UCI/UCLA Writing Style Guide

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Common Writing Problems and Stylistic Suggestions

This guide is designed to help you improve your writing in the social sciences. Developing your style requires you to make choices about how to communicate your ideas. Your readers are looking for well reasoned and supported ideas that increase their understanding or help them develop new insights. A style guide, unlike a grammar guide, will not tell you the right and wrong way to write. The goal is to encourage you to reflect on the choices you make in writing and provide some clues to how you can improve your writing. You have to make the decisions. There is a short annotated bibliography of print and online resources at the end of this document to provide a wider context for the development of your writing. I. Sharing your ideas Social science writing is a sharing of ideas, not necessarily your person. It is often best to place yourself in the background. Consider this suggestion from Strunk & White (1979, p.70)."Write in a way that draws the readers attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author." Your paper is your ideas. You signal this by putting your name at the top. The goal is to share your ideas without necessarily including aspects of your personality. Consider: A. As a leader in school change, I know that it is important to reward teachers who work to change the school. B. Recognition and rewards for good teaching are central factors in implementing school reform (references to school programs or research that documents a relationship between merit pay or recognition programs and school change) The first sentence focuses on the person and his or her leadership role. The second is a statement about a relationship between a practice and an outcome. "I" statements can be good for conflict resolution but generally are less effective in academic writing. When you are describing actions you took in designing a research study or a case study in which you played a role, it makes sense to use first person. However, when you are discussing your ideas, you can make the focus on ideas stronger by making the idea the subject of the sentence.

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As the author of the paper, it is clear that the ideas and observations you describe are your ideas. Rather then begin with "I think that..."consider beginning the sentence with your idea, and then ending with supporting evidence. II. Avoid Empty Sentences Your reader will be grateful for concise, clear statements of your ideas. No one wants to spend time reading sentences that do not add to the content. Consider the following pairs of empty and content-rich sentences: A. (Empty) There are many papers that have been written on plans to reform schools. B. (Content) Many educational reformers detail systemic and comprehensive plans to reform schools (Stringfield, Ross and Smith, 1997). A. (Empty) Equity is an important issue. B. (Content) Equity is central because unless we find a way to address the learning needs of all children, our democracy is "at risk" along with our neglected learners. A. (Empty) We can always do better! B. (Content) Innovative models of school reform provide images of the many different strategies that can be used to invigorate schooling. A. (Empty) Implementing school reform is hard. B. (Content) Implementing school reform requires a high level of coordination among the staff of a school, and that is difficult to achieve. A. (Empty) The principal is important in school leadership. B. (Content) The principal leads the school community by providing a model of decision-making strategies. Hint: Search for sentences beginning with pronouns ("It is," "This will") and consider revising these sentences using a noun or noun phrase instead. Then transform empty sentences into content sentences by answering one or more of these questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? or How?

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You might also want to look at "Methods of Eliminating Wordiness" from Purdue University Writing Lab(http://owl.english.purdue.edu/Files/127.html). The Craft of Scientific Writing includes a set of online workshops to help graduate students write in a concise, precise and clear way (http://darkstar.engr.wisc.edu/alley/handbook.html). While the examples are drawn from engineering and science, the advice applies equally to writing for the social sciences.

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III. Place Ideas in Context Academic writing is a intended to contribute to a dialog or debate which builds the existing knowledge base. How do you contribute to this scholarly development and exchange of ideas? Consider the following three sentences which bring in published research to support an idea. Each gives emphasis to a different aspect of the research the person who conducted the research, the published research itself, or ideas emanating from the research. 1. (Person) Bob Tinker (1997) demonstrates that integrating technology into the curriculum dramatically changes the roles of teachers and learners. 2. (Work) In Tinkers' (1997) insightful article, [name of article], he describes how integrating technology into the curriculum resulted in dramatic change to the roles of teachers and learners. 3. (Ideas) Integrating communication and information technology into the curriculum dramatically transforms the roles of teachers and learners (Tinker, 1997). In the first example, the writer is in the foreground and the idea is secondary. The second form highlights the work. In the final example, the idea is in the foreground, and the author and work move to the background. This third sentence, depending on the content, may imply that the writer shares this idea. All three of these examples are correct but they serve different purposes. The third option allows for the development of ideas with less of a focus on people. It also makes it possible for you to state your own ideas supported with evidence from the writing of others. In a review of the literature, you need to decide when you want to emphasize the person, the work, or the idea; that decision should determine what the subject of your sentence will be. As you read journals, note the use and frequency of these different forms of documenting ideas. IV. Avoid Informal, Casual Language In a paper for a class, you might be tempted to write in an informal voice or phrase terms casually. Avoid these approaches. If you find this difficult in a specific instance, add comments in a footnote. (cf. Strunk & White, 1979, p 73 "Do not affect a breezy manner."). A. (Informal) Brain-based learningthe concept may be good, but what board of education would understand or support brain-based reform? B. (Formal) The reform strategies suggested by brain-based learning, (Caine, Caine, & Crowell, 1997) indicate that teaching for meaning, relaxed alertness, the

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importance of complex, "rich" experiences, and ways to engage active processing, may be considered important for school reform but they are difficult to present in a clear and convincing way to a school board.

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V. Consider Active Voice Since academic writing often takes the person out of the subject and focuses on ideas, there is often a natural tendency to write in the passive voice. The data were collected Learning has become They were not selected Centers were developed Concepts have been challenged In most cases, using subject-verb-object word order, with strong verbs, can make your writing more powerful. Most grammar checks will point out passive sentences and warn against overuse of the passive voice. Consider transforming theses sentences to the active voice. If you can make the sentence shorter and more direct without any loss of meaning, it will improve your style. For example: A. (passive) Teachers are described as facilitators of learning with three fundamental roles: teaching, advising, and participating in continuous improvement. B. (active) Teachers facilitate learning in three ways: teaching, advising and participating in continuous improvement. A. (passive) The article is presented in terms of what needs to be done or what would happen if "it" were done in a certain way. B. (active) The article presents a plan of action and the results of the implementation. See also "Clarifying Strategies" in Purdue University Online Writing Labhttp://owl.english.purdue.edu/Files/116.html VI. Ideas Need Framing It is fine to "freewrite" for a first draft of a paper but final copy needs to be carefully structured. There are different ways to structure papers depending on the content. A research paper has a very definite form that you can see in many journals. While some formats might be more detailed, the general structure for contributing new knowledge to the research community is: 1. Present your problem, issue or hypothesis 2. Describe the state of knowledge before your work 3. Describe your methods of research 4. Present your findingsthe new knowledge gained

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5. Discuss the relationship of this new knowledge to what is known 6. Write your conclusions, including implications for educational policy and/or practice Academic papers also can be reviews of literature, presentation of ideas or issues, comparisons of models, critiques of ideas or methods, suggestions of solutions to problems.

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All academic papers need a structure. You might want to think of the structure as a framework, such as the following: 1. A clear introduction of the topic, problem issue or goal -examples, quotes, scenarios -contradictions -reasons for needing more information 2. A plan for organizing the discussion that is tied to the issues raised in the introduction 3. Detail support and development of the ideas following the plan described. 4. An analysis of what is learned from placing all of the evidence or ideas into this framework or perspective 5. A tie back to the opening device (quote, story, example, etc.) with a new level of understanding. A well-written paper clearly raises an issue, presents a thorough and objective discussion of what is known about it, and provides some new way(s) of understanding the information. Multi-level headings can help you focus on the framework and provide guidance for your reader. VII. Outlining Some people work well using outlines. They will write an outline first and then fill out the topics. For others, writing is a way of developing ideas. In either case it is important to outline the ideas before a paper is finished. This will help you review the structure and make changes to it, if necessary. In some cases, the end of the paper helps inform the beginning. VIII. REWRITE Very rarely does one write a first and final draft. Typically, the more you work on a paper the better it becomes. The best way to develop your writing style is to write often, edit your work carefully, rewrite to achieve quality, ask for feedback and keep writing. Finally consider this advice from an old sage: "The conditions to be fulfilled are these. First, you must know the truth about the subject that you speak or write about; that is to say, you must be able to isolate it in definition, and having so defined it you must next understand how to divide it into kinds, until you reach the limit of division; secondly, you must have a corresponding discernment of the nature of the soul, discover the type of speech appropriate to each nature, and order and

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arrange you discourse accordingly, addressing a variegated soul in a variegated style that ranges over the whole gamut of tones, and a simple soul in a simple style. All this must be done if you are to become competent, within human limits, as a scientific practitioner of speech, whether you propose to expound or to persuade. Such is the clear purport of all our foregoing discussion." These are words attributed to Socrates by Plato in his dialogue, Phaedrus, 277b-c (c. 378368 BC). Plato is one of the clearest thinkers and lucid stylists the Western world has ever known.

References Alley, M. (1996). The craft of scientific writing. New York, NY: Springer. Michael Alley has developed online sets of tutorials to expand on the issues covered in his book. The exercises can be done with or without reading the book. (http://darkstar.engr.wisc.edu/alley/handbook.html). Becker, H.S. (1986). Writing for social scientists. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. With wit and humor, Howard Becker urges social scientists to write simply and clearly, and gives suggestions for accomplishing this. One dominant theme: do not try to hide unclear thoughts in social science jargon. Hansen, R.S. (19__). Writing your way to a higher GPA. (http://stetson.edu/~rhansen/writing.html). This is another book that has a web site. The site has the most extensive links to other web resources for writing. The Online Writery--A conversation Coffeehouse for writers (http://www.misouri.edu/~writery/) is definitely worth a visit. It has a newsletter and provides a great deal of advice on grammar and style (see sections by Jack Lynch) as well as online links to other resources. Strunk, W. and White, E. B. (1979). The Elements of Style. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company. Advice from Strunk has been a standard for many generations of writers. In this version, pages 66-85 deal with issues of style and are well worth reading. An online version of Strunk's original guide (1918) has been stored online (http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/strunk). University Online Writing lab (OWL) (http://owl.english.purdue.edu/) is a great source of information on grammar and style. The handouts are available online and the Online Writing Labs have been created at many other universities.