Write in clear, straightforward, grammatically correct English. Be honest. Do not make statements you yourself do not mean or do not understand. Prune. Avoid unnecessary words. Try to avoid clichés and jargon. Spell accurately. Use words precisely. Get in the habit of consulting a good dictionary. Use colloquialisms sparingly. Use correct punctuation.
Try to organize your paper so that ideas proceed logically.
Read a first draft aloud to yourself to determine whether it sounds stilted. Or show a first draft to a friend, to a college writing tutor, TA, or instructor for editorial suggestions.
There are excellent, inexpensive, short paperbacks available on English usage and style, such as:
Blanche Ellsworth, English Simplified.
William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White, Elements of Style.
II. Crediting Your Sources
“PLAGIARISM. n. 1. The appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas, and thoughts of another author, and representation of them as one's original work.” (Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition.)
Students are expected to meet standards of academic integrity, (see the Schedule of Classes or The Navigator:http://gazos.ucsc.edu/soc/index.cfm). If you steal someone else’s words or ideas without acknowledgment, you are a thief. In practice, this means you must provide written acknowledgment of language and ideas that come from sources other than your own eyes and mind.
• If you use the exact language of another author, put quotation marks around it and cite the source.
• If you paraphrase another author, cite the source. A paraphrase is a restatement of a text or passage giving the meaning in another form; it is rewording.
• If you use an idea stated by another author or speaker, cite the source.
There are two ways to credit your sources, (1) footnotes and (2) parenthetical citations. You should check with your professor to determine which style of citation is preferred.
A. FOOTNOTES
Reference footnotes are usually written and punctuated like this:1
1. Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), p. 85.
Once a work has been cited in full, as in the example above, subsequent references to it should be abbreviated. If there are no intervening references, this is done by writing:
2. Ibid. (Abbreviation of the Latin word ibidem, which means in the same place.) This refers not only to the same book but also to the same page 85 in that book.
3. Ibid., p. 117. This refers to the same book by Turabian but to another page.
If you refer to a work already cited in full but not cited in the immediately preceding footnote, you invent a sensible shortened form of the original full citation, always including the author's last name and a part of the title. For example:
14. Turabian, Manual for Writers, p. 119.
In the case of an article in a periodical (that is, a newspaper, magazine, scholarly journal—in other words, a publication that appears periodically) the title of the article to which you are referring is placed in quotation marks, the title of the periodical is italicized, and the volume number and date of the periodical are included. For example:
7. Leo Steinberg, "The Polemical Part," Art in America 67 (March-April 1979): 115-117.
The examples above are usually called reference footnotes. There are also content footnotes, in which an author amplifies a point made in the main text or perhaps directs a reader to sundry other sources on the same subject. Often these are used for subsidiary matter, in order not to distract a reader from the flow of an essay. For example, let us suppose you were writing a short descriptive paper about these hints. You might include a content footnote such as this:
16. Although Rosenthal recommended that students purchase Turabian's Manual for Writers for their reference libraries, one of her colleagues suggested that she was being “nitpicky,” and stressed that the important point is to acknowledge the sources of your ideas.
It is acceptable to put your footnotes on a page at the end of your paper rather than at the bottom of each page.
B. PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS
Parenthetical citations are usually written and punctuated like this (Smith 1978, 85).
If your sentence includes the author's name, place the citation immediate afterwards as in
Smith (1978, 85) believes that plagiarism ought to be punished by a public lashing.
Once a work has been cited parenthetically, as in the example above, subsequent references to it should be abbreviated. If there are no intervening references, this is done by writing
(Ibid.). same citation and same page
(Ibid., 117). same citation, different page
Footnotes or end notes may be used to address subsidiary matters (as in content footnotes above). These should be used sparingly.
C. BIBLIOGRAPHIES
Bibliographies appear on a separate page at the end of an essay. A bibliography should list the sources you have actually used in writing the paper, not each book or article read or lecture heard but only those relevant to what you have written. Don't litter bibliographies with books irrelevant to your paper in order to create the impression that you have pitched a tent in the library.
Bibliographical references look a little bit like inverted footnotes. Bibliographies are usually arranged in alphabetical order according to the last name of the author. For example:
Ashberry, John. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. New York: Viking Press, 1975.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Psychoanalysis of Fire. Translated by Alan C. M. Ross. Boston: Beacon Press, 1964.
Cage, John. Silence. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973.
You also may use commas instead of periods to separate the items.
Steinberg, Leo, "The Polemical Part," Art in America, 67 (March-April 1979), 114-127.
(Note: Titles of books are italicized while article titles are placed within quotation marks with the journal title italicized. In a bibliography, you give the complete page numbers of an article, not merely the pages you have cited.)
III. A Few Conventions
A. Titles of visual works are italicized or underlined (the typist's signal to the typesetter to italicize). Titles of visual works are not put in quotation marks. This custom applies when a work actually has a title that has been given to it by the person who made it. For example:
Manet's Olympia shocked the public.
Sometimes this custom applies even when the maker is unknown, anonymous, or has not actually given the work the title by which it has become known. For example:
I have always wanted to see the Charioteer from the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi.
Douglas McClellan recently made an amusing assemblage with materials bought at the flea market: a reproduction of Dürer’s Self-Portrait of 1500 and a circular scrub brush with tough bristles.
It would be equally correct not to italicize self-portrait in the above case. For example:
Panofsky and other art historians have pointed out that in his Self-Portrait of 1500, Dürer deliberately painted himself to resemble Christ.
B. The titles of architectural monuments are not italicized. For example:
The remains of the Parthenon are in Athens, whereas the Pantheon is in Rome.
C. It is fairly common to state the full name of the maker, the full title of the work, the date, and often the medium, the first time you mention a work. Sometimes it also helps to cite the collection . For example:
Meyer Schapiro calls Georges Seurat's oil, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-86, “an astonishing achievement” for a twenty-five-year-old artist.6
Later in your essay:
T.J. Clark might disagree with Schapiro's observation that Seurat's Grande Jatte expresses the happiness of a society at rest.8
D. Captions or legends to illustrations should cite the following: name; title (or customarily used title, if there is no formal title); date, medium, dimensions; collection or owner and location of collection or owner. Illustrations are located at the end of a paper after notes and bibliography. The sources from which the illustrations have been taken should be noted in correct bibliographic form.
Edouard Manet. Olympia, 1863. Oil, 51 x 74-3/4", The Louvre, Paris.
IV. Common Problems
A. Overuse of passive voice.
For example: The Olympia was painted by Manet in 1863.
Better: Manet painted the Olympia in 1863.
B. Dangling participles.
Wrong: On arriving in Berkeley, Calder's huge sculpture Hawk for Peace appeared menacing to me.
Question: Did the sculpture fly or take the jitney from Santa Cruz?
Rule: A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject of the sentence (Strunk and White, Elements of Style).
The incorrect example above might be rewritten:
On arriving in Berkeley, I asked directions to the University Art Museum.
or
When I first saw Calder's Hawk for Peace, the huge, black sculpture appeared menacing to me.
Bolted sheet steel painted black, Calder's sculpture Hawk for Peace is twice the height of passersby.
C. Contractions, possessives, plurals
a) Its (a possessive adjective).
The legs of the table are carved. Its legs are carved. (possessive)
It's (it is; noun = it + verb = is) It's a carved table. Amazing! It's not formica! (contraction of it and is)
It's a centipede. If the centipede wore shoes, its shoe polisher would be busy. Dick and Jane love their cat. It's an unusually friendly cat. Its eyes are green. It's a shame that this friendly cat scratches their Louis XIV chair.
b) Artists, artist's, and artists'.
Plural noun: artists (no apostrophe) = more than one artist.
Two or more artists often disagree.
Singular possessive.
One artist's cadmium red is another artist's pale pink.
Plural possessive.
The artists' rent was fairly cheap.
A group of artists found a twenty-thousand-square-foot loft. These artists were fortunate. The artists rented the loft. The artists' loft became a central attraction in town: an “alternative space,” as they say. The artists' rent was fairly cheap. The artists sold a lot of work. Sales of the artists' work helped pay the rent. Each artist's profit contributed to maintaining the loft.
