The English Miscellany

The path to publication is arduous! "Publication is a self-invasion of privacy." - - -  Marshall McLuhan You can't publish unless you've written something ... 1. Ban thoughts of failure or rejection; by starting to write you are improving on the blank page of terror 2. Write a rough draft quickly; the quality of the writing should be worked on later 3. Familiarise yourself with an appropriate academic phrasebank 4. Learn to use a range of connectives in order to make your ideas flow 5. Avoid writing marathons - they seldom produce quality outcomes 6. Learn to use short stretches of highly focused writing time 7. Check that your have displaced all potential distractions 8. Identify SMART targets for your short periods of writing: Specific – target a specific area for improvement. Measurable – quantify or at least suggest an indicator of progress. Assignable – specify who will do it. Realistic – state what results can realistically

Nowadays, so much academic writing is simply a rehash of other people's work. Textbooks, in particular, are prone to the vice of uncritical recycling. Clearly, however, there is a virtue in building on the work of others. Work in the humanities has become very specialised (since the 1970s) and this means that we are standing on the shoulders of an army of scholars, not to mention the proverbial giants and geniuses of the past. Nonetheless, excessive use of citation suggests perhaps a lack of confidence in your own thought and creativity. A literature review may be the starting point of a research project, but it is not the final destination. I was led to these rather banal reflections having recently picked up a copy of John Russell Brown's engaging and thoughtful book: Shakespeare: The Tragedies (2001). This book has four citations, two of which refer to the work of Peter Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200-1830 . (1983) Now that's perhaps the l

If you own a Kindle, Nook, or other ebook reader you will be familiar with the problem that the majority of texts do not have fixed page numbers. They will also display the same text in different way. This means that the location of a quotation in one digital format will be different from another. Obviously if you are downloading a pdf there will be fixed page numbers to refer to. Readers who want to locate and check your quotations can of course simply search for key words within the text. Also, you can indicate which section of the book you are referring to by including a chapter reference. Therefore you ought to write in this style McCormick (2013) outlines the art of disputation (ch. 7) and the art of the supplement (ch. 6). and quotations like this McCormick (2013) argues that 'the use of transition words is highly effective in logical thinking' (ch 1.5). Note that in the example above, the reference helpfully also provides a note of the subsection 5 of chap

Do you find that you waste time wondering how to start the next sentence? Do you find yourself lost for words when you are required to link your ideas coherently and persuasively? Do your sentences flow together and support the larger structure? Do you want your writing to communicate more effectively and efficiently? The Art of Connection: the Social Life of Sentences is an innovative practical book that explains the Nine Arts of Connection: Location, Timing, Comparison, Contrast and Difference, the Supplement, Disputation, Sequence, Example and Illustration, and the Summary. By following the easy to use guides and examples provided in this book, writers can learn how to write fluently and begin to enjoy the process of composition. Whether you are a student or learning English for the first time, this book will assist you to write successfully to achieve your goals. By dividing the common words and phrases used to signal transition and connection into nine cat

Are you still sharpening your use of academic language, or are you loosening the reins? The title of this blog points to the tensions involved in professional educational writing. In one sense the purely personal, original, pre-academic voice is a fiction. By joining the ranks of academe your voice has already begun to switch from a personal to a public voice. Taking the micky becomes parody or satire , for instance. Academic writing loses colloquial speech-like qualities and takes on the jargon of professional authenticity. And speech also tends to lose the accent and dialect of your class roots. Sadly, standard academic English is a rather middle-class business proposition. There is a gain but there is also a loss. But academic voice in the arts and the social sciences need not be the bleak accent of dry neutrality and emotionless abstraction. Surely there's an error in losing the individual idiosyncrasy of the human pulse in this domain of work? While it is true that

From time to time PhDs are submitted and they are failed . Your 3 to 7 year investment does not come with any guarantee of a pass. Nor is it enough complain that the supervisory team did not tell you that you might fail, or that you are at risk. While failure is very uncommon, there are no guarantees of success. Most examiners are looking for positive evidence of success, but they are also required to identify weaknesses and errors. Both roles comprise the work of critical scrutiny and the professional process of examination. On one occasion when I was serving as a PhD examiner we required major corrections with a 24 month timetable as that seemed to be the alternative to a failure. But the alarm bells ought to have been clear well before submission. Multiple errors and weaknesses may result in protracted re-submission or even outright failure. Examiners often spot weaknesses that your supervisors may not have identified or scrupulously checked. It is not uncommon for