Happy Friday!
This week Abigail and I were unable to meet with Dr. Farless, so the two of us met and discussed our current project: a paper we agreed to tackle during the last meeting. The papers we encounter have already been reviewed and voted on by the committee at the Journal of the Florida Conference of Historians for the J. Calvitt Clarke III Award (undergraduate) as well as recommendations for publication. With that said, Abigail and I were concerned with the use of a website -- as a biographical source -- created by a television network. According to Mary Lynn Rampolla, author of A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, tertiary sources are not acceptable for an academic paper, but serve as a helpful resource to introduce a new topic.[1] Since the information borrowed from the source was employed as an introduction to the topic, perhaps the committee will permit the use of the website. In addition to questions about sources, citations, and historiography, we discussed some of our own techniques or aids that prove vital in this academic journey.
Abigail shared some helpful grammar books such as: The Elements of Style by W. Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White; Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss; and The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English by Bill Walsh. Although the study of history requires much writing and argument building, I welcome any suggestions and techniques in the arena of grammar. Since this blog is like a personal diary, I am committing many taboos that would ordinarily be frowned upon for an academic paper. Nonetheless, I would like to share some tips that were passed on to me… Avoid passive voice. Past participle verbs that end in -en or -ed proceeded by a being verb are examples of passive voice. Being verbs include am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been. Abigail proposed the use of “ctrl F” in order to quickly find passive voice in a paper. This technique is helpful for our own work! There are times, after hours of typing, that I have trouble proofreading my essays. In order to help see the paper from a new perspective, it was suggested that I change the alignment of the document. I plan to give this a try! Lastly, Dr. Farless previously mentioned that she likes to read printed documents. While there are benefits to both print and electronic, I do favor the pages that can be felt and turned.
Here’s to a new week and new techniques!
[1] Mary Lynn Rampolla, A Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 9th edition (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018), 10.