Students' Advice for Students Sharon Stanley '99 writes on Clarity

Many years ago, when I was just beginning high school, I believed that good writing meant extremely complex, wordy sentence structures. The more difficult a paragraph was to plod through, the more thoughtful and academic it must have been. I packed my writing with passives, run-on sentences, and extremely convoluted structures to avoid any possibility of an overly colloquial or simplistic tone. In my years as a Writing Assistant, I have seen that many Dartmouth students share this concept of writing. But forcing your readers to reread a paragraph six times before they understand its implications is neither impressive nor particularly intelligent. Above all, I find that student papers could be most improved by making their writing more simple, direct, and active.

• Avoid unnecessary passives.

• Do not begin sentences with unwieldy and empty phrases like "it is imperative."

• Sentences should get right to the point without weighty prefacing.

• You should make the primary actor the subject of the sentence wherever possible.

• Don't rely on long lists of items all prefaced with the same phrase.

• Eliminate clichés and other trite expressions from your writing.

• You should also avoid opening sentences with "it is" or "there are." These expressions rarely add anything to the meaning of the sentence.

When writing papers, you should continually be asking yourself if you can make your writing any clearer. Using overly complicated structures to affect a formal or detached tone simply makes your paper more dull and plodding. While a lively paper certainly varies sentence structure from time to time, it should not be so convoluted as to bury the central argument in weighty but unnecessary rhetoric. Ultimately, your readers should find your writing clear and direct.

Ross Wilken '99 writes on Revision and the importance of starting early

I had always placed great emphasis on research,planning, and outlining before writing, but I often found myself writing my papers only a night or two before they were due. When I finally realized the importance of writing drafts in advance to allow my mind to work through the ideas and discover new ones, and to allow feedback from professors and my peers whom I asked to read my work, a great deal of the anxiety related to paper writing disappeared. Because I allowed myself time to think, I became more and more confident that I was turning in pieces of quality work.

Ashley Brown '00 writes on Writing as a process

Its hard to give advice on writing when I still don't feel proficient myself, but I think maybe that's the most important advice to give. Writing is a process; ... you will never "master" writing....

There's no point when you stop improving. I think this idea is important to remember when writing an assignment for class. People often get stuck into trying to write a perfect paper, and agonize over things such as word choice and style. They also try to write it perfectly the first time around. In my experience I've found it easier to go through a process. The most important parts of the process for me are brainstorming and organization.

Brainstorming is important because it frees you to write down all the ideas you have and not worry about them being stupid. I think that a key problem with the way that I personally used to write was that I never would brainstorm. I would try to write a paper from intro through conclusion. This would make more work for myself often in the end because I wouldn't realize what I really wanted to write about until I was almost done. Its important to put all the brainstorming ideas down on paper; once I visualize, I can organize better.

The second part of the process which I find most helpful is organization. Creativity has never been a personal strong point, probably because I never took the time to develop it. I think many people are in the same position, and worry because their style isn't creative enough. One thing I've realized is that while creativity is wonderful, if it isn't working for you on a particular assignment it is much more important to get your point across clearly. Making outlines is the easiest way to make sure your thoughts are organized and coherent.

What works best for each individual differs, but as a writer with little confidence in my creativity I find brainstorming and organizing two of the best techniques to aid me in writing.