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English 210 - Dr. Jamey Graham“Do’s” and “Don’ts” when writing a literature paperDo have your introduction include all of the following: a good opening sentence, an introduction of your topic (or the question your paper seeks to answer), a strong thesis statement, and a “roadmap” of how your paper is going to proceed.Don’t open your paper with clichés, small talk, or vague statements. Weak words such as “people,” “humans,” “society” (“today’s society,” “society today,” etc.), “many things,” and so forth should be avoided altogether.Bad Example:William Shakespeare is one of the greatest writers of all time. William Shakespeare wrote many plays. One of Shakespeare’s plays is Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is a great play, for many reasons. One reason why Romeo and Juliet is a great play is that it is about love. Love is important, because humans care a lot about love. People in today’s society can still appreciate Romeo and Juliet because of the way it treats love, and that makes it a great play, because people can still relate to it in society today.Do cite the text to evidence whatever you say. Usually, you should quote the text. Sometimes, when there isn’t anything special about the language of the line you’re referring to, it’s enough to just give a citation without quotation. Cite plays parenthetically as follows: Act.scene.line(s).Good Examples:In keeping with the theme of rottenness, Hamlet uses images of botanical overgrowth to describe the world, calling it “an unweeded garden/That grows to seed,” a hotbed of “Things rank and gross” (I.ii.135-7).According to Hamlet, Gertrude wept for King Hamlet like Niobe (I.ii.149).Do quote just enough of the text to evidence your point.Good Example:In his introductory speech, Puck portrays himself as a rustic shape-shifter, taking the forms of a “filly foal,” a “roasted crab,” and even a “three-foot stool” to beguile country folk and animals alike (II.i.44-57).Don’t quote the text excessively, or more than you need to for your argument.Bad Example:In his introductory speech, Puck portrays himself as a rustic shape-shifter who beguiles country folk and animals alike:I am that merry wanderer of the night.I jest to Oberon, and make him smileWhen I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,Neighing in the likeness of a filly foal;And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowlIn very likeness of a roasted crab,And when she drinks, against her lips I bobAnd on her withered dewlap pour the ale.The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me:Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,And “tailor” cries, and falls into a couth,And then the whole quire hold their hops and laugh,And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swearA merrier hour was never wasted there. (II.i.44-57)To carry out his pranks, Puck turns himself into a “filly foal,” a “roasted crab,” and even a “three-foot stool.” Puck gives another important speech in Act III…Don’t rely too heavily on plot summary.Bad Example:Romeo’s love for Juliet cannot be taken seriously. When Romeo and Juliet begins, Romeo is in love with Rosaline. He drops Rosaline like a hot potato the instant he sees Juliet. Even then, he isn’t really in love with Juliet, he’s in lust: he comes to her bedroom that very night, probably to see her undressed, and agrees to marriage right away so that the couple can go to bed together.Do allow the text to define its own ideas and make its own judgments. This is a principal goal of interpretation.Good Example:Romeo and Juliet has become an iconic love story. The New York Times in the last five years alone has compared Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers to a statutory rape case in Alabama, an Afghan couple from warring clans, teenage relationships nationwide, and the personal life of Miley Cyrus. Such diverse applications reflect the play’s multiform treatment of love, which is spoken of very differently by Mercutio, Lord and Lady Capulet, Friar Lawrence, and Romeo and Juliet themselves. Does Romeo and Juliet have a unified theory of love, or does the idea remain dispersed among conflicting perspectives? The following essay sets out to answer this question. As I claim, love in Romeo and Juliet is…<insert thesis here>Don’t impose your own ideas and judgments on the text. This is especially important when interpreting texts from the distant past or from foreign cultures, because ideas and value judgments change.Bad Example:Who doesn’t hope to fall in love someday? Love is when two equals like each other for who they really are, not because of appearance or other superficial traits. People who love each other are willing to make any sacrifice, even die for the other person. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet shows that the human desire to love was the same five hundred years ago as it is today. In the following essay, I will show that Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other is false at the beginning of the play, because they only care about each other’s beauty and about wanting to sleep together; however, their love becomes true by the end, because they are willing to die for each other.Do try, in every sentence, to use a word (or synonym for a word) that comes from the previous sentence. This ensures continuity of thought from sentence to sentence. It will help your style and also help with writer’s block.Do try to put subordinate phrases/clauses at the beginning of a sentence, and the main clause at the end of a sentence.Do think in paragraphs. The paragraph is the unit of academic prose. Each paragraph should make one part of your argument—and only one part.Do give each paragraph a topic sentence that summarizes what that paragraph is going to say. If possible, give each paragraph a nice concluding sentence; however, this is less important than the topic sentence.Do have your introduction contain a summary of your thesis and argument.Don’t have your conclusion only contain a summary of your thesis or argument. A good conclusion should also say something new: a new thought, a new piece of evidence, a suggestion for further research, etc. The possibilities are endless.Don’t have your conclusion be an exact or nearly exact reproduction of your introduction.Do put a lot of thought into what you write, and consider doing your thinking in some other place than in front of a computer screen. Take a walk, take a shower, work out, go to a museum, go to a coffee shop…whatever puts you in a thoughtful frame of mind. ................
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