POLI 100 Fall 2010 N. MillerGENERAL COMMENTS ON POLI 100 WRITING ASSIGNMENTSAs has also been the case in past semesters, many of the writing assignments demonstrated moreor less serious problems in presentation and exposition. Only a few were written at an essentiallyprofessional level. I am pleased to note, however, that in recent years most papers have been largely freeof the most basic kinds of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors (that is, they were mostlysatisfactory with respect to Criterion (A)) that were commonly made by earlier generations of UMBCstudents. Probably most of you aim to pursue careers of a professional or semi-professional nature. Assuggested in the instructions to the writing assignment, the ability to write a good memo, abstract, legalbrief, report, etc., is a requirement for success in most professional-level jobs in business, government, andother institutions. The POLI 100 writing assignments are specifically designed to help you develop thisskill. Writing is particularly a skill in which “practice makes better” — even if, for most of us, it doesn'tmake perfect. Therefore you should continue to take courses that give you multiple opportunities todevelop your writing skills.The following guidelines and observations pertain to any writing task.(1) It is very hard to express complicated points clearly and concisely on the first attempt. A good finalproduct almost invariably requires multiple drafts and revisions. [For examples, see below.] Manypeople find word processing technology helpful in this respect.(2) Between drafts, get feedback and editorial criticisms from others. At this stage, regard criticalcomments and suggestions from your readers as more valuable than praise (so take all my red inkin this spirit). Even if some of the criticisms are off the mark, they will encourage you to considerwhether you can present points more clearly or concisely. If your preliminary readers are notknowledgeable about your subject matter, so much the better — if they can't understand what youare trying to say, your ultimate readers probably won't be able to either. In addition, you must tryto function as a critical reader for yourself.(3) You can't express a thought clearly and concisely until you have a clear thought to express. Goodwriting is difficult precisely because it forces us to develop, refine, clarify, and organize ourthinking. (Informal oral presentations allow us to get away with sloppier thinking andorganization.) The process of revising drafts sharpens your thinking.With respect to my red ink editorial markings (which typically focus most heavily on the firstseveral paragraphs):(a) Refer to the attached sheet explaining marking symbols and diagnostics.(b) Note that where I have written alternative phrasing above your words, my phrasing is proposed asclearer and/or more concise.(c) What I suggested most commonly was the deletion of words, phrases, or whole sentences that wereirrelevant to the question, or that repeated what was said elsewhere, or (especially) that could becompressed or combined. [See examples below.] A good professional memo (as well as othergood writing) says what needs to be said in as few words possible. Achieving clear and conciseexpression typically requires multiple revisions, which in turn requires (for most of us) considerablePOLI 100 Writing Assignments page 2time and effort. (Mark Twain once wrote a letter to a friend in which he said apologetically, “I’msorry this is such a long letter, but I didn’t have time to write a short one.”)Two very common writing problems(1) The word it’s is the contraction of it is (and probably should not be used in formal writing); thepossessive form of the word it is spelled its. Likewise who’s is the contraction of who is; thepossessive form is whose. (2) If you incorporate someone else’s writing (including distinctive words and phrases) into your owntext, the quoted material must be enclosed in quotation marks and attributed to the author. Butthen what appears within quotation marks must match the exact words of the quoted author.Refer to the original documents, not just the summaries of them in the textbook The assignments asked you to read original documents in the Course Pack. Quite a few studentswriting on the Virginia and New Jersey Plans, said (i) that, under the Virginia Plan, the lower house of theNational Legislature [rather than the Legislature as a whole] elects the National Executive and Judiciary;(ii) that, under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had a unanimity requirement [it was actually a 9/13requirement, except for amendments to the Articles]; and (iii) that, under the New Jersey Plan, thisunanimity requirement would be replaced by a simple majority requirement [the NJ Plan left thisunspecified: “none of the powers hereby vested in the United States in Congress will be exercised withoutthe consent of at least _____ States”). It turns out that the K&J textbook (3rd ed.) on pp. 52-53 (pp. 46-47in the 2nd ed.) says (or implies) the same erroneous things. Also some students said that, under the NJ Plan,the legislature “can exercise supremacy clause over state legislation” (or words to that effect) — astatement that apparently comes from K&J’s Figure 2.2, not from the text itself, but that in any case doesnot come from the NJ Plan and that makes no sense. Finally, many students paraphrased or quoted thetextbook to the effect that the NJ Plan (unlike the VA Plan) failed to propose the organization of theexecutive and judicial branches and generally was less complete than the Virginia Plan. However, acomparison of the actual text of NJ resolutions #4 and #5 with VA resolutions #7 and #9 does not supportthe first claim, and the text of the NJ Plan is actually slightly longer than that of its rival. The lesson is that textbooks (and other secondary sources, especially on the web) can be wrong. Of course, beginning students are ordinarily justified in presuming that their textbooks are accurate — butnot when original documents have been provided against which they can check statements in the textbookand when the assignment refers specifically to these documents.Finally, many students said the NJ Plan called for a unicameral legislature, with delegates selectedby state legislatures and each state delegation having one vote. However, the