ENGL000: Pre-College English

"Red flags" in writing are going to be words or phrases to be careful about using. A red flag catches our eye, and this is how I would like you to think about items of writing that I call "red flags": they are things that should catch your eye and should be double checked. 

The first red flag to be careful about is using overly general words. For example, a word like "thing" or "stuff" does not carry very much meaning. Can you even define the word "thing" or the word "stuff"? What question are you immediately going to have when you see one of these words? While it isn't automatically wrong to use them, if you do, it is vital that within a sentence, you define what that "thing" or "stuff" is.

In the paragraphs on Wayne Cafe you just read, in paragraph A we see the sentence: "Also, the other stuff I have to do is easy and not stressful." What question do you have when you read that?

Other red flag words/phrases to be careful about are: dream, goal, event, place, and a lot. These words aren't automatically wrong; however, they are not very specific, so if you use them, make sure you define them, so your readers aren't left asking, "what dream?" "what goal?" "what event?" "what place?" and "how much?"

We'll talk about more red flags later, but a final one I'd like to talk about from paragraph A is the use of the word "you." In the paragraph, we see the sentence, "When you are friends with your coworkers, shifts are a lot more fun and go by more quickly." There are a couple of problems here.

Red Flags

thing	stuff	event	place
goal	dream	you	a lot

First of all, you might have read that sentence and wondered what you, the reader, has to do with this author's job. In this sense, the use of "you" (called 2^nd person – we'll talk more about pronouns and person later) is off topic. This paragraph is about what the author likes about her job at Coffee on Wayne Café; it has nothing to do with the reader. The other problem is that it assumes that you share the opinion or experience of the author. While it is likely that most   people would agree that being friends with one's coworkers makes a job more fun, it is really important to avoid statements that make assumptions about everyone. For example, some people might prefer to keep their social/personal life separate from their workplace and would not want to be friends with coworkers.

The fact is that "you" is a really tough one to get out of our writing. Part of this is because our most common form of communication is speech where we are directly interacting with our audience. You probably say "you" more times in a day than you can count (certainly you are seeing me say it a lot as I address you in this text!). This means that "you" is very likely to creep into your writing if you aren't careful. Certainly in a rough draft, there is nothing wrong with that, but it is absolutely something we need to keep out of our final drafts when we are talking about writing in an academic or professional environment.

There are really only two occasions where it is appropriate to use "you" in formal writing. The first is in instructional writing. If I am giving you instructions, that is telling you how to do or make something or giving you directions, I am going to need to address you and use that second person. The other occasion is in advertising. Advertisers make all kinds of assumptions about their audience with statements like, "You are going to love how this car makes you feel" or, "This body spray will get you all the best dates". The idea there is that they are trying to convince you that you will like or that you need their product.

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Source: Erin Severs
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