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Moving from Problem to Response
Earlier this year, I had a post on the basic structure of an introduction, using a concept derived from Swales and terminology derived from Booth, Colomb, and Williams. In a subsequent post, I went on...
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Academic Writer as an Identity
Since this is the 100th post on Explorations of Style, I thought I would allow myself to return to one of my favourite topics: the notion that someone who engages in academic writing is, in fact, a...
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Links: Writing without Inspiration
In a recent post at Inside Higher Ed, Lee Skallerup Bessette discusses the way writing sometimes comes easy and sometimes comes hard. She is noting how a general love of writing doesn’t necessarily...
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“Can you recommend a good book on writing?”
I am often asked to recommend a ‘good book on writing’. A simple enough question, but one that is surprisingly hard to answer. In my attempts to do so, I feel a bit like a sommelier, responding to the...
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Links: Writing and Enjoyment
A recent post on the Doctoral Writing SIG blog addresses the idea of writing aversion. In this post, Susan Carter discusses her work with an academic who has an actual phobia of writing. Most of us...
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The Pace of Academic Writing
Chances are, if I praise a graduate student’s writing, I will hear something like this: “Thanks, but it takes me so long.” “It should be good, I worked on those two pages for three weeks.” “Sure, but...
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Links: Germano’s Snow Globes
Sometimes I choose articles for my links posts because I have something particular that I want to add to the topic. This week, however, I just want to be sure that as many people as possible see this...
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Full Stop
As I was proofreading something recently, it occurred to me that discussions of punctuation and grammar contain relatively little about the period. If you go looking for information on using periods,...
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Links: Observing without Judging
In a serene and sunny yoga studio on Saturday morning, my yoga teacher asked us to dedicate our practice to the notion of observing without judging. Being me, I immediately stopped thinking about my...
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Contribution and Voice in Academic Writing
In my line of work, I hear a lot of sentences that start, ‘My supervisor says …’. And the supervisory comment that seems to elicit the most confusion involves the concept of voice: ‘I can’t hear your...
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Links: You Know It and I Know It
A recent post from the After Deadline blog about the use of ‘of course’ got me thinking. Mostly I started thinking about how I much I rely on ‘of course’ and similar expressions such as ‘needless to...
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A Question of Parallelism
The following letter was sent to me recently. After replying to the letter directly, I asked if I could reprint a version of the letter here on the blog. The letter writer’s problem was simple, but...
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Links: Summer Edition
Explorations of Style is going on a summer hiatus. I’ll be back in the middle of August, after a family vacation and a summer research institute. While I’m away, I’m going to experiment with reprinting...
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Best Laid Plans (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about what to do when you discover a mismatch between your stated plans and your actual text. Best...
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One-Way Trip (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about the extent to which the meaning of an academic text is co-created by the writer and the reader....
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A Cut-and-Paste Job (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about the benefits and limitations of importing previously written material into a new text. A...
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Signposting and Metadiscourse (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about using metadiscourse to help your audience understand your text. Signposting and Metadiscourse...
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Letting Go (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about the difficulty of removing parts of our own writing. Letting Go In two different contexts...
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Literature Reviews and Reverse Outlines (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about using reverse outlines to improve the organization and overall coherence of literature reviews....
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Contribution and Voice in Academic Writing (from the archives)
Over the summer, I am reposting some of my favourite posts from the archives. In this post, I talk about the importance of clearly articulating our contribution to the scholarly conversation....
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