Department of Political Science, Queens College

Peter Liberman, Dept. of Political Science, Queens College, October 2006

A good paper informs and persuades; to do this it must be logically organized, clearly argued, and well documented. Good writing is hard work, but following the rules of thumb below will help you to write better papers and to do so more efficiently.

Editing Abbreviations
Here are some editing abbreviations that you might see on your graded papers:

agr(eement)	pronoun does not correspond to referent
awk	awkward senence construction
coll	colloquial–words or phrases better spoken than on paper
filler	digression that doesn't advance the argument
frag	sentence fragment
NSI	need summary information
non seq	non-sequitur - "does not follow" from what came before
¶ or para	paragraph - usually to indicate spot to divide an overlong one
red(undant)	repeats point already made
run on	sentence is too long or has too many clauses
source	citation needed
sp	spelling
stet	ignore editor's correction
unpack	need to break up overlong paragraph into constituent ideas
wordy	excess verbiage
ww	wrong word