English 150W
Many of these guidelines appear in the Hamilton College Essentials of Writing and in Hacker's Manual. However, I've found it helpful to issue this additional reminder about these basics of essay writing.
1) Your essay should have a title.
2) Put your name on your paper.
3) Number your pages. Make certain they appear in order, and that they all actually appear.
4) Proofread your paper. Sentences begin with capital letters; so do proper names. Questions end with a question mark.
5) Titles of works of some length--novels, full-length plays, operas, epic poems (i.e., The Iliad or The Odyssey)--are underlined or italicized (either is acceptable, just be consistent), as are the names of newspapers, magazines, and feature-length films. Titles of shorter works--short stories, lyric poems, one-act plays, newspaper and magazine articles, short-subject films, television shows--appear in quotation marks.
6) You must provide proper, complete documentation for every direct quotation or paraphrase of someone else's work that appears in your essay. Both the Essentials of Writing and the handbook tell you how to do this (use the MLA parenthetical citation method for this class). You must attach a separate "Works Cited" page, giving complete bibliographic information (author, title, publisher, date of publication, etc.) for every work quoted or paraphrased. This applies to work in media other than print, as well: film, television shows, web sites, on-line encyclopedias, radio shows--all of these contain or represent someone's hard work, work that should be duly credited. Students who fail to acknowledge their sources have failed, in a very real way, to do college-level work, and leave themselves open to charges of plagiarism.
7) Quotations that are longer than 4 lines must be set off as a "block quotation": single-spaced, double-indented (see your handbook for an example of this). You do not use quotation marks around block quotations.
8) Do not use a hyphen when you need a dash, and vice versa.
9) A novel is a lengthy work of prose fiction (that is, it is pretend, make-believe, not real); thus, autobiographies, biographies, slave narratives, and memoirs are not novels, because they aspire to represent actual events--or, to use the more literary term, they are non-fiction. Also: plays and poems are not novels.
10) Do not use the word "lifestyle" as a synonym for "life." A "lifestyle" is something purchased: it has everything to do with how people choose to spend their money (hence the title of the old television program, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," which was all about the homes, yachts, and expensive hobbies of the wealthy). A "life," on the other hand, is something lived, not bought: it encompasses religious beliefs, personal habits, ties of affection, accomplishments and challenges, hopes and fears, work done well or poorly, acts of charity or meanness. Think of a funeral oration: the subject is always the "life" of the deceased, not his or her "lifestyle."
