Thursday, December 24, 2009

How to write a boring paper

Timely advice for everyone at FCP.

6 comments:

Mr roT said...

Where's the part about CDs?

Tecumseh said...

Read your email to find out. Where's my VCP? I could use one for X-mas.

Mr roT said...

Hah, then you'd owe even more!

My Frontier Thesis said...

This is good.

Tecumseh said...

How do you write papers, MFT? Try to make them boring, or liven them up?

My Frontier Thesis said...

Well, I think about the audience in which the paper will be presented. And how the said audience might be thinking about the particular topic. Then I gear what I'm saying toward the audience. This is old Aristotelian rhetoric, though, and in the non-pejorative sense. One can speak how one wants, but is the message delivering the truth as best as possible? That's what the old Aristotle asked his readers in rhetoric and poetics (I'll get you a proper page number and citation upon request; he's resting right over there on the shelf, but I'm not going after it right now). So that's the kind of shit — at least one aspect — I think about when I'm putting papers together.