Academic writing is defined by conventions rather than rules and so its style varies. The point is not for you and your peers to produce identical pieces of writing , but to provide a shared framework ...

Effective academic writing at Hope College should be characterized by eleven key qualities, regardless of paper type (whether lab report, reader response, personal reflection, memo, term paper, ...

Other academics, particularly younger scholars, often ask me about how to get an academic book published. When I recently floated the idea of writing a series of blog posts about this issue, on social ...

Writing assignments at the university level often require an academic voice. There are certain aspects of academic voice that are more formal than every day, conversational speech. Typically, academic ...

A few years ago, when I was a graduate student in English, I presented a paper at my department’s American Literature Colloquium. (A colloquium is a sort of writing workshop for graduate students.) ...

Nothing is more frustrating during the writing process than stopping because we cannot find an appropriate word or phrase. We have the idea in our head but no matter what combination of words we try, ...

To talk, as I am here, about the aesthetic pleasures of scholarly writing is surely a fool’s game. After all, we know that much academic writing is at best intelligible and at worst unreadable. To ...

T here is no end to denunciations of academic writing. You’ve likely read one recently. They usually deride jargon and theory and despair over turgid and impenetrable prose. Most recently the British ...

As a middle-aged instructor at the front of a college lecture hall, I feel like a pivot point — a human crossroads.