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1. Home (you are here) explains how the guide is organized and tells you how to contact the author and publisher.

2. "I've got nothing to say!" The first step in writing a paper is having something to say—or turning a mediocre argument into a good one. The guide's Thinking section emphasizes writing not as an end-product but as a dynamic process of thinking, exploring, and revising ideas.

3. Already have a decent idea or argument but don't know how to express it? In Style, the heart of Nuts and Bolts, you'll find practical how-to advice (and tons of before-and-after examples) on the biggest writing problem facing most students, lack of clarity.

4. Confused about how to put an argument together so it flows logically? Structure offers guidance on the anatomy of essays, from thesis statement to conclusion. You'll also find help on crafting and linking paragraphs in ways that make sense to readers.

5. Research blues? Or you have to write a paper in MLA or APA style and don't have a clue what that means? Evidence will help you. This section provides a quick guide to using the Internet for research, advice on how (and why) to avoid plagiarism, and lots of detailed help on how to quote effectively and how to use major documentation styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE.

6. If you've got a teacher who loves to nit-pick, check out Mechanics. Here you'll find help with the basic look of essays, including presentation, punctuation, and a top-ten list of common usage mistakes.

7. You say your paper is due in two hours? Well, good luck, but we'll do what we can. End gives our Nuts and Bolts writing advice in a nutshell.

Background

If you're lucky enough to like to write—if you love "the music the words make," the rhythm and pace of phrases and sentences, the architectural possibilities of paragraphs—you'll find it easy to use this guide, because you're most likely willing to do the hard work required to write well..

But most people don't have such warm feelings about writing. Nuts and Bolts can also help the rest of us for whom writing—especially school writing—has mainly meant drudgery, anxiety, and getting ruthlessly criticized for breaking this or that rule or being "unclear" or "vague" or "wordy," as if we were doing those things on purpose. Studying writing might not seem like fun, but I've tried to make Nuts and Bolts as concise and entertaining as possible, even as it teaches its lessons about the active voice, rhetoric, punctuation, and so on. One promise: if you put in some effort at this, you'll get better as a writer.

I can promise you that if you put in some time studying the arcane secrets of the active voice, parallelism, semicolons, etc., you'll start writing better, you'll enjoy it more—and, to bottom-line it, you'll get better grades.

Most people probably suppose that a writing guide should be a kind of rule-book. Since I see it differently, perhaps Nuts and Bolts should be called a thinking guide rather than a writing guide. As a thinking guide, Nuts and Bolts offers not just a bunch of rules to memorize but a framework for how to analyze essays, from their overall structure down to individual words. You become a better writer primarily by reflection and analysis (and by writing!) rather than rote memorization. I promise you that if you take the time to look through the guide and pay attention, you'll find scores of useful ways to improve as a writer. You'll understand the process of writing essays better, and you'll take more pride in the work you put into your writing. Hopefully the Nuts and Bolts Guide can kindle in even the most writing-averse student a flicker of Emerson's reverence for the creative magic of writing.

The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing is for anyone who wants to write better. It's intended mainly for college students, but it has also helped lots of other people around the world learn how to write more clearly, gracefully, and effectively.

The guide's author—that's me, Michael Harvey—has taught writing for a long time, first as a undergraduate peer tutor at the University of Maryland, then as a grad student at Cornell University, where I learned a lot in the John S. Knight Writing Program. As a college professor, I've built my students' work around writing, because it's not only something students are going to have to do throughout their lives, but it's also a great way to stimulate learning and critical thinking.

American college students live in a society that is, by historical standards, incredibly well-educated, literate, and word-oriented. Yet most college students don't write very well. It doesn't seem to matter where I've taught—an Ivy League college, a big public university, a small liberal-arts college, even an online course. Nor did it matter what I taught—introductory or upper-level courses; Shakespeare, political science, political theory, organizational behavior, or international business (I've had kind of a wide-ranging academic career). Even from bright students I kept seeing the same problems: poor thesis statements, pomposity and overuse of the passive voice, rambling paragraphs, awkward quotations, and unconvincing use of evidence. I've seen more bad writing in my 15 years of college teaching than I care to think about.

So Nuts and Bolts came about because I got tired of seeing the same writing problems year after year, and I got really tired of writing the same comments on papers year after year: "wordy," "turn passive into active," "how does this fit with your thesis?" I also started to wonder if writing comments did much good—what my students really seemed to need was explanation of why something didn't work well, and help with how to do it better the next time.

Eventually I wrote a little guide for my students summarizing my most common explanations of good and not-so-good writing. My students liked the first guide, so I expanded it. I also broadened its scope because I felt students in many different areas of study needed writing help. Most writing guides are written from the perspective of English and literature courses, but today students are increasingly likely to encounter writing-intensive courses in a wide range of fields, from history to physics to business to art. This cross-disciplinary approach to teaching writing is known as writing across the curriculum.

Nuts and Bolts is a writing-across-the-curriculum primer. The writing-across-the-curriculum perspective challenges students to write in many different fields, not just English courses. Thus, it is hoped, students are more likely to see writing as an important part of their own education, not just something English majors need to be good at. Writing compels you to ask yourself what you know, to articulate your ideas, to link facts and concepts together, to acquire skill in rational argument. Is there a better way to learn how to think for yourself?

But the writing-across-the-curriculum perspective poses some challenges for students and their teachers. Students are less likely to be taught by highly trained writing experts. In addition, each academic discipline has its own traditions, its own terminology, and its own idiosyncratic rules about things like citations and references. These differences can make it harder for students to apply what they learn in one course to other subjects.

Still, underlying the many differences between writing in various academic disciplines are some broadly held norms in western culture about good persuasive writing: rational arguments, sentence-level clarity and elegance, well-structured paragraphs, effectively deployed evidence, and adherence to disciplinary rules and conventions. The particular conventions vary, but the basic formula remains, and based on my experience I can affirm that students who learn to write well in one area can fairly easily translate that to other subjects.

Thus whatever field you find yourself writing papers for, there are certain essentials of essay-writing to know and use: common writing virtues like clarity, an active style, coherent organization, effective use of credible evidence, and observance of the conventions of standard English (that these conventions are in large measure arbitrary and change over time does not lessen their importance or the need, if one wishes to have one's work accepted by one's audience, to obey them).

A final introductory note: Some students worry that embracing the kind of writing advocated here will choke out their own voices, leave them sounding like boring, unoriginal clones. Not so. Youthful incompetence, which is what this guide takes aim at (as well as writing incompetence in general) is usually a lot less interesting than its practitioners think. Real originality and style begin when one has mastered the basics covered here. Learning the lessons of the Nuts and Bolts Guide will help you on your journey to develop your own voice, your own thoughts, and your own virtues as a writer.

The nature of essays

What is an essay? The dictionary tells us it's "a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretive." But in centuries past, as the entry from Dr. Johnson's 18th-century dictionary suggests, the term meant something more uncertain and provisional. To write an essay originally meant to explore or try out ideas. This old meaning lingers in the verb to essay (accent on the second syllable), meaning "to try"—and it remains the underlying idea of the essay. A true essay is a try, a journey of discovery for reader and writer (for more on writing as a way to learn, see the next section on Thinking).

The guide is meant to help you. If you've got ideas on how it could do that better, please let me know. I'd love to hear your suggestions. Thanks.

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Use and limitations

The online Nuts and Bolts Guide is free for individual use, but its content is copyrighted and all rights are reserved by Hackett Publishing Company. Teachers and institutions wishing to make use the guide as an academic or professional resource (for instance by mentioning it in a course syllabus or training materials) may do so free of charge simply by sending notice to the author at mharvey2@washcoll.edu.

At Washington College, the best place to start for writing help is the excellent Writing Center. The Writing Center's expert instructors and peer tutors provide hands-on assistance in crafting stronger essays.

The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing is not only for students but also their teachers. The growing popularity of writing across the curriculum means that more and more teachers are looking for help in improving their students' writing. Teachers may consult Nuts and Bolts for thoughts on using writing in courses. In general, Nuts and Bolts emphasizes thinking, logic, and the structure of sound expository writing rather than just rules.

My hope is that Nuts and Bolts can help teachers discover a more rewarding self-image than correctness judge. The best teaching—of writing like any other difficult skill—does not just train and correct but also inspires and empowers. A commitment to writing takes a good deal of work on the part of teacher, but it's an integral part of helping students develop their potential—not just as writers, but as thinkers, communicators, and whole human beings.

Teaching suggestion: if you require students to follow Nuts and Bolts guidelines in writing their papers, I suggest providing a bit of direction since the guide can be dauntingly long for time-harried students. You might wish to assign one section of the guide per week at the beginning of the term so students get used to working with Nuts and Bolts. And make sure you specify a particular style format (MLA, APA, etc.) which your students should follow. (If you'd like the guide to supply online or downloadable quizzes to increase its value as a teaching tool, or if you have other suggestions that would make it more helpful for you as a teacher, let me know).

Teachers may obtain a free examination copy of Nuts and Bolts from Hackett from the link at the top of this page.

Last updated August 25, 2008.

Technical assistance: Shane Brill, Nancy Cross, Gavin Frayne, Jane Jewell, Rick Jordan, Ted Knight, Austin Lobo.

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