· IMPACT is not a verb. “’Such and such’ impacted the decision” – is not correct English. Instead “such and such had an impact on…” is correct English and can be used as an alternative to affect as a verb.
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· Please get “affect” and “effect” correct.
Generally speaking, affect is a verb and effect is a noun. When you affect something, you produce an effect on it. Even in the passive voice, something would be affected, not effected.
There are certain situations where effect is used as a verb and situations where affect is used as a noun, but very few people ever have a need to use them thus, so unless you are already confident of your ability to use these words correctly, just treat as general the rule that effect is a noun and affect a verb.
· (If you feel the need to get fancy, however, here are the meanings of effect as a verb and affect as a noun. As a verb, effect means to execute, produce, or accomplish something; as a noun, affect is used primarily by psychologists to refer to feelings and desires as factors in thought or conduct.) Affect is a noun when it means how much something is liked, ie: “How much affect does the public have toward Ronald Reagan?”
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· “Its” is possessive and “it’s” is always “it is.”
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· Generally, do not use contractions.
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· It's Never "Could Of"! It is “could have.”
· And certainly don’t use “coulda woulda shoulda.”
· Do not use utilize
· Do not use upon unless referring to a physical placement of something
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Be careful of colloquialisms in general.
I don’t mind the use of the first person.
For other tips on grammar, please use the following resource:
http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/articleindex.html
A person who supports the democratic system of government is a democrat – a person who supports the Democratic party is a Democrat.
Unfortunately, the word liberal has two meanings and even more unfortunately, the meanings are opposite of one another. Liberals are people who support limited government. Liberal democracy means that the government is a democracy is limited by a constitution and usually a bill of rights. Liberals are also people who want government to be more proactive in providing for those who are less fortunate. Because of the confusion, when you use this word, you need to make the context clear.
Do not use long unrelated introductions. Your job is to make the reader’s job easy. It is not to hit her over the head with drama. Get to the point. You should mention your thesis statement right away, tell the reader what it would take to prove it and if necessary, and give the reader an idea of what counterarguments you are going to take into consideration.
Generally, stay away from metaphors.
Do not ask questions unless you intend to answer them. (Generally, just don’t use questions in your writing).
Examples:
How can Colin Powell quit right now?
How can Baird make that argument in her book?
These questions are distracting.
For the purposes of this class, make sure the reader has no idea whether you are liberal or conservative – or what you think about a particular policy from the perspective of your own values. What your values are does not interest a reader. What you have to say that is inter-subjective and speaks to them whether they support your values or not, does interest a reader.
Use subheadings.
The last sentence of each paragraph should always communicate the connection between that paragraph and the argument that you are making. It can start with the word “thus.”
Thus is different from therefore – therefore is bringing deductive logic to a conclusion. Thus brings inductive logic to a conclusion. So, when you are providing logical analysis and little in the way of fact, use therefore. If you are bringing together a conclusion based on empirical facts that you are using as evidence, then use thus. This is even when you are citing another author’s use of the facts – that they used those facts are facts and are therefore inductive evidence for your argument.
The first sentence of the last paragraph in each section should show how the argument from that section relates to your entire paper. It can also begin with the word “thus.”
After you finish your paper, write a
post-hoc outline. This is a sentence outline that has a sentence for
every paragraph that starts with the phrase: “The purpose of this paragraph is to
…”
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Every time you think a thought, criticize
it. Make your counterarguments
explicit.
· Every time you think a thought, think about what the implications are of that argument. Ask yourself whether those seem reasonable. When you are writing, make these implications clear. My most common comment on a paper is “draw conclusions from this argument.”
· Are you using the correct word? Many mistakes with writing have to do with using a word that sounds like the correct word.
· Often, students try to use sophisticated words to communicate something that could have been communicated with simpler language. Nothing communicates lack of sophistication like trying to be sophisticated.
· Make the reader’s job simple.
Note that it is difficult to determine causality – you really have to think about what it means for something to cause something else. For example, if you are interested in why people vote, you could think people vote because they are interested in politics, but is it possible that they are interested in politics because they vote? These are the kinds of places to think critically.
Also, it is possible to make the mistake of observational equivalence – that is, making inferences from correlations when it is difficult to explain why there is a correlation. It could be that legislators are voting the way they do because they have conservative preferences or because they have conservative constituents. Often, it is the case that conservative legislators represent conservative constituents. So, which is it – preferences or constituents? When legislators vote conservatively, it is observational equivalence. They vote conservatively, but it is hard to know why. When reading and writing, you should think the causal logic through carefully.
You should also be sure to focus on something that is not entirely obvious. The focus of your paper should make people think – “hey how interesting.” If you show that liberals vote for Democrats and conservatives vote for Republicans, it is not very interesting. Perhaps it is counterintuitive or leads to counterintuitive implications. This is like the example I gave in class about how lowering the voting age actually led to LESS voting in that generation, not more. That is counterintuitive and interesting.