I have two writing problems that I frequently see here. One is a variation on 3), but reads "In a study done by Smith and Jones" The other one that I have not seen mentioned yet is a variation on 4). In this one, every paragraph in the introduction begins with some variation of the author's names. Another of my pet peeves is writing hypotheses in a proposal in the past tense and hypotheses in the finished research paper in the future tense.
Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Wallace Dixon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 17, 2003 3:07 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences Subject: Writing Pet Peeves Dear Colleague, I am teaching my research methods course about what not to do when writing manuscripts. If you would care to share, could you give me your top 5 or 10 pet peeves about student writing? I would like to share these lists with my students. I think it would also be interesting to see how much overlap there among/between us. My top 6 1) misuse of affect / effect 2) use of male-female when men and women should be used 3) the phrase "Smith and Jones did a study and found" 4) a rhetorical style which presents 1 study and its finding per paragraph, w. no integration 5) colloquialisms & dramatics 6) the phrase "there was no significance" wedj ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wallace E. Dixon, Jr. | Chair and Associate Professor | Rocket science is child's play of Psychology | compared to understanding Department of Psychology | child's play East Tennessee State University | -unknown Johnson City, TN 36714 | (423) 439-6656 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
