EE 399 Lecture 2 (a) Guidelines To Good Writing

Contents Basic Steps Toward Good Writing. Developing an Outline: Outline Benefits. Initial Development. Creating the outline. Outline Style. The Paragraph. Factors of Adequate Development. Transitional Words / “ Devices ”. Textual Referencing to Numbers Improving Your Style. Guidelines to Good Writing

Basic Steps Toward Good Writing For good writing, you have to understand: subject – purpose – audience Main steps: Planning: ends up with sound outlines Drafting: ends up with 1 st draft Revising: checks ideas and sentences Proofreading: checks for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors Guidelines to Good Writing

Outline Benefits Reflects logical thinking and clear classification about a topic Helps to organize the ideas and presenting them Shows relationships among ideas Defines boundaries and groups Developing an outlineGuidelines to Good Writing

Brainstorm: get ideas Organize: group ideas Search: get material Order: arrange material Label: create headings and sub-headings Initial Development Guidelines to Good WritingDeveloping an outline

Creating the Outline Coordination: to indicate equal significance Subordination: to indicate unequal levels of significance Division: use one basis for division and at least two parts per division Parallelism: parallel expressions for coordination and subordination heads nouns || nouns verbs || verbs adjectives || adjectives Guidelines to Good WritingDeveloping an outline

Outline Styles First style: I. A. B a. b. II. Second style: Guidelines to Good WritingDeveloping an outline

The Paragraph It is a collection of related sentences dealing with a single topic Good paragraph has the following: Reasonable length (at least 3 sentences) Short (or medium) sentences (avoid long ones!) Topic sentence: introducing the main idea of the sentence. Unity: single focus Coherence: e.g. use transition words. Adequate development: the target idea should be made understandable to the target reader (next slide) Guidelines to Good Writing

Adequate Development means: Use examples and illustrations Cite data: Give references (facts, statistics, evidence, … ) Define terms Compare and contrast Examine effects and consequences Offer chronology (sequence) of an event Guidelines to Good Writing

Transitional Words “ Devices ” : 1/2 Used to connect sentences in a paragraph, or two paragraphs together Examples: Causality: accordingly, consequently, for this reason, hence, therefore, thus Intention: in order to do, to this end, with this in mind, for this purpose Location: beyond, here, nearby, there, opposite Concession: at any rate, at least Guidelines to Good Writing

Emphasis: above all, certainly, clearly, indeed, in fact, in short, of course, obviously Closure: in conclusion, in sum, on the whole, to summarize Similarity: likewise, similarly Time: afterward, at the same time, before, earlier, in the meantime, sometimes, later, next, simultaneously Amplification: again, also, apparently, besides, equally important, finally, further, in addition, moreover Detail: especially, in particular, namely, specifically, to enumerate Contrast: however, in contrast, nevertheless, on the contrary, on the other hand Interpretation: fortunately, interestingly, significantly, surprisingly Transitional Words “ Devices ” : 2/2 Guidelines to Good Writing

Textual Referencing to Numbers: 1/2 Numerals used for measured quantities: 1.3 centimeters US $ 25,000 Numbers of ten or less are written as words: Nine cars, NOT 9 cars. If sentence begins with number, it should be in words: Two NOT 2 students came late Guidelines to Good Writing

Textual Referencing to Numbers: 2/2 For consecutive numerical expressions: use words for the 1 st, and numerals for the second Example: Five 3-people groups NOT 5 3-people groups Guidelines to Good Writing

Improving your Style: 1/3 Maintain subject / verb agreement: Use words / verbs suitable to the subject. Choose proper verb tense: Past, present, present perfect, future, … Exploit topic sentence (to introduce the paragraph) Use (suitable) verbs to describe phenomena: Use suitable verbs to reduce wording. Guidelines to Good Writing

Improving your Style: 2/3 Choose the suitable voice (passive or active) Passive: avoiding “ I ” and “ We ” and emphasizing issues (traditional English technical writing). Active: using “ I ”, “ We ” (in use in American English technical writing) Guidelines to Good Writing

Improving your Style: 3/3 Pay attention to special conventions such as: Avoiding gender-specific language:  Use “ humans ” instead of “ man and woman ”.  Use “ plural ” nouns instead of “ singular ” nouns.  Use “ the author ” instead of “ he ”. Avoiding contractions (contractible words):  Use “ can not ” instead of “ can ’ t ”. Proper textual referencing to numbers (next slide) Guidelines to Good Writing

Training Punctuations  Write paragraphs on different topics: e.g. why technical writing is a useful skill: Assignment 1 (Punctuation & Grammar)  Follow the basic steps in preparing for a complete report: Starting from Assignment 2 (Searching for Final Paper Topic)

The END Guidelines to Good Writing