English
11.67
Style
C.O.P.
Concision:
Cutting Through the Crud
- Make sure
every word used actually needs to be present, that every sentence and phrase
introduces something new and necessary
- Avoid repetition
- Avoid wordiness
in phrasing
- rework
long series of consecutive prepositional phrases to shorten them
- decide
whether a passage really needs prepositional phrases, or whether
you can reduce wordiness by relying on adjectives and adverbs
- avoid
unnecessary articles
- Brainstorm
and research so many ideas that paper-writing becomes an act of condensation instead
of an act of airy expansion
Organization Optimization
- Argument structure
- effective
introduction
- concise,
arguable thesis
- major
points organized logically
- memorable
conclusions that that don't merely restate the main points and thesis
- Paragraph
structure
- creating
clear & appropriate topic sentences
- varying
sentence length, pacing & rhythm by alternating long and short
sentences
- shifting
rhetorical strategies effectively by moving among pathos, ethos, & logos
Putting Passive Voice out to Pasture
- Creating dynamic
statements that tap into the imagination
- Insuring that
the sentence's subject is doing something (active
voice), instead of being something (passive voice)
- Using active
verbs whenever possible forces you to articulate your ideas precisely,
instead of just implying some vague connection between subject and predicate
- Shaping prose
which sounds polished and filled with forethought, instead of writing in
the halting way we tend to think and speak (with lots of "to be" constructions)
Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu
