Writing a paper with sources

Before we begin, this discussion is an overview, just an overview. These steps involve far more than what I cover here. And the problems listed are not an exhaustive list.

A literature review, or a term paper that uses sources and cites them, need not be a problem, although most people dread doing them. Even if you write literature reviews frequently, they can be trouble. They are trouble because most people don’t know how to approach the things, and then they foul it up. The worst way to foul up a literature review is to plagiarize, of course, but a lot of other things can go wrong as well. Usually, I see five problems that crop up in literature reviews.

Generally, when you do a literature review or term paper, you are responding to an assignment, either a class assignment or in preparation for experimental research. Your first order of business is to first make sure you understand the assignment. The second is to realize that no assignment is specific enough that simply responding will work. Such assignments are usually vague because the teacher knows the topic is broad and expects the student to do some reading, pick an area of interest, and then focus on that. Otherwise, the paper ends up being a mishmash of garbage that the teacher, or graduate advisor, finds extraordinarily frustrating to read. So after you make sure you understand the assignment, do a little general reading to find an area of interest, then you are ready to start work. 

This is when the five problems crop up.

First, you have to decide when to start on the paper. The problem here is that starting the paper does not involve writing. You can’t write if you don’t have anything to write about, so you must allow time to find out something that you’re willing to put on paper. Start now, the day you get the assignment, not a week before the paper is due, not two weeks before, not even a week from now. You need a lot more time than you realize, and even if you start immediately, you’re still going to be rushed at the end. But at least if you start now, you will have something others will want to read—that is, you will have some content.

So step two (and problem two) is to find sources. Here you can get librarians to help out. You’ll find all kinds of ways to generate sources, too many, in fact, provided you have allowed yourself some time and you are willing to ask questions of people who know how to do literature searches. What you do not want to do is to choose the first five (or 10, or 15, or however many are required) sources that you come across. You want to choose not the first sources you find, but the best you find. And you want to get enough information about those sources so that you can cite them and stick them in a reference list properly.

Avoid problem two by searching extensively for sources, choosing the best, and making sure you have the right information for citations and reference lists.

Step three, and problem three, comes when you have the sources. These days the sources often come as a PDF or some sort of web link. That’s always good. But don’t let them sit on the computer. You now have to read them. Do not take notes yet. Once you have read those articles, read them again. Do not take notes yet. Read them again. Are you taking notes? Stop it.

That is problem three. You have to understand those sources. Read them until you do understand them. Don’t take any notes until you know what that article is about. You cannot take notes on something you do not understand. Make marginal comments if you want. Highlight words that you think are important. Outline the article. Those will help you understand what that article says. Do not highlight full sentences, and do not use complete sentences to outline the article. An outline is simply a list, an ordered list, yes, but a list. Use key words in that list.

(There is a reason for this. That reason has to do with problem number four and step four.)

Keep in mind that few articles are well enough written that you can and will understand them in one reading. Some are so badly written that the best thing you can do is discard them. (A side comment here—you do not want your article falling into this category. An unreadable, and therefore unread, article is a waste of your time as well as the reader’s time.)

Once you are certain you understand the source, then take notes. That is step four. Take those notes in a separate medium, another word processing file, a spreadsheet, note cards, whatever you find most comfortable. Take notes using key words without copying sentences. Track those notes as well. Make sure every note is tied to source. Use a notetaking system that allows you to sort your notes by concept and still keep track of the source of each concept. Note taking is not hard, but it takes up a lot of space, and it is difficult to keep track of which information came from which source. Don’t lose track. Taking notes is not only step four, it is problem four. You’ll find more ways to create trouble for yourself here than nearly anywhere else in writing a paper.

Now put the sources away. From this point until you have a draft, you will not use the sources themselves, only the notes. The process to this point has a goal: avoiding plagiarism. If you work with the source directly in front of you, expect plagiarism. It will happen. It’s almost unavoidable. You have the original in front of you. How hard it is to come up with a paraphrase for that original? Nearly impossible—that’s the answer. Writers with a lot, a whole lot, of experience can do it, but only because they have had more practice than they can even explain.

You have read and understood the sources, you have taken notes by concept, and now you face the final step before writing, and the final problem. You need to outline your material. If you have taken notes by concept, that outline is relatively easy. List the concepts. Put them in order. Think of a sentence that focuses all those concepts into a single unit. That’s an outline. You’ll have sources that discuss the same concept. All that source material on that concept goes together. (Now you know why you kept track of sources as you took notes.) One quick way to see how this works is to stack your notes on your desk, physically, with each concept going in a separate stack. Each stack becomes one element of your outline.

Write that outline out and write out your focus statement. Tape both over your desk where you can see it as you begin your first draft. Write from your notes and from the outline. Write from your memory and your understanding of the sources. Write in your own words, trying to explain what the source said so that anyone who reads what you write can understand.

Are you done? Of course not. You need to cite each source as you use the notes from that source, and you need to cite using the correct format and using it consistently. There are computer programs for that, and they help, but ultimately, you as the writer are responsible for getting it right. You need a reference entry for every source you used, and you need to use the correct format for that as well. You need to proofread, not once but several times. You need to check your draft against the sources themselves to make sure you stated the information accurately.

A warning: it’s not that linear. Most of the time, you have to backtrack, do portions of the process again, rework your outline, resort your notes, rethink your focus. You write, and then you outline a second time or a third time or a fourth time. And then you realize you didn’t get enough information, so you go hunting for more, read more, take more notes…Writing is messy, but it is satisfying.

Most people don’t like to write. They like to have written. (Dorothy Parker said that first.)

Problems with the Apostrophe

English, unlike many other languages, does not use many word endings that denote the function a word has in a sentence. What that means is that, in English, we tend to use position within a sentence to help the reader understand how a word is used within that sentence. As a result, we can use the word “shampoo” as both noun and a verb, and we distinguish which it is because of where it is.

• He is shampooing his hair.
• The shampoo is on aisle 5.
• You should buy some shampoo.
• One property of shampoo is its perfume. 

The first is a verb, denoting an action. The second, third, and fourth are all nouns. The first is used as the subject of a sentence, the second is an object of a verb, and the third is the object of a preposition. Simply changing the way a word is used and where it is placed changes its function in the sentence. That is one thing that makes English difficult—parts of speech do not depend on the word itself and they are not indicated by word endings. Parts of speech simply indicate how a word functions within a sentence, which means a number of words can be several parts of speech even within a single sentence.

To further demonstrate, consider the following sentence:

The teacher said that that that that that boy used was wrong.

Most people get a headache just thinking about that sentence, but it is entirely correct. Maybe it’s not entirely clear, but it is correct.

We have five thats here. The first is a subordinate conjunction introducing a subordinate (or dependent) clause. The second is a demonstrative adjective. The third is actually used as a noun, and the demonstrative adjective tells us which “that” we are discussing. The fourth that is another subordinate conjunction. And the last one is another demonstrative adjective, telling us which boy. 

By now, most of you are probably just shaking your head, thinking to yourself that grammar nuts are, well, crazy, not to mention wondering just what all this has to do with apostrophes.

Ok, here’s the transition. Apostrophes are used for two things: possessives and contractions. The problem I want to bring up involves possessives.

• Employees’ characteristics
• Students’ satisfaction and loyalty
• Dogs’ bones

 

Most people would look at these and consider them acceptable. They are acceptable. They are not ideal because we have another more concise and easier way of dealing with them. Consider the following:

• Employee retention
• Student health
• Cat box 

Why did we not use the apostrophe in each of these instances? You could say employees’ retention, students’ health, cat’s box, but we don’t. If you were actually trying to be consistent that is what you would do. In each case, the first word operates not as a noun, but as an adjective. We know it is an adjective because of its position in the sentence; it precedes a noun. 

The previous phrases should be treated the same way:

• Employee characteristics 
• Student satisfaction and loyalty 
• Dog bones

Why do we try to make these possessives? I think most of us associate words like employee, student, and cat/dog with the part of speech known as a noun, probably because we were made to memorize lists of nouns, verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions in grade school. 

Most of us figure out how useless that little exercise is, but we still have some carry over. 

(And some of you will accuse me of ending a sentence with a preposition here. I did NOT. Because of how it is used, “over” is an adverb in this case, not a preposition.)

More on passives

(Hiatus from blogging because of editing the last couple of weeks. I’ve had as many as six manuscripts—including two reports, a thesis, articles that keep coming, and a book chapter—sitting on my computer desktop and emails from writers weeping about deadlines. I’m down to two—the thesis and the book chapter, but I have to get those done soon because another thesis is on its way and at least two or three more articles are in the pipeline. I think everyone I know went to work this summer to have a half a dozen articles ready to go by fall, and now they all want it fixed yesterday.)

So, passives. I’ve mentioned that passives aren’t necessarily bad, but that they do cause problems with conciseness and with clarity. Perhaps we should talk about how to identify them.

Simple answer: turn on the computer grammar checker. I recall telling my husband, after his stint with the federal government and their idiotic writing rules, that his writing was full of passives. If he wanted to keep the page limits required by journals, or at least avoid paying the extra page charges, he needed to identify them and get rid of as many as possible. He didn’t believe me until grammar checkers turned up, and then he discovered that nearly every one of his sentences had a nice squiggly green line under it. 

I said it was the simple answer, but it’s not the complete answer. Grammar checkers use simple rules to find what MAY be passives, but they are wrong about 40% of the time. Worse yet, as we said before, passives are not always bad. Sometimes you need them. So if you take a grammar checker’s word for it, you’ll be revising a lot of writing that doesn’t need revising for all the wrong reasons.

I’ve had students tell me that other teachers (usually in high school) told them never to use any form of the verb to be. From what I can tell, the teachers never explained why, although that may have been inadequate reporting from the students instead of inadequate teaching. I suspect that teachers who tell their students not to use am, is, are, was, and were are trying to prevent their students from using passives. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t work. 

Let me explain. (Those who know something about the English language have my permission to skip this. I’m over-simplifying.)

English generally has two types of sentences. One type is what I call a subject-linking verb-completer sentence (S-LV-C). These sentences use verbs that operate much like an equals symbol (=). 

• The man is thirsty.
• The woman is a doctor.
• The dog seems friendly.
• The football player turned pale.
• Bread becomes stale quickly in a dry climate.

Note that in each case what follows the verb says something describing (or completing) the subject. The subject is not doing anything. The most common linking verb is to be. If you do what your high school English teacher instructed, you will be eliminating perhaps half of all the sentences you want to use. That’s not a good plan. Much of what we write about involves a state a being, not a state of doing.

Actually, these types of sentences are the least likely to be turned into passives. It’s just too awkward. However, if you write one of them and turn on the grammar checker, most of the time the grammar checker will tell you that you may have a passive and would you please review what you have done.

The other type of sentence we typically use is the action (not active) sentence, where the verb involves some action that the subject is doing.

• Birds fly south in the winter.
• Cows eat grass.
• Farmers grow corn.
• That dog bites people.

In this sort of sentence, we have the actor (birds, cows, farmers, dog), the action (fly, eat, grow, bites), and in some cases the acted upon or object of the verb (grass, corn, people). South, by the way, is not an object, just so you know. It’s an adverb.

This type of sentence is the kind that gives trouble. Every sentence that has subject-verb-object (S-V-O) can be written as passive (which isn’t necessarily bad, as I keep saying).

• Grass is eaten by cows.
• Corn is grown by farmers.
• People are bitten by that dog.

Note that, in every case, the sentence is longer in passive voice than in active voice. That’s problem number one. 

Problem number two? In English, we use position to determine a word’s role in the sentence. We don’t use word endings much. So in a basic sentence like S-V-O, we expect the actor to come first, the action to come second, and the acted upon to come third. What happens if the object comes first and the actor comes last? We have to rethink the entire sentence, and very often, we have to reread the sentence, especially the long ones. That takes time we could better spend doing something else.

Problem number three? In passive sentences, it is easy to leave essential information out. At that point, especially in technical and scientific writing, we have a very real problem. We must have all the essential information. Let’s have a closer look at this. Consider the following scenario:

You have a son who played with the neighbor’s dog. The dog bit the boy. You take your son to the emergency room and run in yelling, “The boy was bitten! The boy was bitten!” What is the first question the ER people will ask?

>> 

Wrong. They’ll ask if you have insurance (/facepalm). I’ve been telling that same joke for the last 20 years. I must stop.

Think about it though. You have left out a critical piece of information. Does it make a difference if the boy was bitten by a dog as opposed to say, a tick? Proper treatment requires complete information. 

Good science requires complete information. Passives get in the way.