Professor Caterina Pierre

Common Writing Errors in Scholarly Papers
(art papers and others)

• Watch out for spelling errors; they make your writing look sloppy. Run spell check on your word processing program before you print. Also, check for homonyms such as their/there, two/to/two, here/hear, etc.
• Titles of works of art should be either underlined or italicized (not both). DO NOT use quotation marks. Quotation marks are for quotes, not titles (except in titles of articles in bibliographies; but never for titles of works of art).
• Use correct punctuation: sentences beginning with who, what, where, when, why, is, if, etc. require a question mark at the end of the sentence. "Why does the professor care if we write correctly?" ("It is because the professor wants you all to find a job someday.")
• Write clear, full sentences, and break down long sentences into two shorter ones.
• Do not begin sentences with "and", "because" or "but". Do not end sentences with prepositions, such as "to", "before", "after".
• Leave slang out of scholarly papers: do not use words such as "got" (as in "I got my inspiration" — change "got" to something else, like "acquired", "received", "found", etc.)
• Do not use contractions in scholarly papers: do not use "I’m", "don’t", "ain’t", "we’re"; write these out fully as "I am", "do not", "am not", "we are".
• Write out numbers under 100 in words: "Picasso was ninety-five years old when he died."
• When you first mention any important artist, write out his/her full name and put the birth and death dates in parenthesis after the name. When you mention that artist again in the same paper, you can just refer to him/her by their last name only. Do not address an artist by their first name, ever. Make sure the artists’ names are correctly spelled.
• Please include page numbers at the top of the page. The preferred scholarly style is at the top right, as just the number "1", "2", etc. or with your name and the number, "Smith 1", "Smith 2", etc. The cover, endnotes, and bibliography pages DO NOT count in the text page number.
• Do not repeat yourself. It is redundant and boring to read.
• Try to avoid the internet for research. For art history it is very unreliable and consistently filled with errors. Use only reputable internet sources, usually ending in .org, .gov, or .edu. To cite a website in notes or bibliography, give as much information as possible:
  Metropolitan Museum of Art website, pages on Matisse, viewed on 10/5/01, at www.metmuseum.org.
• Stay focused on your topic. If you are writing about Claudel, I do not want to read two pages on Matisse. Stick to your topic and the issues you are most interested in. Deviations from the topic will bore the reader and cause confusion in the text. (It will also lower your grade.)
• Bibliography: follow the Chicago Manual of Style. Do not number your bibliography; list everything in alphabetical order by authors’ last names.
• For books:
  Pierre, Caterina Y. Marcello (1836-1879). New York: Abrams, 2000.
• For articles:
  Pierre, Caterina Y. "Marcello’s Heroic Sculpture." Woman’s Art Journal. 22:1 (Spring/Summer 2001): 14-20.
• Notes: whether you choose to use footnotes, endnotes or parenthetical notes, please be consistent and use the Chicago Manual of Style. For parenthetical notes, give the author’s last name, the date of the text and the page number(s) in parenthesis right after the section you quotes or paraphrased. Then give the full citation in the bibliography.
• According to Pierre, Marcello "was the greatest artist to have ever lived" (Pierre, 2001, p.15).
• Tense agreement: the artist… was; the artists… were.; it… was; both… were. Since you are almost all writing about dead artists, use the past tense.
• "Courbet was the greatest painter." "His work is highly regarded by scholars today." (The artist is dead and gone, but the work is still here.)
• Capitalization: In English the following items usually have their first letter capitalized: First words of a sentence; the pronoun I; proper nouns; religious figures and titles of holy books; titles of works of art; days of the week; months of the year and holidays.

**I am warning you all now, if the above errors are committed to future assignments I will take points off of the paper grade!