0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 09 November 2006 at 12:40

In a draft of a current paper, I wrote the following:

I attempted to decipher Robert Frost’s “Design,” finding that I had no idea what the poem might mean but that its creation of ambiguity aroused my interest far more strongly than did the presentation of dates and figures in courses on comparative politics or international relations.

Upon a first revision, the sentence is now:

I attempted to decipher Robert Frost’s “Design,” finding that I had no idea what the poem might mean, but its creation of ambiguity aroused my interest far more strongly than did the presentation of dates and figures in courses on comparative politics or international relations.

The difference is miniscule. I placed a comma between mean and but and removed that. That's all. Does it even make a difference?

Yes. In the first version of the sentence, the second half of the sentence is almost endless, becoming quite confusing because it contains both an idea -

I had no idea what the poem might mean

- and its opposite -

but that its creation of ambiguity aroused my interest far more strongly than did the presentation of dates and figures in courses on comparative politics or international relations.

- without even a comma to separate them. That's no good. Adding that comma (and removing that to make the comma grammatical) makes the sentence immensely more readable by separating two opposing ideas into different parts of the sentence.

On my second revision, the sentence is now

I attempted to decipher Robert Frost’s “Design,” finding that I had no idea what the poem might mean, but its creation of ambiguity aroused my interest far more strongly than the presentation of dates and figures in courses on comparative politics or international relations did.

The only difference? I moved did from before than to the end of the sentence. The first way was not strictly speaking wrong; it's the sort of archaic but acceptable inverted sentence that I include in most of my papers. Nonetheless, the length of the sentence necessitates a clear structure, and inverting the subject and verb was probably not the best route to go in creating such clarity. So, I changed it.

These are small changes, but the sentence is significantly easier to read. The devil is in the details may be an old saw, and clunkiness may not be the devil, but working on the details can still make a difference.

0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 18 October 2006 at 11:40

Just a short post today - I want to follow up on last week's series. I got an A on that paper, so I guess my methods are valid and can be followed. That is all.

0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 13 October 2006 at 10:07

Well, the paper is done, right? Strike that: The draft is done. Before the paper is in turn-in-able form, it needs to be revised.

First, after having set the paper aside for a bit, I give it a quick read-through, out loud, to make sure that my grammar and what not is all right, and that I don't use any awkward phrases like "turn-in-able." The important thing, when reading out loud, is to try to read the paper exactly as it appears, without automatically filling in all the missing words.

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0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 12 October 2006 at 11:42

So now I have my content, but what about my thesis? What about an introduction and conclusion and what not?

Well, regarding the thesis, I must admit to being a bit of a tease. Professor Ehrlich has said in class that she prefers a slightly more conversational style than the standard argumentative essay, and so my thesis is more a topic sentence:

Denis thus problematizes the role of the camera, and thus of “proper customary conduct as viewers,” in looking at the action unfolding in her films.

So let's look at this to see how it could be made a better thesis. Note: This post will contain some brief excerpts of admittedly non-substantive portions of my essay. Do not plagiarise them. That would be very bad.

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0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 11 October 2006 at 10:47

So now I'm done researching. How did I set about outlining my paper?

It was really a three-step process, two of which I will go into here.

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0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 10 October 2006 at 12:39

When last we left our hero, he had just received his research materials via Inter-Library Loan. So, how did he approach his research?

The important thing was to avoid limiting himself ... okay, forget this conceited third-person. The important thing was to avoid limiting myself to the ideas I'd had about the paper before starting my research. So I highlighted everything that remotely had to do with looking or observation.

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0 comments Contributed by David Mansfield on 09 October 2006 at 08:39

To take a break from offering bland writing advice, I thought it might be wise to spend this week relating how I approached an actual paper assigned to me this semester. After all, my position on the Crew presupposes that I know how to write papers well, and so perhaps my example will be useful.

That said, today will not be the meaty portion. I will start with how I approached research, and then over the next few days I will expand to my method of organization, composition, and revision.

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