Clarity and Precision in Professional Writing:


Your audience expects crisp, flawless prose. Such writing depends on close attention to basic grammatical skills. The most valuable collection of writing advice and practical exercises is at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL). It's valuable in your school work and your professional writing outside the classroom. Visit owl.english.purdue.edu. Note there there's no "www" in front of this URL.

Below are links to topics that often affect students' writing. Comments on your papers will frequently refer you to these items.

• Making Subjects and Verbs Agree
• Active and Passive Voice
• Sentence Fragments
• Transitional Devices
• Independent and Dependent Clauses
• Using Pronouns Clearly
• Non-Sexist Language
• Proofreading for Commas

This list of links will be revised throughout the term.

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Remember to have the grammar check turned on in your word processor. It will catch a variety of important errors.

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Formatting your list of works cited is difficult. Fortunately, there are some marvelous online tools that will do this for you. My most recent favorite is http://webapps.calvin.edu/knightcite. Use it to save time, to make your writing error-free, and to avoid the maddening detail of citation formats.

Formatting citations within the text of your paper is also difficult, but the Purdue OWL provides excellent examples at: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/02/ . You must follow those models.

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The "Five-Paragraph Paper" is a form of human behavior so evil that I almost dare not speak its name. It creates horribly oversimplified ideas that -- horror of horrors -- lead to terribly naive papers . . . that annoy employers and professors. If you are tempted by this frightening model, please visit The Evils of the Five-Paragraph Paper to rid yourself of this impulse.