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Sharing ideas and advice about academic and professional writing
Don’t make your academic writing emotive and grandiose
Don't make your academic writing emotive and grandiose.More about it:What the principle really means is to "avoid appeals to emotion and inflated claims."In other words, you want to "clearly communicate ideas, information and arguments, not to inspire an emotional...
Make sure your academic writing is correct and consistent
Make sure your academic writing is correct and consistent.Make sure you follow the style manual required by your instructor or professor.
Academic writing is supposed to be well-sourced
Academic writing is supposed to be well-sourced.More about it:You would draw from "other texts (or media objects like photographs or films) that the author analyzes or uses as evidence" to support your arguments.It's expected you would cite materials "written by other...

Latest Posts
Spelling: I before E
Spelling can be #FunnyOnFriday. I found this funny variation on the rhyme "I before E except after C" on Facebook. Enjoy. Screen clipping taken: 6/11/2021 8:49 AM
Academic writing is supposed to be formal and unbiased
Academic writing is supposed to be formal and unbiased.More about it:In school, you’re expected to “base arguments on the evidence under consideration, not the author’s preconceptions.”You should make sure to “to represent the work of other researchers and the results...
By the book: Elegant writing can be learned
Ward Farnsworth, in his book Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric, gives us hope for improving our writing by leaps and bounds in this installment of #ByTheBook. He wrote: “Everyone speaks and writes in patterns…they are models we internalize from the speech around...
Periods are passé?
English teachers take note: Periods are passé. Will it eventually seep into more formal writing? Right now, it applies to texting. I assume it won't get into more formal writing because punctuation signals what to expect in more complex sentence structures.