Academic Writing and Grammar for Students (Student Success)

Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copryright
Contents
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Introduction
	Writing at university
	What's in this book?
		Basic conventions of academic writing
		Basic grammatical concepts
		Putting sentences together
		Putting paragraphs together
		Critical thinking
		Referencing
		Conciseness and clarity
		Common mistakes and how to deal with them
		Proofreading effectively
	Notes on the text and the conventions I follow
		Different subjects
		Referencing
		Further reading sections
	Further reading
1. Basic Conventions of Academic Writing
	Using abbreviations
	Establishing objectivity
	Referencing correctly
	Avoiding slang/colloquial language
	Avoiding emotive language
	Avoiding the first person
	Avoiding the second person
	Avoiding contractions
	Simplicity, clarity and conciseness
	Further reading
2. Basic Grammatical Concepts
	Types of words
		Nouns, concrete nouns, abstract nouns, proper nouns and plurals
			Concrete nouns
			Abstract nouns
			Proper nouns
			Plurals
			Effective noun use
		Verbs
			Effective verb use
		Pronouns
			Non-binary pronoun use
			Effective pronoun use
		Articles
		Modifiers (Describing words and phrases)
		Adjectives
			Effective adjective use
		Adverbs
			Effective adverb use
		Conjunctions
			Effective conjunction use
		Prepositions
			Effective preposition use
	Summing up
	Further reading
3. Putting Sentences Together
	Subject–verb–object
	Active and passive
		Removing the subject of the sentence
		Emphasising the object of the sentence
		Varying your sentence structure
	Tense
		The most common tenses in academic writing
		Avoiding continuous tenses where possible
	Hedging
	Punctuation
		. The full stop
		? The question mark
		! The exclamation mark
		, The comma
		: The colon
		; The semi-colon
		( ) Parentheses/round brackets
		[ ] Square brackets
		- The hyphen/dash
		' The apostrophe
	Further reading
4. Putting Paragraphs Together
	Signposting language
	Topic sentences and staying on topic
	What, why, when
	Further reading
5. Critical Thinking
	The ‘P’ word: plagiarism
	What is critical thinking?
	Critical as opposed to descriptive
	Summing up
	Further reading
	Bringing up alternate perspectives and conclusions (and then debunking them)
		The rule of three
		Repetition
		Ad hominem arguments
		Hyperbole
		Rhetorical questions
		Straw man
	Further reading
6. Referencing
	The different referencing systems/styles
		Harvard referencing/the author–date system
		Vancouver or numeric referencing
		Footnotes
		Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association (APA) referencing
		OSCOLA
	More complex referencing techniques
		Ellipsis
		Square brackets
			Errors in the original
			Emphasis added and emphasis in original
			Adding words to a sentence
	Summing up
	Further reading
7. Conciseness and Clarity
	Watch those word counts
	Redundant phrases
	Other redundant phrases
	Avoiding expletive constructions
	Using simple words instead of complex ones
	Simple sentences
	Does this belong here?
	Meaningless modifiers: ‘very’/‘really’/‘extremely’/‘severely’ (and so on)
	The future tense/unnecessary signposting
	Avoiding repetition
	The active and passive voices
	Changing negatives to affirmatives
	Removing excessive ‘nominalisation’
	Using the word ‘this’
	More examples
		Example one
		Example two
		Example three
		Example four
		Example five
	Further reading
8. Common Mistakes and How to Deal With Them
	Mixed constructions
	Dangling modifiers
	Using ‘it has been said that …’
	Using ‘I think/I feel …’
	Avoiding the word ‘interesting’
	Poor presentation of tables and graphs
	Comma splicing
	Using ‘of’ instead of ‘have’
		There/they’re/their
		To/too
	The word ‘of’ and possessive replacements
	‘Putting things off’
	Further reading
9. Proofreading Effectively
	Distance yourself from your work
	Proofread more than once
	Leave more time than you think you need
	Read your work aloud
	Read from your last sentence back
	Use technology but don't rely on it
	Be ruthless
	Proofread for you …
	… and keep things in context
	Do your own proofreading
	Further reading
Index