Tips for Writing Great Papers
Every student has his/her own way of doing things. If you are NOT a strong writer, organizing yourself and giving yourself a
“to do” list will help you!
1. Get your ideas straight before you write!
When you have to write a paper, your brain will be either flooded with ideas or completely blank. Either way, make yourself
a list to gather your thoughts.
If your brain is overloaded, write every idea down. This list does not have to be in sentence format, just in subject format.
See what you can do from there. Can you tie the ideas together to formulate a paper? How can you tie these ideas together
to form a thesis?
If your brain is blank, do your best to come up with at least three ideas for your paper. Once you do that, try to see how you
can tie those three ideas together in order to formulate a paper. Avoid sitting and staring at a blank Word document screen.
2. Outline your paper
Once you have your ideas straight, try to put them in outline form or as a graphic, such as a fishbone, web, tree, bubble
chart, or Venn diagram. You want to group your ideas so that you can see relationships among your ideas. Your paper will
be structured in three different parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. Your ideas will most likely constitute a bulk of your
“body” structure. Your introduction needs background information and your thesis. Your body needs ideas that relate to your
thesis, and your conclusion will have ideas that sum up your paper. If you jot down words, phrases, or short sentences
under each category, you will have an easier time writing your paper than you would if you were still sitting in front of a blank
Word document screen.
3. Avoid “You”!
Once you begin writing, you really need to avoid the pronoun “you,” the “second person” pronoun.
You probably notice that this handout is full of “you” references. This is because you, the reader, are having a conversation
with the writer of this handout. The handout is giving you information, and you are reading it. Therefore, this handout is
directed at ANYONE who is reading it. In this case, YOU are reading it, so using the pronoun “you” IS appropriate. When
you write papers, however, your focus is NOT on the reader as this handout is. Your focus is to get your information on
paper to an audience larger than one person. You may be writing for a general audience, or you may be writing for a
specific group of people, such as parents, United States Senators, policemen, teenagers, etc. In any case, you will use third
person pronouns.
When you use the pronoun “you” in your paper, you are personalizing too much. Using “you,” in some cases, is too strong.
If you are writing a paper on the effects of eating disorders, and you write sentences similar to “if you have an eating
disorder, you need to get help!,” the person reading your paper (instructor, tutor, peer) may NOT have an eating disorder,
so the way you are writing your paper is not appropriate. “You” is NOT the pronoun to use for people in general. If you want
to write for a “general” audience, you need to use “general” words such as a person/people, one, victim/victims,
student/students, men/women/children, etc. Use third person pronouns in your paper: he, she, it, her, him, they, them, and
their. ONLY if your instructor gives the OK do you ever use first person pronouns—I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours-- in
your essays. If you are uncertain, ask your instructor.
Note: If you put “commands” in your paper, you are still using you, even if you did not explicitly PUT the word “you” in your
paper!
4. Consider your thesis a work in progress!
Some students think they have to have a perfect thesis at the beginning of their writing process. If this works for you, fine,
but you need to make sure everything you write goes back to proving your thesis. The best idea is to consider the thesis a
TCTC Writing Center
Prepared by Jennifer Higgins-Spiers
July, 2007
work in progress. Write a tentative thesis at the beginning of your writing process. As you work on the paper, you may
decide to revise your thesis along the way. When you have completed a draft of your paper, read over it to be sure that
everything in the body of the paper supports your thesis. If that is not the case, you have two choices: take out the material
that does not support your thesis, or revise your thesis.
5. Proofread!
Instructors and tutors cannot stress this enough. How would you feel if you read this handout, and it had tons of errors on it?
Would you want to read it? If you turn in your paper full of careless errors, it will show your instructor that you did not put
forth any effort on the paper, nor did you take the assignment seriously. Do yourself a favor and read over your paper!
Reading out loud will help you more than reading over your paper passively. For a second proofreading, read the paper out
loud and from the bottom of the last page, one sentence at a time.
6. Be sure your information is correct!
If you are unsure about a statement, look up the information.
TCTC Writing Center
Prepared by Jennifer Higgins-Spiers
July, 2007