Tips on How to Write Good Papers—Plus Tips on Editing
(This is a short article that I have written in 2008 as Course Examiner for a Faculty Summer Internship course at City University of Hong Kong to help students understand how to write a good paper.)
THE AUTHOR’S NOTE: For quick information regarding the APA (American Psychological Association) style, click here to check out “Changes to the 7th Edition” from the Purdue Online Writing Lab website: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/apa_changes_7th_edition.html.
Dr. Katty P. Ho (December 2, 2020)
Clarity. Your ideas can be clearly communicated, if you can write clearly. The clearer you write, the easier your reader will understand what you are trying to say. Therefore, it is important not just to think clearly, but also to write clearly.1
Drafts. Do not expect that your first draft will earn you an A grade. Often, it will not. Most of the time, your first draft will only be of a C quality, or even of a B quality if you have perfect grammar. The tricks lie on whether you have good organization of your thoughts, good demonstration and illustration of the problems in hand, and good analysis, summary, and conclusion of your ideas and materials.
Organization. Good organization of your thoughts and ideas takes time, work, and effort. It does not hatch overnight. It takes enormous effort in rearranging, reordering, and regrouping of ideas, to make your ideas and points more sensible and logical to your audience.
One flaw in writing is that the writer expects the audience to analyze the materials as they read on their own. Thus, the writer just lists out and describes the situation and leaves room for his reader to do the organizing and analyzing—to dig out or fish for the points.
No. This is a major misconception. Your reader won’t be able to dig out or fish for your points. Your reader simply doesn’t have the time and patience to do so. If you don’t write your points out clearly and make it clear to your reader why you are giving her all those details, you will not expect her to understand them, let alone have interest in continuing to read your work.
Outline. So, work with an outline. Organize your points logically. Spell out the logical connection between your points and use transitional sentences. Do not just use “firstly, secondly, and thirdly…” to list out your materials. Rather, identify their logical connection and use “and,” “but,” “although,” “if,” “because,” “since,” “while,” “as,” and so forth, to explain relationship between information and ideas and connect them.
Citation. Moreover, you must, first, read well to write well. Reading lets you learn to write well from other authors. At the same time, it lets you acquire knowledge and information. You cannot write well without having acquired adequate amount of knowledge and information on your subject matter first.
A good piece of writing will include proper citation of references read and consulted. Therefore, remember to read a lot before you write and cite your references.
To consult a citation method, check out this web site from Purdue University’s Online Writing Laboratory on the APA style: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/general_format.html.
Substantiation. Good writing is full of details. That’s because details attract the reader to read on; they exhibit characterization, significance, and power. Whether your purpose is to inform, persuade, or entertain, without details, your writing falls into the sin of vagueness.
So, to write well, you must write with very specific details of the subject matter that you intend to address.
Originality. Good writing offers the reader something new. The purpose that you write is that, rather than thinking and speaking in cliché, you can express your ideas from your own perspective. Do not think that you have nothing new to add to the literature and community. In fact, you do. You are an individual. No two individuals see things exactly the same. Not even twins have necessarily the same personalities and taste.
Therefore, give your reader a fresh look at an issue that interests you. Try to see things from a different perspective and vantage point. Be an individual thinker, not a follower of a given trend.
Writing Skills. If you have something important and interesting to say, write it in a way that will grab your reader’s attention and retain her interest. To do so, you need to have skills.
Do not think the first set of sentences that you have constructed in a text will attract your reader’s attention. No, they usually won’t. To make your writing more attractive to your reader, rewrite your sentences.
Tools.
To learn how to revise your sentences and improve your writing style, consult these following web sites:
- On Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, from the following web sites: http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf; https://www.bartleby.com/141/
- On Improving Style, from Composition Standards, Dakota State University web site: https://www.sdstate.edu/english/composition-standards
- On Common Errors in English, from the Washington State University web site: http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html
- On Why Reading is Fundamental to Writing, from the CriticalReading.com web site: http://www.criticalreading.com/learn_read_write.htm
To check your English Grammar, consult these following web sites:
- From the Word Power web site: http://www.wordpower.ws/grammar/gramind.html
- From the Edufind.com web site: http://www.edufind.com/english/grammar/toc.cfm
- On Resources for English as a Second Language (English idioms, English phrasal verbs, English irregular verbs), from the UsingEnglish.com web site: http://www.usingenglish.com/
To use English Punctuation properly, consult the following web site:
- From the WikiHow.com web site: http://www.wikihow.com/Use-English-Punctuation-Correctly
To use an online English Dictionary to check word meaning and improve word choice, consult these following web sites (DO NOT use English-Chinese Dictionary):
- For dictionary, from the Yahoo.com web site: http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/ or from the Cambridge Dictionaries Online web site: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
- For thesaurus, from the Thesaurus.com web site: http://thesaurus.reference.com/
1 You must read this: An informative article on writing Argument from the Purdue Online Writing Lab web site: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/academic_writing/essay_writing/argumentative_essays.html
Hoideology 