College Writing Guide

This page is a work in progress.  My goal here is to aggregate some of the best practices in college writing for your help.  I plan to update this page continuously, so please check back in frequently.

Using Unnecessary Words:

A well written essay is concise.  You must avoid unnecessary words.  As Strunk and White say, writing should contain no extra words “…for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”

To that end, avoid such statements as “the reason why is that”, “this is a subject that”, etc.  Choose instead to use “because” and “this subject.”

Avoid: Very, Many, Various, Little, and other unnecessary words.

Passive Voice:

The active voice is always preferred.  Use of the passive voice is a sign of weakness in writing. For example, do not say “John was hit by Billy.”  Say instead, “Billy hit John.”  Begin your sentence with the subject, followed by the action.  Do not start a sentence with the object of the verb.

Brevity:

Effective writing is clear writing.  Clear writing contains nouns and verbs.  Do not spend your time on adverbs and adjectives, they rarely improve your writing.

Avoid fancy words.