Getting an A on your school paper is not very hard. It usually comes down to three things: research your topic, know your topic, and write in a clear, organized fashion. It's very hard to follow that formula and not get an A or at least high B. Unfortunately, this formula does take a little bit of work. So, rather than put the effort into what does work, many students opt for easier approaches that merely sound like they should work. Upon examination, however, they usually don't, and in some cases actually make your paper worse! Here are four seemingly effective paper writing techniques that will probably not deliver the goods.



1) Making up for lack of content with sheer length

There's a saying that "those who can't do, teach." Well, many students seem to write under the philosophy "those who can't write, write more." When they either run out of things to say (or more often, never had anything real to say in the first place), many students figure they will simply pad their paper with generic rambling about whatever the assigned subject was. One common example is when the assignment is to write about some specific aspect of a famous person's life. Rather than do the hard research on that one specific aspect, however, students will fill the paper with irrelevant trivia about the person's upbringing, childhood hobbies, educational background, parents, etc. Don't do that! All this does is indicate that you did no research and have no real grasp of the assigned topic. Professors get papers like these every day and will instantly spot yours as the copout that it is.

2) Excessive use of quotes

Another all-too-common mistake is overdoing it with quotes and citations. This seems like a better strategy than padding your paper with generic verbiage, because after all, the quotes may be at least related to the assigned topic. But it still doesn't satisfy the core requirement of getting an A: demonstrating that you understand the topic. Excessive quoting of others just indicates that you found other people who understand the topic. Of course, the occasional quote can make a paper better and more enjoyable. So here's a good rule of thumb: if quotes comprise more than 20-30% of your paper, you've used too many. Keep eliminating quotes until 70-80% of the paper is your own written work and your grade will improve.

3) Turning non-autobiographicals subject into an autobiographical papers

Some assigned topics are about you: say, a personality analysis paper in a psychology course. But for some reason, lots of students turn totally impersonal subjects into dissertations about their own lives. If you ever saw a student turn a paper about say, the Civil War, into a personal rant on his own feelings about war, this is what we mean. What such students don't understand is that most college papers do not call for this. In fact, most of them explicitly prohibit you from using first-person words like "I" anywhere in the paper. You are supposed to be writing as a scholarly observer, not as though you were sitting across from someone at a bar. Now, this doesn't mean your paper needs to be dry or boring. You can still inject wit and cleverness into a school paper. But do not tie the topic back to yourself unless this was specifically requested.

4) Turning non-political subjects into political papers

A similar tactic is turning some totally non-political paper (say, a character sketch of Wily Loman from "Death of a Salesman") into a political rant. You wouldn't believe how many non-political writing assignments college students have transformed into Bush-bashing festivals in the last eight years! While this may score you points with some professors, most professors just see this as self-indulgent rambling about something other than what was assigned. Don't do this either! Always ask after each sentence you write, "how does this relate to or strengthen my main point?" The harder it is to answer that question, the more strongly you should consider deleting that sentence.