How To Eschew Weasel Words...

Names. Give a person's full name in the first reference, even if the figure is reasonable well known. If you are writing about 17th-century England, for example, the first mention should be "Bishop Matthew Wren," not "Bishop Wren." Also, use a person's commonly used or professional name. A reference should be to "Richard Hofstadter," not to "R. Hofstadter." The latter form belongs to Soviet writers and sociologists.

Overwriting. Few are in favor of dull history, especially the book-buying public. but verbal pyrotechnics do not produce compelling prose. Only solid writing, good organization, and an engaging subject can do that. Exercise restraint. Many students are too eager to wax metaphorical, to paint things more vividly than necessary, and to substitute rhetoric for logic. this often comes across as foolish rather than dramatic, especially when events or inanimate objects acquire the traits of the animal kingdom:

• Carter's grain embargo cut into the Soviet economy like the bit of a rabid pit bull.
• Congress stood up on its hind feet and bared its pointy teeth at the president.

Personify rarely; use metaphors sparsely. when you do use metaphors, make sure that they are not mixed or do not conjure up grisly images:

Passive voice. Passive verbs lack a clear subject and should be avoided. Typical passive constructions are "should be avoided," was done," and "is chosen." You need not avoid passive verbs at all costs, but their number should be few because active verbs give a stronger, more direct tone to your writing.

In addition to reading less well, passive verbs also promote vagueness, because they permit the author to avoid naming a subject. "It was determined that..," for example, fails to state who determined it. This fact explains why passive verbs are so popular in bureaucratic and political discourse.

Note how passive constructions can convert to active ones. (That sentence, in fact, is a conversion from "Note how passive constructions can be converted to active ones.")

• It was decided that Socrates should die.
• Can be: The judges decided that Socrates should die.

Plagiarism. There are many definitions of plagiarism. "Theft" is the simplest. It is plagiarism to take as your own a significant portion of the words or thoughts of another person, especially if you paraphrase them somewhat to disguise their origin. when you repeat someone else's words, enclose them in quotation marks and footnote the source. Also footnote passages of your prose that owe major intellectual debts to someone else's scholarship. In practical terms, plagiarism means an automatic "F."

Proof. See "Elaboration" and "Evidence".

Punctuation. Consult someone else. If necessary, check the MLA Handbook, or other reliable references, such as Margaret Shertzer's Elements of Grammar. Just remember, if you write a sentence that runs over three lines and has no comma, you may be in trouble. James Joyce could write a single, brilliant chapter with only one comma. You probably can't.

Quotations. Quotations should support and illustrate an argument, not intrude upon it or substitute for it. Try to blend quotations with your own prose, pruning judiciously, and to break long ones into shorter units.

• James Madison declared: I trust we shall find that part which gives the general government the power of laying and collecting taxes indispensable, and essential to the existence of any efficient or well organized system of government...."

This would read better as:

• "I trust," declared Madison, "we shall find that part which gives the general government the power of laying and collecting taxes indispensable...."

Stay away from unattributed quotations. Do not plug someone else's words into the midst of your own without indicating who wrote or said them:

• The revolutionaries aimed at finding something that "gives the general government the power of laying and collecting taxes...."

Says who? The thought should either be paraphrased or credited to Madison:

• The revolutionaries aimed at finding something that, in James Madison's phrase, "gives the general government the power of laying and collecting taxes...."

Above all, avoid bloc quotations. These large, single-spaced chunks look imposing on the page, but readers usually skip them, assuming that anything important will be in the body of the paper. Even if read, large quotations make an essay appear unoriginal and interrupt the flow of an argument. Integrate quotations into the paragraphs of your paper; a mother, more persuasive essay will result.

If you are dead-set on including a bloc quotation in your paper, make certain it does real work. It should illustrate some aspect of your subject that you cannot describe adequately in your own words; it should convey the nature -- language, form, character -- of your source materials; or it should enhance your argument substantially without retarding the flow of your exposition. Bloc quotations aren't taboo; they just have to earn their keep.

Rhetorical questions. Avoid rhetorical questions. Why, you may ask? Because they fall into several obnoxious categories:

1) there are the unanswerable and pretentious ones: "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"

2) There are silly ones: "Was slavery good or evil?"

3) There are the perky ones (and we hate perky): "Why don't we try to put ourselves into the head of an average medieval peasant?"

4) Above all, there are the ones authors use when they cannot think of a decent way to make a transition -- ones that substitute for clear organization: "What, we may wonder, connects these various phenomena?" We know we will still wonder after reading the paragraphs that follow such a question.

Specific (as in "be specific"). See "Elaboration."

Split infinitives. Verbs in the infinitive form comprise two words, one of which is "to" -- "to be," "to go," "to consume." fifty years ago it was a cardinal rule of grammar never to split infinitives -- as in "to boldly go where no man has gone before," or "to really be radical." These examples and dozens of others have proven useful in writing, particularly for newspapers and in television. Enforcement of the rule has eased in many circles. the New York Times employs the policy that it is all right to split an infinitive when you cannot gracefully avoid doing so. Some of us are less forgiving.

Style. Don't try to develop one until you are thoroughly in control of your writing. English is cruel to those who affect a style. Readers often laugh unkindly, as at this:

• The more Henry VIII cogitated and masticated, the more alternatives he saw to divorce.

That/which. Using "which" and "that" correctly can be a puzzler. Cardinal rules offer guidelines, but exceptions abound.

In general, use "that" in a defining, restricting, or essential clause; reserve "which" for nondefining or innessential clauses. What those terms means is that if the clause following "that" or "which" is essential to the definition of whatever precedes it, the appropriate word is "that." If, on the other hand, the clause merely modifies or elaborates upon the subject, the appropriate word is "which." James J. Kilpatrick gives a handy guide: "If the clause is to be set off by commas, use which. Otherwise, use that."

• The announcer's hairpiece, which he wears with no regularity, is the worst that Bryant Gumbel has ever seen.

Practice appears to differ among English-speaking nations. Many British writers consistently use "which" where Americans use "that." Don't plead that as an excuse. They only think it is their language.

That/who. Keep in mind that people are not things, and "that" refers to things. Do not write sentences like this one:

• Catherine the Great was the kind of woman that got what she wanted.

The. Usually a friendly and useful word, "the" can be overdone.

• The peasants went to the nobility whenever they needed relief from the clergy's demands.

• Reads better as: Peasants went to nobles whenever they needed relief from clerical demands.

Verbs. See also "Passive voice.") Instructed to avoid a dribble of adverbs, students reach for strong verbs. In this way they fall into careless error, most often an error of degree -- using "pummel" where "strike" would be correct. use the dictionary, in which you should seek verbs that convey your meaning precisely.

Verbs and causation. More dangerous are verbs used blindly, dropped into a sentence without regard for what they imply about causation. For example: "Tom Paine's "Common Sense" produced the Revolution" makes a large claim, and one that cannot be proven. Unless you are prepared to argue the point, it is better to say "Tom Paine's "Common Sense" helped justify the Revolution." Make certain that the verbs you use do not commit you to causal propositions, or to implied relationships that you do not intend.

Verb tense. Arrange historical events in the past tense. The present and progressive tenses usually add confusion and inconsistency to historical writing. Students occasionally use these tenses in an attempt to give a sense of drama:

• Napoleon surveys Europe with an eagle eye. He sees before him a world to conquer and all that stands between him and glory is an insignificant island with poor cuisine and warm beer.

People who write like that end up doing documentaries for local television.

Speaking of television, avoid its latest contribution to the language, the "sports present tense," also known as Madden-speak. It's most common constructions begin with "if" and involve an imaginary rewriting of whatever just happened: "If he catches the football, it's a whole different game." When this verbal instant replay is applied to history, the effect is bizarre:

• If Lincoln lives, it is a while different Reconstruction.
• If Luther stays with the Catholic Church, there's no Reformation.

See also "Passive voice."

We/I. It is all right to refer to yourself in most academic papers. You might, for example, state: "I firmly believe that Turner's view of the frontier is flawed by sexism and racism." It would be simpler, however, to leave yourself out; "Turner's view of the frontier is flawed by sexism and racism."

If you do use "I," make certain that you aren't simply being self-indulgent, making yourself -- rather than the topic -- the centerpiece of your work. There is an obvious (and irritating) narcissism to essays that contain sentences like the following:

• I couldn't relate to slavery because it is so alien to my life growing up in Scarsdale.

I was really impressed with the way Machiavelli talked about how to get ahead in the world of politics. I know it is difficult to see George Bush as Lorenzo the Magnificent, but I can see the parallels and they're awesome.

Whatever you do, avoid using the imperial "we" when you really mean "I." (You may wonder why we use "we"" in this style sheet. Because two of us wrote it, that's why.) "We" neither disguises your identity nor creates a sense of community with your reader. It just makes you sound like Dan Rather.

• We now must turn our attention to the negative aspects of the Black Death.
• We must determine whether or not the French Revolution was truly revolutionary, or merely a bit of historical housecleaning.

Weasel words. If your information is less than conclusive, acknowledge that either in summary or by choosing another argument. But don't undercut your argument with weasel words -- empty palliatives such as "to a certain degree," "it may seem likely that," or "in some cases." If your points are weak, they need no additional burdens. Note how much stronger the following become as the bracketed words drop out:

• [It may even be, as] some experts have hinted that Thomas More was [somewhat] suicidal [anyway].
• Josiah Royce was [to some extent] the Hegel of American philosophy.

Weasel words dilute your thought, and hence your argument.

Which. See "That/which."