My professor Judith K. Schafer gave us a handout that was modeled after William B. Hesseltine. I would like to share it here.
THE FOURTEEN COMMANDEMENTS FOR WRITING HISTORY
- Thou shalt not use the present tense, nor the passive voice.
- Thou shalt not split thy infinitives, nor dangle thy participles, not end thy sentences with prepositions.
- Thou shalt not use slang. Above all, thou shall avoid modern jargon. Also trite statements. Do not use contractions in formal writing.
- Thou shalt not use the personal pronoun.
- Thou shalt not use this for the nor the for a.
- Thou shalt place thy time clauses first in the sentence.
- Thou shalt not begin a paper with a rhetorical question. Thou shall strike thy reader hard with thy first sentence.
- The shalt set down things as they happened. There should be no reference later in time than the subject thou are treating.
- Thou shalt beware of quotations. Do not quote from secondary sources – you can say the same thing as well as the author. Use quotes from original material (primary sources) only to enrich and enliven your work. Avoid block quotes – never more than three lines.
- If you want to battle with other historians, do so in the footnotes, not in the text of your paper. Use one footnote or endnote at the end of each paragraph and cite in order to the sources you used for the paragraph [Really don’t agree with this one]
- If you discuss methodology, do so in the introduction or in the footnotes, not in the text of the paper.
- Thou shall clearly identify persons about whom you write, be it Abraham Lincoln, the Battle of Gettysburg or Jesus of Nazareth. Only after that can you refer to the as Lincoln, or Gettysburg (but never as Abraham or Uncle Abe).
- Thou shalt not be judgmental. If you discover that some historical figure made an unwise decision, remember you have the benefit of hindsight.
- Always give credit in the footnotes for any ideas that are not your own.
Overall, very good advice, but I would like to add one more from my friend Will Burdette:
- Thou shalt NOT SUPPOSE!
My research continues…