoid using quotations to begin or end a paragraph or a paper. Your own words are most important in those places.
  6. In longer papers remind the reader of your thesis throughout the body of your paper.

Rules concerning Argumentation:

  1. Never just summarize or paraphrase. Assume your reader has read/seen it. I do not want to know what happened. I want to know your ideas about what happened.
  2. Support your assertions and ideas with concrete examples, with brief quotes from the story, book, or film you are discussing, or with a short citation from some reliable authority.
  3. Do not hedge. Words like “maybe,” “seem,” “perhaps,” and “might” do not keep you from being wrong; they merely alert the reader to the fact that you are worried about it.
  4. Avoid vague generalizations: “as we all know,” “people say,” “since the beginning of time,” etc. Obvious claims such as “mankind would not exist without the heart” are equally lamentable.
  5. Write about works of art in the present tense, since Hamlet will be stabbing Polonius and Roy Hobbs will be knocking the lights out with his home runs long after your grandchildren have forgotten your name.
  6. Avoid rhetorical questions.
  7. Delete the phrase “in the past” from your writing as well as any hint of chronological snobbery. Chronological snobbery is the erroneous assumption that, with the passage of time, mankind has gotten progressively wiser. In the past such a pedantic list of writing rules would have been unnecessary for undergraduates.
  8. When citing a dictionary refer to the Oxford English Dictionary whenever possible.

Diction Rules:

  1. Do not misspell words. Misspelled words look dumb; do not look dumb. Use a dictionary or a literate friend to check your spelling. On a word processor always use spell-check, but do not trust it! Possessing a limited vocabulary and undiscerning between right words spelled wrongly and wrong words spelled rightly, spell-check is no substitute for proofreading. Spell out one and two digit numbers.
  2. Never use contractions.
  3. A possessive without an apostrophe is a misspelled word. One exception is the possessive of “it”: “its.” “It is” contracts to “it’s.” Since you will not use contractions, you will never write “it’s” on a paper.
  4. Choose the best word for the context. Your papers should be a place “where every word is at home, taking its place to support the others” (Eliot “Little Gidding,” V.217-218). Beware of unintended irony: an N.C. Statebasketballer once explained his ability to shoot with either hand, “yeah, I’m amphibious.” Suffice it to say this student-athlete, to avoid drowning in his coursework, crawled out of school and into the NBA.
  5. Also beware these other egregious violations of Rule Twenty-Nine (29): jargon (say “library”; do not say “instructional media center”), cliche (say “the professor is a conservative grouch”; do not say “the professor is an old fogey”), slang (say “the teacher is foolish”; do not say “the teacher is a dork”), hyperbole (say “this man has too high a regard for himself”; do not say “this man is the most arrogant jerk who ever lived”), gobbledygook (say “now”; do not say “at this point in time”), and malapropism (confusion of idioms; one former NFL player commented, “I really cleaned his bell; I rang his clock”).
  6. Use your smallest most Anglo-Saxon, most comfortable words; big words impress only high school teachers and smell of the thesaurus.
  7. Lose the word “very” and, like, you know, other gratuitous additives from, you know, your written and spoken vocabulary.
  8. Non-English words should be italicized. Foreign words and terms that are not commonly used should be defined when initially used in the paper.

Format Rules:

34. Number your pages. Numbering begins on the first page of text, title pages are not numbered.

35. Do not widow/orphan lines from lengthier quotes, single sentences from paragraphs, sub-headings from first line of text in the section, labels of tables, charts, figures, graphics from the table, chart, figure or graphic to which it refers.

36. Use APA/APSA Style for your papers. See examples attached to your syllabus.

37. Give your paper an informative title. The name of the work you are dealing with is NOT the title of your paper. “Shakespeare’s Use of Time in Hamlet” is by a thoughtful person; “It Takes a Broken Egghead to Make a Hamlet” is by a clown; Hamlet is by Shakespeare.

38. Italicize all full-length films, plays, and books. Do likewise with magazine and newspaper titles. Short stories, film shorts, one-act plays, and articles go in quotation marks (“…”). Do not underline or put your own title in quotation marks.

39. On those extremely rare occasions when you quote more than two lines of text, indent five spaces left and right and single space the quotation, and leave off the quotation marks.

40. When you quote from or refer to a source, cite it appropriately and include a works cited page of some kind.

41. When you borrow and idea or paraphrase statements from existing scholarship, give appropriate citation.

42. The first citation within a paragraph must contain the author’s name, even if it is the same author and item from the previous citation in the preceding paragraph. Likewise, the first citation on any page must contain the author’s name and the year of publication, even if the citation is for the same source as the last citation on the preceding page.

43. Print your paper out only on the front side of the pages.

44. Use 1” margins top, bottom, and right, use a 1 ½” margin on the left side of pages.

45. Use Times New Roman 12 point font.

46. If a header is used on page 1 to identify you, the course and the date, this material should be single-spaced and have minimal spacing between it and the body of the paper and it should be used only on the first page. Such header is not required if a title page is used. Title pages are required for course research papers.

47. Before handing in your final copy, have an intelligent friend read your paper to you; then fix it. Frequently save your file, and if possible keep a hard copy, and/or a version on another drive.

48. Do not hand in a paper unless you have come to care about it. You believe in goodness and truth; therefore, commit yourself to communicating your ideas well and true.