“Notes on Writing” Professor McDonald Fall 2013

Midterm Results 5 A5 A-7 B+4 B9 B-6 C+-- C1 C-2 D1 F--

Figures based on McCusker and Menard, The Economy of British America, , 54. Problem #1: State a Thesis Thesis: “The morality rate for all nations surveyed in the Transatlantic Slave Database is consistently lower than 30%, supporting Herbert Klein’s contention.” “The most rapid rise in slave trading happened in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when Herbert Klein argues that plantation economies also grew.”

Opinion (is NOT a thesis): “Was slavery inevitable because of the plantation systems in America? Could another form of labor worked just as well? What kind of people would enslave each other and not see what was wrong?” “Slavery was a horrible practice that should never have been allowed.”

Description (is NOT a thesis): “These three documents are all about slavery and how it ended.” “All of the documents talk about the middle passage.”

Problem #2: Outline Your Arguments Thesis: Mortality rates are consistently lower than 30%. Point #1: Establish Klein’s argument about mortality and which nations and time periods he tested. Point #2: Provide an overview of results…for example, note that mortality rates were highest early on. Point #3: Mortality rates lowered even as the number of slaves increased—indicating that it is not just slave trading that results in death—but perhaps less experience early on..

Problem #3: Citation Problems YES: (first citation)  David Northrup (ed.), The Atlantic Slave Trade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), p. 1. NOT: David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade, 1. Northrup, p. 1. Nuthin’

What Footnotes Look Like Footnotes appear at the end of a sentence or, if combining many sources, at the end of paragraph. NOT: “Conditions were horrible on board slave ships, 8 with too many people packed in place, 9 little food, 10 and often outbreaks of disease. 11 ”

Problem #4: Proofread “The two questions posed in section one of this paper have been troubling me since I was first enlightened by closer of the study this subject.” “Without the internal slave traders help, the Europeans could not have been able to convey their on the Africans without the use of force.” “The Africans due to there culture and leadership…”

Figures based on Philip Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison, 1969), 268. “Differences are also seen in the different points of view of the Amistad slaves, and in the different interpretations of who they were a more clear picture can be shown of who they may have really been.” “There were a number of people who believed in slavery in this time period and a number of people who did not believe in slavery, but and some people who were not sure about slavery but did not own slaves themselves, or who changed their mind.” Problem #5: Sharp Writing-- Less is More

Problem #6: Use Past Tense Not present or future tense (all of the people you are writing about died long ago)! “Europeans want to become planters and merchants of the high seas and the way they are going to do that is by keeping order of all the new settlers.” “This document mainly concerns his plans on getting back his slaves and how he plans to use them in Cuba to grow sugar cane.”

Problem #7: Don’t use First Person “I believe that slavery was, if anything, just an excuse to take people and use them to work for nothing.” “Given this last article about the treatment of Africans, I can really understand how the slaves were living.”

“In a way it is easy to say that slave traders were greedy men. They wanted many things for their own personal success, but I can not be the one who answers the question. It is entirely up the reader and their opinions they make after reading these primary documents.”

Problem #8: Passive Voice Look closely every time you use “was” or “were”…. “There were three data sets chosen to read for this paper.” vs. “This paper uses three data sets.” “The other contributor to the downfall of the Africans was how they treated the Portuguese.” vs. “The Africans’ behavior toward the Portuguese also contributed to their downfall.” “In the first fifty years set, Africans were dying less often...” vs. “Fewer Africans died in the first fifty years….”

Problem #9: Avoid Prepositional Phrases Try not to use filler phrases that don’t add substance to your sentence. “As mentioned above, there were many questions about how owned the Amistad slaves.” “One might ask for the reasoning for all of this violence on the part of the Spaniards.” “It is well known that the middle passage was a horrible experience and that many slaves died before reaching the Americas.”

“Due to the fact that these articles were written by different authors, they sometimes seem to contradict each other.” “It can also be argued that American courts had a problem with the Amistad case because slavery still existed in the United States.”

Problem #9 (again) as Redundant/Repetitive Language “Columbus describes in his journal detailed descriptions of his crew’s morale as well as his lies to them.” “Christopher talks about the finding of gold and how everything should be reported.” (one sentence later…) “Columbus asks them about how people can go and look for gold and how everything must be recorded.”

“The second of the two most prevalent traits of the Spaniards is their extreme hunger for wealth which depended on slavery. All three of these documents show that one of the main reasons for them even buying slaves was for the wealth they could provide. Greed is one of the main characteristics of the Spaniards which is evident in each of these three documents.”

Problem #10: Informal or Colloquial Language “It tells how the Spaniards more of less killed everything that walked.” “The document is about Cortez right hand lady and interpreter.” “I believe that it was more of the actual adventures and colonists that were actually put on the foreign soil that used the religion card improperly to destroy any heathen and steal any or all of their property.”

“Dona Marina made it possible for Cortes to communicate with the locals and really gave him yet another leg up.” “He believes that somewhere in the ballpark of 15 million people have died at the hands of the Christians, and that the ones who were still surviving were being malnourished and worked to death as well as being raped.”

“Columbus’s efforts to keep a peaceful solution to the gold situation, was soon thrown out the window…” “We also get a false sense of his ability and competence in his letter to the king and queen of Spain where he seems to have good ideas and everything covered in the New World when the truth is that he just talks a good game.” “This was the first wake-up call to the indigenous people.”

Pet Peeves It’s 1500s, not 1500’s (the century doesn’t own anything!) Avoid those prepositions…“due to the fact that” “it has been shown”… “it has been demonstrated”… “as we can see” “it is also interesting that” “more or less” “it can be said” Documents describe or record, historical actors write…they don’t speak, say, or tell.

Top 10 in Review State a Thesis Outline your arguments and make sure they ALL relate to your thesis. Use proper citation format. Proofread. Write sharply. Use past tense. DON’T use first person (I, you, we, us) Avoid passive voice. Don’t use prepositional or “filler” statements Ban informal language!!! GOOD LUCK!!!