Writing a Paper: Why It's Good to Be Obvious

Three tips on being clear with your ideas.

Every good paper has a reason for being. We write in order to convince and persuade. If all you are doing is describing a text, historical event, or making a connection that is obvious to everyone, you haven’t been digging deep enough. It’s easy to think that good writing must be convoluted and full of big words. In most of your college papers, however, simplicity is best. Make your professor’s life easier and your grade better by observing the following guidelines: 1. State the main idea of your paper right up in the first paragraph. Don’t worry about being too obvious—there’s no such thing! 2. Keep your paper moving along with strong statements of short to medium length. A sentence needn’t be long and complicated to be good. 3. Don’t use a big word unless you are 100-percent sure you know what it means. Check the dictionary if you need to. An advisee of mine once wrote about his hopes that one day, all people on earth would co-habit peacefully. He really meant “co-exist”: the primary meaning of “co-habit” is that people live together in a sexual relationship without being married. Oops!