Advice on Academic Writing

1. Advice on Academic
Writing

2.  An essay should have an argument.
 It should have a question that you will seek to answer in your essay
 An essay organization should be designed to present your argument
clearly and persuasively.
 Successful methods of composing:
 Start writing early
 write what seems readiest to be written
 keep the essay’s overall purpose and organization in mind
 revise extensively
 Revise sentences, with especial attention to transitions, diction and
economy. Lately, proofeadthe final copy

3. Provides formulas. Discourages formulas.
Offers you a ready-made structure to work
with.
Provides freedom for you to come up
with your own way of structuring your
argument.
Teaches just one model for an essay that
you then apply in all of your courses.
Offers discipline-specific guidelines for
approaching written work.
Encourages repetition. Discourages repetition.
Provides rules. Encourages critical thinking.
Rewards you for demonstrating your
knowledge of the material.
Rewards you for engaging in analysis.
High school University

4.  When you begin planning, ask the following questions: What type of essay am I going to be
writing? Does it belong to a specific genre?
 Avoiding a common pitfall: the structure of an essay should not be determined by the
structure of its source material.
Planning provides the following advantages:
 helps you to produce a logical and orderly argument that your readers can follow
 helps you to produce an economical paper by allowing you to spot repetition
 helps you to produce a thorough paper by making it easier for you to notice whether you
have left anything out
 makes drafting the paper easier by allowing you to concentrate on writing issues such as
grammar, word choice, and clarity
Overplanning poses the following risks:
 doesn’t leave you enough time to write and revise
 leads you to produce papers that try to cover too much ground at the expense of analytic
depth
 can result in a writing style that lacks spontaneity and ease
 does not provide enough opportunity to discover new ideas in the process of writing

5. When you are asked to write an essay that creates
an argument, your reader will probably expect a
clear statement of your position. Typically, this
summary statement comes in the first paragraph of
the essay, though there is no rigid rule about
position.
 It makes a definite and limited assertion that
needs to be explained and supported by
further discussion
 It shows the emphasis and indicates the
methodology of your argument
 It shows awareness of difficulties and
disagreements

6. Introduction
 A good introduction should identify your
topic
 provide essential context
 indicate your particular focus in the essay.
 It needs to engage your readers’ interest

7. Conclusion
 A strong conclusion will provide a sense of
closure to the essay while again placing your
concepts in a somewhat wider context.
 A conclusion is not merely a summary of your
points or a re-statement of your thesis.
 The conclusion involves critical thinking.
 Broaden your focus a bit at the end of the essay.

8. What is a paragraph?
 A paragraph is a series of related sentences developing a central idea, called the
topic.
How do you develop your ideas in a paragraph?
 Illustration in a paragraph supports a general statement by means of examples,
details, or relevant quotations .
 The definition paragraph defines a term, often by drawing distinctions between the
term and other related ones.
 The analysis or classification paragraph develops a topic by distinguishing its
component parts and discussing each of these parts separately.
 A comparison or a contrast paragraph zeroes in on a key similarity or difference
between, for instance, two sources, positions, or ideas.
 A qualification paragraph acknowledges that what you previously asserted is not
absolutely true or always applicable.
 The process paragraph involves a straightforward step-by-step description. Process
description often follows a chronological sequence.

9. What is a topic sentence?
A topic sentence states the main point
of a paragraph: it serves as a mini-
thesis for the paragraph.
Where do topic sentences go?
Topic sentences usually appear at the
very beginning of paragraphs.
Using topic sentences

10. Critical Reading: What is It?
 don’t read looking only or primarily for information
 do read looking for ways of thinking about the subject
matter
Skimming and Scanning: By first skimming a text, you
can get a sense of its overall logical progression. Skimming
can also help you make decisions about where to place your
greatest focus when you have limited time for your reading.
Scanning is basically skimming with a more tightly focused
purpose: skimming to locate a particular fact or figure, or to
see whether this text mentions a subject you’re researching.

11. Summarizing a text, or distilling its essential concepts
into a paragraph or two, is a useful study tool as well
as good writing practice. A summary has two aims:
• to reproduce the overarching ideas in a text,
identifying the general concepts that run through
the entire piece
• to express these overarching ideas using precise,
specific language.

12. What exactly do I have to document? With experience
reading academic prose, you’ll soon get used to the
ways writers in your field refer to their sources.
 Quotations, paraphrases, or summaries: If you use
the author’s exact words, enclose them in quotation
marks, or indent passages of more than four lines.
 Specific facts used as evidence for your argument
or interpretation
 Distinctive or authoritative ideas, whether you
agree with them or not: The way you introduce a
reference can indicate your attitude and lead into your
own argument.
How Not to
Plagiarize

13. How much should I quote?
• The language of the passage is
particularly elegant or powerful or
memorable.
• You wish to confirm the credibility of
your argument by enlisting the support
of an authority on your topic.
• The passage is worthy of further
analysis.
• You wish to argue with someone else’s
position in considerable detail.

14. Revising gives you the chance to
preview your work on behalf of the
eventual reader. Revision is much
more than proofreading, though in the
final editing stage it involves some
checking of details.

15. Commas
 Commas after many introductory phrases are optional. When the
introductory phrase is short, you can often omit the comma; when the
phrase is longer, a comma will help your reader recognize where the main
clause begins
 When joining two independent clauses (clauses that could stand alone as
sentences) with a coordinating conjunction (and, or, nor, but, yet, for, so),
you normally place a comma before the conjunction
 When joining mere phrases, you usually do not provide a comma
 Place commas between each element of a list of three or more parallel
words, phrases, or clauses. Writers often place a comma before the
conjunction (and or or) preceding the last element in the list
 Surround interrupting or parenthetical clauses or phrases with commas.
Such clauses or phrases are not essential to the sentence. If you removed
them, the central point of the sentence would remain

16. Semicolons: The semicolon has two main uses.
The first is to combine two closely related
independent clauses into one sentence
The other valid use of semicolons is to separate list
elements that are long or complex. If, in particular,
those list elements contain internal commas,
semicolons will help show just where each element
begins and ends.
Colons: Colons offer a way of urging your reader
forward. The words preceding the colon create an
expectation; the words following the colon fulfill it.

17. Dashes:
Dashes serve some of the same functions as
commas and colons, but they assert
themselves more forcefully. Like commas,
dashes are used to set off interrupting clauses
or phrases, but a pair of dashes will tend to call
more attention to what lies in between
Parentheses:
Parentheses offer a third way of introducing
interrupting material. A pair of commas supplies
the standard, matter-of-fact way of doing so. If
dashes provide a more forceful alternative to
commas, parentheses offer a tentative and
modest one.

18.  The Book Review or Article Critique
 Writing an Annotated Bibliography
 The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It
 The Abstract
 The Comparative Essay
 Writing about History
 Writing about Literature
 Writing a Philosophy Essay
 Writing in the Sciences
 How to Use Active Voice in the Sciences
 Effective Admission Letters
 Application Letters and Résumés
 The Academic Proposal
 Academic Proposals in Graduate School
 The Lab Report
 Oral Presentations

19. What are articles? Articles are special modifiers that appear before
nouns or noun phrases. Like other adjectives, they help clarify the
meaning of the noun in your sentence. There are only two articles in
the English language: the and a
Following a verb (gerund or infinitive)
 Both gerunds and infinitives can replace a noun as the object of a
verb. Whether you use a gerund or an infinitive depends on the main
verb in the sentence.
Verbs for Referring to Sources
 Pattern 1: reporting verb + that + subject + verb
 Pattern 2: reporting verb + somebody/something + for +
noun/gerund
 Pattern 3: reporting verb + somebody/something + as +
noun/gerund/adjective

20. UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO. Writing courses.
Advice on Academic Writing.
http://advice.writing.utoronto.ca/