Quote:
Originally posted by NutBrnHair
Writing the Paper
Remember that if a paper fails to communicate well, then its research--no matter how well done--will have little impact. There is an old piece of advice that says, "write like you speak." This is terrible advice, at least for formal papers. Good written communication is somewhat different from good spoken communication.
1. Watch your sentence structure....
2. Rely on active tense, action verbs. Avoid the passive tense (No: "Politicians are disliked by many people." Yes: "Many people dislike politicians."). Similarly, action verbs (made, jumped, went) are better than verbs of being (is, are, were). In general, active/action verbs generate more interest....
8. Get to the point. Do not beat around the bush; save a tree; avoid word pollution.
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I work as a tutor in my college's writing lab, and points 1 and 8 are the problems that we see most often. But as a science major... WATCH OUT FOR #2!!!!!!!! As part of my web project, I wrote a "How to Write a Lab Report" thing, and 98% of the science faculty wanted passive tense and no personal pronouns.
Overall, that was great advice. I'll have to pass that along to the coordinator.
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