-F
ACTOIDS
:
1.) Readers process information best if they can identify key concepts and keep track of those concepts’ progress through the story your paper tells.
2.) Readers tend to lose track of the story if they are presented with too much new substantive material too quickly.
3.) Writers plan out their papers in large conceptual units of paragraph length or larger. Readers, meanwhile, read from sentence to sentence and may have difficulty remembering the main point of whatever chunk they are reading if the argument strays too far afield of that point.
4.) Readers become enraged when faced with “It…that” expletives.
5.) Readers are kindly of heart, and like to sympathize with plucky main characters. However, oftentimes they become confused about whom they should be sympathizing with if they are not directed toward some person or concept.
6.) Readers approach writing in all sorts of unpredictable moods. While on good days they can jump about from concept to concept and enjoy papers that require them to do so, on bad days they can get pissed at the slightest disturbance and need constant supervision and guidance.
-T HEREFORE :
1.) Go back and make sure all your sentences can be divided up into chunks (clauses) that have a clearly defined main character (person or concept) followed by some action that that character performs or which happens to that person or concept. Employ thematic strings throughout your discussion that are introduced in your issue, and refer to them consistently (by the same name).
2.) Go back and make sure each sentence introduces its main character within six words of its beginning, and that you never place your interpretation of evidence before the evidence itself. Introduce new and unfamiliar concepts by placing them in the context of more familiar ones.
3.) Go back and make sure each sentence coheres with the sentence immediately preceding it, so that if you switched their orders they would make no sense, or less sense. Also, employ cohesion via topic strings so that your reader becomes familiar with the way each chunk will present information to be processed by the reader.
4.) Go back and remove all expletives. While you’re at it, remove as well all passive constructions that can’t be justified by an indeterminate agent (“Jack Kennedy was shot by an unknown assailant”) or by a more pressing need to introduce old information (“This assailant was in turn shot by Jack Ruby on his way to arraignment”).
5.) Think hard and with a modicum of strategery about which P.O.V. will serve each of your reason paragraphs best, and then go back and shift the characters in your sentences’ topic and stress positions so that you can identify sections of focus, chain, or mixed topic strings. Have a rationale for each paragraph, the more so because you know I’ll be searching for evidence that you had a rationale.
6.) Plan for the worst. Avoid annoying your readers with stunts and rhetorical questions and three word sentences that seem to call attention to themselves. Also, use the damn spell-check. If you’re not sure if the word you want to use exists, find someone you think might know and ask him or her, or
(how about it?) use a thesaurus. Include transitions between paragraphs (see other side) so that absolutely no intuitive leaps are necessary on the part of the reader. If you can’t breeze through a reading of your paper in 5-6 minutes without rereading a sentence, how likely am I to be able to do the same and still find the finer points and think up comments in 15 minutes?