Writing for Grad School

So many people today are earning a graduate degree.  Grad school requires writing, and in disciplines like nursing and business, papers must follow APA (American Psychological Association) style. 

Rosemary Camilleri teaches a one-day introduction to analyzing and writing a grad paper that gets you the best grade possible.

Intro to Grad Writing and APA6    September 14, 2012, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm
Lots of practical tips, interaction, and a handout that will guide you as you write.

$175 payable to UIC        Earns 7 hours of CEUs (continuing ed units).
Class meets at the College of Nursing, 845 South Damen Ave, Chicago, IL.
To register, go to http://uic.edu/nursing/ihi and, in the News & Events window, scroll way, way down to 2012 Graduate Writing Courses.

For details on the class's content, email Rosemary.

Microsoft Word Partially Checks Spelling and Grammar

In the passage above, I deployed Microsoft Word (Mac) 2010's spelling and grammar checks, but they failed at 11 places.  If you would like a more legible copy of this illustration, just email me at rosemary@WritingSems.com.

Do use spelling and grammar checks. They are important.  But remember that they are not enough.

First Person in Academic Writing

Dr Christine Webb has published a scientific paper in which she argues effectively that researchers should use the first person (I, my, we, our).

In helping professions, writers have tried to seem objective by writing in the third person: they, it, he, she.  But the impersonal pretense belies the real nature of knowledge, which we all know is socially constructed.

Of course, a social science or nursing paper should not read like The Confessions of St. Augustine.  Most sentences should not start with "I." 

And when I write about evidence I gained by reading, or I describe an objective fact that someone else could replicate, I use the third person:

Of these heart patients, 16 recovered;
After six minutes, the lead melted;
U. S. children with asthma use inhalers;
The emerald ash borer kills ash trees.

But when I record a fact that would differ if someone else did it, I should use the first person:

I hypothesized that...
My previous research had shown that...
This patient's mother approached me privately and said ...

In such cases, anything else is at best less accurate and at worst deceptive.

What Is an Idiom, and Why Does It Matter?

“When I worked at BigTech, we pushed the envelope on real-time global trading.”  

Push the envelope is an idiom because you can define push and envelope and still not understand the phrase. 

Idioms are not always explained in a U.S. dictionary such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate or the American Heritage Dictionary.  Yet learning idioms is vital to newer Americans, who benefit from an advanced learner’s dictionary (ALD).  In fact, these dictionaries may well deserve a place on everyone’s desk.

In job interviews, if applicants misuse an idiom, they may disqualify themselves.  If I misuse an idiom on my CV, résumé, or website, my prestige will plummet.   And graduate students may be writing to a higher standard, so they might appreciate a resource that builds their confidence.  Further, Americans who come from Scotland or Nigeria may want to know which British idioms (such as ticking over) puzzle Americans.

ALDs and learner’s dictionaries (LDs) represent the same category, and you choose a level from basic to advanced. The category includes editions from

Cambridge

CollinsCOBUILD  

Longman

Merriam-Webster available as an app via iTunes

Oxford also available as an app

The Cambridge Intermediate LD is even searchable online.

Before you buy an ALD, you might want to look at a web page by Tomasz P. Szynalski.  He has exhaustively compared five of these dictionaries, not including the Merriam-Webster’s.  He finds no clear winner.  Your choice may depend on whether you will use the dictionary online, as a book, or as an app or DVD.

As always, I have no financial interest in any of the products mentioned here.  I currently own the Cambridge ALD, and I’m contemplating adding a Merriam-Webster’s and a Longman to my collection.   New idioms appear often, and, sadly, my Cambridge ALD (2003) does not include “push the envelope.”

In the Plain Writing Act of 2010, Congress ordered the federal government to write clearly.  But few Americans realize that we have had plain-language executive orders, agency guidelines, and a website at least since the Clinton Administration.  Why are we still reading and writing dreck?

The Plain Writing Act resulted in updated federal guidelines that we can all use to write clearly. They live at a fine website.  

Moreover, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has long enforced plain-English standards when companies disclose information to investors.  You can download the SEC's own 83-page "Plain English Handbook.” 

And the federal agency that runs Medicare (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or CMS) has published its own “toolkit” for writing clearly and inclusively.   This toolkit advises us how to design a document and collect feedback before we publish; and it warns us that readability formulas do NOT ensure readability.  Bonus: It even helps us write appropriately to older adults and people from other cultures.

But if you scan any of these guidelines, you will recognize most of them from high school, if not grade school, English.  They reflect common sense, such as

·      Write short sentences,

·      Use active-voice verbs,

·      Write short paragraphs,

·      Use words that your audience knows, and

·      Test your document with its audience before you publish. 

Why, after decades of good advice, do we still write impressive but ambiguous documents?  Does bafflegab still lure us with the power of avoiding readers who criticize because we avoid readers who understand?

Years ago, I helped a famous professional person write a document.  I cut it drastically and transformed key noun actions into active verbs.  I kept the nouns consistent, and topic sentences led most paragraphs.  The author gave the result to another professional who made suggestions; then I received the resulting document for a second round.  It was again long and inflated; evidently, inflation spelled prestige.

I gave up. 

Today, I hope, I would persist.  I would keep on editing for clarity until the author fired me.  But I wonder.  When will clear English be prestige English?

Flesch Readability Index:  56.5 

Grade Level: 8th grade, 6th month

Dr. King and the Topic Sentence

Dr King did not read his speeches; he spoke them.  So when we read them, someone inserted the paragraph breaks.  But Dr. King made it easy.

Dr. King started each chunk of his speech with a main idea, and then he elaborated it.  In written form, his speeches exhibit nearly perfect paragraphs, each beginning with a “topic sentence.”  This pattern is an amazing feat of rhetorical ability.

On Dr King’s Day in 2012, I studied one of his speeches (as is my custom). They are all available to us at http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documents_contents   I chose his April 3, 1968, speech, I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.  

This speech’s point sentence was  “Strangely enough…‘…in the second half of the twentieth century, I will be happy.’ ”

Here’s how the next paragraphs begin:

Now that’s a strange statement to make because the world is all messed up.  [Rest of paragraph illustrates the mess.]

And another reason I’m happy … demands didn’t force them to do it.  [Rest of paragraph: how demands force us to protest nonviolently.]

I can remember … Negroes … scratching where they didn’t itch and laughing when they were not tickled.  [Rest of paragraph: we work toward the opposite of that unnatural behavior.]

Now what does this mean in this great period of history? It means that we’ve got to stay together.  [Rest of paragraph: how staying together foils white power.]

Secondly, let us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice.  [Rest of paragraph: injustice.]

When I write paragraphs, I try to announce a topic sentence and then support it.  To do so reliably, I must work retrospectively.  I draft the document first; then I go back and relocate or add the topic sentences. 

Dr. King, on the other hand, did so many things brilliantly.  He told moving stories.  He verbally embraced and emboldened his audience.  He told the truth, but always in love.  And, intellectually, his speeches could announce a topic, and support it, and move smoothly to the next. 

He made it seem easy.

Each time he spoke, he built, in the air between him and his audience, a structure so perfect it can still instruct us today. 

The "However" Sandwich

Too often we all see sentences mispunctuated like these:

1.  WRONG He arrived 15 minutes late, however, he found a seat.

2.  WRONG He arrived 15 minutes late, however he found a seat.

Each of these sentences consists of an independent clause, then the conjunction however, and then another independent clause. 

Rule:  When however is sandwiched between two independent clauses, it requires a semicolon either before or after it—usually before.

Why?  Because however is one of the conjunctions that may either begin or end the clause.  

Example:

3. “My work is like a diary,” Picasso told me, and I have taken him up on this.  One has to tread carefully, however.  Diaries are nonetheless interesting for embroidering upon the truth.  (House & Garden magazine, March 1991, p. 28)

The second sentence ends, quite correctly, with “however.”  The period could (also correctly) have been a semicolon.

If however appears between two independent clauses, the reader needs to know whether it ends the first clause or begins the second one. This information is provided by the semicolon:

4.  CORRECT   He arrived 15 minutes late; however, he found a seat.

5.  ALSO CORRECT:  He arrived 15 minutes late.  However, he found a seat.

Other “two-direction” conjunctions or conjunctive phrases include therefore,

consequently, in fact, and of course. 

© 2012 Rosemary Camilleri. All rights reserved.

They Say, I Say

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein have published a book, They Say I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. It has received positive reviews and a not-so-positive review.

My review is positive.  Novice writers must start somewhere, and They Say, I Say lays a good foundation.  Scholars expect certain “moves” that signal the accepted parts of an argument.  To execute those “moves,” academic writers can start by structuring arguments around certain phrases and clauses. Below are some clauses that I use. 

Move 1:   Announce consensus—a kind of “they say.”

It is widely believed that

Today, most people believe that…

Normally, one would expect that…

Experts in [a discipline, such as social work or French literature] have shown that…

Snow & Crow (2011) have demonstrated that    [Cite the appropriate research]

Theory X predicts that…

Move 2, usually right after Move 1:   Announce the contrast that points toward your paper’s thesis or "point."

However, there is some evidence that

But two very recent studies suggest that

Yet no research has yet tested whether

On the other hand, many practitioners find that

However, in the case of X,

Yet this current research fails to examine/answer

However, no studies have investigated the case of

On the one hand, every X wants to…   On the other hand, no X wants to…

Currently, theorists [or researchers] are divided; some believe X, while others hold that [not X]. 

Move 3  Announce your point.

Thus the purpose of this [paper, research, study…] is to

Therefore the present study will test whether

Move 4   Review the literature to provide a fuller context for your own research question.

            Here the trick is not so much clauses as verbs.  I can send you a list of verbs that bring lit reviews to life—verbs such as posit, maintain, suggest, contend, theorize, refute, etc.

Move 5, usually later in the paper:  Acknowledge arguments that rival your own.

This result seems to contrast with the findings of Snow & Crow (2011), perhaps because

Swallow & Spring (2011) disagree, asserting that …  This apparent contradiction could arise because

Our novel result could be explained if

Move 6   Later in the paper: Acknowledge limitations; thus you preempt attacks.

The present study is limited by

This research has several methodological limitations:

We acknowledge certain limitations of this research design:

Move 7   Conclude with a “Big Picture” ending.

This study has several implications.

If this study can be replicated, it would imply that

A next research question might be, “…..?”
How can we generalize this result?
Based on these results what larger problem can we solve?

This study may point to the notion that

Future researchers might well ask

Ultimately these results, if substantiated, may mean that X should

Publish or Perish? Writers Accountability Groups

If you need to write for your job, you probably have trouble starting or finishing a writing project.  Academic writers face especially tough hurdles: urgent priorities compete for their time.  Many such writers find that a support group speeds their projects.   

Experience shows you must want such a group, choose motivated members, and stay accountable when you feel like hibernating instead.  If you are an academic writer, don’t choose a group of journalists or fiction writers.  For joining or starting your own Writers Accountability Group, here are some tips: 

Spiritedwriter is a site with a religious tone.  It supplies practical steps to setting up a Writers Accountability Group.

Don’t be fooled by the post’s title, “Shut Up and Write.”   This longish article by Kerry Rockquemore argues that you deserve and can find (start?) a writer’s accountability group.

A writer named Bridget Cowlishaw has started a Writers’ Accountability Group on Facebook. You don’t have to join this one. You could start your own, using the group options in Facebook.

At women-on-writing, this newsletter, The Muffin, posts inspiration and writing tips.  Most of these people are freelance authors and journalists, but this post includes links to other writers’ groups.