Making references to particular sections of a literary work part of your own sentence, as in “Later, in chapter sixteen” or “But in line 235 of the poem,” clutters your writing. Most of the time, you should rely on parenthetical citations for this kind of information. Cite books by page numbers (121-22), poems by line numbers (11-14), long poems such as Iliad by book and line numbers (3.112-18), and Shakepeare’s play by act, scene, and line numbers: (2.1.84-86). For films, use time-codes (1:05:32-1:08:10).

You must also format quotations correctly. That means, for example, setting off long quotations, marking line-breaks when quoting verse, maintaining capitalization, and so on. See the Quotation and Citation Guidelines for Listserv Posts for more detailed instructions.

A cliché is a phrase — most often a metaphor or simile — that has been used so often that it no longer has any trace of originality about it and therefore cannot excite the reader’s imagination. Examples include “life is a journey,” “cried a river of tears,” “loved him with all her heart,” “an emotional rollercoaster,” “grew like a weed,” “high as a kite,” “drank like a fish,” and so on. Using clichés is like writing on automatic pilot. They make your writing boring, and make you seem lazy. Avoid them. If you are using a metaphor or making a comparison you have heard before but you don’t remember where, you can almost bet it is a cliché.

You should write your posts in what is called general English or semi-formal style. That means contractions are acceptable. Still, you should always be careful that no confusion results, and that the contraction adds to the rhythm and even sense of the sentence. For example, it is not can be contracted into either it’s not or it isn’t. Both are acceptable, but each creates a different emphasis. Using contractions well requires a great deal of self-awareness and a good ear for the rhythms of the language. Avoid contractions that are potentially confusing: for example, he’s is the contraction for both he is and he has; a reader can only figure out which one the author intends from the context. 

Using the first-person pronouns (I and we) in scholarly writing was long considered weak and even inappropriate. This may be partly because scholars liked to think of themselves as objective, as if their own personalities and foibles had no influence on their ideas. This ban on the first person has loosened up considerably in recent decades. I certainly expect you to use first-person in your posts occasionally — these are your own responses to the texts, after all. However, students tend to use the first-person too much. You could easily add the phrase “I think that” before every assertion you make, but doing so is pointless because your name is already on the post.  

Avoiding the first-person is also a good way to make your writing more concise. I suggest saving the first-person for when you are either describing a personal experience (which is extremely awkward to do without writing I) or you want to make a distinction between an assertion and a speculation (you write any assertion you are planning to support without using the first-person, but when you want to share a more speculative opinion with us you use the more personal I).

In any case, be careful of the verbs you link with I. Writing “I know” suggests certainty, but may strike readers as arrogant.  Writing “I believe” suggests you are quite confident about the following assertion, but cannot support it with any evidence. Writing “I think” indicates you are unsure about whatever comes next. Writing “I feel” is almost always a terrible choice: one cannot argue with feelings and sensations, which by their very nature are subjective and cannot be presumed to be rational. If you tell me you feel sad, or cold, or happy, or hot, or sleepy, I cannot say “No, you don’t.” Writing “I feel” is thus a way of avoiding any rebuttal. This has no place in scholarly work. Of course, saying “I feel” is fine if your subject actually is your feelings or sensations, not your opinions.

The first time you use someone’s name, the custom is to use both the first and last names, or whatever names, initials, and titles the person used in life, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Emily Dickinson, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Every time after the first, you should use just the last name. A few people are so well known that you can use the last name exclusively from the beginning. If you just write Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, or Chaucer in an English essay, or Lincoln, Jefferson, or Hitler in a history essay, no one will think you mean Homer Simpson, Bob Shakespeare, Joe Dante, Susan Chaucer, Kathy Lincoln, Tim Jefferson, or Chip Hitler. But those exceptions are rare. (And context matters: Joe Dante, a fairly well-known director, could be named in an essay on film.)

Spell out whole numbers requiring two words or fewer; use numerals for numbers requiring four words or more or for those involving a decimal point. You may use either words or numerals for numbers that would require three words, but be consistent. Thus, you would write “seven” and “sixty-one” and “twelve million” by spelling them out, but “1251,” “67,522,816” and “3.6” in numerals. You can write either “three-hundred-thousand” or “300,000.” Exception: This rule does not apply to dates.

Your readers do not need you to tell them that classic authors wrote well. Therefore, sentences like “Homer is a wonderful writer,” “Owen was the greatest poet the Great War produced,” “Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms is a spectacular novel,” and even “Shakespeare creates extraordinary, memorable characters” have virtually no impact. They state the obvious and are too general to make an interesting point. To write in a compelling way about literature requires specific critical judgments: “Some of the audience’s sympathy for Henry dies with Falstaff, but a king does not need sympathy any more than he needs a drinking buddy. He must be more than human, which means in some ways he must be inhuman.”  

For several reasons, you should generally get out of the habit of using slang in academic work. First, slang is usually wordy and imprecise. Second, many slang phrases are clichés. Third, slang changes rapidly: one of the reasons for speaking slang is to use a code the uninitiated cannot understand, so as soon as everyone recognizes a slang phrase, it is passé. Often, the meaning of the slang then changes: When it first appeared, “It’s all good” meant “Don’t worry about apologizing” or “Things are fine between you and me,” but then car companies began to use it in commercials (Toyota: “It’s all good!”) to mean something more literal. Thus, slang stamps your work with an unseen expiration date. “This line is a’ight,” “this line rocks,” “this line is dope,” “this line is def,” “this line is wicked awesome,” “this line is groovy,” and “this line is the cat’s pajamas” all say the same thing —their varying ridiculousness is merely a function of age and cultural context.

Titles of Literary Works

When referring to the titles of literary and artistic works, the general rule is that the titles of works published on their own are italicized and the titles of works published as part of a larger volume (such as an anthology, magazine, or academic journal) belong in quotation marks:

The Great Gatsby [novel]
“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” [short story]
“I am born” [chapter title in a novel]
Paradise Lost [book-length poem]
The Autobiography of George Barker [poem published as its own volume]
“Ode to the West Wind” [shorter poem]
The Importance of Being Earnest [play]
Lohengrin [major classical musical composition]
“Moonlight Sonata” [shorter classical musical composition]
London Calling [record album, cd]
“Guns of Brixton” [song]
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [movie]
“Duck Amuck” [cinematic short]
Star Trek [television series]
“Mirror, Mirror” [episode of a television series]

Never use the title of another written work as your title:

Wrong:  The Brothers Karamazov
Right:  Guilt and Expiation in The Brothers Karamazov
Also good:  “The Torments of Disgrace”:  Guilt and Expiation in Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov
In this case, the first part of the title is in quotation marks because the writer of the paper took this phrase from the book.  Otherwise, no quotation marks would be needed. Also, no colon would be needed if the title and the subtitle were written on separate lines.

Your title should tell us something about your topic.  Avoid vague words and phrases:

Wrong:  Perspectives on The Great Gatsby
Right:  Color My World:  Daisy Buchanan and Whiteness
Wrong:  Bleak House —  An Analysis
Right:  Revolution in the Manor: Dickens’ Plea for Social Justice in Bleak House
Wrong:  My Critique of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet 
Right:  “The Cheer and Comfort of My Eye”:  Shakespeare’s Claudius and Surveillance
Wrong:  “Returning, We Hear the Larks”:  A Reading
Right:  Random Death and Dangerous Beauty in Isaac Rosenberg’s “Returning, We Hear the Larks”

Note that the phrases that are in quotation marks in these titles are actual quotations.  Otherwise, you should not use quotation marks in your title.