Overview

A series of articles on the basics of Academic Writing

To understand how this range of articles is organised you can:

1. navigate to the topics given on the left
2. search the site, or
3. keep reading to learn how the guide is organized
   (the recommended approach)

Organisation of the Site

1. This page explains how the guide is organized in different sections.
2. "I've got nothing to say!" The first step in writing a paper is having something to say—or turning a mediocre argument into a good one. The guide's Thinking section emphasizes writing not as an end-product but as a dynamic process of thinking, exploring, and revising ideas.
3. Already have a decent idea or argument but don't know how to express it? In Style, the heart of Basics of Writing, you'll find practical how-to advice (and lots of before-and-after examples) on the biggest writing problem facing most students: lack of clarity.
4. Confused about how to put an argument together so that it flows logically? Structure offers guidance on the anatomy of essays, from thesis statement to conclusion. You'll also find help on crafting and linking paragraphs in ways that will make sense to readers.
5. Problems with research? Or you have to write a paper in MLA or APA style and don't have a clue what that means? Evidence will help you. This section provides a quick guide to using the Internet for research, advice on how (and why) to avoid plagiarism, and lots of detailed help on how to quote effectively and how to use major documentation styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE.
6. If you've got a teacher who loves to nit-pick, check out Mechanics. Here you'll find help with the basic look of essays, including presentation, punctuation, and a top-ten list of common usage mistakes.
7. You say your paper is due in two hours? Well, you left it a bit late, but we'll do what we can. End gives our Basics of Writing advice in a nutshell.

Background

To me the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.             Truman Capote (1924-84)

If you like to write—if you love "the music the words make," the rhythm and pace of phrases and sentences, the architectural possibilities of paragraphs—you'll find it easy to use this guide, because you're most likely willing to do the hard work required to write well.

But most people don't have such warm feelings about writing. Basics of Writing can also help the rest of us for whom writing—especially academic writing—has mainly meant hard work, anxiety, and getting severely criticized for breaking this or that rule or being "unclear" or "vague" or "wordy," as if we were doing those things on purpose. Studying writing might not seem like fun, but we have tried to make Basics of Writing as concise and entertaining as possible, even as it teaches its lessons about the active voice, rhetoric, punctuation, and so on. One promise: if you put in some effort at this, you will improve as a writer.

We can promise you that if you put in some time studying the arcane secrets of the active voice, parallelism, semicolons, etc., you will start writing better, you will enjoy it more—and, the best still: you will get better grades.

The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)

Most people probably suppose that a writing guide should be a kind of rule-book. Since we see it differently, perhaps Basics of Writing should be called a thinking guide rather than a writing guide. As a thinking guide, Basics of Writing offers not just a bunch of rules to memorize but a framework for how to analyse essays, from their overall structure down to individual words. You become a better writer primarily by reflection and analysis (and by writing!) rather than rote memorization. If you take the time to look through the guide and pay attention, you will find many useful ways to improve as a writer. You will understand the process of writing essays better, and you will take more pride in the work you put into your writing. Hopefully the Basics of Writing Guide can kindle in even the most writing-averse student a flicker of Emerson's reverence for the creative magic of writing.

Aimed at University Students

The Basics of Writing is for anyone who wants to write better. It's intended mainly for our University students, but it has also helped lots of other people around the world to learn how to write more clearly, gracefully, and effectively.

We build our students' work around writing, because it's not only something students are going to have to do throughout their lives, but it's also a great way to stimulate learning and critical thinking.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Fanklin (1706-90)

College and University students live in a society that is, by historical standards, incredibly well-educated, literate, and word-oriented. Yet most college students don't write very well. It doesn't seem to matter at which level a student takes a course—introductory or upper-level courses; Shakespeare, political science, political theory, organizational behavior, or international business—we keep seeing the same problems: poor thesis statements, pomposity and overuse of the passive voice, rambling paragraphs, awkward quotations, and unconvincing use of evidence.

Basics of Writing came about because we got tired of seeing the same writing problems year after year, and one gets tired of writing the same comments on assignments year after year: "wordy," "turn passive into active," "how does this answer the question?" We also started to wonder if writing comments did any good—what students really seemed to need was an explanation of why something didn't work well, and help with how to do it better the next time.

Most writing guides are written from the perspective of English and literature courses, but today students are increasingly likely to encounter writing-intensive courses in a wide range of fields, from history to physics to business to art. This cross-disciplinary approach to teaching writing is known as writing across the curriculum.

The Purpose of "Basics of Writing"

Basics of Writing is a writing-across-the-curriculum primer. The writing-across-the-curriculum perspective challenges students to write in many different fields, not just English courses. Thus, it is hoped, students are more likely to see writing as an important part of their own education, not just something English majors need to be good at.

Writing compels you to:

• ask yourself what you know,
• to articulate your ideas,
• to link facts and concepts together,
• to acquire skill in rational argument.

Is there a better way to learn how to think for yourself?

But the writing-across-the-curriculum perspective poses some challenges for students and their tutors. Students are less likely to be taught by highly trained writing experts. In addition, each academic discipline has its own traditions, its own terminology, and its own idiosyncratic rules about things like citations and references. These differences can make it harder for students to apply what they learn in one course to other subjects.

Still, underlying the many differences between writing in various academic disciplines are some broadly held norms in western culture about good persuasive writing:

• rational arguments
• sentence-level clarity and elegance
• well-structured paragraphs
• effectively deployed evidence, and
• adherence to disciplinary rules and conventions.

The particular conventions vary, but the basic formula remains, and based on our experience we can affirm that students who learn to write well in one area can fairly easily translate that to other subjects.

Thus whatever field you find yourself writing reports and essays for, there are certain essentials of essay-writing to know and use:

• common writing virtues like clarity, an active style,
• coherent organization, effective use of credible evidence, and
• observance of the conventions of standard English (although these conventions are in large measure arbitrary and change over time does not lessen their importance or the need, if one wishes to have one's work accepted by one's audience, to obey them).

A final introductory note: Some students worry that embracing the kind of writing advocated here will choke out their own voices, leave them sounding like boring, unoriginal clones. Not so. Youthful incompetence, which is what this guide takes aim at (as well as writing incompetence in general) is usually a lot less interesting than its practitioners think. Real originality and style begin when one has mastered the basics covered here. Learning the lessons of the Basics of Writing Guide will help you on your journey to develop your own voice, your own thoughts, and your own virtues as a writer.

The nature of essays

What is an essay? The dictionary tells us it's "a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretive." But in centuries past, as the entry from Dr. Johnson's 18th-century dictionary suggests, the term meant something more uncertain and provisional.

ESSAY: A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.       Samuel Johnson (1709-84)

To write an essay originally meant to explore or try out ideas. This old meaning lingers in the verb to essay (accent on the second syllable), meaning "to try"—and it remains the underlying idea of the essay. A true essay is a try, a journey of discovery for reader and writer (for more on writing as a way to learn, see the next section on Thinking).

Contact us to give feed-back

The guide is meant to help you. If you've got ideas on how it could do that better, please let us know. We'd love to hear your suggestions. Thanks.

Adapted from: The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by
Professor Michael Harvey
Washington College
300 Washington Ave.
Chestertown, MD 21620
(410) 778-7889 | Fax: (410) 778-7891
michael.harvey@washcoll.edu

Buy the book from: Hackett Publishing Company
PO Box 44937
Indianapolis, IN 46244-0937
(317) 635-9250 | Fax: (317) 635-9292
http://www.hackettpublishing.com/

More help

The best place to start for writing help is the excellent Writing Centers on the Web. The documents give expert instructions and provide hands-on assistance in crafting stronger essays.

Note to teachers

The Basics of Writing of College Writing is not only for students but also their teachers. The growing popularity of writing across the curriculum means that more and more teachers are looking for help in improving their students' writing. Teachers may consult Basics of Writing for thoughts on using writing in courses. In general, Basics of Writing emphasizes thinking, logic, and the structure of sound expository writing rather than just rules.

Our hope is that Basics of Writing can help teachers discover a more rewarding self-image than correctness does. The best teachingof writing—like any other difficult skill—does not just train and correct but also inspires and empowers. A commitment to writing takes a good deal of work on the part of tutor, but it's an integral part of helping students develop their potential—not just as writers, but as thinkers, communicators, and whole human beings.

Teaching suggestion: if you require students to follow Basics of Writing guidelines in writing their papers, we suggest providing a bit of direction since the guide can be dauntingly long for time-harried students. You might wish to assign one section of this guide per week at the beginning of the year so students get used to working with Basics of Writing. And make sure you specify a particular style of assignment format which your students should follow.

Adapted from: The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing by
Professor Michael Harvey, Washington College

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