How to Revise Your Paper

New paper due date: 11/25 by email. There is no class that day. Papers must be sent by midnight on Tuesday 11/25. Please send in Word or rtf format only.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR REVISING YOUR PAPER

Please read the points below with an open mind. Some of them directly contradict your previous writing teachers. Those teachers were not wrong; they were just teaching you a particular genre: the student research report. Now I want you to learn a different genre: the technical position paper. Even if you don't plan to be a scientist or engineer, this style of writing is very similar to many professional genres of writing, including proposals, reports to clients, and project critiques. So you will learn a style of writing that can be very useful to you in the future. Honest.

1. Using quotes: I know you all have been taught a method for writing term papers in which you quote some source in support of every point you make. We don't do this in science, where the authority rests in the evidence itself, not in the words that express it or the person talking. So there should be few if any quotes in your paper. Only use direct quotes when the actual words in the quote matter, and other words will not do. This is almost never the case.

Instead of quotes, you should be using the information in the quotes appropriately synthesized into theses or arguments. You can combine information from multiple sources. Suppose Mr. Smith has info on electrical power generation and Mr. Jones has info on greenhouse gases. You could say (and I made these numbers up):

Nuclear power supplies 40% of our electrical power, while contributing only 2% of our carbon emissions (Smith, 2007; Jones, 2006).

If I had tried to do this with quotes, it would have taken three times as much room with one tenth the impact. Using the information rather than quotes will let you structure the information in the best possible way for your purposes.

You should find that getting rid of the quotes makes the paper flow better. It will also reduce the repetition of information many of you had, and should free up space for more in-depth analysis. In short, it will make your paper much better.

2. Writing a good introduction: Many of you were taught the inverted triangle intro, where you start general and focus in to the specific thesis statement in the last sentence. This style is almost never used in the professional or technical world. Instead, I want you to start strong. Your very first sentence needs to convince me to read the paper. So there should be no bland, "Many factors are important in thinking about climate change" kind of openings.

Your introduction should do three things, in this order:

• State a thesis in strong, direct language. The take-home message of the essay should be right there in the first two sentences or so. It should take a position (again, I made it up):
  • Nuclear power has the greatest potential of any energy source to arrest and perhaps reverse climate change.
• Provide context for the thesis:
  • Nuclear power is the only energy source that can provide uninterrupted energy with minimal carbon emissions. Despite public fears, nuclear power has proven to be safe and relatively inexpensive.
  • You would want more than this, a few more sentences.
• Preview the structure of the paper. Many of you did the studenty thing of saying, "this essay will discuss this issue. First it will do this, then it will do that, then finally it will do this other thing." That is acceptable writing, but it is not sophisticated writing. It is preferable to preview the structure of the paper by actually making the arguments very briefly, in the order you will discuss them in the paper:
  • Nuclear power is attractive in three respects: economically, environmentally, and geopolitically. Electricity generated by nuclear power plants compares in cost to that generated by coal-fired plants. Even with the Chernobyl disaster, nuclear power is responsible for far less environmental damage than coal-fired or petroleum-fired power plants. Geopolitically, nuclear power is very attractive; the U.S. controls the great majority of the world's uranium ores. However some challenges remain, including the two most critical issues: long-term disposal of nuclear waste, and security of nuclear materials.
  • Here I have told you exactly what the paper is about, what arguments you can expect to read, and the order you will read them in. Aim for 3/4 to 1 page long for the entire intro.

3. SECTIONS WITH HEADINGS!!! Required.

4. Citations and Reference lists: Please use APA style. This means that citations are embedded in the text like this (Kusnick, 2008), not listed as footnotes. Citations are (Author, year). You only need a page number if you directly quote the author, which of course you're not going to do ;-)

You must use a citation every time you use i) a piece of factual information or ii) an opinion from another author. So there should be many citations studding the text. If all of a paragraph is using information from one source, include a citation at the end of the first and last sentences of the paragraph. There is a whole handout on the Web site on citation and bibliographic formatting; you can find the link on the course schedule.

Your reference list should be alphabetical by author. If there is no personal author (as on a government Web site, for example), then the agency or organization responsible for the document or Web page is the author. The name in the citation should be the same name that the reference is alphabetized by, so the reader can easily find the reference in your list.

5. Tone: You should aim for a very direct, clear style of writing. I saw three common problems:

• Too much drama, not enough power. Don't go for colorful images and exciting words. Power comes from strong statements made very plainly and directly.
• Too cozy. "Now we'll consider..." Avoid pronouns entirely. No I, no you, no we. You want a more formal tone (it's possible to use these pronouns and write well, but it's hard, so give yourself a break and just avoid them until you master writing without them).
• Too big-wordy. Students often pull out the big words and complicated sentence structures to sound more scholarly. Reread my little introduction up above. I used simple language, no big words except "geopolitically". I admit I have a weakness for complex sentences. My intro would probably be better without semi-colons, but the sentences are still easy to follow. Think simple and straightforward.

6. Tightening up the paper: The best way to write a good paper is to write too much and then throw away the bad stuff. I only saw a couple papers that can afford to do that. So my best advice for almost everyone is:

• Write more. Expand on your arguments and explanations. Don't stop until you have at least 7-8 pages.
• Then start pruning. Cut out all unnecessary phrases. Try to cut at least some words from every sentence, and a sentence from every paragraph.
• If you got extensive comments about your organization or clarity, the best advice is the hardest to follow: start over. It is SOOOO much easier to organize from scratch than it is to reorganize a badly flawed paper. Once you have a really nice detailed outline in place, you can go back to your old paper and see if you have any text that can be salvaged and revised to plug into your new structure. There is no shame in starting over - it's often the fastest way to fix a paper.

7. How your paper is being judged: Look at the rubric to see a snapshot of how your paper measured up in all those areas in this current version. Look, we both know it's a first draft, so don't feel discouraged if it's not where you thought it would be. There is a complete grading standard on the paper assignment on the course Web site. Here's my shorthand way of thinking about the grade. If we were a company, with me the boss and you my employees:

• An A paper is one that I could give to a client with no hesitation.
• A B paper is one that can go to the client after some minor revision.
• A C paper should not go anywhere near a client. It needs to go back to the author for some serious overhaul.
• A D paper would make me rethink the author as an employee. I would suggest getting your resume up to date.
• An F paper would be grounds for immediate dismissal.

But this was a first draft. So if I said your paper looks right now like a D or F, you aren't fired ;-) but you should probably talk to me about a possible extension. You have a whole lot of work to do. If I said it looks like a C, then you should be doing some serious revision - not tinkering with words and punctuation, but maybe doing some more research, definitely deepening the explanations and analysis, probably revamping the organization.

8. Last but not least - go back and carefully read the prompt for the paper. Make sure you have addressed the questions you were supposed to address. Make sure you have done everything that is required in the assignment. The best way to succeed in a writing task (in fact, in almost anything you will do in your professional life) is to find out exactly what is expected of you, and then do it. Really simple idea, but amazingly few people actually do it.