Stylish academic writing pdf download

Can such a waterlogged sentence be salvaged? Probably not. Academics identified by their peers as stylish writers for other reasons—their intelligence, humor, personal voice, or descriptive power—are invariably sticklers for well-crafted prose. Their sen- tences may vary in length, subject matter, and style; however, their writing is nearly always governed by three key principles that any writer can learn.

First, they employ plenty of concrete nouns and vivid verbs, especially when discussing abstract concepts. They call on evidence beyond the reach of our senses and overturn the observable world.

They disturb assumed relationships and shift what has been substantial into metaphor. The earth now only seems immovable. Academic writers often assume that abstract thought demands ab- stract language. Literary historian Gillian Beer lays that misconception firmly to rest.

Beer packs plenty of abstract nouns into this paragraph—theories, common sense, evidence, reach, relationships, metaphor, beliefs—but takes care to balance them with appeals to sen- sory experience: senses, world, earth, sun, eyes. Her writing helps us see how ideas and theories can take on energy and agency, a life of their own. She starts off the paragraph with a short, compact sentence seven words followed by two slightly longer ones fifteen and twelve words and another very short one six words.

Then, just as we are get- ting used to her almost staccato rhythm, she tosses in a long, sinuous sentence forty-seven words that requires us to concentrate in quite a different way. When readers encounter a sen- tence composed largely of concrete nouns, they can immedi- ately visualize its objects, actions, and relationships, as when philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah illuminates the univer- sality of the human condition by describing a time-traveling baby:. If a normal baby girl born forty thousand years ago were kidnapped by a time traveler and raised in a normal family in New York, she would be ready for college in eighteen years.

She would learn English along with—who knows? A sentence composed mostly of abstract nouns, by contrast, of- fers us nothing tangible to hang on to, no person or thing that we can mentally situate in physical space:. This sentence suffers from other ailments as well, including a para- lyzing glut of adjectives and adverbs fervent, intellectually original, scientific, different, specific, literary, creative, exemplary, hybrid- ized, rhetorical, scientific, non-scientific and a shocking case of jargonitis paradigms, heuristic, trace, hybridized.

Stylish writers sometimes bring intangible concepts to life by pairing abstract nouns with animating verbs:. Substantive differences also lurk in this confusion. In these lively sentences by philosopher Daniel Dennett and liter- ary scholar Brian Boyd, respectively, differences and play function almost like living characters; they have physical presence lurk and affective agency puzzles and fascinates.

Many academics, however, give little thought to their verbs, favoring forms of be is, am, are, was, were, been and predictable scholarly verbs such as analyze, show, examine, and consider:. Although standard statistical methods are available for incorporat- ing measurement error and other sources of variation, they are not commonly applied, and they have rarely been considered in the con- text of phylogenetic statistics in which trait values are correlated among related species.

The authors of this evolutionary biology article, for example, have combined three abstract verbs apply, consider, correlate with a series of be verbs are, are, been, are to produce a pas- sively phrased sentence in which we never actually discover who is doing or failing to do all that applying, considering, and cor- relating. Compare their lackluster effort with another article from the same journal:.

Insects suck, chew, parasitize, bore, store, and even cultivate their foods to a highly sophisticated degree of specialization. Abstract nouns weigh down the prose of researchers in nearly every academic discipline, from medicine to literary theory. All scholarly endeavor involves abstract thinking, of course, which we naturally express via abstract language. As readers, we have to struggle unacceptably hard to locate the agents and actions in these sentences, even though each contains two proper nouns de Man, Kant; Bahia Azul, Blue Bay and one concrete noun hand, water.

Among the most persistent contributors to clutter are prepositions: little linking words such as of, by, to, and through. In a well-calibrated sen- tence, prepositions supply energy and directional thrust:. Equally, however, the Europeans en- tered Tahitian history, tangling these histories together. In unfamiliar waters a skilled navigator could identify and name new swells by studying the sea hour after hour, and the sequence of stars, the wind and current patterns and numerous other items of navigational information were memorized for the return voyage.

During such expeditions the navi- gator slept as little as possible, ceaselessly scanning the sea and the night sky and keeping watch for land clouds and homing birds. It was said that you could always recognize a star navigator by his blood-shot eyes. All too often, however, authors use prepositions to string to- gether long sequences of abstract nouns:. This conceptual distinction between anticipatory and consumma- tory pleasure is supported by evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of healthy individuals, which has differen- tiated the relative role of brain regions involved in anticipation of a future reward nucleus accumbens in contrast with consumption of rewards prefrontal cortex.

Adjectives and adverbs add color and zest to stylish scholarly prose. Like prepositions, however, they can also contribute to clutter:. The author of this passage has flung one descriptive adjective af- ter another revivifying, additional, scientific, creative, empirical, evolutionary, clinching, verifiable, Lamarckian into an already long and complex sentence that raises more questions than it answers.

Can a light be revivifying that is, capable of bringing dead things to life? Can a trajectory be revivified was the trajectory ever dead in the first place?

Does the word evidence— signifying something that helps us form a conclusion or judgment— really require the addition of both clinching and verifiable to make its meaning apparent? Other contributors to clutter include it, this, that, and there. Used carelessly or excessively, however, they can muddy rather than clarify meaning:. It is now generally understood that constraints play an important role in commonsense moral thinking and generally accepted that they cannot be accommodated by ordinary, traditional consequentialism.

Some have seen this as the most conclusive evidence that consequen- tialism is hopelessly wrong, while others have seen it as the most con- clusive evidence that moral common sense is hopelessly paradoxical. Some who have seen this what? The minor mode itself has a different tinta in each: wild and untamed in the Farewell, densely passionate in the quartet, grace in the trio.

It bears repeating: Haydn never repeats himself. Historian of music James Webster turns musical movements into dra- matic narratives and symphonies into stories. Elsewhere his vocabulary becomes highly technical. Yet even when addressing a specialist audience, he continues to call on perfectly chosen adjectives deceptive, quickly and lively verbs leads, bursts, harmonized to convey drama and action:.

The deceptive cadence in m. Alert to the power of a good story, Webster often frames his musical analyses with tales of human escapades and foibles:. If Schubert was homosexual, as Maynard Solomon suggests in his now- famous essay, what difference does it make for his music? Exquisitely attentive to subtleties of musical style, Webster varies his own style to fit his purpose.

There is a mostly unremarkable word that contributes to clut- ter by consorting with it, this, that, be verbs, and other bad company:. If the nomocentric principle is correct, then there are as many true backward counterfactual conditionals as there are forward counter- factual conditionals and, therefore, the thesis that an asymmetry of counterfactual dependence characterizes our world would turn out to be false.

However, in its grammatical function as a relative pronoun, that often encourages writers to overload their sentences with subordinate clauses, driving nouns and verbs apart in the process:. An attentive stylist would reword or eliminate the latter, which gets in the way of the parallel that clauses on either side. Note that all of the above examples were drawn from recent articles in philosophy journals.

Philosophers are by no means the only academic writers whose sentences are awash in it, this, that, and there. On average, however, they use these four words much more frequently than academics in other disciplines—a statistic that helps to explain why many nonphilosophers find philosophi- cal prose wordy, dense, and difficult to read. For philosophy, the figure was 65 percent, more than double the density in the next-highest discipline see Figure 2.

So is there something special about philosophical discourse that makes it imperative for philosophers to write in this wooden, long-winded way? However, those who aspire to communicate with nonspecialists—students, colleagues, the general public, and the academics on those all- important multidisciplinary review panels that can make or break an academic career—might start by addressing their addiction to it, this, that, and there.

Obituary writers understand the dramatic value of widely sepa- rating a subject and its accompanying verb:. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, fa- mous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.

Stylish academic writers, likewise, often play around with lan- guage: they vary their vocabulary, mix up their syntax, and veer back and forth between short sentences and long. They follow no set formula or rule book; but nor do they throw grammar and coherence to the wind.

Whatever their stylis- tic choices, they always make us feel that every word counts. By the time you have tested three or four samples of your writing, you will have become aware of your signature usage patterns—for example, a predilection for abstraction translation: too many spongy abstract nouns or a tendency to begin every sentence with this.

A few passive phrases can provide welcome syntactical variety. Too many passive constructions in one paragraph, however, will add up to lifeless, agentless prose. When in doubt, limit the number of prepositional phrases to no more than three in a row.

When agent and action become separated by more than about a dozen words, readers quickly lose the plot. Can you supply the same descriptive energy using concrete nouns and lively verbs?

If so, try adhering to the following principles next time you write something new:. Sentences that rely on subordinate clauses that in turn contain other clauses that introduce new ideas that distract from the main argument that the author is trying to make.

There is no reason why you should not employ there every now and then. But wherever there is, weak words such as this, that, it, and is tend to congregate nearby. Do you find all of this editorial polishing and tweaking labori- ous and slow? Like a hat on a head or the front door to a house, the title of an academic article offers a powerful first impression. Is the title dry, technical, straightforward? Does the title contain opaque disciplinary jargon?

Is the title amusing, intriguing, provocative? Here is an author who is working hard to catch our gaze, engage our inter- est, and draw us in. This session will be playful, not plodding. You can expect me to use lots of concrete examples and visual illustrations. If you run a spartan hotel, you probably should not advertise it with an ornate front door. Attention to paratext and subtext can help academic writers make more thoughtful—and in some cases more daring—decisions about their titles.

However, when invited to partici- pate in a university lecture series aimed at members of the general public, the same scientist faces a wider range of choices—and a correspondingly greater variety of possible subtexts. Every one of these choices carries both benefits and risks; the same subtext that attracts one reader could easily turn another off. Most undergraduates learn to negotiate this stylistic dilemma fairly quickly: the safest title is the one their teacher will approve of.

For one of my deeply parkinsonian post-encephalitic patients, Frances D. One minute I would see her com- pressed, clenched and blocked, or else jerking, ticking and jabbering—like a sort of human time bomb. But it was necessary—for her—that the music be legato; for staccato, percussive music might have a bizarre countereffect, causing her to jump and jerk helplessly with the beat, like a mechanical doll or marionette. Among the many decisions faced by authors composing an academic title, the most basic choice is whether to engage the reader, inform the reader, or do both at once.

Deliberately en- gaging titles are standard fare in the world of book publishing, particularly on that slippery slope where academic discourse meets the educated reading public. In fact, two different versions of the report were made available: a page version aimed at adults and a page summary for chil- dren and young people. The title, which is the same for both ver- sions, raises some provocative questions.

Why do children die, how many, and under what circumstances? What work is already being done, and what future research is planned as a result of the pilot study? But what would it be like if everyone had similar levels of some personality trait? If all the actors scored relatively high in right-wing authoritarianism, what kind of future would unfold? Such people, he explains, have proven.

Remember a few lines ago when I said high RWAs seemed to be the most prejudiced group ever found? Well, they lost the title when Felicia Pratto and Jim Sidanius began studying social dominators. All too often, however, titular colons perform no obviously use- ful function aside from allowing an author, in effect, to cram two titles into one:. For academic authors who aspire to write engaging and infor- mative titles, the colon is an undeniably useful device.

A much trickier challenge is to combine—like Dawkins with his dis- tracted bees—catchy and descriptive elements within a single, colon-free phrase. There are many ways to accomplish such a splicing.

Or make a claim so grand and compelling that we cannot help but want to read further:. In all of the above examples, the authors have found graceful and compact ways to frame their research subjects without re- sorting to a colon. Some academics will argue, however, that the brevity and breeziness of such titles come at an unacceptable cost.

This is where the paratext comes into play. Thanks to recent advances in electronic search technol- ogies, titles no longer provide the only or even the principal means by which researchers in many disciplines locate relevant articles. Yet academics remain shackled to the notion that titles must always include major keywords. Yet a worthy, pedestrian title offers no compensatory guarantee of re- search quality. Scientists often insist that serious science demands serious titles.

Yet computer scientist Philip Wadler and his colleagues in the functional programming community R. Findler, S. Jones, R. Lind- ley, S. Marlow, M. Odersky, E. Runne, and J. Yallop, among others clearly believe otherwise. Their titles range from the humorous to the whimsical:. These punning titles are not merely empty window dressing; rather, they reflect a deep-seated belief in the power of language to advance innova- tive thinking.

Far from undercutting the seriousness of their research, their playful titles offer evi- dence of highly creative minds at work. Remember, your title announces your intention to be serious, humorous, detailed, expansive, technical, or accessible—possibly several of those things at once.

Double-check that your title matches your intention. How many of your past titles contain colons? In each case, can you clearly articulate your reason for needing both a title and a subtitle? As an extra challenge, see if you can come up with a colon-free title that is both engaging and informative. Next, ask yourself whether your title would still make sense without the subtitle. No one in your discipline need ever know. Many academic titles contain seven, eight, or more!

Abstract nouns analysis, structure, development, education and collective nouns students, teachers, patients, subjects have a generic, lulling quality, particularly when they occur in journals where the same noun is used frequently, as in a criminol- ogy journal where most of the titles contain the nouns crime and criminology.

Concrete nouns piano, guppy, path and vivid verbs ban, mutilate, gestate are particularly effective. Proper nouns Wagner, London, Phasianus colchicus can also help individualize your title and ground your research in a specific time and place. We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.

What are these goddamn animals? Thompson beyond the California desert to the even more bizarre and alien landscape of academe, his account might instead be titled Hallucinogen- Induced Anxiety Disorders and Revulsion Responses in a South- western Gambling-Oriented Locality: A Qualitative Study, and the first few sentences would read something like this:. It has been suggested that frontal brain asymmetry FBA is associ- ated with differences in fundamental dimensions of emotion David- son, According to the directional model of negative affect, the left prefrontal cortex is associated with the approach-related emo- tion, anger, whereas the right prefrontal area is associated with the withdrawal-related emotion, anxiety.

Of course, we all know that scientific researchers are supposed to be concerned with serious, sober matters such as frontal brain asymmetry, not with drug-fueled road trips and hallucinated bats. Not every engaging academic book, article, or chapter begins with an opening hook, but a striking number of them do. Stylish writers understand that if you are still reading three pages later, they have probably got you for the long haul.

By contrast, nothing sinks a piece of prose more efficiently than a leaden first para- graph. However, the CARS model also has a lot to answer for.

Move 1 encourages authors to begin with a sweeping statement of the obvious:. Ecologists and anthropologists, among others, recognize that hu- mans have significantly affected the biophysical environment.

Our Review uses the substantial work undertaken by international experts contributing to the world report and data published since that time. In the opening lines of this review article from The Lancet, population health researcher Shanthi Ameratunga and her colleagues Martha Hijar and Robyn Norton demonstrate that the CARS Creating a Research Space model can work well when employed gracefully, generously, and without exaggeration. Rather than baldly asserting the importance of the topic, they offer hard evidence about global death rates, injury numbers, and monetary costs.

There is, to be sure, still plenty of scope here for the authors to tighten up their prose. For stylish academic writers, the work of editing and polishing is never done.

Finally, with Move 4, the author steps boldly into the breach, making claims, frequently inflated, for the novelty and impor- tance of his or her own research: This study expands the existing models for estimating the effect of community college attendance on baccalaureate attainment by map- ping out the points of divergence in the educational trajectory of 2-year and 4-year students. Developed to encourage rhetorical precision, the CARS method frequently steers authors into rhetorical predictability instead.

In some academic contexts, formulaic openings are required; in most, however, they are merely conventional. I shall show that the butler did it. In this essay I argue that citizens of a liberal-democratic state, one that I argue has a morally justified claim to political authority, enjoy a moral right to engage in acts of suitably constrained civil disobe- dience, or what I will call a moral right to public disobedience.

An article on the mind-body problem, for example, opens with a carefully chosen literary quotation:. An essay on feminism and pornography begins with a question drawn from a newspaper story:. A study of corporate responsibility catches our attention with a historical anecdote:. The Herald of Free Enterprise, a ferry operating in the English Chan- nel, sank on March 6, , drowning nearly two hundred people.

The official inquiry found that the company running the ferry was extremely sloppy, with poor routines of checking and management. And a paper about the problem of mental causation starts by painting a vividly personalized picture of physical pain:. Quincy strikes his thumb with a hammer, feels pain, and dances in cir- cles.

Not a botanical lecture, a literary one. He recalled to us the Genesis story of Eve tempting Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Traditionally, people take it to be an apple. But our elegant lecturer was missing so much. With these opening lines from Climbing Mount Improbable, evolution- ary biologist Richard Dawkins uses just about every rhetorical trick in the book to hook and hold our attention: humor, metaphor, concrete nouns, active verbs, varied sentence length, literary references, and more.

But his offer to tell us the true story of the fig, an emblem of evolutionary improbability at its most intriguing and bizarre, will keep most of us turning the pages. If his neurons cause his legs to move, what more is there for his pain to do?

Every discipline has its own typical opening moves, which can provide a rich store of ideas and inspiration to academics in other fields. Literary scholars like to spin webs of signification from a single starting quotation or anecdote: Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us To purify the dialect of the tribe And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight.

Popular science writers may home in on a fascinating fact: a creature, object, or phenomenon that captures our imagination but then leads the author into a discussion of wider issues.

Any opening gambit can, of course, become stale and predict- able if used repetitively or unimaginatively. However, alert stylists will find ways to keep their openings fresh. Several years ago at Harvard, a friend invited me to dinner and asked if I would pick up two of his other guests, Nadine Gordimer and Carlos Fuen- tes. Thrilled, I readily agreed to do so.

Nevertheless, for those who have previously see this guide and you're simply prepared to make his or her studies well require you to take your time to leave a critique on our site we can submit each bad and good evaluations. In other words, "freedom involving speech" We all completely backed. Your own feedback to book Stylish Academic Writing - different readers can determine with regards to a e-book.

Dispelling the myth that you cannot get published without writing wordy, impersonal prose, Sword shows how much journal editors and readers welcome work that avoids excessive jargon and abstraction. Stylish Academic Writing showcases a range of scholars from the sciences, humanities, and social sciences who write with vividness and panache. Individual chapters take up specific elements of style, such as titles and headings, chapter openings, and structure, and close with examples of transferable techniques that any writer can master.

The Pitt Building. Tmrnpingtun Street. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction o f any pan may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University h s s.

First published by St. Martin's Press, Inc. Theology should not leave readers feeling bewildered and lost. Expressing Theology challenges writers of theology to craft engaging, compelling, and beautiful prose that grabs readers' attention and makes reading a pleasure.

Expressing Theology provides writers of theology--academics, aspiring, and published--with perspectives and writing techniques to write theology that readers want to read. Good writing skills and habits are critical for scholarly success. This book draws on the tools and techniques of storytelling employed in fiction and non-fiction writing to help academic writers enhance the clarity, presentation, and flow of their scholarly work, and provides insights on navigating the writing, reviewing, and coauthoring processes.

Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students is a rhetoric designed to cover the basics of a college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format.

Anything inessential to the business of college writing has been excluded. Each chapter concentrates on a crucial element of composing an academic essay and is capable of being read in a single sitting. Each short chapter concludes with questions and suggestions designed to trigger class discussion. The second edition has been updated throughout, with special attention to making the book even better suited to accelerated and co-requisite composition courses.

This is a book for real students, people with full and active lives. Academic Writing Now: A Brief Guide for Busy Students covers the basics of the introductory college writing course in a concise, student-friendly format.

Providing you with a quick set of writing rules to follow, this tried and tested guide uses a unique and easy to follow grid-based system. Packed with advice on understanding big and little common errors made in academic writing, it helps you identify patterns in your own writing and demonstrates how to reshape or re-evaluate them - and raise your writing game in any academic context. How-to tutorials include: Synthesizing and critiquing literature — and using your coding sheet to develop critical arguments Shaping abstracts, introductions, discussions, and conclusions — to improve the logic and structure of your writing Applying lessons-learned to future projects, whatever format of academic writing.

Save time and improve your grades, with this essential quick fix guide! From how to write great essays and succeeding at university, to writing your undergraduate dissertation and doing postgraduate research, SAGE Study Skills help you get the best from your time at university.

Are you confused by the feedback you get from your academic teachers and mentors?