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Common Student Errors in Coursework Essaysand how to avoid them. . .

1. Always read the set question carefully and make sure you answer all partsof it.

2. Take a stance on the topic you are writing about, based on the weight ofevidence you have collected. Direct all your subpoints towards defending your stance.

!. Academic writing is di"erent from #ournalistic and other kinds of writing.$n #ournalistic writing, you use style, opinion and moral #udgement topersuade your reader. $n academic writing your argument stands or fallsentirely on the quality of your evidence alone. $f you use #ournalistic style, you will make your reader suspect you are using it to hide weak evidence.%ee &., '. and (.)

*. Always back up your arguments with detailed evidence from the

secondary literature, and avoid speculation + if you cant prove it on thebasis of the evidence presented, dont say it.

&. Avoid e-aggerations e.g. massive/, #udgemental quali0ers e.g.monotonous/ and #ournalistic cliches and colloquialisms e.g. e-ploded, farcry/ they make the reader suspicious that you are relying on personal biasrather than evidence in making your #udgements.

'. nly use articles and books that have been peerreviewed, especially forfacts. That means subscriptiononly academic #ournals, and books fromuniversity and commercial academic presses.

(. $f you use a theoretical concept or a piece of #argon e.g. liminality,discourse/, make sure you are 1334 sure in your own mind what it means.That way, you will use it correctly and consistently.

5. $f you do use specialised concepts, you need to make sure that you haveread the relevant theoretical literature and understood it e.g. Turner onliminality, 6oucault on discourse/.

7. Aim for simplicity and clarity in your language use dont try to be 8poetic9or 8academic9.

13. $f you 0nd yourself writing 8As $ discussed earlier,9 you shouldinstead rearrange your paragraphs so that you dont need to repeat yourself. This rule may be rela-ed if your essay is c. 5,333 words orlonger, and used only very sparingly./

11. :se of 0rst person a/) you should only use 0rst person $/ in theintroduction and conclusion when laying out and summarising theargument, and only very sparingly in the body of the te-t IF you are 1334sure that your point is entirely original and noone has ever made it before.

12. :se of 0rst person b/) :se evidencebased words with 8$9, e.g. $argue, $ will demonstrate, $ will present evidence, $ suggest. ;ever usesub#ective words, e.g. $ think, $ feel, $ believe, in my opinion. The latter

make it sound as if you have no evidence to back up your statements.

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1!. :se of 0rst person c/) :se 0rst person singular $/, not plural we/the latter makes assumptions about your audience that may not be true,and might irritate them.

1*. Avoid the use of rhetorical questions. <ssays answer questions theydont ask them.

1&. Avoid generalisations like 8the =ungarian peasant9, 8scholarssuggest that9 + which =ungarian peasants they are all di"erent, and someare women/ which scholars name them/>

1'. ?e rigorously accurate with factual details recheck your sourcescarefully to avoid sloppy errors.

1(. @ake sure you get your dates and chronology correct i.e. the orderof events as they occurred in time./

15. atherines pet hate no. 1) Bou cannot use a comma to separate twosentences that are capable of standing on their own use a semicolon, afull stop, or 8and9 or 8but9.  Wrong: $ went to the shop, however, $ didnt

buy food. $ went to the shop, $ didnt buy food. Correct: $ went to theshop however, $ didnt buy food. OR  $ went to the shop but $ didnt buyfood. OR  $ went to the shop. $ didnt buy food.

17. atherines pet hate no. 2) $ncorrect apostrophe use. ne dog, twodogs, one dogs dinner, two dogs dinners, ?:T its dinner, their dinner,whose dinner> 8$ts9 always C 8it is9.

23. $f someone is dead e.g. %travinsky/, use past tense was/ to referthem, not present tense is/. e.g. %travinskys Le sacre du printemps  was 0rst performed in 171!. =owever)

21. Bou may use present tense to refer to someones works IF you arediscussing them as they e-ist in the present day. e.g. The 0rst bar of%travinskys Le sacre du printemps is a bassoon solo.

22. There is only one question that can be 8begged9) 8n what basis are you making that sweeping assumption>9 $n all other cases, questions are8raised9.

2!. To 8e-cept9 is to make an e-ception to 8accept9 is to receive oragree to something.

2*. To 8a"ect9 is to inuence something to 8e"ect9 is to causesomething to happen.

2&. To 8bear9 is to carry bear comparison/ to 8bare9 is to take yourclothes o".

2'. 8Disinterest9 means neutrality and ob#ectivity it does not mean lackof interest.

2(. 8<normity9 means horror or atrocity it does not mean largeness.

25. 8Eractise9 C verb 8practice9 C noun. $ practise the violin every dayin the doctors practice.

27. 8Erinciple9 C standard or value 8principal9 C main or chief.

!3. Fompound ad#ectives) 8$n the twentieth century9 twentieth Cad#ective century C noun/ BU 8$n twentiethcentury music9 twentiethcentury C ad#ective music C noun/.

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!1. $n <nglish, ordinary nouns are not capitalised e.g. nation, not;ation disco, not Disco/.

!2. ;umbers below 133 should be in words) 8four9, 8twentyseven9,8nineteenth9.

!!. @ake absolutely sure you spell personal names and foreignlanguagewords correctly.

!*. To avoid typos, proofread your essay on paper, as well as using thespelling and grammar checker.

!&. Bou need to footnote every fact and idea you take from anothersource, and not #ust direct quotations. As a rough guide you should haveappro-imately 13 footnotes per 1333 words.

!'. Bou should only quote another source directly if it says something soperfectly or articulately that you couldnt possibly put it better in your ownwords. $n all other cases you should paraphrase, but you still need tofootnote your source.

!(. @ake sure you accurately reproduce quotations from other sources.

!5. Guotations of 1! lines should be integrated into the paragraphusing quotation marks quotations of * lines or longer should be indentedand set o" from the paragraph without quotation marks.

!7. Dont italicise quotations use plain roman. Bou may use a smallerfont for indented quotations.

*3. @ake sure your footnotes are internally consistent, whicheversystem you choose to use.

*1. After the 0rst time you cite a source in a footnote, you may use ashort reference form thenceforward, e.g. Hacy, 8=istorical worldviews,9 p.13'. Bou may use 8ibid9 in footnotes if you use the same source more thanonce in direct succession.

*2. p. C one page pp. C two or more pages.

*!. ?ibliographies should have a hanging indent they should never bebulletpointed.

**. @ake sure your page setup is A* not :% Ietter/, that all yourmargins are at least 1 inch wide, that your spacing is at least 1.& lines,and that you use no smaller than 12 point font. therwise your ancient

halfblind lecturers will struggle to read your work.

*&. To improve your writing style, $ recommend reading the printededition of a serious broadsheet newspaper every day e.g. The Guardian,The Daily Telegraph/. This e-hortation does not include reading the blogse.g. 8Fomment is 6ree9/. Bou can read the printed edition online, butwhat gets printed is rigorously copyedited for grammatical and synta-errors, whereas the blogs are not.