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The Voyage a close reading

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how to analyse prose fiction

Close reading is the most important skill you need for any form of literary studies. It means paying especially close attention to what is printed on the page. It is a much more subtle and complex process than the term might suggest. Close reading means not only reading and understanding the meanings of the individual printed words; it also involves being sensitive to all the subtle uses of language in the hands of skilled writers.

This can mean anything from a work’s particular vocabulary, sentence construction, and imagery, to the themes that are being explored. It also includes the way in which the story is being told, and the view of the world that it offers. It involves almost everything from the smallest linguistic items to the largest issues of literary understanding and judgement.

One of the first things you need to acquire for serious literary study is a knowledge of the vocabulary, the technical language, indeed the jargon in which literature is discussed. You need to acquaint yourself with the technical vocabulary of the discipline and then go on to study how its parts work.

What follows is a short list of features you might keep in mind whilst reading. They should give you ideas of what to look for. It is just a prompt to help you get under way.

Close reading – Checklist

Vocabulary
The author’s choice of individual words – which might vary from plain and simple to complex and ‘literary’.

Syntax
The arrangement of words in sentences. Often used for emphasis or dramatic effect.

Figures of speech
The rhetorical devices used to give decoration and imaginative expression to literature, such as simile, metaphor, puns, alliteration, and irony.

Literary devices
The devices commonly used in literature to give added depth to the work, such as imagery or symbolism.

Rhythm
The cadence or flow of words and phrases – including stress and repetition.

Narrator
Ask yourself, who is telling the story.

Narrative mode
First or third person narrator. (‘I am going to tell you …’ or ‘He left the room in a hurry’)

Point of view
The perspective from which the events of the story are related.

Characterisation
How a character is created or depicted.

Dramatisation
How any dramatic elements of a piece of work are created and arranged.

Plot
How the elements of the story are arranged.

Tone
The author’s attitude to the subject as revealed in the manner of the writing

Structure
The shape of the piece of work, or the connection between its parts.

Theme
The underlying topic or issue, as distinct from the overt story.

How to read closely

Close reading can be seen as a form of special attention which we bring to a piece of writing. It involves thinking more deeply than usual about the implications of the words on the page. Most normal people do this automatically, without being specially conscious of the fact. The academic study of literature brings the process more to the surface and makes it explicit. There are four levels or types of reading which become progressively more complex.

Language – You pay especially close attention to the surface elements of the text – that is, to aspects of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax. You might also note such things as figures of speech or any other features which contribute to the writer’s individual style.

Meaning – You take account at a deeper level of what the words mean – that is, what information they contain, plus any further meanings they might suggest.

Structural – You note the possible relationships between words within the text – and this might include items from either the language or the meanings.

Cultural – You note the relationship of any elements of the text to things outside it. These might be other pieces of writing by the same author,
or other writings of the same type by different writers. They might be items of social or cultural history, or even other academic disciplines which might seem relevant, such as philosophy or psychology.

Close reading is not a skill which can be developed to a sophisticated extent overnight. It requires a lot of practice in the various linguistic and literary disciplines involved – and it requires that you do a lot of reading.

The good news is that most people already possess the basic skills required. They have acquired them automatically through being able to read – even though they haven’t been conscious of doing so. This is rather like many other things which we learn unconsciously. After all, you don’t need to know the names of your leg muscles in order to walk down the street.

The Voyage a close readingStudying Fiction is an introduction to the basic concepts and the language you will need for studying prose fiction. It explains the elements of literary analysis one at a time, then shows you how to apply them. The guidance starts off with simple issues of language, then progresses to more complex literary criticism.The volume contains stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence, and Charles Dickens. All of them are excellent tales in their own right. The guidance on this site was written by the same author.
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Now here’s an example of close reading in action. The short passage which follows comes from Katherine Mansfield’s short story The Voyage. This concerns the journey made by a young girl at night on a ferry with her grandma. If you wish to read the complete story in conjunction with these tutorial notes, it is available free at Project Gutenberg.

redbtn The Voyage

If you would like to treat this as an interactive exercise, read the passage through a number of times. Make notes, and write down all you can say about what goes to make up its literary ‘quality’. That is, you should scrutinise the passage as closely as possible, name its parts, and say what devices the author is using. Don’t be afraid to list even the most obvious points.

Don’t worry if you are not sure what name to give to any feature you notice. You will see the technical vocabulary being used in the discussion notes which follow, and this should help you pick up this skill as we go along.

Fenella’s father pushed on with quick, nervous strides. Beside him her grandma bustled along in her crackling black ulster; they went so fast she had now and again to give an undignified little skip to keep up with them. As well as her luggage strapped into a neat sausage, Fenella carried clasped to her grandma’s umbrella, and the handle, which was a swan’s head, kept giving her shoulder a sharp little peck as if it too wanted her to hurry. … Men, their caps pulled down, their collars turned up, swung by; a few women all muffled scurried along; and one tiny boy, only his little black arms and legs showing out of a white wooly shawl, was jerked along angrily between his father and mother; he looked like a baby fly that had fallen into the cream.

Here are some comments, using the checklist as a guide. The objective is not to be totally exhaustive, mulling over every single word and punctuation mark in the paragraph. Rather, it’s to develop the skill of being sensitive to language, and to notice special effects when they are offered.

It’s also true that a really in depth close reading is much easier if you know the author’s work well – so that you can see regular patterns of language use and recurrent effects and themes.

Vocabulary
The language of the passage is fairly plain and simple. Apart from the term ulster (an overcoat) which might not be familiar to readers today, most of the terms used would be known even to a reasonably well-educated child. And this is entirely appropriate since Mansfield is relating the story to us largely from a child’s point of view. Her use of terms such as ‘>little skip’, ‘ neat sausage’, ‘tiny boy’, and baby fly reinforce this effect.

Syntax
The word order and grammar is that of normal written English. The only feature I can observe here under this heading is that in some clauses she separates the subject from its verb by interposing dependent clauses – ‘Men, their caps pulled down, their collars turned up, swung by’. But this is just giving variety to her construction of sentences.

Rhythm
She creates a briskness and liveliness in her prose to match the business of what is going on in the scene. This is done by the variation of sentence length. The first is quite short, the second is longer, but it is split into two which have a similar construction to the first.

It’s also done by her use of a form of repetition called parallelism. Notice how ‘quick, nervous strides’ is echoed by ‘crackling black ulster’: the construction is ‘adjective + adjective + noun’.

Figures of Speech
Under figures of speech you might have noticed the simile – ‘like a baby fly that had fallen into the cream’. That is, the small baby boy is directly compared to a fly. Then there is an example of onomatopoeia in the phrase ‘crackling black Ulster‘ – because the words themselves sound like the thing they are describing.

There is also an example of anthropomorphism in the swan’s-head-handled umbrella giving Fenella a ‘sharp little peck’ on the shoulder. That is, the inanimate object is spoken of as if it were alive – and once again this is entirely appropriate given that the story is being told from the child’s point of view.

Mansfield also uses alliteration more than once. In ‘crackling black Ulster’ there is repetition of the ‘a’, ‘ck’, and ‘l’ sounds; and in ‘white wooly shawl’ there is repetition of the ‘w’ and the ‘l’ sounds.

Tone
This can be quite a difficult feature to pin down accurately, but I think in this passage you could say that there was a light, brisk and somewhat playful attitude to what is going on. That’s the safest way of defining tone – describing the author’s attitude to the subject as briefly as possible. The tone here is entirely appropriate – because we are being invited to see the world from a child’s point of view.

Narrative mode
This is the traditional manner of story-telling using the third person and omniscient narrator. That is, Fenella is referred to as ‘she’ and Katherine Mansfield, as the person telling the story, does not intrude as an ‘I’ speaking directly to the reader. Moreover, as narrator, she knows what is going on in her characters’ heads and their feelings. She is ‘all-knowing’, which is what ‘omniscient’ means.

Narrator
This must be Katherine Mansfield, because she does not invent another person who stands between herself and the reader, telling the story. This might seem rather obvious, but some authors invent a fictional narrator who tells the story, and might even be a character in it.

Characterisation
It’s not easy to say a lot, based on such a short extract. But you might observe that ‘grandma bustled along’, which gives the impression of a lively older woman. (This is confirmed by events later in the story). And the observations about the umbrella and the little boy, as well as the ‘little skip’ Fenella is forced to make, help to establish her as a young girl.

Notice that Mansfield as narrator does not tell us that Fenella is a young girl: we work this out from the few details we have been given. Notice too that this information about the characters is being given piecemeal as the story progresses. We are being left to put together these pieces ourselves.

Point of view
Many of these small details – the peck from the swan’s head umbrella, the little boy looking like a fly – help to establish that the story is being told from Fenella’s point of view. That is, the events of the story are being shown as she would experience and see them. This is quite an important feature of prose fiction.

Drama
It’s not easy to say much about this based on such a short extract – or if we were reading the story for the first time. But most of the tension in the story is created by the fact that we are not quite sure what is going on. But returning with more knowledge of the story, we might note that the father is ‘nervous’ because he is due to be separated from his mother and his daughter. The grandmother ‘bustles’ along because she has the task of conveying Fenella to her new life.

Meanwhile Fenella is busy observing the world around her. Notice a small (and dramatic) detail of the world she sees. The little boy is being ‘jerked along angrily between his father and mother’ [my emphasis]: that is, the way some adults treat their children is not so pleasant.

 

We’ll stop at this point. It’s not really possible to say anything about plot, structure, or theme unless you’ve read the whole story. But almost everything listed was accessible even if you were reading the passage for the first time.

Literary studies are not conducted in such detail all the time, but it is very important that you try to develop the skill of reading as closely as possible. It really is the foundation on which everything else is based.

The next point to make about such close reading is that it becomes easier if you get used to the idea of reading and re-reading a piece of work. The Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov (famous for Lolita) once observed that “Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only re-read it”.

What he meant by this apparently contradictory remark is that the first time we read a book we are busy absorbing information, and we cannot appreciate all the subtle connections there may be between its parts – because we don’t yet have the complete picture before us. Only when we read it for a second time (or even better, a third or fourth) are we in a position to assemble and compare the nuances of meaning and the significance of its details in relation to each other.

That’s why the activity is called ‘close reading’. You should try to get used to the notion of reading and re-reading very carefully, scrupulously, and in great detail.

Finally, let’s try to dispel a common misconception. Many people ask, when they first come into contact with close reading: “Doesn’t analysing a piece of work in such detail spoil your enjoyment of it?” The answer to this question is “No – on the contrary – it should enhance it.” The simple fact is that we get more out of a piece of writing if we can appreciate all the subtleties and the intricacies which exist within it. Nabokov also suggested that “In reading, one should notice and fondle the details”.

© Roy Johnson 2004

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Titles in essays

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1. Publications of book length such as text books or novels should normally be presented by giving their titles in italics. [In hand-written essays, this will be denoted by underlining].

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
R.G. Lipman’s Positive Ergonomics

2. When using a word-processor you should use italics for titles (with bold reserved for special emphasis). Remember to be consistent throughout your document, and do not combine any of these attributes.

3. You should not combine underlining or italics with quotation marks.

4. The titles of short stories and songs are indicated by single quote marks:

Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘The Voyage’
Kurt Weil’s show tune ‘September Song’

5. Thus, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ is a celebrated short story, but his long novel Ulysses is even more famous.

6. When offering book titles in references and endnotes the sequence of information given is as follows:

AUTHOR—TITLE—PUBLISHER—DATE—PAGE

Valerie Shaw, The Short Story, Longman, 1983, p.56.

If you are using the Harvard system of referencing, remember to put the date of publication after the author’s name.

7. The titles of individual poems are indicated by using roman type and single quote marks, thus:

W.H.Auden’s ‘Night Mail’
Browning’s ‘Pippa Passes’

8. Where a long poem has been published on its own, it may be indicated as a book, thus:

T.S.Eliot’s The Waste Land
Milton’s Paradise Lost

9. Where a number of poems has been collected as a group, they are treated as a book, as follows:

‘Tess’s Lament’ is one of the poems in Thomas Hardy’s 1903 collection, Poems of the Past and the Present.

10. You should always make a clear distinction between fictional characters and books which are named after them. David Copperfield is a fictional character, whereas David Copperfield is the novel which bears his name. The same is true of Middlemarch (the fictional town) and Middlemarch (the novel).

11. Plays are indicated in the same way as novels, because they are usually published in single volume form.

Oscar Wilde’s play, Lady Windermere’s Fan
Shakespeare’s The Tempest

12. Magazines, newspapers, and journals are indicated in the same way as books:

The Economist     The Daily Telegraph
Architectural Review     English Studies

13. Individual articles from within these separate publications are indicated by single quotation marks and roman type, as follows:

A.B. Smith’s review article ‘Foreign Practices’ in The Observer business section of 27 October 1991.

14. The titles of films, radio and television programmes are also indicated by italics:

Double Indemnity     Round the Horne
Newsnight     World in Action

15. This convention also applies to the names of famous operas, ballets, paintings and sculptures:

The Magic Flute     Swan Lake
The Night Watch     David

16. When the title of a work includes mention of another book title, the second title should be placed in single quotation marks:

A.B. Smith, The Textual Development of ‘King Lear’, New York: Scholarship Press, 1986.

17. Notice that capital letters are used in the first word and any other important words of titles. Less important words such as ‘and’, ‘of’, and ‘in’ are not capitalised:

The Power and the Glory
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

18. The titles of works which are stored in electronic form will follow similar conventions, but are described separately.

19. Sometimes in documents stored as web pages, bold is used instead of italics because it shows up better on screen.

20. Whichever conventions you use, you should be consistent throughout your document.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Tone in essays

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1. The tone in essays or any other piece of writing can be roughly defined as ‘the author’s attitude to the subject – as manifest in the writing’. In academic essays (unless you have been instructed otherwise) you should adopt a tone which is neutral and objective. Your attitude to the subject should be serious and formal.

2. For instance, too much use of ‘I think that…’ and ‘I feel that…’ has the effect of making an essay too personal and subjective in its tone, as in this example:

‘I think that E.H. Carr is a really brilliant historian, and when I first started reading his book The Bolshevik Revolution I suddenly felt … ‘

3. This approach is also likely to encourage a casual and conversational style, which is inappropriate in a formal essay.

4. Avoid using features such as slang (‘far-out’) contractions (‘can’t’ or ‘they’ll’) and vogue words (‘situation’, ‘ongoing’, ‘fantastic’) which create a tone which is too chatty and casual.

5. Avoid the use of ‘I think’ and ‘I believe’ by substituting impersonal expressions such as ‘It seems that…Carr argues that…but there is now increasingly good evidence to show that…’

6. The following example illustrates an inappropriate tone which combines chattiness with writing in note form. It is from a student essay on ‘The Origins of the Industrial Revolution’.

Easy access to raw materials – coal, iron, etc. And cheap labour too (all exploited of course!). Then inland waterways and the building of the ship canal. Lots of good markets overseas as well.

7. These notes should be expanded and expressed as grammatically complete sentences in a manner such as this:

In that part of the North West there was easy access to raw materials such as coal and iron. The sources of labour were also cheap at that time since there was such unchecked exploitation. A system of inland water ways provided good transportation. This was especially true following the construction of the Manchester Ship Canal. In addition, Britain in the nineteenth century had access to (and in some cases a monopoly of) a number of overseas markets.

8. A manner of expression which is direct, simple, and clear is preferable to one which is flamboyant or wordy. Keep your sentences short and to the point. ‘He sent for the doctor’ is more direct than ‘He called into requisition the services of the family physician.’

9. Some people imagine that an ornate or flamboyant manner is necessary in order to create a good impression. This is not true. In fact the opposite is the case. Too many flourishes or a sense or wordiness will weaken your essay. Adopt a plain, straightforward prose style. Remember that academic essays are not exercises in creative writing. You will not give your work a sense of purpose or seriousness simply by adding literary decoration. Even when one is sorely tempted – one should eschew the grandiloquent. [That’s a deliberately bad example, by the way!]

10. All this is not a killjoy injunction against writing which is stylistically attractive. If you write fluently and include the occasional well-turned phrase, then your work will be more pleasant to read. If you are in any doubt however — Keep it plain and simple.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Topics in essays

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1. Topics are distinct units of meaning. They are normally sub-divisions of a subject, but they can sometimes stand as the purpose of an essay in their own right.

2. For instance, if the subject of an essay was ‘government’, the separate topics for discussion might be ‘finance and taxation’, ‘law-making’, ‘public health’, and ‘international diplomacy’. Each one of these however might, in a different context, be a subject on its own.

3. If ‘international diplomacy’ became the main subject of an essay, this might be considered by sub-dividing it into topics such as ‘government policy’, ‘political history’, ‘trade and industry’, and ‘foreign relations’.

4. In most essays, the subject in question can and should be broken down into a series of separate topics. These are then arranged in some persuasive or logical order at the planning stage to form your argument.

5. Remember that each paragraph normally deals with a separate topic. This should be signalled (usually by a ‘topic sentence’) at the outset. Its relevance to the subject in question should also be explained as part of the argument.

6. In the following essay plan the main subject is ‘French wine’ and the topics to be discussed are Loire wines, Bordeaux wines, Cotes du Rhone wines, and Burgundy wines.

Introduction

Loire
* red wine
* white wine

Bordeaux
* red wine
* white wine

Cotes du Rhone
* red wine
* white wine

Bugundy
* red wine
* white wine

Conclusion

7. In the following essay plan the main subject is ‘Congestion charging in city centres’, and the topics to be covered are – traffic density, ecology, economy, and politics.

Introduction

Part One – In favour of congestion charges
* [traffic] reduces volume
* [ecology] less air pollution
* [economy] generates local income
* [politics] positive social control

Part Two – Against congestion charges
* [traffic] public transport alternatives
* [ecology] transfers problem elsewhere
* [economy] reduces profitable activity
* [politics] punishes tax-payers

Conclusion

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Towards Electronic Journals

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future directions for academic publishing

Academic publishing is in crisis. In the past, university researchers have been dependent on publishers to print and distribute their work in the form of books and scholarly journals. Now that they realise they can use the Internet, it’s time to change. Here are the arguments. Academics are under pressure to publish. If they produce articles, books, and research papers which are assessed by their peers, this helps them to promote their careers – and we may or may not be wiser for what they write. All this is done at the expense of taxpayers, who foot the bill for their salaries whilst they spend time writing. Academic publishers take their works and turn them into marketable products. And who buys these very specialised products? Well, very few people actually. Mainly research libraries – also funded by taxpayers’ money.

Towards Electronic JournalsThere’s an interesting conjunction here. Academic authors receive very little in the way of royalties from these sales. A five percent payment on sales is normal for a book. Zero percent is equally normal for a journal; and there have recently been tales of writers paying publishers to produce their work.

D’you think that’s bad? There’s worse to come. At the moment, because the UK academic ratings are taken at fixed intervals, some publishers have recently been making it known that a payment from authors would help, just to move their work up the production schedule, in time for the next assessment.

The authors have actually been paid already in terms of time off from a salaried post to produce the works [the system of termly and yearly ‘sabbaticals’ – that is, fully paid leave]. They will be rewarded by the salary increases (and more time off) which come with promotion. But at the very time when cuts in public expenditure mean that libraries are no longer able to subscribe to expensive journals and books which only a few people read – along comes the World Wide Web.

This was actually created (and here’s a further irony) so that academic researchers could share their findings across the Internet – doing so quickly and free from any commercial restrictions. If you write a paper on rocket science, you can put the results directly onto a web site and announce the fact to special interest groups. That way, you can invite feedback, critical comment, and peer review – and receive it fairly quickly, instead of having to wait up to two years as you would if the paper was put into the dinosaur production methods of commercial publishers.

Everyone loses as a result of this sequence of events: scientists are paying more in their time to obtain needed articles, libraries are paying higher subscription fees while providing less information, and because of this, their funders are concerned and sceptical about increased costs.

Publishers, on the other hand, are severely criticized, and they continue to lose subscribers, prestige, and the potential advertising revenue that accompanies higher circulation. In other words, the increased prices have resulted in a lose, lose, lose, lose situation for publishers, scientists, libraries, and their funders.

Scholarly journals take a long time to produce; they are very expensive; and very few people read them. Why bother then, when the same results can be made available fast, free of charge, and to a much wider audience? These are some of the fundamental issues underpinning this book. It’s an investigation into basic questions related to publishing in this form. How much does it cost? What are the trends in scholarly article authorship and readership? What are the overall implications of electronic journals to publishers, libraries, scientists, and their funders?

The argument on costs is overwhelming. Electronic publishing saves on printing costs, re-printing costs, storage costs, archiving, and inter-library loan costs. And all the other arguments return again and again to the obvious advantages of electronic publication. Yet Carol Tenopir and Donald King are no revolutionaries – in fact they are not even very radical.

They point out that readers both inside and outside universities will continue to demand materials in printed form. Which is true. It’s amazing how many people continue to print out documents – for the sake of convenience, and habit. And throughout the entire study they assume that the production of journals will be organised and conducted by commercial publishers, making charges for access and subscriptions. This might be true – for a while.

The information they assemble in answer to their own questions seems therefore to be provided as answers to the basic questions raised by this interesting cultural phenomenon.

It’s a study which is aimed at researchers, librarians, publishers, and anyone interested in electronic publication, and they go out of their way to provide hard evidence for decision-makers.

They offer a realistic examination of what scientists, publishers, and librarians can expect from scholarly journals, based on hard quantitative evidence. This provides revealing information with which to address such searching questions as:

  • Are printed journals worth saving?
  • What are the consequences of escalating journal prices?
  • Will electronic journals replace print journals?
  • What is the current readership of scientific journals – in both print and electronic form?
  • What are the costs of publishing in print and electronic form?

They go into the finest details of pricing, cost-per-reader, and variations of delivery – but it is all posited on the notion that ‘journals’ are most naturally available in printed form. The details even include the history of scholarly journals; subsidies; and readership behaviour – including even the number of hours required to keep abreast of a subject.

If you are interested in one of the lesser-known but burgeoning forms of electronic publishing – then you should find this a rich source of hard facts for the debate. And if it’s a subject close to your academic heart, let me strongly urge you to read it in conjunction with Anne Okerson’s Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads in which the arguments for electronic publication and self-archiving were first made available in printed form.

© Roy Johnson 2001

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Carol Tenopir and Donald W. King, Towards Electronic Journals: Realities for Scientists, Librarians, and Publishers, Washington, DC: Special Libraries Association, 2000, pp.488, ISBN 0871115077

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Tutor comments on essays

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1. Tutor comments written on your essay script are the most detailed response you are likely to receive on what you have produced. You should take the trouble to read these comments carefully, and learn from them as much as you can.

2. Where there is no comment on the script you can usually assume that your argument is to the point. Tutors often find it difficult to comment on an argument which is relevant and well articulated. Ticks on the script are usually a sign that your writing is dealing with the issues required.

3. If you are answering the question successfully there may not be much for the tutor to say, except to offer encouragement and suggestions for further development at the end of the essay. [This however should not be taken as an endorsement of lazy script-marking.]

4. Your tutor may correct the first instance of a common mistake, then ignore subsequent occurrences. This often happens with spelling problems, for instance. You should take careful note, and try to learn the correct form.

5. Be sure to read the tutor’s comments at the end of the script. Don’t just check the grade awarded to your work. The comments represent valuable feedback and response to what you have written.

6. A comment such as ‘What does this mean?’ usually suggests ‘Your argument is not very clear at this point of the essay’ or ‘You are not showing the relevance of this topic to the question’.

7. The tutor may use square brackets [these] to indicate those parts of your argument which are not really necessary – as in this example.

… just as Mansfield Park [by the novelist Jane Austen] is a novel which is concerned with the theme of ‘improvement’

8. If the tutor invites you to discuss a particular issue in person, then take up the offer. But don’t abuse this arrangement. Tutors can easily become irritated by students ‘seeking further clarification’ too frequently.

9. Be academically modest. Be prepared to learn from your mistakes. Put into practice those suggestions made by the tutor. After all, they are made for your benefit, not for the convenience of the tutor.

10. The most noticeable advances in essay-writing skills are usually made by those students who take notice of each new suggestion offered for improvement. They are also likely to incorporate these ideas on a permanent basis. That is, once a new strategy or technique is adopted it becomes a skill which is used regularly. Subsequent suggestions for improvement are also incorporated in the same way.

11. Conversely (and not surprisingly) those students who make the least improvement in their work are those who seem to disregard tutor comments. They require the same notes of ‘advice for improvement’ with each successive essay. Do yourself a favour – take notice of your tutor’s comments.

12. See the selection of marked essays in Writing Essays 3.0 for examples of typical tutor comments.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Word limits in essays

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1. You should make every effort to stay within any word limits that have been set for an essay assignment. One important part of the exercise is that you should produce an answer to the question within set limits.

2. You will not normally be penalised if your essay is a little too short – so long as your argument is written in a concise style and you have covered all the topics which a full answer requires.

3. Similarly, an essay that is just slightly too long will not normally be penalised – so long as all your arguments are relevant to the point of the question.

4. However, you should avoid producing essays which greatly exceed the word limit. The longer you go on writing, the more likely you are to stray away from the point of the question. You will not normally be rewarded just for the quantity you produce.

5. An essay which seriously exceeds the word limit (say, by more than twenty or thirty percent) could be returned to you by your tutor as unacceptable. The argument could be made that you are not staying within the set limits, and you are possibly taking an unfair advantage over other students who have stayed within them.

6. Quotations should not normally be counted as part of the word limit – but the total amount of material from secondary sources should be so small that the proportion is insignificant.

7. You do not need to make a detailed count of every word (or pencil totals in the margin as ‘proof’). Use the word-count feature of
your word-processor to get an idea of the total. If it doesn’t have a counter, just make the following calculation for a rough estimate of your total word count:

words per line × lines per page × pages

Too long

8. If an essay is too long before you produce your final draft, its length may be reduced by rigorous editing. Consider some of the following possibilities.

9. Eliminate any repetitions in your basic argument. If you cover the same point from more than one perspective, retain only the most important parts of the discussion, and delete the others.

10. You might consider shortening your introduction, certainly if goes on for much more than 200 words. In some extreme cases it might even be better to go straight to your argument.

11. Check your prose style and try to make the expression of your argument as concise as possible. If necessary, shorten the length of your sentences by removing any words which are not essential to the argument. Cut out anything which introduces a conversational tone.

12. Reduce the number of illustrative examples. Each major point of your argument should normally be illustrated by one or [at the most] two examples of evidence which are then analysed or discussed. If you have more, you should just retain the most convincing and relevant. Eliminate the others.

13. Shorten any illustrative quotations to the absolute minimum. Most essays should not need long quotations from secondary sources – if only because it is your own argument which is more important. Select just those few words which make your point.

Too short

14. If on the other hand your final efforts have produced an essay which is shorter than the required length, you obviously need to do some extra work on it. Consider the following steps.

15. Go back to the start of the essay planning process and generate more ideas and topics on the subject in question. Try to think of new approaches or aspects of the subject which you might have ignored or forgotten.

15. Look closely at the question again. Ask yourself if you have followed all its instructions and covered all that it has asked for.

16. Make sure that you have provided an explanatory introduction and conclusion to the essay. Don’t waffle just for the sake of filling up the space. Introduce your argument succinctly and make sure that you have explained its relevance to the original question.

17. It might be that you have produced an argument which is not well enough illustrated by examples which are analysed and discussed. Make sure that you have sufficient evidence and explanatory examples to prove your point. Do not let an argument stand alone without proof.

18. Make sure that you have explained the relevance of your argument to the question which was originally posed. In other words, you must demonstrate the connection between your examples and the subject in question.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Word-processors for writing essays

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sample from HTML program and PDF book

1. The advantages of using word-processors for writing essays are overwhelming. They offer editing and re-writing tools, spelling-checkers and grammar-checkers, plus many features for improved layout and presentation.

2. If you are only just starting to use a word-processor and still producing handwritten essays, don’t feel disadvantaged. Keep in mind however (as an encouragement) that as presentation standards are forced up by word-processors, tutors are likely to become less and less tolerant of untidy work.

3. The main advantage of a computer when writing essays is that it allows you unlimited scope for re-writing and editing what you produce. You may start out with only a sketchy outline, but to this you can add extra examples, delete mistakes, and move paragraphs around to improve your argument. You are able to build up to the finished product in as many stages as you wish.

4. At first you might continue to produce your first draft in handwritten form, then transfer it into your computer at the keyboard. You can then edit what you have written, either on screen or by printing out what you have produced. This is quite common for beginners.

5. You will probably feel a strong desire to see everything printed out as soon as possible. Later however, with experience, you might edit on screen, only printing out the finished version. Most recent word-processors allow you to see on screen what the finished document will look like.

6. Before you print out your final document, make sure to leave plenty of blank space around the text so that your tutor can write detailed comments on what you have produced. Take the trouble to set wide margins, and follow the guidelines for good page layout and presentation.

7. The word-processor will produce your documents very neatly, but will probably do so by using single line spacing. Even though you are likely to be pleased by the neatness, learn how to set for one-and-a-half or double spacing so that your tutor is still able to make helpful additions and corrections between the lines of text.

8. If your word-processor has a spell-checking facility, then use it before you print out your document. But remember that it is unlikely to recognise specialist terms and unusual names such as ‘Schumacher’, ‘Derrida’, or ‘Nabokov’. These will not be in the processor’s memory. You will have to check the correct spelling of these yourself, as you will any other unusual words.

9. Remember too that a spell-checker will not make any distinction between ‘They washed their own clothes’ and ‘They washed there own clothes’, because the word ‘there’ is spelled correctly even though it is being used ungrammatically in this sentence. Use your grammar-checker [if you have one] to locate such problems.

10. Use italics to indicate the titles of books. (Reserve bold for special emphasis.) It is important that you are consistent throughout your document.

A.J.P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War, London: Penguin, 1987.

11. Take full advantage of indenting to regularise your presentation of quotations. Use double indentation for those longer quotations which would otherwise occupy more than two or three lines of the text in your essay. Try to be consistent throughout.

12. Advanced users may well be tempted to take advantage of automatic footnoting. Word-processors can remove all the headaches from this procedure. However, do not clutter your text with them just for the sake of showing off your command of the technology.

13. In most cases, the size of font chosen should be eleven or twelve points. This will be easy to read, and will appear proportionate to its use, when printed out on A4 paper.

14. Choose a font with serifs (such as ‘Times New Roman’ or ‘Garamond’) for the body of an essay text. Avoid the use of sans-serif fonts (such as ‘Arial’ or ‘Helvetica’): these make reading difficult. Avoid using display fonts (such as ‘Poster’ or ‘Showtime’) altogether. These are designed for advertising.

15. Long quotations (where necessary) should normally be set in the same font as the body of the text, but the size may be reduced by one or two points. This draws attention to the fact that it is a quotation from a secondary source. Alternatively (or in addition) it may be set in a slightly different font.

16. If your word-processor automatically hyphenates words at the end of a line, take care to read through the work and eliminate any howlers such as ‘the-rapist’ and ‘thin-king’.

17. In laying out your pages, you should avoid creating paragraphs which start on the last line of a page or which finish on the first of the next. (These are called, in the jargon of the printing trade, ‘Widows and Orphans’). The solution to this problem is to control the number of lines on a page so as to push the text forward. An extra space at the bottom of a page is more acceptable than just one or two lines of text at the top of the next.

18. Titles, main headings, or essay questions may be presented in either a slightly larger font size than the body of the text, or they may be given emphasis by the use of bold.

19. Don’t use continuous capital letters in a title, heading, or question. In addition [even though many people think it is good practice] there should be no need at all to underline. If something is a title, a heading or a question at the top of an essay, then the larger font, and the use of bold should be enough to give it emphasis and importance.

20. Don’t forget to put your name and student ID number on any work you submit.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Write in Style

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lessons on good writing style – with lots of examples

Write in Style is a good-natured and humane guide to the main elements of producing fluent and accurate English. Richard Palmer’s approach is practical and refreshingly irreverent. He covers good and bad sentences; how to deal with punctuation; how to strike the right tone; and the rules of spelling and grammar – plus all the bewildering exceptions to them. His pace is leisurely and the style conversational. He’s particularly good at explaining the problems and irregularities of the English language. Every point is illustrated with vivid examples – gaffes from the popular press and good style from skilful authors.

Write in StyleHe covers all the fundamentals and issues which commonly give people problems – such as the differences between clauses, phrases, and complete sentences. There are also exercises (with answers) at the end of each chapter, so that you can check your understanding of each topic.

All the common marks of punctuation are fully explained, including the much-misunderstood apostrophe. There’s a whole chapter devoted to advice on writing academic essays – a very good discipline to acquire for anybody who wants to develop their writing skills. Then he does the same thing for reports, reviews, and the quite tricky precis and summary.

This will appeal to people who want to be taken by the hand and led through the complexities of English by a reassuring teacher. The strength of this book is that every point is thoroughly explained and illustrated by good and bad examples – many of them very amusing.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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Richard Palmer, Write in Style: a guide to good English, London: Routledge, 2nd edn, 2002, pp.255, ISBN: 0415252636

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Writer’s block – how to overcome it

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1. Writer’s block is much more common than many people imagine. When faced with the task of producing a piece of writing, many people develop a mental block. It can be like a state of panic, emptiness, paralysis – or just a sheer inability to get started. You simply cannot make the pen move across the page or type the words at the keyboard. After agonizing for a while you might just squeeze out a few words, but then immediately delete them again – and you are back where you started.

2. Suddenly all sorts of other tasks seem very attractive – going shopping, or just taking the dog for a walk. You desperately want to write your essay or report, and you may even have a deadline to meet. But the last thing you can bring yourself to do is start writing. And the longer you worry about it, the more intractable the problem seems to become.

3. If you sometimes feel like this, here is the first piece of good news. It is a very common problem. Even experienced writers sometimes suffer from it. Do not think that you are the only person in the world who has ever encountered such a difficulty. What you need to know is how to get out of the blocked condition.

4. Most people read as part of their everyday lives, even if it is only glancing through newspapers and the occasional magazine. In doing so they keep their reading skills sharpened. Some of them may even develop it further by an active habit of reading. However, there are a lot of people who have hardly any need to write at all, and this skill is allowed to go rusty or even wither away. They simply become out of practice.

5. There are also a series of other possible reasons – many of them psychological in origin. Others may be connected with simple factors such as lack of preparation, or the common but rather misguided assumption that it is possible to write successfully at the first attempt.

6. The notes which follow are a series of the most common statements made by people suffering from writer’s block. This should help you identify your own case if you have this problem. Then there follow explanations of one or two of the most probable causes for the condition – followed by tips on how to effect a cure.

7. Read through all the examples given. It will help you to understand that overcoming writer’s block often involves engagement with those other parts of the writing process which come before you put pen to paper.

1. ‘ I’m terrified at the very thought of writing’

Cause – Perhaps you are just not used to writing, or you are out of recent practice. Maybe you are over-anxious and possibly setting yourself standards which are far too high.

Cure – Limber up and get yourself used to the activity of writing by scribbling something on a scrap of paper or keying in a few words which nobody else will see. Write a letter to yourself, a description of the room you are in – anything just to practise getting words onto paper. Remember that your attempts can be discarded. They are a means to an end, not a product to be retained.

2. ‘I’m not sure what to say‘

Cause – Maybe you have not done enough preparation for the task in hand, and you don’t have any notes to work from and use as a basis for what you want to say. Perhaps you haven’t yet accumulated enough ideas, comments, or materials on the topic you are supposed to be discussing. Possibly you have not thought about the subject for long enough.

Cure – Sort out your ideas before you start writing. Make rough notes on the topics you wish to discuss. These can then be expanded when you are ready to begin. Brainstorm you topic; read about it; put all your preliminary ideas on rough paper, then sift out the best for a working plan. Alternatively, make a start with anything, then be prepared to change it later.

3. ‘My mind goes blank’

Cause – Maybe you have not done enough preparation on the topic in question and you are therefore short of ideas or arguments. Perhaps you do not have rough notes or a working plan to help you formulate a response. Maybe you are frightened of making a false start or saying the wrong thing.

Cure – Make notes for what you intend to do and sort out your ideas in outline first. Try starting yourself off on some scrap paper or a blank screen. You can practise your opening statement and then discard it once you are started. Put down anything that comes into your head. You can always cross it out or change it later.

4. ‘It’s just a problem of the first sentence’

Cause – These can be quite hard to write! There is quite a skill in striking the right note immediately. You may be thinking ‘How can I make an introduction to something which I have not yet written?’ Maybe you have not created a plan and do not therefore know what will follow any opening statement you make. Perhaps you are setting yourself standards which are much too high or unrealistic. Maybe you are fixated on the order of your statements – or just possibly using this as an excuse to put off the moment when you will have to start.

Cure – Leave a blank space at the beginning of what you are going to write. The first sentence can be written later after you have finished the rest. Make a start somewhere else and come back to it later. Alternatively, write any statement you wish, knowing that you will change it later.

5. ‘I’m not quite ready to start yet‘

Cause – This could be procrastination, or it’s possible that you have not quite finished digesting and sorting out your ideas on the topic in question.

Cure – If it is procrastination, then use the warming up procedure of writing something else of no importance just to get yourself into the mood. If it is not, then maybe you need to revise your notes, drum up a few more ideas, or make a working plan to give you a point from which to make a start.

6. ‘I’ve got too much information’

Cause – If you have several pages of notes, then maybe they need to be digested further. Maybe you have not selected the details which are most important, and eliminated anything which is not relevant.

Cure – Digest and edit your material so as to pare it down to what is most essential. Several pages of notes may need to be reduced to just one or two. Don’t try to include everything. Draw up a plan that includes only indispensable items. If your plan is too long, then condense it. Eliminate anything that is not absolutely necessary for the piece of work in hand.

7. ‘I’m just waiting for one small piece of information’

Cause – Maybe you feel that a crucial piece of background reading – a name, or just a date is holding you up. You may be waiting for a book to be returned to the library. But this is often another form of procrastination – making excuses so as not to face the task in hand.

Cure – Make a start without it anyway. You can always leave gaps in your work and add things later. Alternatively, make a calculated guess – which you can change if necessary at a later stage when you have acquired the missing information. Remember that your first draftwill be revised later anyway. Additional pieces of information can be added during the editing process.

8. ‘I’m frightened of producing rubbish’

Cause – Maybe you are being too hard on yourself and setting standards which are unnecessarily high. However, this can sometimes be an odd form of pride, with which some people protect themselves from what they see as the embarrassment of having to go through the process of learning.

Cure – Be prepared to accept a modest achievement at first. And remember that many people under-rate their potential ability. It is very unlikely that anybody else will be over-critical. If you are a student on a course, it is the tutor’s job to help you improve and become more confident.

9. ‘I’m stuck at the planning stage’

Cause – This may be a hidden fear of starting work on the first draft, or it may possibly be a form of perfectionism. It may be that you are making too much of the planning stages, or alternatively that you are stuck for ideas.

Cure – Make a start on the first draft anyway. You can create a first attempt which may even help you to clarify your ideas as you are writing it. This first draft may then be used to help you devise and finalise another plan – which can then be used as the basis for your second or final draft.

10. ‘I’m not sure in what order to put things’

Cause – Maybe there are a number of possibilities, and you are seeking the best order. Perhaps there is no ‘best’ or ‘right’ order. You are probably looking for some coherence or logical plan for your ideas.

Cure – Draw up a number of different possible plans. Lay them out together, compare them, then select the one which seems to offer the best structure. Be prepared to chop and change the order of your information until the most persuasive form of organisation emerges. Make sure that you do this before you start writing, so that you are not trying to solve too many problems at the same time once you begin.

11. ‘It’s bound to contain a mistake somewhere’

Cause – You may be so anxious to produce good work that your fear of making a mistake is producing the ‘block’. Alternatively, this may be a form of striving for the impossible, or setting yourself unreachably high goals so as to create an excuse for not starting.

Cure – Your first efforts should only be a draft, so you can check for mistakes at a later stage. Be prepared to make a start, then deal with any possible errors when you come to re-write the work later. Very few people can write without making mistakes – even professional authors – so there is no need to burden yourself with this block.

Some general guidelines

  • Don’t imagine that you should be able to write impeccably at your first attempt. Most successful writers make several drafts of their work. They edit what they write, correct mistakes, make additions and deletions, and generally re-write extensively. Writing fluently and clearly is a skilled business. Nobody can expect you to have advanced level ability if you are still at the learning stage.
     
  • Don’t just sit staring at the blank piece of paper or the edit screen: it will only make you feel worse. Do something else, then come back to the task. Best of all, write something else – something you know you can write. This will help you to feel more confident.
     
  • Do some different type of writing as a warm-up exercise. Write
    a note or a letter to one of your friends. Re-write some of your earlier work, or just write something for your own amusement. This may help to release you from the blocked condition.
     
  • Don’t try composing in your head if you get stuck. Put down even your scrappiest ideas, so that you can see what you are dealing with. It may help you to identify any problems which are holding you back. If in doubt, put it down anyway. You can always delete it or change it later.
     
  • Get used to the idea of planning and making notes for what you are going to write. Don’t try to work with all the information stored in your head. A sound working plan and good notes will take the strain off you – and will prompt you with ideas, which in turn will prevent any ‘blocks’ developing.
     
  • Be prepared to make two or three attempts at anything you write. The first may not be very good, but it can be corrected, altered, changed – or even thrown away. Nobody need see your first attempts, so you don’t need to worry how bad they are – provided you pass on to a second or a third draft.
     
  • If you feel intimidated or blocked at the edit screen but wish to remain there, one simple tip which you might find helpful is to turn down the brightness on your screen so that you are faced with a blank monitor. You then type anything you
    wish for a while without seeing the results (and trying not to worry what they might be). When you feel ready, turn the brightness back up again and treat the results as just a rough draft which you can either edit – or delete.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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