Spelling and Style
Academic writing
Academic writing can be learned. There is no single ‘right’ way of writing an academic essay. The main requirement is that you do your best to clearly put into words what you have discovered about the past and what your opinion on that is. Proper, effective use of language helps you to communicate your research results. Academic writing is primarily functional. It is a vehicle for conveying academically sound and honest research. However, it must also be consistent, explicit and credible. Even great content can be ruined by subpar wording.
A historical essay’s persuasiveness depends mainly on the quality of the text. Readers are not obliged to read your writing. One vague sentence, spelling error or ambiguous phrase will detract from your argument and sow doubts about your credibility. Some readers will simply stop reading. Therefore, you should never expect your readers to ‘get what you mean’. It is not about what you intend; it is about what you put on paper. Do not hesitate to use several sentences to explain what you mean. More than one sentence and complete clarity are preferable to one sentence with lots of ambiguity.
Although everyone has their own way of writing an essay, there is a common denominator: no one produces a great text from beginning to end in one sitting. A good paper is usually the result of extensive editing (rereading, improving, deleting). There is a reason why academic journals use editors or peers to correct authors’ papers.
Every student has strengths and weaknesses in writing; you must know your own weaknesses if you are to improve your writing ability. One of the greatest problems in producing texts is that people tend to overlook their own errors. This is true of both spelling and style. You tend to know exactly what you mean while writing, but to ensure your message reaches your audience you need to reread your text with a very critical eye.
Staring at your screen for too long causes you to lose perspective. Print your text and then put it aside for a while. Go do something else. Then return to it later to reread it critically.
When you get back a section you have handed in to your instructor, carefully study their comments. Look at what you did right, what needs improving and what errors you made.
Make a list of your own ‘weaknesses’ and continue to update this list. Which mistakes do you tend to make (see below)? The sooner you recognize them, the sooner you can correct them.
Always use a spelling checker. This will at least catch simple typos, but beware: it will not catch typos that form another word (‘there’ instead of ‘their’, ‘form’ instead of ‘from’). Do not rely on the spelling checker completely either. It can make strange suggestions if it does not recognize a word (‘Methuen’ instead of ‘Mauthausen’) and correct words that are not errors (‘Men in Gate’ instead of ‘Menin Gate’). The same goes for grammatical tense. Even if you use the ‘check grammar’ option, the spelling checker will not catch mistakes in tense (where you have used a present perfect instead of a past simple, for example) or even a simple error like an erroneous past tense after auxiliary ‘do’ (‘did he managed’ instead of ‘did he manage’).
Good writing is mainly a matter of being critical of your own work. George Orwell once wrote some great advice for writers. The following quote can help you develop the right attitude toward your own writing:
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? ― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Academic papers and theses are supposed to contain original thought. According to Orwell, originality is harder to achieve when writing about abstract issues. Unlike concrete matters, which immediately conjure up images in our mind, abstract issues are couched in words. We think about these issues in words rather than images. Therefore, we are much more likely to resort to existing phrases and similes when writing about such issues. This distracts us from our original thoughts about the topic and we end up repeating other people’s ideas. To avoid this, Orwell came up with six useful guidelines:
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.