What's In a Word?

One of my responsibilities as MALS Writing Consultant is to periodically post some thoughts on writing that may become food for thought. The following is my first attempt. Writing can be a scary thing because it always requires that we "put ourselves out there," even if we are only writing thoughts in a personal journal to never be shared with another living being. I look forward to working with you and providing any kind of assistance to help the writing process become a joy rather than torture.

When we decided to become graduate students, one thing was certain: we knew we would be expected to write lots and lots of papers! All of us wrote papers in high school and undergraduate school. The bar is raised, however, for the graduate student. The kinds of errors tolerated (whether structural or content) in the early years are no more. The expectations are great, and we are expected to deliver. Nothing can be more terrifying (at least it was for me) than reviewing the syllabus for a grad class and finding that you will have 5 or more papers due during the semester (And that’s for one class!) I can remember driving home from my first day of classes in tears wondering, “How will I get it all done?”, and thinking, “What in the world have I gotten myself into!”

The time has arrived, and we have to get started. We have our first assignment: a five-page paper on [fill in the blank]. Where to begin? A little research perhaps? Mark Twain observed, “The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.” (http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html) A Google search on “how to improve academic writing” resulted in 1,550,000 hits! It is obvious that millions of words have been written to advise academics (remember, we are academics) on the myriad of ways to improve their writing. That makes it a challenge for me to come up with some solid advice to get us started on our collective way to sharpening our writing skills. So, like the good scholar I try to be, I turned to some experts at Dartmouth University for assistance:

The Dartmouth Writing Program suggests three concepts that must be understood by students in order to write academic papers:
• Academic writing is done by scholars for other scholars.
(As a college student, you became a part of the academic community in which you will engage in “centuries old” scholarly activities: “read[ing] about, think[ing] about, argu[ing] about and writ[ing] about great ideas.”)
• Academic writing is devoted to topics and questions that are of interest to the academic community.
(It goes without saying that choosing a topic can be extremely difficult. That said, your professor is your first line of defense so pay attention to what he/she shares with you regarding context, presentation, and style.)
• Academic writing should present the reader with an informed argument.
(The Dartmouth Writing Program proffers, “To construct an informed argument, you must first try to sort out what you know about a subject from what you think about a subject.” In other words, learn what you can about your topic before you try to figure out what you think about it. The successful paper must inform or argue in order to “meet the expectations of the academic reader.”
(http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/student/ac_paper/what.shtml)

Knowing when to end our writing is a good lesson for all of us to learn. Economy of words and efficient and effective thought processes will take us far in this adventure known as academic writing. One of my professors argued that academic papers should not close with quotes, but I really like quotes. Thus, let’s hope that we never are on the receiving end of the following: “I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.” ~English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University (http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html)

Welcome to the MALS Online Writing Center

Darcy will be demonstrating the chat and document functions in MALS 5000 class on Tuesday, September 28.