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Purpose: An attempt to gather together my most common complaints on students' writing

See also

  Best Practices: We expect good English

  Common Grammar Mistakes (pdf)

  Dr. Bauer's writing tips (pdf) or Guide to Written Communication (Word)

  William Pfeiffer, Technical Writing: A Practical Approach, Fourth edition, Prentice Hall, 2000.

  Purdue University Online Writing Lab

Audience: For whom are you writing? What are their interests and backgrounds?

Purpose: What do you want your audience to take away?

Have a detailed outline, at least in your mind.

Give the reader a roadmap.

Provide transitions between sections

Try reading your work out loud.

Try reading a paragraph. Ask yourself, "What am I trying to say?" Consider using your answer instead of whatever is already there.

Proper English style, grammar, and spelling.

Prefer active voice to passive.

Prefer present tense to future

A, B, and C. Note second comma

A comma follows an introductory prepositional phrase

Avoid "input" and "output", especially as verbs

Simple, direct, concise.

Prefer short, simple sentences to long, compound ones

Gender neutral is better than gender specific.

Gender free is better than gender neutral. Consider re-phrasing completely so that the gender of the actors never comes up

Sentences and paragraphs are not too long.

Sentences and paragraphs are not too short

Punctuate mathematics, too

Write mathematics into sentences

Watch subject-verb agreement

Watch articles "a", "an", and "the"

Watch possessives

Avoid beginning a sentence with a conjunction, e.g. "and", "but". If you would really like to start a sentence with "But", consider "However".

Avoid beginning a sentence with "so". Often, "Hence" works better

Avoid "so" as glue

"It's" = "it is"; "its" = belonging to it

Avoid or define jargon. Consider providing a glossary

Use a thesaurus.

Use a (or two) spelling checkers

Know the difference between "that" and "which"