Passive forms in writing
Much like the -- in my view wrong -- idea that scientific writing goes without the first person, I regularly come across the idea that the passive form should be avoided at
Concepts and conceptions
Underlying seemingly unterminable discussions, different interpretations of words can often be pinpointed as the cause of trouble.
Problem statements
The following remarks and questions on problem statements form a rather loose and unstructured collection. The are phrased in a seemingly silly and even caricatural style.
Normative and descriptive statements
Quite some of the problems that students run in to can be mended by distinguishing more clearly between normative and descriptive statements.
On writing
An overwhelming amount of guides can be found on the internet about how to write a proper paper. Most of them are quite useful, and probably most of them at least contain something that I do wrong all the time. Hence, this text is not written with the pretention to provide the conclusive guide to writing college papers. It is written because the things I see many of my students do wrong, are so stereotypical, and easy to prevent.
