Your writing mechanics will be assessed on your formal reports and essays, counting approximately one third of your total grade on each. Pay close attention to the organization of your paper. Is there a clear introduction? Is there a concise conclusion? Are there clear transitions between sections and paragraphs? Is each paragraph clearly organized internally?

Misspelling is the most inexcusable writing gaffe: You have access to spelling checkers, dictionaries, and the critical eyes of your more literate friends, and the University Writing Center. Here is the contact information for the UWC: https://www.csulb.edu/university-writing-center, Language Arts Building 206, (562) 985-4329).

The most common goofs in grammar are disagreement between the subject and verb of a sentence (e.g., several kinds of quiche is available), incorrect pronoun case (e.g., between you and I, ...), and tense switches with no apparent reason (e.g., Steinbeck writes about the Dustbowl migration. The main characters in this novel were ...).

Make sure your sentence structure is correct and varied, and pay attention to proper punctuation and capitalization (the most problematical punctuation mark seems to be the comma). Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is a good resource, which gives copious advice on punctuation (among lots of other useful things). You may want to invest in a copy you'll treasure for the rest of your collegiate career and beyond!

Try to avoid abbreviations and contractions ("it's" = "it is" or "it has"; "didn't" = "did not") in formal writing. I will not mark you down for them, however, unless you do them incorrectly ("it's color was green" -- arghhhhh!!!). The most common mistake is confusing "it's" with "its." "It's" always means "it is" or "it has"!

Be careful with coördinating conjunctions. Avoid starting sentences with "and," "but," or "or." Technically, you also should avoid starting them with "however" or "therefore," too.

Beware of sexist usage. Sexist usage is the use of a gender-specific term to refer to people of both genders (e.g., "man," when you mean "humanity," "people," "the human species," or something similar; "mankind," when you mean "humankind"; "men," when you mean "people"; "he," when you mean some generic individual). Sexist usage of pronouns can often be avoided very elegantly by simply switching to the plural (e.g., instead of "the doctor bases his diagnosis on ...," you could easily write "doctors base their diagnoses on ..."). Sexist usage can also occur when you use the third person singular (i.e., "he" or "she") and then make tacit assumptions about the gender of some hypothetical individual on the basis of the most commonly found gender in such a group (e.g., "the doctor when he ..." and "the nurse when she ..."). One way of dealing with this situation is the rather clumsy "he or she," "s/he," "his or her," and so on. Another sometimes clumsy way is the use of "one" ("one wonders where the ducks have flown"). When in doubt, switch to the plural: It is generally simpler and more elegant, as well as inconspicuous.

A really useful guide to effective writing mechanics has been put online by NASA's Langley Research Center, and I recommend that you bookmark this one! It's Mary K. McCaskill, no date, Grammar, Punctuation, and Capitalization: A Handbook for Technical Writers and Editors (NASA SP-7084), available at: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/19900017394.

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Last Updated: 08/15/22