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,” is clunky. 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 Lamia by part and line numbers (2.112-14), and verse plays by act, scene, and line numbers: (2.1.84-86). For films, use time-codes (1:05:32-1:08:10).

See the Quotation and Citation Guidelines for more detailed instructions about citations.

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. How? 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 semi-formal or general English 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. 

You should write formal essays in a more professional, formal style. Use contractions rarely if at all.

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 or essay.  

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.

For a long time, higher education meant a classical education, meaning one rooted in Latin and even classical Greek. Using Latin abbreviations — etc., e.g., i.e., cf., q.e.d., et al. — was an expected part of a scholarly voice. This is no longer true in most circles and for most audiences. The better choice now is to use the English equivalent.

Special note: rarely is using either etc. or its English equivalent and so on a good idea. It shifts the burden of completing the list you are providing onto the reader. If providing a complete list is impossible or silly, the better approach is to use such as or for example before the items, and then restrict yourself to one or two items. Readers will get the idea. For example, say, “Reviewers have compared her to classic horror writers such as Edgar A. Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King,” not “Reviewers have compared her to classic and modern horror writers: Edgar A. Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, and so on.”

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 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 “Keats 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.

Avoid vague or generic titles. At minimum, a title should inform potential readers about your specific focus, not just your topic. Ideally, it also offers wit or memorable phrasing to intrigue them. A title is your first opportunity to engage your reader’s interest and impress them with your voic — don’t waste it:

Bad title:  Perspectives on The Great Gatsby
Great title:  Color My World: Daisy Buchanan and Whiteness

Bad title:  Bleak House —  An Analysis
Great title:  Revolution in the Manor:  Dickens’ Plea for Social Justice in Bleak House

Bad title:  My Critique of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet 
Great title:  “The Cheer and Comfort of My Eye”:  Shakespeare’s Claudius and Surveillance

Bad title:  “Returning, We Hear the Larks”:  A Reading
Great title:  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, or what I call borrowing your cleverness, which is perfectly fine to do. Otherwise, you should not put your own title in quotation marks.