Organizing & Revising Your Paper

Words to Avoid

➢ Filler words, including thing, stuff, so, and like

➢ Non-descriptive, general words, such as normal, everybody, and something

➢ Contractions (i.e. don’t, can’t, won’t)

• These words can make a paper appear informal. Words like these are not descriptive, and as a writer, you want your words to be meaningful and have purpose.

Colloquial Vocabulary

➢ Avoid using colloquial (informal) vocabulary

• Examples—

• Words: gonna, wanna, ain’t

• Phrase: “It’s raining cats and dogs”

• Colloquial vocabulary or spoken language (slang) should be avoided when writing a formal paper. You can more easily avoid this by writing in the third person, since you are more tempted to speak in relaxed tones when writing from a first person (I) point of view.

Don’t be afraid to make concrete statements

➢ A way to strengthen your writing is to take out statements such as, I think, I believe, I

feel, maybe, could. ➢ It is your argument and your paper, so be bold!

• Change “I feel climate change is a real problem” into “Climate change is a real problem.”

The word THAT

➢ ‘That’ is often used as filler in a sentence and frequently overused. A way to tell if ‘that’

is needed in a sentence is to read the sentence out loud without it. If the sentence makes sense without ‘that’, delete it.

Quotations

➢ Quotations are important for supporting your argument. They should be introduced with a signal phrase that incorporates the author’s name and the name of the sources that it is from.

➢ The quotation should be followed by an analysis or explanation of the quote. This is

important because it explains the importance of why it is being used and it connects it thoroughly to your paper.

➢ In most cases, quotations should not be used to end a paragraph. Quotes are used to

support your claim; they should be analyzed and explained.

Helpful Tips

➢ An effective tool to use when trying to polish your paper is to read it out loud to yourself, or to someone else. This will be helpful because hearing it out loud will allow you to pick up on mechanical errors or sentences that don’t make sense.

➢ Don’t rely only on spell check because it might overlook some typos. Always proofread

your paper!