This is the first in an upcoming series of posts that will address the better writing of individual journals. The next post will feature general “feel” for what good journals will look like and beyond that, there will be a post that discusses the concept of “reality”, “objectivity” and “neutrality” to better align your thoughts in understanding sociological theory.

Before we begin though, please note that this post was not meant to be read in its entirety. Go through the table of contents and pick out only the segments relevant to you. Do not attempt to read it in its entirety, since that really will make me feel bad for wasting that much of your time. (@__@) Okay, getting back on track now…

It was without a doubt quite a nice experience to come to understand your thoughts from the journals. Nonetheless, I did manage to spot some troubling patterns that seemed to have permeated across a majority of the journals and I thought it may be helpful to compile them into this blog post for your learning purposes (not that there is anything to teach, really, LOL).

I have divided these points into two major sections: the first is the more important segment regarding the content of the journals, while the second is a more general segment on common language mistakes. I have also ordered the points in each segment from “most serious” to “least serious” in regards to the attention you may want to pay to these items.

Either way, with so many anticipated posts to push out, I better get started on this, LOL. To facilitate, allow me to kick things off with an almighty table of contents, so that you know which parts you might want to read or skip. (^__^)

===================================================
0. Table de Matières
===================================================
1. Putting Content into Context
a. Re-examining Reality as a Concept
b. Focusing Your Message
c. Rallying Support in Academia
d. Week 2 and the Katz in the Bag
e. Claims-making through Week 3
f. Irrationality and Suicide in Week 4

2. By George, Mind Your Language!
a. Italicising is not for Italians only!
b. Improper Writing of Disciplines as Proper Nouns
c. Differentiating “Media” from “the Media”
d. Researching the Mass Noun of Research
e. Taking a Stand for Stance
f. One to Nine and 10–100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (@__@)
g. Stop Dashing Around the Script! The Difference between “-“, “–” and “—”
h. Maybe it May Be…
i. “Besides” as a Preposition
j. Are Claims-Makers Claim-Makers?
k. Convincing Suicidal Articles Not to Jump

===================================================
1. Putting Content into Context
===================================================
a. Re-examining Reality as a Concept
———————————————————————————————-
In general, most of the journals seem to be overly concerned with the idea that the media is distorting reality and, to emphasise its importance, many journals conclude by highlighting that distortion as their overall key message. While this sounds like a fair argument and analysis, the problem with it is simply that reality is a very tricky concept.

That is, in order for us to claim that reality has been distorted presupposes that there is a concrete knowable reality that can be distorted in the first place. The question that needs to be answered then is this: What is this concrete and knowable reality that you are talking about? Can you provide examples of this one ultimate reality?

If you could demonstrate this one knowable reality, then you have effectively disproved social constructionism and therefore deserve the highest honours in the field of sociology; if you can’t demonstrate this however, then you need to ask yourself what exactly did the media distort?

Nonetheless, as you ponder that, rest assured that Allison and I will be writing a post dealing with the concepts of reality, objectivity, and neutrality in the near future.

———————————————————————————————-
b. Focusing Your Message
———————————————————————————————-
Another large problem with a good proportion of the posts may have been borne from the way the journal questions were structured. That is, the individual journals’ writing and arguments generally seemed to jump all over the place without any consistent idea running through them. Remember, it is more important that you find the core point within each journal question and address the journal’s question with that core as a starting point.

Focus your message and bring your journals towards the point that you would like to advocate; however, in saying this, it is also important to not neglect alternative sides of the argument because that demonstrates that you have come to your conclusions through much reasoned thought. Lacking any alternative considerations will certainly not help in delivering a good mark.

———————————————————————————————-
c. Rallying Support in Academia
———————————————————————————————-
I will have to admit that this was something I did not expect at all from a good chunk of the journals—the almost complete lack of citations or references to support points that could be of contention. While I will acknowledge that the journals were meant to be of a personal nature, that did not mean that they also ought to be written free of any references and citations.

Rather, it meant that you needed to take anything relevant into account (i.e. from the lecture and readings) and write with those as your foundations. Of course, you have to state your opinions and ultimately come to your own conclusions, but you ought to do so with at least some demonstration that you have understood the content of that week.

Remember, cite and reference—it is as important in these journals as it is in any essay.

———————————————————————————————-
d. Week 2 and the Katz in the Bag
———————————————————————————————-
From reading the journals on Week 2, it seems that many people missed the point of what Katz was trying to say. While it is true that he spoke about the four categories that helped with determining the newsworthiness of a story, the crux of his article was not about how the media determined newsworthiness but rather that there is no inherent newsworthiness in crime itself. In other words, Katz was saying that there is nothing about the topic of crime that makes it any more newsworthy than, let’s say, the topic of botany.

In this way, those four categories that were discussed are merely the elements that made any news newsworthy but it just so happens that they tended to concentrate into events we define as “crime”. Thus, it is not enough that we simply say “the stealing of data from Edison’s computer was newsworthy because it was about collective integrity”. Instead, you still have to demonstrate how this case was enough of an offence to collective integrity to give it the newsworthiness it had and in so doing, you cannot shy away from discussing what societal norm was violated and why a violation of that norm gives that specific crime its newsworthiness.

———————————————————————————————-
e. Claims-making through Week 3
———————————————————————————————-
Another point of confusion occurred in Week 3 and this was likely fueled by an error in the provision of examples (for which oversight I hereby do personally apologise for). It seemed that many were unclear as to what a claims-maker was in Week 3 and I am guessing that this is because of an example embedded into the question that goes: experts, police, claims-makers, owners of the problem, etc.

Indeed, placing claims-makers and owners of the problem in the same list is confusing and it was certainly my error for not looking through the question properly. Let me set the record straight here and declare that experts and police are claims-makers—everyone is a claims-maker, and because of that, one needed not only to identify the claims-makers but also to demonstrate the impact they had on shaping the audience’s understanding of a criminal event.

———————————————————————————————-
f. Irrationality and Suicide in Week 4
———————————————————————————————-
While reading through the journals of Week 4, it became worrying to me that many noted that suicide was an irrational act. I can understand the sentiments on this issue and the argument that the act of suicide makes no logical sense. Indeed, I also know that I am threading dangerous ground in doing this, but I must point people to the body of evidence that notes that suicide is not an irrational act.

While the degree of suicidal ideation may vary from person to person, circumstances could conspire to make suicide seem like the only option available. Most people who commit suicide take a lot of time thinking about it very carefully because they understand the gravity of their situation and the consequences of their actions—more usually than not there are plenty of warning signs as most usually do talk about their thoughts to others and people usually do not complete their first attempt at it (which leaves scars and other discernable characteristics of self-harm on them).

In general, it is safe to say that most of the research shows that people do not choose suicide if there is any other viable alternative for them to sustain their lives. It is because of this understanding that makes it difficult to argue that suicide is an irrational act.

On a side note, in class once we spoke about whether electrocution was a bizarre method of suicide and in this light, I would like you all to consider the recent local case of the Nepalese man that was shot dead by a police officer after assaulting him with a chair (click here for the RTHK write up on it). This case actually reminded me of another method of suicide that I had once come across in my studies into the topic—colloquially, this method is known as “suicide by cop” but academically, it’s “victim-precipitated homicide”. In this method, an individual acts in a manner that they know will provoke the use of deadly force by law enforcement and complete their suicidal intents that way.

Finally, in line with Dr Fu’s note at the end of lecture, if this discussion has evoked thoughts of suicide in any shape or form, you are strongly advised to talk to someone you trust about this or seek professional help immediately. An appointment can be set up with the university’s counselling service, CEDARS, by phone at 2857-8388 or by email at cedars-counselling@hku.hk. For more contact information, please click here.

I do not and will never condone such an act, but I also have an academic responsibility to help all of you better understand the circumstances surrounding this very sensitive and complex issue.

———————————————————————————————-

And now, for some common errors in English that I managed to spot, LOL:

===================================================
2. By George, Mind Your Language!
===================================================
a. Italicising is not for Italians only!
———————————————————————————————-
How italicising has anything to do with Italians is anybody’s guess, but what is not to guess is that you must italicise when writing out the titles of newspaper publications, journals, movies and so on in your journals. I don’t ever want to see Apple Daily again, instead I demand that it be only Apple Daily. So there. Italicise your titles—or else! (>__<)

———————————————————————————————-
b. Improper Writing of Disciplines as Proper Nouns
———————————————————————————————-
Academic disciplines are not to be treated as proper nouns unless they are “naturally” proper nouns (yes, I said that right, LOL); in other words, disciplines that are naturally proper nouns like languages (e.g. Spanish and Chinese) or names of places or peoples (e.g. American studies and Japanese studies) are written out capitalised because of the type of nouns they are.

All other disciplines however, like sociology, psychology, physics, engineering, etc. are not proper nouns and therefore should not be capitalised. So, it’s good English to say, “I am a student of philosophy and Afrikaans” but not so good to say, “I am a student of Philosophy and Afrikaans”.

I have to admit that this is almost by far the most common English error I spotted in the introductory journals (the second most common error being the previous one on italicising publication titles). (^__^”)

———————————————————————————————-
c. Differentiating “Media” from “the Media“
———————————————————————————————-
While this may seem slightly trivial, there is quite an important difference between referring to “media” and “the media”. Let’s begin with understanding the word “media” first.

“Media” on its own is actually one of the plural forms of the word “medium”, and the word usually refers to the tools that are used in the process of communication and data storage. So, you would refer to the television, radio and newspaper as well as USB storage devices, computer hard drives, and so on in this manner. Singularly each of these forms are known as a “medium” and an alternative plural is “mediums”.

So, when you are referring to a multitude of these sources, you could say, “the media of television and radio”, or “the mediums of television and radio”, but when you are talking about only one of these, it’s going to be, “the medium of television.”

Notice that in the above example, I used “the media…”, which is why I am going to note here that the term, “the media”, must be read contextually. For the most part however, “the media” actually refers to “mass media” which is the transmission of information that is designed to reach a large audience. This information could refer to the news, entertainment programming, typhoon signal warnings… basically, anything that is communicated to you via the various channels of media.

In this way, you are more often than not referring to “the media” in your journals, instead of simply “media”. So, remember to keep that in mind when you write your next journal. (^__^)

———————————————————————————————-
d. Researching the Mass Noun of Research
———————————————————————————————-
Semester after semester, this problem continues to plague the papers I read—but allow me to definitively say here that the word “research” is a mass noun and there is no plural form of it. Yes, you heard that right, like the sugar you put in your coffee and the water that courses your body, research is also a mass noun that does not have a plural form to it.

So, why then does Microsoft Word and other word processing programs allow for the word “researches” to stay unhighlighted as a spelling error as you type your journals? Well, the answer is simply because Microsoft Word is stupid. Oops, no, that’s not what I meant to say. *ahem* The answer is because “researches” is a present tense conjugation of the verb “research” when used with a singular third-person subject. (WTF?) (@__@)

In other words, it’s the simple present tense form of the verb “research”when used with “he”, “she”, or “it”. For example, “he researches a whole bunch of crime stuff”. So it’s not that “researches” is not a word, it’s just not the word you are looking for.

———————————————————————————————-
e. Taking a Stand for Stance
———————————————————————————————-
This segment is related to the words “stand” and “stance”. While they share slightly similar meanings, they are actually rather different words and their usage actually implies different things. Stand, for our purposes, is a verb that means to take, maintain, or advocate a position and, in many ways, it has the connotation that there is a vehement defence of that position or argument.

For example, “I stand with the faculty on this issue” or “He stands for democratic change”. Both examples show individuals who are taking a position and maintaining it with a sense of defensiveness. To help you out, you could imagine the word “stand” to be slightly like the word “fight”—if the sentence maintains the message you are trying to convey when imagining the concept of fighting for something, then you can be sure you used “stand” correctly.

Let us now consider the word “stance”: a noun that simply means the mental position of a person in regards to certain issues. There is no concept of defence in “stance”, it is simply a position adopted. So, you could say something like, “ZiTeng’s stance on prostitution is legalisation” or “My stance on ice-cream is that it should be eaten”. Here, positions are noted but there is no implication of outright defence.

For those interested, in regards to technicalities, it must be noted that “stand” as a reference to “position” is always a verb and when it is a noun, it does not encompass the meaning of position. Thus, when someone says “liberal stand” the image that is conjured up in the listener’s mind is of a stand or a booth that is associated with liberal ideals.

In this way, when I say “I have a communist stance” and “I have a communist stand”, I am actually saying two completely different things. In the former, I am saying that I have communist tendencies and leanings in my intellectual position, while in the latter, I am saying that I own a stand in a shopping mall somewhere that upholds the communist ideals. So, think carefully next time you write, “Apple Daily has a biased stand”.

There are exceptions to this rule of course and I will gladly share them with you if you ask, but for now, this simple differentiation will prove more helpful in your journal writing than going into itty-bitty details of when exceptions occur. (^__^)

———————————————————————————————-
f. One to Nine and 10–100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (@__@)
———————————————————————————————-
This deals with writing out numbers in academic papers, well, mainly from the social sciences perspective—since my experience is in this area. In general, it is good practice to spell out any whole number from 1 through to 9. So, if you have 9 participants in your study, then you should write “This study tested nine participants”.

This applies only to the numbers 1 to 9 however, and any other number beyond that is generally kept in numerical format. In other words, it’s okay to “10 parrots”, “5.5 mm”, “0 fatalities”, and “3,000,000,000,000,000 dollars” because they are not a number between 1 and 9 or they are not whole numbers. For the last example though, I should say that it would be better to say “3 quadrillion dollars” since oversized numbers don’t look all that nice, LOL.

Easy, right? Well, what happens then if I have a sentence that has a 1 and 100 inside of it? Should I write, “Tim believed there was only one balloon, but I swear I saw 10“? Hmm… Well, the answer to that question is “no”. Instead, you simply choose one to go with (either spell it out or leave it numerical) and apply it to both numbers.

So, it’s better to say, “Tim believed there was only 1 balloon, but I swear I saw 10” or, “Tim believed there was only one balloon, but I swear I saw ten“.

There you go, that’s the general guideline for dealing with numbers in social sciences papers. (^__^)

———————————————————————————————-
g. Stop Dashing Around the Script! The Difference between “-“, “–” and “—”
———————————————————————————————-
To speak the truth, this is something that I never thought much about until quite recently, but still, since I do know about it now, I might as well share it. There are, in general, three common forms of straight line dashes in the English-language, each of which has a different length and different uses. The three are basically the hyphen “-” (which is not really a dash, but really, who cares? (@__@)), the en-dash “–”, and the em-dash “—”.

i. The hyphen
The shortest of the lot but also arguably the most used. It is also usually directly accessible on most keyboards.

The hyphen is used to separate words out, e.g. for prefixes and suffixes like “non-partisan”, to break a word in order to skip over to the next line, and to spell out words or syllables as in the children’s song that goes, “B-I-N-G-O, B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name, oh!”.

The hyphen could also be used to join words, e.g. in forming a compound modifiers like “hot-water bottle” when it is important that both modifiers equally affect the noun. In this example, a “hot-water bottle” means a bottle that is designed to hold hot water, however a “hot water bottle” simply means a water bottle that is hot.

Finally, hyphens can also be used in joint names as well, with many good Chinese examples of surnames like “Au-Yeung” and “Yee-Kwong”. In some institutions, where databases cannot process Chinese given names because they have spaces in between them (e.g. ZHANG, Zi Yi), a hyphen is used to link the two names together (ZHANG, Zi-Yi).

Sorry for using Zhang Zi Yi as an example, but I can’t think of any other Chinese entertainer that does not have an English name and has three characters in their name at this very moment, LOL.

ii> The en-dash
So named because the “–” is about the length of an “n”, it is the middle length one and is also quite commonly used. (Nothing like stating the obvious, eh?)

The en-dash is most popularly used to denote a range, e.g., “Our lecture runs from 2–4 pm on Tuesdays” or, “He’s always here, Monday–Saturday, without fail.”

Another commonly used function of the en-dash is the establish items that are somehow connected or related, e.g., “They are proposing to build a Hong Kong–Macau suspension bridge” or, “There is much lecturer–tutor interaction in this course”. In general, the en-dash could be replaced with the word “to” in many circumstances.

Microsoft Word (when running in English) actually corrects hyphens into en-dashes when you type: “word1 – word2”. You will notice that when you finished typing the second word and hit SPACE, the hyphen becomes longer since it’s been converted into an en-dash. For Mac users, you can access the en-dash by simply holding Option and pushing the hyphen key.

iii> The em-dash
You would likely have guessed but the em-dash is the longest of the dashes and gets its name because it is about the length of, well, an “m”… LOL.

There are two major uses for the em-dash, with the first one being to express a sudden relevant thought that intervenes into a sentence. For example, “I cannot understand why you would blame me—even if I look like a thief to you—for stealing the cookie jar” or even, “I can’t fly a helicopter—I am legally blind!”

Alternatively, it could also be used to show an incomplete sentence like so, “This is bloody ridiculous, I mean I’ve work so hard for—” Note that in all cases, the use of the em-dash actually implies more abruptness and emotional charge. For example, saying “I would do it if…” and “I would do it if—“, or “I stand for one thing alone: ice-cream” and “I stand for one thing alone—ice-cream” would indicate the same thing to the reader BUT will have different connotations with the second examples displaying more emotional charge in their expression.

Using Microsoft Word running in English, you can have it auto-correct to an em-dash by typing: “word1–word2” without spaces. The moment you hit the SPACE bar on that, Word will auto-correct the “–” into a really long dash: the em-dash “—”. For Mac users, you can use the em-dash by holding Option and Shift then pushing the hyphen key.

So there you have it, some basic dashing for everyone. I am becoming increasingly tired now, so let us quickly try and wrap this post up, okay? (^__^”)

———————————————————————————————-
h. Maybe it May Be…
———————————————————————————————-
This post is about the confusion that seems to occur so very often between “maybe” and “may be”. Though they basically share the same meanings, they are not the same word and they are certainly not interchangeble. “Maybe” is an adverb that could also be replaced with the word “perhaps” and because it is an adverb it needs a verb in the sentence to modify. In other words, when you use “maybe” you must make sure to tag an action along with it, because “maybe” conveys no real meaning alone.

So, it’s incorrect to say, “That maybe the case…” because there is no verb in this sentence. The correct expression of this sentence would be “Maybe that is the case…” because this construction allows for a verb that then completes the sentence.

“May be”, on the other hand, is a phrasal verb that could take the place of a verb in sentence formation and is replaceable with other phrasal verbs like “could be”. Because “may be” is a verb, it is perfectly fine to say, “That may be the case…”. Still, you should note that it is not good grammar to say “May be that is the case…” since “may be” is not in a subject–verb relationship in this statement and is therefore made meaningless.

Anyhow, forget the technicalities, the key point is that you have to be careful when using “maybe” and “may be”, and that you have to treat “maybe” as an adverb and “may be” as a verb. Capisce? (^__^)

———————————————————————————————-
i. “Besides” as a Preposition
———————————————————————————————-
For those of you who had the misfortune of being in my tutorials last semester for SOCI0041: Social Problems, this part will be completely familiar to you because I once sent out an email on different English tips then and this was one of them. I am repurposing what I wrote then into this blog. This segment is about why using “besides” as a preposition is a bad idea in your formal writing assignments.

I do have to acknowledge that this grammar sin has found its way into Hong Kong’s academic circles as well, but make sure to stay far away from this mistake because using “besides” as a preposition is informal and colloquial. As if that weren’t bad enough, it also implies that the subject that you are talking about is actually an afterthought to what you were previously saying.

So, what should you do if you are ever so tempted to say “besides” in an academic paper? Well, you should use the word “moreover” instead since it indicates the same thing but is much more formal and appropriate for those circumstances.

———————————————————————————————-
j. Are Claims-Makers Claim-Makers?
———————————————————————————————-
While there is no right or wrong here since both “claims-maker” and “claim-maker” essentially mean the same thing, but it is actually more conventional to say “claims-maker” rather than “claim-maker”. The reason behind this lies in the fact that any person who asserts anything is making a claim and, in this sense, we make claims with almost every sentence we speak as sentences tend to assert things.

Under this logic, everyone makes a multitude of claims in communicating with others and therefore they are claims-makers rather than claim-makers (unless they truly succeeded in isolating their message and making only ONE claim, LOL).

———————————————————————————————-
k. Convincing Suicidal Articles Not to Jump
———————————————————————————————-
When writing journals on Week 4, many people tended to confuse the words “suicide” and “suicidal”, which is not a good sign. This is because while “suicide” may be a noun or verb denoting the killing of oneself, “suicidal” is an adjective that indicates self-destructive tendencies.

In this way, articles about individuals that commit suicide are “suicide articles” (a compound word) because they are related to suicide. This is the same reason why we can also say “sports article”, “crime article”, and “fashion article” because they are all articles that relate to those specific subjects.

Writing something like “suicidal articles” or “suicidal rates” actually means that the article and the rate you are referring to are planning to end their existence. Clearly, that is not what you are hoping to express since I really have yet heard of any article or rate that had suicidal tendencies.

===================================================
Phew… that was an extremely long post but I hope it helps in some way or other, LOL. Right, take care and look forward to the next part in this series of posts. (^__^)