Common Writing Issues for History Papers:

Always proofread your work, paying attention to these common issues:

• Misuse of the apostrophe:

  • There should be no apostrophe in decades or centuries (1960s, not 1960's)

  • "It's" used to express possession (it's is always the contraction of "it is" and should never be found in formal writing, as contractions should not be used in formal writing).

  • Confusion between possessive and plural.

• Beware of homonyms (words that sound the same, but mean different things). A common one is the confusion between "they're", "their", and "there".

• Misuse of the past participle, which is a regional particularity of Western North America. Writing (or saying, for that matter) "I seen", instead of "I have seen" or "I saw", is not only grammatically wrong, it makes you sound uneducated. If you are not sure which to use, substitute the verb for another one that will highlight the difference, for example, "I wrote" (would you say "I written"?).

• Verb tenses. In general, history is written in the past tense. That being said, when addressing how historians speak about the past in their current works, the present tense can be used. For example, "In his book, Clearing the Plains, James Daschuk speaks of the policies used by the federal government to weaken Indigenous sovereignty." *

• It is preferable to use "who" instead of "that" when referring to people. Also, "whom" is reserved for when the word is used as an object, not a subject of the verb: "The people of whom Daschuk speaks", but not "The people whom speak of Daschuk."

• Use of pronouns, especially the ever-so-vague "they". Pronouns are useful, especially to avoid undue repetition. However, they can lead to confusion: ensure that it is possible and easy to identify who "they" are. When in doubt, use specific nouns.

• Use of the passive voice. The issue is less grammatical than one of clarity of thought. Saying that, for example, "Indigenous people were moved from..." does not address agency and begs the question of who it was who forced their relocation. Use the active voice to identify historical actors.

• Strive for simple, plain, and clear language that convey your clear ideas:

  • Avoid adding words simply to make up bulk. Where one word is enough to convey an idea, don't put two. Do not overuse adverbs and adjectives.

  • While you may think slipping "hermeneutic" in an essay will make you look sophisticated, if you don't actually understand what the word means, it may instead make you look silly. Make sure you understand the words you use. Your instructors do. Generally, simpler, plainer language is preferable than overly elaborate words.

  • Avoid "social scientese" jargon. These words are often Latinised versions of perfectly good English words: "Use" is preferable to "utilise". "Societal" is a useless word that really means nothing other than "social" and should avoided.

• Use of subtitles: For most papers of the length required in undergraduate courses, subtitles serve as a crutch to hide awkward structure. Avoid them. Paragraph structure should make clear how the ideas flow without having to use subtitles. Subtitles may be useful in longer papers (20 pages and over) that are organised into sections, but this is generally not a length required for papers that we assign. It is however advisable to have subtitles for entirely different sections ("Bibliography", or "Self-Reflection", for example).

* Everyone interested in the history of Canada's relations with Indigenous peoples should read this book. Daschuk,  James. Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. 2nd ed. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2019. (link).