Discovering Ideas

Reminders

The following reminders and suggestions are a review of some of the comments I found myself making most often on the first three essays so far.  Please review them.  Most may not apply to you, but some may.

Essay Length

• Some of you are coming up short on your essays, and I wonder if you are counting the words.  The minimum length for your revised essays is 1500 words.  All current word processing programs allow you to do a word count.  In the Word, just go to Tools > Word Count.  Remember that the minimum word count applies to the text of your essay only, not to your title and list of works cited.  At the end of the semester, I won't do a word count on individual essays, just a total on all four to see if you have 6,000.

Thesis Statement

• Your guideline for developing good thesis statements is DIH 1.4: The Thesis Statement.  Use it, and refer back to it when you have questions.  When I mark your essays and your thesis statements I use the summary of the rules for developing thesis statements in the Checklist for Revising Thesis Statements, as the very end of the section.  TS 1, TS 2, etc. refer back to the Checklist, which is linked back to the main document if you need more explanation.
  
• TS 6:  Using the active voice.  I'm still seeing a number of thesis statements that use "is" or another linking verb.   If this is just inattention, it will be easy for you to correct once you notice it.  But if the problem is that you still aren't sure what the active voice is and how to produce it, you need to work on this.  Luck is not on your side if you can't tell when a clause is in the active voice.  Review DIH 1.4.3.3 (the link above) and the tutorial on The Active Voice.  If you still have questions, ask them.
  
• Think about your core sentence.  The most important words in any sentence, grammatically, are the subject and the verb.  So pay attention to them.  As you work with your thesis statement, identify the subject and the verb in each clause.  Wherever possible, make the subject refer to a person or a group of people (an organization, a government agency, a business, a set or group of persons).  Try to avoid using an abstract noun as a subject. 
  
   
• Remember that your thesis statement is flexible.  You can change it anytime you want.  It is a tool you are using to clarify what you want the essay to say, not a rigid formula that you have to follow.  The purpose of the thesis statement is not to prevent you from saying what you want, but to help you to say what you want, and to make sure that you have said it.
  

Pronoun Problems

• That/who.  Look up that in the DIH Glossary.
  
• They for singular nouns.  6a.  You want to avoid sounding sexist by using "he" or "his" to refer to both men and women.  This desire has led many of us to fall into the habit of using "they" or "their" even when the noun it refers back to is singular.  This is always wrong.  Most of the time, you can solve the problem by using the plural for the original noun.  So don't say, "Each employee who wants to change their insurance program must submit an application."  Instead say, "All employees who want to change their insurance program must submit an application."

Citations

• We use MLA format for citing sources, as you will in all English classes.  The MLA format is described in detail, with many examples, in 33a.  The first part, 33a1, covers parenthetical citations in the text.   The last part, 33a2, covers preparing a list of works cited.  Ignore chapters 34, 35, and 36, which are different formats.  This material may come in handy when you take a psychology or history class, but don't use these formats in our class or you will be wrong. 
  
• If a citation goes, as it usually does, at the end of a sentence, the period follows the citation.  If it is a quotation, the closing quotation marks will come before the opening parenthesis of the citation, but the period ending the sentence will come after the closing parenthesis of the citation, thus: 

  • "Smith is the greatest living authority on the sex life of the Newt" (Jones 34).  

  This is because the citation is part of the sentence (though a parenthetical part) but not part of the quotation.  The only exception to this rule would be a long quotation that is indented, as described in 20a.  With an indented quotation, the period goes before the citation.
  

• When you use parenthetical citations, you are pointing the reader to your list of works cited.  Therefore, you need to have correct works cited entries for each source before you can be sure you are citing them correctly. 
   
• The list of works cited entries, in MLA format, are not numbered.  They are arranged in alphabetical order according to the first element in each entry.  If there is an author, the first element will always be the author's last name.  If there is not an author, the first element will be the title of the article or section or a Web page (in quotation marks--20b) or if there is no subdivision, the title of the book or major Web page (in Italics--24a). 
   
• The name of a magazine, newspaper, or journal will never appear first in a correct works cited entry, nor will the URL for a Website.  So you will never have a parenthetical citation that uses the name of a magazine or the URL for a Website.  Whenever you have an author's name, that will appear first in the list of works cited, so if there is an author the author's last name will always appear in the parenthetical citation.  If there are two or three authors, all the authors' names will appear in the citation: (Jones, Smith, and Brown). 
   
• If it is a print work that extends beyond one page, you will always give the page number of the information cited as well.  If it is a Website, there will be no page number.  

Proofreading

•  Proofread the essays you are including in your portfolio carefully.  I strongly recommend that you do not try to proofread your work on the computer screen.  Instead, print it out on paper when you have what you think is a finished essay.  Then read through the entire thing aloud, using your finger or a pencil to guide your eyes along the line.  Both of these techniques, reading aloud and pointing to the words with your finger as you read, will help you to see what is actually on the page rather than what you intended to type.  The hardest thing to do in proofreading your own work is to see what you actually typed, rather than just rush past it assuming that you typed what you intended.  As you read, when you see anything that looks as if it might be wrong, circle it.  Or if it is an obvious typo that you can correct on the spot, correct it.  After you have gone through the whole essay go back to the beginning and, with your handbook and a dictionary, check the circled parts and correct any errors.  Proofreading takes time, so allow for it in your planning.  I am still seeing a fair number of errors that you would have corrected if you had seen them.  Find them before you submit your portfolio.

Discovering Ideas
Palomar College
jtagg@palomar.edu
This page was last edited: 01/05/09