Sain käsiini hauskan ohjeiston, joka on tarkoitettu historiaa käsitteleviä tieteellisiä tekstejä tuottaville. Historioitsijoiden lisäksi se soveltuu mainiosti kaikille tieteellistä kirjoittamista muodossa tai toisessa harjoittaville. Ohje ei tosiaan ole mikään uusi, mutta kovin ajankohtainen se silti on.
Tekstin on tuottanut historian professori Theron F. Schlabach. Tekstin alkuperäinen versio on hieman pidempi ja sisältää käskyjen lisäksi kommentaaria, hieman Ison Katekismuksen tapaan.
Minulle kuitenkin riittävät pelkät käskyt. Tässä ne ovat englanninkielisessä muodossa:
Ten Commandments of Good Historical Writing
- Thou shalt begin with an outline that buildeth thy entire paper around thy central ideas.
- Thou shalt avoid self-conscious discussion of thy intended purposes, thy strategy, thy sources, and thy research methodology.
- Thou mayest covet other writers’ ideas but thou shalt not steal them.
- Thou shalt strive for clarity above cuteness; thou shalt not use jargon when common language will serve, nor a large word when a small one will serve, nor a foreign term when an English one will serve, nor an abstract term where a vivid one is possible.
- Remember thy paragraph to keep it a significant unity; thou shalt not fragment thy discussion into one short paragraph after another, and neither shalt thou write a paragraph that fails to develop a topical idea.
- Thou shalt write as if thy reader is intelligent–but totally uninformed on any particular subject: hence, thou shalt identify all persons, organizations, etc., and shalt in every way try to make thy paper a self-sufficient unit.
- Thou shalt use quotations sparingly and judiciously, only for color and clarity; if thou must quote, quotations should not break the flow of thine own language and logic, and thy text should make clear whom thou art quoting.
- Thou shalt not relegate essential information to thy footnotes.
- Thou shalt write consistently in past tense, and in other ways keep thy reader firmly anchored in time.
- Thou shalt not use passive voice.
Copyright © 1996 by Theron F. Schlabach