General Writing Guidelines/Conventions
1) Use the third-person point of view for class writing assignments. In other words, avoid using the first person “I.” Your voice and position are already implicit in the statements/claims you make. Your authority and the strength of your position rest on the clarity of your expressed thoughts and the quality of the support you provide (See The Little, Brown Handbook, 795-6).
2) Use the present tense when writing about texts and documents. In this “historical present,” fictional figures act and speak NOW, and the voices of historical figures make claims NOW in their writing.
In a letter to the Lord Can Grande della Scala about The Divine Comedy, Dante briefly explains how to read allegorically.
After the boy first hears Mangan’s sister speak of Araby, the bazaar grows in his imagination along with his infatuation over the young woman. In the end, he finds the bazaar a shattering disappointment and sees himself “as a creature driven and derided by vanity” (28).
This convention will save you a lot of trouble with verb tense shifts and inconsistency. Use the past tense when writing about actual events that happened in the past (Little, Brown, 795-6):
In 1848 Marx wrote to Engels.
3) An argumentative essay is characterized by a single, central thesis or argument. The body of your essay involves your organizing and developing support to prove your thesis. Your thesis will likely include several stated reasons for your argument (a closed thesis); these reasons are major supports for your overall argument (Little, Brown, 163ff.).
4) Quoting and citing sources is an essential part of supporting an argument or an interpretation of a text (even if that means simply quoting the single text you’re analyzing). Using quoted material well means much more than dropping the quotation and moving on. You need to explain how and why the quotation is related to the point you’re making. Your use of a good quotation should help demonstrate your own thinking, not replace it.
5) Whenever you use a quotation or a paraphrase of a text, you need to provide an appropriate citation (MLA form—see Little, Brown, 700-708). A paraphrase as well as a quotation requires a citation. Failure to give such credit to sources of quotations or paraphrases is plagiarism. See Little, Brown, 680-689.