Resources for graduate academic writing

In My Humble Opinion
1

My life is extremely different than it was a year ago; instead of working at an IT job, I’m now in grad school in a completely different field (Historic Preservation).

My first semester was great. However, the classes didn’t heavily focus on “actual” paper writing* (one was an intro to the field of study, one was more about creating 3D models in Google Sketchup and the other focused on creating a program for a community). This semester, my classes will be more focused on heavy reading, research papers, etc.

Now, this is likely because I’m really great at over-thinking, over-complicating and worrying :D, but I really need some great resources (be they websites, books, etc.) on graduate level academic writing.

I know the basics of undergrad writing; heck, I was a writing tutor then. But IME, undergrad writing really tends to stick to:

Intro paragraph with thesis statement at the end
Body paragraphs, each of which has a topic sentence
Conclusion paragraph

I know that graduate-level writing has that same structure (intro, body, conclusion), but it doesn’t seem to stick that rigidly to the specific paragraphs, y’know? My experiences with higher level academic writing are on the reading end (scholarly journals, etc.). I can see the structure is the same, but there are definite differences between these and the standard undergrad essay format.

I basically know enough… to know I don’t know enough! :slight_smile: It seems that higher-level papers can have an introduction of multiple paragraphs and that “topic sentences” for the body are used as headings for a multiple paragraph section. This makes sense, considering that these papers will go into far more depth compared to an undergrad paper.

I just want to know things like how you divide your paragraphs, any expected sub-structure, etc. I know how to do it “traditional undergrad” style and I know how to do it in general writing. I’ve found that there is a lot of information that graduate school either 1 - assumes you already know or 2 - assumes you’ll go out and find the information on your own**. So basically, I’m trying to do #2 for this!

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love it! I’ve googled the topic in several ways and my findings are more vague, talking about “have your own idea”, “edit edit edit!”, “develop your argument”. No shit, Sherlock! :slight_smile:

  • This is an interesting program because it’s an extremely diverse mix of styles. Obviously there are different concentrations depending on your specific interests, but even within all of them you’ll see research papers/articles, 3D models, physical restoration of artifacts, etc.

** One example: getting emails about upcoming grants you can apply for. The profs/dept know all about this, but (and it’s not just me) students tend to only have really basic knowledge (I know there are grants for graduate work and that you have to apply to get them, but why would my basic classes or research papers qualify? Why/how would one rinky-dink paper I do qualify to be published? etc.). This is the info I need to learn.

2

Your field of study is fascinating to me.

I teach research paper writing, among other kinds of writing, but it’s difficult to explain it all here. Which style of formatting are you required to use–MLA or APA? I recommend that you find a handbook for whichever formatting style and read it closely.

I’d tell you to email me for more information, but I don’t think my email is available here because I’m not a member.

3

First, sorry for the long delay in replying! Yesterday was spent reading reading reading reading reading and whatnot. Then today was a disaster (front tie rod on my car broke :().

But I’m home now!

I love my field; it’s the perfect example of a field that tons of people say, “how the hell do you get a cool job like that?!?!” but hardly anyone knows it’s even an actual program at a bunch of universities. If you have any questions about it (even just out of curiosity), fire away! :slight_smile:

Formatting: Interestingly I haven’t heard of a firm, department-wide format standard (I know! But it could be only because the one class I’ve had with actual papers was the intro class and he was more concerned with just making sure you DID citations, etc.). I know that one of my two profs this semester requires MLA (and two of her papers will be research papers)

I know the real basics of MLA (that’s what my undergrad used 99% of the time) so I’m not concerned with how to properly format foot/endnotes, or a bibliography, etc.

Actually, let me link one of the papers that I’ve had to read for one of my classes (it only gives you the first page for free, I believe. :frowning: Maybe you can access it, since you teach? Or even just the first page probably will be enough to get the general style).

Reading a bunch of academic papers like these is what made me really start wondering about academic writing styles. It’s clearly not written in the “basic undergrad” format (one intro paragraph, each body paragraph being for a specific issue and begins with a topic sentence); it has introductory paragraphs, body divided into topics (each with multiple paragraphs) and a conclusion, though.

Using a paper like this as an example, is there some kind of “code” for when you would separate paragraphs? A brief undergrad paper would have one paragraph per topic, so it’s easy to know when to end a paragraph. But here, a topic could be pages. It doesn’t seem like there are miniature topic sentences that start each paragraph; the writing flows more smoothly.
So like I said, I could be totally overthinking it. :smiley: Is it basically “have your introductory space, your body (divided into a section per overall topic) and a conclusion. Don’t worry about strict structure or “requirements” for a single paragraph; instead just break them up as you feel would flow best?”

4

Based on my own grad school experience, I would simply do the best I could at first, and then pay close attention to my professor’s criticisms. I went to grad school for public policy, and surprise surprise, most of our writing was in policy memo format. I was like “wtf I have no idea how to write a memo”. The first time I had to write one, I spent hours and hours reading sample memos on the web.

But that’s what we were there for - to learn to write in a way appropriate for our field. Now I am an expert at writing policy memos. But it took two years!

5

I have a post graduate degree in museum studies, and have had to do a lot of writing in various forms for both academic as well as museum-studies related writing.

My advice would be to look at as many examples of writing specific to your field as you can find. For example, one of the things we studied quite a lot, and had to learn to write for ourselves, were case studies. Another type of writing you’ll want to get good at is writing critical reviews. I had a heck of a time learning to write book reviews, but I’ve published several (and usually land about one a year for a peer-reviewed journal), so I guess I finally learned how!

This is all on top of other writing that you’ll be doing for conferences and submissions for publications, and, of course, the all important grant applications (as well as job applications!)

Another difference between grad and undergraduate writing is that higher-level academic writing has original research and synthesis to it that one doesn’t necessarily see at the undergraduate level (although senior will begin to write that way if they’re preparing for a final thesis.)

There are actually two MLA stylesheets; there’s the handbook for writing research papers that you can find most readily in bookshops, but bear in mind there is also an academic writing version.

Finally, you might find the museum studies listserv of good use; they publish information daily about CFP (calls for papers) and job opportunities, as well as emails in which grad students, independent scholars, and faculty toss out queries about book searches, suggestions for research advice, and other interesting questions

I was quite fortunate to attend the University of Delaware’s Museum Studies programs to pick up my certification; there really aren’t that many programs in the US, and I believe the UD’s may have been the first one. I didn’t want to do it originally when I was an undergrad there as most of their internships are connected to Hagley, Winterthur, Nemours, etc – not that these aren’t fine museums, but to me, they’re all about modern history (to me anything after about AD 600 is modern history!) It did open up opportunities for work at the British Museum, and on-off chances to work for and help with projects at the Johnson Victrola Museum here in DE, the EMI archives in Hayes (Middlesex, England), the textiles collections at the V & A, a rampage through the Roman collection at the Museum of London, and a couple other nifty places.

You’re in a neat program!

6

I am a coordinator of a master’s program and teach both masters and doctoral students. Sadly I read a lot of really poor graduate writing. But typically I can distill the problems fairly easily.

First, poor graduate writers don’t read enough peer-reviewed articles in their field. Read 20 papers in your field that have been in peer-reviewed journals. You will start to discern the structure of the paper fairly quickly. Also, you’ll note, that not every author has a great command of style - but they are likely well-organized and easy to follow. So academic writing has little to do with flair and substance, but a lot to do with organization.

I tell my students that I see a correlation between my strongest writers (who read copiously) and those that struggle (they’re the ones that can’t find the required number of sources on assignments). Google Scholar makes it so easy nowadays - you just type in the keywords and the articles appear. If your school has a good library, you’ll be able to download them right then and there.

Finding a group of scholars that write in a way that you find compelling is key as well. I know of two sociologists and three educational researchers that I simply adore, because they write so well. They use the first person to describe themselves and how they conduct their studies, instead of the awkward, third person (in the passive voice) that so many academics seem to favor. (In my field, education, nobody really writes like that anymore, but there are some holdovers.) But my first forays into writing academic papers look a lot like Stacey Lee’s work.

Academic writing is not at all like creative writing, in my experience. You need to make arguments clearly and concisely. Very few among us can make the words sing off the page. That happens with a great deal of practice. The more you write, and the more good feedback you receive, and the more you are able to make the feedback about the paper and not about you - the more your writing will improve. I find a lot of my students are aghast when they receive a paper from me, full of comments and edit marks (even good ones!). A lot of profs don’t give much feedback, if any. Others are instantly defensive and want to meet with me because they think I’m saying that they aren’t a good writer, when the reality is they may be a fine writer but everyone can improve their writing.

Trust me, as a tenure-track faculty member, if I took the criticism of my writing personally, I’d be suicidal. I regularly get rejection letters from journal editors, but I am often asked to revise papers and they get published. So in a nutshell… read a lot, and practice a lot!

Last, a package that deals with bibliographies is essential. I use EndNote, and I know Zotero and NoodleBib are two free programs that can do this. I like EndNote’s interface and I’ve been using it since grad school, plus it isn’t super expensive for students.

One more thing - peer editing rocks. Get a classmate to read your work before you submit it, and vice versa.

7

Loads of good advice from Hippy Hollow, especially on reading a lot in your field, getting feedback from peers, and developing a thick skin! Constructive criticism has nothing to do with you personally.

Something HH wrote reminds me of another small piece of advice – on writing clearly. One writing problem I learned to overcome had to do with being very clear and straightforward in my introduction about not only what my thesis was, but how I was going to demonstrate/solve my particular issue. I would state my thesis, state the different points I was going to address, and in what order, but would frequently not state my conclusions (ie, my end result) – fortunately, early on in both grad school, and now professionally, I had kind readers who pointed out that I’d left out the ‘why in the heck should anyone read this?’ part.

I think it happens because the writing most common is fiction and movies and television – where, of course, you don’t want to give away the final chapter, or tell the reader whodunnit in the first paragraph! Academic writing is a completely different kettle of kittens, and at first I found that ‘giving away’ my amazing answers was a difficult habit to break.

Look not only at a lot of peer reviewed writing, but also the abstracts – there’s another thread going about writing long papers, but I think the hardest thing to write is that 200 or 350 word abstract of your article or thesis as well.

8

There’s a journal article I go back to regularly when I am starting a new paper: Lynn White, 2005, “Writes of Passage: Writing an Empirical Journal Article.” Journal of Marriage and Family, 67(4):791-798. Your field sounds pretty different, but you might look around for something similar in one of the prominent journals in your field.

I’m a big proponent of the “road map” type of paragraph that Ms Boods mentions above. Tell your reader early on what you’re doing in your paper and why. I also like a lot of transition words/phrases in the body of the paper so the reader doesn’t have to figure out why and how you’ve just moved from Point A to Point B.

To be honest, I’ve never given much thought to where paragraph breaks go - just go with your gut! Sometimes it will take three paragraphs to make one point, sometimes you can get a couple of points in one paragraph. It’s cool.