If you don’t have time to show your paper to a writing tutor or a friend, put it away for a few minutes and then re-read it, checking for these common problems.

"Hegemony in Orwell disarticulates socialist irony."

No doubt you had something in mind when you typed that. To unpack the sentence, ask yourself, "who is doing what?" Reword the sentence completely. Try two sentences. (What is "hegemony"?)

Wordiness, Indirectness

Your instructor may tell you to "avoid the passive (verb)." In other words, phrase the sentence so that the sentence subject performs the action:

• Passive verb: "Emigrants are shown by Sebald to have feelings of displacement."
   
• Active verb: "Sebald shows emigrants’ feelings of displacement.

The passive is appropriate, however, when the actor is not important. For example, "The boat people were granted asylum."

Subject-verb agreement: as you type, remember whether the subject of your sentence is singular or plural. Use a matching form of the verb:

• Incorrect: "The differences between the many explanations of revolution lies in the role assigned to the expanding middle class."
   
• Correct: The differences …lie…

• Incorrect: "Usually the instructor will explain their rules to you." "Their" refers only to plural nouns.
   
• Correct: "Usually the instructor will explain his or her rules to you." Or: "Usually instructors will explain their rules to you."

Spell-check doesn’t catch everything. (Someone we know once wrote a whole paper on ‘pubic art.’) Check punctuation, too. Be sure you use apostrophes—and use them correctly.

• "It’s" means "it is."
   
• "Henry James’s novel…."

Also, be absolutely sure you spell the author’s name and the paper’s key terms correctly.

• In order to avoid plagiarizing, always give credit for ideas and phrasing that are not yours. In a university, you are encouraged to use other people’s ideas. The point is to acknowledge that you are doing so.
   
• Plagiarism can take many forms. One obvious example is handing in a paper you did not write. It is also considered plagiarism if you lift a key phrase from an author without using quotation marks and giving the author credit, or if you borrow the author’s sentence structure without acknowledgement. When in doubt, use a footnote. If you discussed your paper with a friend or tutor, say that.
   
• The Wesleyan University policy on plagiarism is available at the Honor Board’s Web page: http://www.wesleyan.edu/acaf/policy/sc_plagiarism_complete.html
   
• Princeton University’s pamphlet, Academic Integrity at Princeton, offers this explanation of when you must use citations:
   
  1. Direct Quotations: If you quote word-for-word from a text, place the passage in quotation marks or type it in an indented paragraph within your own text. "The quotation must be accompanied, either in the text or in a footnote, by a precise indication of the source that identifies the author, title and page numbers. Even if you use only a short phrase, or even one key word, you must use quotation marks in order to set off the borrowed language from your own, and cite the source" (Princeton 12).
      
  2. Paraphrase: If you restate another person’s ideas or thoughts in your own words, you are paraphrasing. You must still cite your source. It is important to change the sentence structure. If you paraphrase but still use the sentence structure of your source, you are plagiarizing.
      
  3. Summary: "Summarizing is a looser form of paraphrasing," and still requires you to acknowledge your source (Princeton 12).
      
  4. If your summary or paraphrase extends for several sentences, be careful to indicate where it begins and ends.
      
  5. Using data and facts: "If the information included in your paper can be found exclusively in the source you use, you must clearly acknowledge that source" (Princeton 13). You do not have to cite a source for a piece of common knowledge. If you find it hard to determine which information is common knowledge, ask your course instructor for guidance.

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