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Week 1 Slides

The document outlines the challenges and processes of academic writing, emphasizing the importance of clarity, concision, and practice. It discusses the dual focus of improving writing skills through revision and striving for powerful, memorable prose. Additionally, it highlights common writing obstacles, such as writer's block and the formulaic nature of academic writing, while encouraging a supportive class environment for discussing writing issues.

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LocNguyen
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2 views

Week 1 Slides

The document outlines the challenges and processes of academic writing, emphasizing the importance of clarity, concision, and practice. It discusses the dual focus of improving writing skills through revision and striving for powerful, memorable prose. Additionally, it highlights common writing obstacles, such as writer's block and the formulaic nature of academic writing, while encouraging a supportive class environment for discussing writing issues.

Uploaded by

LocNguyen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Academic Writing for

Clarity and Grace


Week 1
• When, where, and how do you write?
• For me: only on the desktop computer in my home office
• What rituals or routines do you follow in order to get started writing?
• For me: read four newspapers and several websites, review
email, and win three games of solitaire (spider, free cell,
Klondike)
• What practices to you follow in order to avoid writing?
• For me: see above
Writing is hard
Why is writing so hard? And why do
we work so hard to avoid it?
• It’s a continual process of confronting problems and trying to resolve
them – problems of logic, argument, evidence, syntax, and so on.
• Easy ideas we can handle in our heads, but writing is how we work
out difficult, complex, and extended problems.
• And you never know if you’re going to succeed.
• It’s a high wire act, with a disastrous fall always imminent.
• And it’s very personal – not what you do but who you are
• If it’s not hard, then you’re not really learning anything; you’re just
transcribing a canned thought
• That’s think tank writing
• Providing arguments and evidence to support at fixed position

• Good news/bad news: It gets better with practice but it doesn’t get
easier
This course operates at two levels
• Writing less badly
• Largely a matter of becoming sensitive to problems that
impeded clarity and concision
• Operates primarily through the process of revision, editing
• This is writing as a craft, which responds to practice and
rewards efforts at editing
• Writing well
• Striving for writing that is powerful, graceful, memorable
• Finding your own voice
• Learning from models of first rate writing
• This is writing as an art, which is harder to accomplish but is
worth aspiring to
• It also serves as group therapy for writers
Any writing accomplishments
recently?
• It’s good to give yourself credit for any progress you’re making on
your writing – even small steps
• Writing an abstract
• Writing the first paragraph
• Developing an outline
• Completing a section
• Revising
• Completing a draft
• Sending it off for review
• Getting it published
Potential problems in writing
• You can intimidate yourself by setting your sights too high, trying
to be the best instead of trying to avoid the worst.
• So the lion’s share of our efforts will be focused on
identifying problems and developing our skills at fixing
them.
• But we will also spend some time looking at really good
examples of writing, in academic prose and in prose more
broadly.
• You can also develop writer’s block by becoming so sensitized to all of
the errors you can make that you are unable to write a simple
sentence.
• So we will focus on writing first and then editing later, getting
your thoughts down on paper than then fixing them to make
them more effective.
• And we will reinforce this by encouraging – in class and out –
stepping back from the writing task at hand and trying a fast
write, just to remind yourself of the larger story you are trying
to develop in the piece your are working on.
A lot of academic writing is formulaic
What are some key themes about
writing that you found in the four
readings for today?
• Clarity
• Concision
• Actors and actions
• Anglo Saxon over Latin
• Practice is key
• Writing is revising
• Writing is music
Lepore
• Fish metaphor
• Your question is a fishing license
• Reel it in
• Gut it with a sharp knife
Course books (any edition is ok)
• Williams, Joseph M. & Bizup, Joseph. (2016). Style: Lessons in clarity
and grace (12th ed.). New York: Longman.
• Becker, Howard S. (2007). Writing for social scientists: How to start
and finish your thesis, book, or article (2nd ed.). Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
• Graff, Gerald, & Birkenstein, Cathy. (2014). “They say, I say:” The
moves that matter in academic writing (3rd ed.). New York: Norton.
• Sword, Helen. (2012). Stylish academic writing. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
• Garner, Bryan A. (2016). Garner’s modern American usage (4th ed.)
New York: Oxford University Press.
Class process
• Will do reading, revision, and editing every week
• Part of every class will focus on the reading for that week
• Part will focus on writing issues, using texts drawn from the reading or
elsewhere
• Part will be a writing support group, where you talk about writing
problems that you are concerned about.
Everyone gets edited, every text
can be better
Example: the opening paragraph of the introduction to my book, How
to Succeed in School Without Really Learning.
Read my version compared with the copyeditor’s version.
[In slideshow mode, just click the hyperlink; in edit mode you need to
right-click the link and select “open hyperlink.”]
The revised version reads better, doesn’t it? He removed a lot of
unnecessary language to make the whole thing cleaner and more
concise.
Try editing, using examples from
Williams
Try editing these examples for clarity, emphasis, and concision.

Check out these examples of possible edits.


What’s this?
It’s a shrink-wrapped set of copies of my prize-winning first book, which I
now use as a doorstop in my office.

After the paper edition came out, the press said they were going to pulp
the remaining hardcover copies since they needed the space. They let
me buy them at production cost and I ordered a case. The copies sat on
my shelf for a long time until I found a way to put them to good use.

Moral: Academic publishing is not a glamorous business. Sales are low,


readers are few and far between, fame is fleeting.

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