I’m taking a break from my essay on Saint Augustine for Comparative Religions. The instructor spent half of the class period on Friday giving us guidelines on what not to do. He also gave us a handout that has a section on diction, saying that slang and casual spoken phrases aren’t appropriate for academic writing but that we should also avoid trying to make our writing “sound smart” by using pretentious words. To avoid:
Beginning a sentence with “Well…”
Using the word “basically”
Slang of any kind
“etc.”—if you have more items for your list, he says, list them. If not, end the list.
Instead of “oftentimes,” simply use “often.”
“literally”==He begs, "please stop using this incorrectly in speech as well. It’s an epidemic."
Do not use “would be” when “is” suffices.
Use an ellipsis only when omitting material from a quote.
He also showed us how to cite a source in our body paragraph:
Janie’s relationship with natural phenomena is shown by her close identification with a pear tree (Hurston 11).
So here’s my first sentence:
Well, after literally sleeping with Saint Augustine for two weeks, I see that oftentimes being a saint doesn’t mean being a goody-goody, a bore, etc., so I have decided that my thesis would be basically that this is… one cool dude! I never thought I’d fall in love with a saint, but that—as God is my witness (God)-- is what happened to me.
On my page for sources, I’ll have God.
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