History 3605:

“Notes on Writing”

Professor McDonaldSpring 2012Feb. 7, 2012

Figures based on McCusker and Menard, The Economy of British America, 1607-1789, 54.

Problem #1: State a ThesisThesis:

“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):

• “Is it really possible to understand how horrible the slave trade was by examining numbers? Could slavery have been avoided? Was it a good thing or a bad thing that Europe discovered the islands in the Atlantic Ocean?”

• “It is clear that the slave traders were under a lot of tremendous pressure.”

Description (is NOT a thesis):

• “This database is about slave trading.”

• “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 you are using to test it.• Point #2: Provide an overview of your 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 ProblemsYES: (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

Appear at the end of the sentence or, if combining many sources, at the end of paragraph.

NOT:

• “Slave trading took a terrible tool8 and many people died9.”

• Not every sentence.

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 African slavery, and in the different interpretations of what it is a more clear picture can be shown of who they may have really been.”

• “The weaponry of the Africans was still a lot more of Stone Age weapons which were very crude and often consisted of sticks with obsidian points on them for which cave people would use when inflicting damage on the enemy.”

Problem #5: Sharp Writing-- Less is More

Problem #6: Use Past Tense

Not present or future tense!

• “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 database mainly concerns plans on settling this newly discovered land and how planters plans to begin to develop it and how it will be governed.”

Problem #7: Don’t use First Person

• “I believe that religion was, if anything, just an excuse to colonize and take people over.”

• “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, slave traders sailed to the New World in search of wealth.”

• “One might ask for the reasoning for all of this violence on the part of the Europeans.”

• “It is well known that Oladauh Equiano’s account of this eight year journey throughout the new land, was mainly to bring focus onto how terrible the slaves had it.”

• “Due to the fact that these articles were written by Europeans, the articles displayed the expeditions as successful with them in authority.”

• “It can also be argued that slave trading was a successful business.”

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 gold. All three of these documents show that one of the main reasons for them even exploring these new lands was for the gold. 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”… “as we can see”…“it is also interesting that”

• 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!!!