Making Your Academic Writing Clear, Effective, & Compelling

Defend your dissertation. Publish your manuscript. Convince your audience.

What you'll learn
Use punctuation to clarify your meaning.
Eliminate unnecessary words from your writing.
Restructure sentences so that your point isn't lost.
Write compelling descriptions that strengthen your message.
Revise writing to ensure readers understand it.
Requirements
No specialized knowledge needed. Only a basic understanding of parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives) and punctuation (periods, commas). Easy-peasy!
Description
Unlike other courses that focus on the what—for instance, what is an adjective?, what is active voice?–this course limits the specialized vocabulary and instead focuses on the how and why of writing. In other words, we’ll be examining the effects that our choices have on our writing—for instance, if I did place a comma here, how would that affect the flow of the sentence? For that reason, this course is highly APPLICATION-BASED. As we proceed through each of the three modules, I want you to feel COMPELLED to look at your own writing and examine how you could improve it. Then, once you understand its weak areas, I want you to feel EMPOWERED to strengthen them.This course is for those wishing to write better, not by memorizing terms and definitions, but by thinking about what they actually want to say and do and experimenting with how they do it. **Targeted at graduate students–native English speakers and non-native speakers–this course course aims to help you produce writing that is accepted for defense and publication. Among other topics, we'll work on using punctuation to guide the reading, reducing wordiness, writing for understanding, and structuring sentences so that our readers are compelled to keep reading out of genuine interest.

Overview

Section 1: Introduction

Lecture 1 Introduction to course

Lecture 2 About me

Section 2: Using punctuation for effect and control

Lecture 3 Introduction to section

Lecture 4 Clarifying your message

Lecture 5 Guiding your readers

Lecture 6 Pacing your readers

Lecture 7 Punctuation: Wrap-up

Section 3: Being intentional in your writing

Lecture 8 Introduction to section

Lecture 9 Word choice

Lecture 10 Wordiness

Lecture 11 Descriptions

Lecture 12 Cadence & word arrangment

Lecture 13 Intention: Wrap-up

Section 4: Writing to express, not impress

Lecture 14 Introduction to section

Lecture 15 Writing with voice and personality

Lecture 16 Providing access to your audience

Lecture 17 Writing to express: Wrap-up

Section 5: Conclusion

Lecture 18 Wrap-up

Lecture 19 Bonus resources for you

PhD students who want to improve their writing for dissertations and publications,Academics who want to sharpen their style for publications,Beginning science writers who want to make their writing interesting and accessible for the general population