A cliché is a phrase — most often a metaphor or simile — that has been used so often that it no longer has any trace of originality about it and therefore cannot excite the reader’s imagination. Examples include “life is a journey,” “cried a river of tears,” “loved him with all her heart,” “an emotional rollercoaster,” “grew like a weed,” “high as a kite,” “drank like a fish,” etc. Using clichés is like writing on automatic pilot.  They make your writing boring, and make you seem lazy.  Avoid them.  How?  If you are using a metaphor or making a comparison you have heard before but you don’t remember where, you can almost bet it is a cliché.  

When people speak, they tend to combine pronouns and basic verbs:  I am becomes I’m, he is becomes he’s, etc. But in writing, the time and effort saved by writing we’ve instead of we have are virtually worthless, especially because of the potential confusion that can arise. For example, she’s is the contraction for both she is and she has; one can only figure out which one the author intends from the context.  For this reason and others (including that readers like to decide when to combine words for themselves) it is almost always best in academic essays to use the full words rather than contractions.  The same is true of contractions involving not (isn’t, can’t, don’t, haven’t, etc.).

For more personal essays written in what is called semi-formal style (this includes some journalism, especially articles in the sports or entertainment/style sections), contractions are acceptable.  Still, one should always be careful that no confusion results, and that the contraction adds to the rhythm and even sense of the sentence.  For example, it is not can be contracted into either it’s not or it isn’t.  Both are acceptable, but each creates a different emphasis. Using contractions well requires a great deal of self-awareness and a good ear for the rhythms of the language. 

The first time you use someone’s name, the custom is to use both the first and last names, or whatever names, initials, and titles the person used in life, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Emily Dickinson, or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Every time after the first, you should use just the last name.  A few people are so well known that you can use the last name exclusively from the beginning.  If you just write Shakespeare, Dante, or Chaucer in an English essay, or Lincoln, Jefferson, or Hitler in a history essay, no one will think you mean Bob Shakespeare, Joe Dante, Susan Chaucer, Kathy Lincoln, Tom Jefferson, or Chip Hitler.  But those exceptions are rare.  (And context matters: Joe Dante could be named in an essay on films.)

When you quote a critic, you need not use the critic’s name in your text; you can just use the citation, e.g. (McGann 125).  However, if you do wish to use the critic’s name the same rules apply:  full name the first time, just the last name afterwards.  

When writing your text, spell out whole numbers requiring two words or fewer; you should use numerals for numbers requiring four words or more or for those involving a decimal point; you may use either words or numerals for numbers that would require three words, but be consistent. Thus, you would write “seven” and “sixty-one” and “twelve million” by spelling them out, but “1251,” “67,522,816” and “3.6” in numerals.  You can write either “three-hundred-thousand” or “300,000.”  Exceptions:  This rule does not apply to dates (“Walt Whitman was born on 31 May 1819”).  In social science papers, large amounts of money sometimes appear in this format: “$420 million” or “£19 billion.”  

Your readers do not need you to tell them that classic authors wrote well.  Therefore, sentences like “Virginia Woolf is a wonderful writer,” “Yeats was one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century,” “Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a spectacularly beautiful novel,” and even “Shakespeare creates extraordinary, memorable characters” have virtually no impact.  They state the obvious and are too general to make an interesting point.  A compelling paper depends upon specific critical judgments: e.g., “Yeats’s mercurial character, as seen in his ability to change his poetic style repeatedly and the many distinct stages of his career that resulted, helped make him the greatest poet of the twentieth century.”  

Putting references to particular sections of a literary work in the text itself, as in “Later, in chapter sixteen,” or “But in line 235 of the poem,” etc. is a bit clunky.  Worse still is referring to a page number, because it is unlikely that your reader will be looking at the same edition of a literary work as you are using.  Rely on your citations for this kind of information, and although MLA only requires that you indicate page numbers (or in case of poems and verse plays, line numbers) in your citations, adding a chapter number after the page number is a welcome courtesy when dealing with classic works available in many editions.  In that case, one usually puts the chapter number in Roman numerals to distinguish it from the page number:  (85; VII) or (Hawthorne 85; VII).

For critical works, do not waste your reader’s time by putting a bibliographic citation in your text:  “In his landmark study of the English Romantics The Visionary Company, published in New York 1961 by the good folks at Cornell University Press, Harold Bloom writes” etc. There is no need for this when you have a Works Cited page.  At most, you can just use the critic’s name (and then cite, of course).  

For several reasons, slang should usually be avoided in papers. First, slang is usually wordy and imprecise. Second, many slang phrases are clichés. Third, slang changes rapidly:  one of the reasons for speaking slang is to use a code the uninitiated cannot understand, so as soon as everyone recognizes a slang phrase, it is passé.  Often, the meaning of the slang then changes:  When it first appeared, “It’s all good” meant “Don’t worry about apologizing” or “Things are fine between you and me,” but then car companies began to use it in commercials (Toyota:  “It’s all good!”) to mean something more literal.  Thus, slang stamps your work with an unseen expiration date. “This line is a’ight,” “this line rocks,” “this line is dope,” “this line is def,” “this line is wicked awesome,” “this line is groovy,” and “this line is the cat’s pajamas” all say the same thing; their varying ridiculousness is merely a function of age and cultural context. 

Titles of Literary Works

When referring to the titles of literary and artistic works, the general rule is that the titles of works published on their own are italicized and the titles of works published as part of a larger volume (anthology, journal, etc.) are put in quotation marks:
The Great Gatsby [novel]
“A Diamond as Big as the Ritz” [short story]
“I am born” [chapter title in a novel]
Paradise Lost [book-length poem]
The Autobiography of George Barker [poem published on its own]
“Ode to the West Wind” [shorter poem]
The Importance of Being Earnest [play]
Lohengrin [major classical musical composition]
“Moonlight Sonata” [shorter classical musical composition]
London Calling [record album, cd]
“Guns of Brixton” [song]
Lord of the Rings:  The Fellowship of the Ring [movie]
“Duck Amuck” [cinematic short]
Star Trek [television series]
“Mirror, Mirror” [episode of a television series]

Never use the title of another work as your title:
Wrong:  The Brothers Karamazov
Right:  Guilt and Expiation in Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov
Also good:  “The Torments of Disgrace”:  Guilt and Expiation in Dostoyevski’s The Brothers Karamazov
In this case, the first part of the title is in quotation marks because the writer of the paper took this phrase from the book.  Otherwise, no quotation marks would be needed. Also, no colon would be needed if the title and the subtitle were written on separate lines.

Your title should tell us something about your topic.  Avoid vague words and phrases:
Wrong:  Perspectives on The Great Gatsby
Right:  Color My World:  Daisy Buchanan and Whiteness
Wrong:  Bleak House —  An Analysis
Right:  Revolution in the Manor:  Dickens’ Plea for Social Justice in Bleak House
Wrong:  My Critique of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet 
Right:  “The Cheer and Comfort of My Eye”:  Shakespeare’s Claudius and Surveillance
Wrong:  “Returning, We Hear the Larks”:  A Reading
Right:  Random Death and Dangerous Beauty in Isaac Rosenberg’s “Returning, We Hear the Larks”