119 Dear Students,  When you write in Spanish (or English), try to do the following: 1.  Use the active voice (subject + verb + object). 2.  Write brief, concise, clear sentences (be aware of parallelisms [faulty parallelisms are common mistakes among writers]).  3.  When writing more complex (compound) sentences, use connectors to ease the flow of the narrative (I shall give you a long list of good connectors [see below]).  Also, the structure of any paper should have the following elements:  1.  A telling title (this should guide you and your reader through the paper).  2.  A clearly defined thesis (an extension of the title). 3.  A development of the thesis (examples, evidence, several sentences).  4.  A CONCLUSION (which should refer back to the thesis and title).   A conclusion should give a sense of finality to things, not start some new thesis.  Each paragraph must be at least five sentences long.  Each one should contain a thesis or main point (one brief sentence), evidence or clarification of the thesis (3 sentences or so), and a conclusion (which may be a reiteration of the thesis, in a short final sentence). To ease the flow of the narrative, use appropriate connectors (list below).  I think 4 to 7 paragraphs should constitute a nice 2-page paper.  Additional instructions for writing compositions:  1. Use a computer or typewriter.  Do not turn in handwritten papers for compositions written at home. 2. Turn in a clean copy of your paper.   Make sure you have a new or good ribbon in your typewriter or enough ink in the cartridge of your printer or typewriter.   Laser copies are easy on the eye.  3.  Use only mechanical diacritic (extended characters) marks (also called "symbols" in Word)  or simply change the keyboard in your computer (to "Brazilian Portuguese" [trust me on this one]) to create accents, tildes, dieresis, etc.   Do not use pencil or pen markings.   If you do this, you will get accents and tilde marks by merely pressing the apostrophe button and then the vowel wanted: á, é, í, ó, ú; the double quotation mark and the u to get an umlaut: ü; the tilde mark and the n to create an eñe: ñ; CTRL + ALT + ? to create the interrogative ¿; CTRL + ALT + [ to open a  comilla: «; CTRL + ALT + ] to close a comilla:  », etc.  Otherwise, memorize the PC or Apple ASCII codes listed below.  4.  For all papers use ONLY the following style and font size:  "New Courier" 12.  5.  Use only white paper (double-spaced, with one inch margins on all sides).  6.  Double - space every line (do not triple-space between paragraphs or leave less than a double space [e.g., 1.5] between the lines).  7.  Indent each paragraph (5 spaces [using "New Courier" 12] from the left [Modern Language Association of America usage]) [i.e., do not use "block" paragraphs or European indentation [more than 5 spaces].  8.  Paraphrase or use indirect style instead of direct style (i.e., "he said he was ill" i nstead of "he said: 'I am ill.'"). 9.  Number pages consecutively, on the upper right corner, after your lastname (e.g., Smith 1, Smith 2, Smith 3, etc.).