Study Guide
Writing
This is my on-going, somewhat eclectic, catalog of tips on writing. You should read everything here and take it to heart, for it's really a confession of my prejudices.
Everything here is stated as absolutes, and the perceptive student will observe that various history books written by professionals in fact break one or all of my rules. That's fine. They're allowed. You are not.
A published historian having (presumably) learned the rules of good writing, can break said rules for effect. Breaking a rule deliberately for effect is one thing; breaking a rule out of ignorance or sloppiness is quite another. I therefore present these rules as absolutes and I will indeed grade your work down for having broken them.
Grammar and Spelling
The course is conducted in English. Therefore, this is indeed an English class.
There's no excuse for grammatical errors because you all have grammar checkers. These grammar checkers are fairly stupid, and using one won't guarantee you won't have grammatical errors, but at least they can catch the obvious stuff.
Spelling counts. See above.
Grammar and spelling count not because they are intrinsically important. In fact, rules of grammar and spelling were made up in the 18th century by a bunch of ruling-class snobs as one way to mark off the ruling class from the common rabble. They are arbitrary.
Grammar and spelling count because if you make enough mistakes, the reader can't understand you, and the goal of anything you write is to communicate what's in your mind to someone else. Since you are asking me to grade that, it follows that you will want to be as clear as possible. While occasional mistakes do not hinder communication, when the mistakes become too frequent, the reader literally does not know what you are trying to say. That's why grammar and spelling count.
On Quoting
In my freshman-level courses, I say this: don't quote. At all. Period. Seriously. There are some good, sensible rules for when to use a quote, but students err on the side of overuse, so the best way to begin learning is to force yourself to use no quotes at all.
For upper-division students, I loosen the rule a bit. Here's the essential rule: quote only when the words themselves are the point of the discussion. This especially makes sense if you are writing about, for example, Luther's opinions on free will. In such a case, the exact language might be very much the issue, and so a quote might be appropriate.
It is never appropriate to quote because the source you are quoting says it better than you could. The reader doesn't care. The reader wants to know what you have to say.
History is not the Present
Stay in the past tense. Nothing in our course transpires in the present, so the past tense is the appropriate form. Absolutely do not use the present tense.
I wouldn't, if I were You
Do not use conditional constructions. Do not say "King Henry was to fight the Battle of Agincourt." Say "King Henry fought the Battle of Agincourt." Do not say "The Persian army fled and some time later would rejoin Darius in the hills." Say "The Persian army fled and some time later rejoined Darius in the hills." The conditional in these cases adds nothing.
It is, in fact, an affectation often heard on the History Channel, which is a source not on my short list of stylistic models worthy of emulation. The writers on the History Channel have evidently decided such a technique adds Drama. It does not. It is, plain and simple, an affection, adding only fluff.
The Passive Voice Shall Be Avoided
Use active voice. If you use a passive construction, you are begging the question, for the passive voice leaves off the agent. It says that something was done, but it does not say by whom it was done. In the study of history, the "by whom" bit is rather the point. You are required to supply the agent. Thus, you may not say "War was declared." You must instead say "War was declared by the English."
Capitalization
Capitalize titles when they are used in conjunction with an individual, but otherwise leave them in lower case. You would refer to popes generically in lower case; e.g., "The popes were important moral figures in Christendom." The individual Pope Boniface VIII gets capitalized. The same applies to kings, dukes, bishops, and so on.
First Things
At the first mention of an individual, use the complete name. At his first appearance in your paper, therefore, he would be named G. Julius Caesar or Gaius Julius Caesar. Thereafter, he could be named Caesar. Names can be somewhat problematic, as your source might not give the complete name. Make it as complete as you can.
At the first mention of an individual, give his or her years. For rulers, this is often the years they ruled. For others, it's birth and death dates. For some, we know only the death date, given as (d. 1417). For some, we know only approximately when they lived, given as (fl. 875), meaning "flourished around 875."
At the first mention of an event, state when it happened. This is history, and chronology is vital.
Paragraphing
No one-sentence paragraphs. A paragraph has a specific function in the structure of writing. A paragraph that has but one sentence is a paragraph that is a topic or an idea with nothing to support it. In analytical writing, that means you literally have nothing to say but have only a stray fact that you don't know what to do with but can't bear to leave out. Either find some supporting information, or leave it out.
Paragraphs are, in fact, the most important building blocks of your writing. When you learn to write good paragraphs, you will learn to think clearly about your subject. When you have learned to think clearly about your subject, you will know how to write good paragraphs. It's very Zen.
That means it's very difficult, that you will never achieve perfection, but that you must always strive to improve. The paragraph is the level of writing that most closely parallels the level of argumentation, of interpretation and analysis. It's one of the most important writing skills you will learn, and it's one of the most difficult to teach, because it's like teaching rhythm in music. The teacher can talk about it and demonstrate it, but in the end, the student must acquire a feel for it.
You Be You
Don't hedge. Don't say "I think" or "in my opinion" or "possibly" or in any other way try to back away from what you are saying. I know this is what you think. It has your name on it. By hedging you only invite the reader to have a lower opinion of your argument. State your case as best you know how; in this course, you will stand or fall by your own words.
Never write an encyclopedia article. Even when I ask for reports, I am not asking for mere reportage. I don't want just the facts. I don't want a paper that says this happened and then this happened and then this happened. Every work you do should have a point of view, an interpretation, an analysis.
On Footnotes
They are required. The form is unimportant--footnotes or endnotes. I despise the MLA style of putting notes in the body of the text and I won't have them. Please do not make me read a paper with MLA style notes.
I call them all footnotes, regardless of where they appear, at the bottom of a page or at the end of the paper. Use whichever is convenient.
Their function is both simple and important: they exist to cite your sources. You are obliged to tell the reader exactly where you found your information, so the reader can check your facts or perhaps do further reading on the point. This is why the footnote has author and title in sufficient detail as to make identification of the book or article unambiguous. And it must have a page number so the reader doesn't have to read 500 pages to check a single point.
The footnote places your writing in the stream of the scholarly dialogue. Sure, no one besides us is going to read your college term paper, but that's beside the point. The purpose of the exercise is to teach you how it's done in the big leagues, to instruct you in the practice of the profession. Key to the profession of history is the scholarly dialogue, the on-going discussion among professionals of the fine points of fact, the variations of interpretation, and it's the footnote that places any one contribution in the context of the larger conversation--a conversation that spans entire generations.
The companion to the footnote is the bibliography. Here is where you give all the publishing information so the reader can track down the book for himself. Having the full form here allows you to use a short form in the footnote. There are lots of other rules about the specific form for footnotes. Turabian or the Chicago Manual of Style will give you all the grisly details.
Points
Get to the point. If your paper is about the Battle of Agincourt, do not start with the beginning of the Hundred Years War. You can assume the reader brings this knowledge to the table. Start with what needs to be known to make sense of the battle.
Stay on the point. If you intend to write about the actual tactics of the battle, do not wander off into talking about the personality and career of Henry V. If you find yourself writing about the Treaty of Paris, you have wandered. If you start writing about the financing of the campaign, you have wandered. Not all who wander are lost, but they are in my class.
Numbers and Words
For numbers that are one hundred or less, use words. He was sixty-three years old. Twelve men served as jurors. For numbers greater than one hundred, numerals are ok, though simple numbers might still be used: ten thousand soldiers marched. But don't say there were seventeen thousand eight hundred and twenty three people in the town.
Problem Words
The guys riding the horsies are cavalry. The place where Jesus was crucified was Calvary.
The things that shoot are cannons. The guys who pray are canons.