Students of the humanities often complete MLA research papers, based on their specialized education and an academic style guide, generally used within the United States or Canada. More precisely, there are quite a few countries around the world where this guide is commonly used ever since its first publication in America in 1985.

Published by the Modern Language Association, the MLA research style guide is a manual made for scholarly publishing. It consists of a series of fundamental rules used by students, editors, scholars and professional writers when writing research papers, mainly in the English fields of study. It serves as a guide also in learning modern languages and literatures, cultural studies or media. MLA documentation of literary criticism and comparative literature, and also other related disciplines of the above mentioned humanity studies can also go into the category of those considering the purpose of these rules.

The guidebook is extremely relevant, as a consequence, the latest edition of the MLA Style Manual, which was published in 2008 by the Modern Language Association is gaining increasingly more popularity in the world. After the United States and Canada, it was taken in by countries such as Brazil, China, India, Japan and Taiwan and throughout North America. Even if the main beneficiaries of such guidelines in MLA research papers are the academic departments, those same rules are used in scholarly and literary journals, newsletters and magazines.

The third publication of the style guide provides important ground rules in formatting the MLA studies, and also presents information concerning the use of font formats, i.e. underlining or italics.We further gather that certain writers may include underlined words as well as italics, although this may not serve as a proper formatting for a MLA research paper. In addition to using the guideline, the writers must also be advised by their editors about each of the unusual aspects of their research paper.

Authors might be expecting special software for managing citations supplied by the style guide, so as to make their writing job a lot easier. MLA research style does not comprise a special software, but it allows several possibilities intended for recording main features of a work. The style meets the needs of different sorts of MLA research papers, each one with its own emphasis on documentation. Using automatic templates will minimize the precision in documenting the research. In this case, MLA research paper studies cannot be dependent on specific software to generate entries.

Bogdan is an editor for this article. If you are willing to learn more feel free to check MLA Research.

For those writers who plan to have a book published, I can only hope that your manuscript will go through a thorough edit before it is printed. That is especially important for those who self-publish or use publish-on-demand services to bring their book to market. These methods usually do not require or offer editing services to catch mistakes that can cost you credibility as an author.

As an editor for individual authors as well as working as a contracted editor for two publishers, I’ve seen many grammatical or mechanical errors in manuscripts. I’ll share a few of the more common mistakes in hopes that you might avoid these pitfalls.

Please note that Associated Press (AP) style is commonly used for journalistic works such as newspapers and Web text. The examples I am going to use are from Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) published by the University of Chicago Press. It is one of the most respected and trustworthy guidelines for literary works such as books.

1. A very common error in many of the books I edit or proofread occurs in the title, headers, and subheaders. The Chicago Manual of Style 7.127 states: In regular title capitalization, also known as headline style, the first and last words and all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinating conjunctions (if, because, as, that, etc.) are capitalized. Articles (a, an, the), coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor), and prepositions, regardless of length, are lowercase unless they are the first or last word of the title or subtitle.

2. A book is not entitled (meaning deserving, allowed, permitted); it is titled (meaning to have a title, label, or name).

3. The titles of books, record albums, movies, TV shows, and screenplays should be in italic type. Do not use “quotation” marks. Do not underline these titles unless you are formatting them for a bibliography. However, article titles and poem and song titles do go inside quotation marks.

4. Unless a word is an acronym, it should not be in ALL CAPS. Use italics for emphasis.

5. OK should be spelled out: okay.

6. ISBN is the acronym for International Standard Book Number. To write “ISBN number” is the same as stating International Standard Book Number number. It is redundant to use the word “number” or the pound symbol (#) after ISBN.

7. Percent symbols (%) should be spelled out “percent” unless used in a chart or table. Numbers followed by a percent should be in numeric form. Example: 91 percent. However, if a percentage is the first word of a sentence in a literary work, it should be spelled out. Example: Ninety-one percent of the students passed the test.

8. Use one space (not two) after a period, question mark, colon, or semi-colon. This is quite the opposite of what we were taught in typing class way back when! It can be a hard habit to break.

9. CMOS 5.57 states, “In a series listing three or more items, the elements are separated by a comma.” For example: The dog, cat, hippo, and cow jumped over the moon.

10. When writing years, do not use an apostrophe. Example: 1960s, not 1960′s unless you want the possessive form of the word. If abbreviated: ’60s is correct; 60′s is incorrect. Notice that the apostrophe [ ' ] is used as a placeholder for missing the numbers, and not a single close quote mark [ ' ] which faces the opposite direction.

11. Speaking of years, hyphens and numerals are used when you write “the 16-year-old boy.” No hyphen is needed, and the number is spelled out when you write “the boy is sixteen years old.”

12. Internet is a proper noun and the first letter should be capitalized. The debate on whether or not Web should be capitalized is still ongoing. CMOS says it should be written in proper case. It is another name for World Wide Web, which is a proper noun.

RE: Web site. When a word is used a lot, its spelling becomes commonly accepted even if it is incorrect. The most common spelling and use of this word is website. However, according to CMOS, it is two words: Web site. As long as you are consistent throughout your book or document, I doubt most people will question either spelling.

13. The em dash [-] is defined as one em (letter “m”) in width. The double hyphen will convert to an em dash-if you type two dashes (hyphens) — and do not put a space before or after. Or, you may create an em dash in Windows-based programs by pressing and holding Caps Lock and Alt while typing 0151 on your number key pad. Similar to a parenthetical phrase (like this), the em dash sets apart clauses in a sentence.

14. The en dash [-] is one en (letter “n”) in width: half the width of an em dash. The en dash is used to indicate a closed range, or a connection between two things of almost any kind: numbers, people, places, etc. For example: June-July 2008. Create an en dash in Windows-based programs by pressing and holding Caps Lock and Alt while typing 0150 on your number key pad. There should be no space before or after an en dash.

15. When writing dialogue, all punctuation goes inside the quotation marks. When a word or phrase is used to set apart text in scare quotes, the first example below is correct; the second is incorrect:

Every day we hear that the price of gas has hit an “all time high.” Every day we hear that the price of gas has hit an “all time high”.

16. Numbers less than ten should always be spelled out. Some style guides will disagree about higher numbers. Chicago advocates that all numbers under 101 should be spelled out. If in question, always consult a style guide. Be consistent and use the same style guide throughout the document or manuscript. Correcting these common errors will make your manuscript much easier and enjoyable to read.

If you need assistance with preparing your book manuscript, the editors on our team would be happy to help you. Our rates are more affordable than you might expect. See writersinthesky.com for more information.

Yvonne Perry is a freelance writer and the owner of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services (WITS). She and her team of ghostwriters are ready to assist you with writing and editing for books, Web text, business documents, resumes, bios, articles, and media releases. For more information about writing, networking, publishing, and book promotion, or to sign up for free email delivery of WITS newsletter, please visit www.writersinthesky.com. New subscribers receive a free eBook Tips for Freelance Writing.

The American Psychological Assocation (APA) and Modern Language Association (MLA) are two common style guides used for writing academic papers. APA is used within social sciences (e.g. psychology, education, sociology). MLA is primarily used in the liberal arts and humanities.

If you are just starting to write papers for college or are a graduate student, your instructors will include the style that is required for assignments in the assignment guidelines. In addition, they may require additional preferences (e.g, a different style to the cover page). Pay attention to these requirements because instructors will remove grade points if a student does not follow the formatting for approved grammatical and citation requirements.

It is recommended (strongly) that students study and learn the requirements of the style early on in their education career and keep updated as different editions are released by MLA (currently 3rd edition) and APA (currently 6th edition). Having good knowledge of the style will help the student write more efficiently. Another recommendation is to have the style book by your computer as you work so that you can check punctuation and citations as you write. Highlight the most commonly used punctuation and other information with a highlighter and post-it notes, because the answer surely will come up again.

Both APA http://www.apastyle.org/ and MLA http://www.mla.org/ have Websites and search engines that can help if you have a tough style problem. Also, most colleges have Writing Centers or online tutorials to help you with ensuring that your use of the style guidelines in your academic paper are perfect.

Here are some major differences in the two styles.

Reference Examples:

APA Style
Jelfs, A., Richardson, J., & Price, L. (2009). Student and tutor perceptions of effective tutoring in distance education. Distance Education, 30(3), 419-441. doi:10.1080/01587910903236551.

Mellers, B.A. (2000). Choice and the relative preasure of consequences. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 910-924.

MLA Style
Jelfs, Anne, John T. E. Richardson, and Linda Price. “Student and tutor perceptions of effective tutoring in distance education.” Distance Education 30.3 (2009): 419-441. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 16 Feb. 2010.

Palmer, William J. Dickens and New Historicism. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997. Print.

In-text citation examples:

APA Style
This is the citation format when there is a quote: According to Black (2009), “all clowns scare children to death” (p.3).

MLA Style
According to Kenneth Black, “all clowns scare children to death” (3).

Professional Editing

There is another option if you need help with academic writing, especially when you are writing a thesis or submitting a paper for publication. Many editors specialize in academic writing and will offer to edit a paper based on word count or pages and the type of editing required. Academic editing will cost more than a standard edit. These editors are professionals who have a lot of experience editing papers in different style formats. They can provide expertise for the difficult editing issues such as footnotes and endnotes, charts and tables, and citing references.

Heather Todd is full-time professional editor, published writer & marketing consultant whose passion is to help others create a letter-perfect presentation in their writing. Ms. Todd provides advisory & consulting services worldwide to numerous corporations, a small sampling of such businesses include: http://www.FirstEditing.com

What’s Up with Those Single Quotation Marks?

Lately I have been seeing single quotation marks on certain words and phrases in the headlines that float across the bottom of the TV screen. These phrases have nothing to do with the story being reported on. I am referring mostly to CNN. I started noticing these rolling sentences shortly after the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. I am not sure what annoys me more-the fact that they are using single quotation marks in place of double quotation marks or the constant bombardment of information on the screen.

I have also noticed that approximately 20% of the writing I get from my clients employs single quotation marks to designate important concepts or key phrases. This clearly violates the U.S.-American convention.

When to use single quotation marks:

It is always appropriate to use single marks when you have a quote within a quote.

Ex., Mary said, “I don’t care that John said, ‘I won’t eat that old pasta.’ I am going to eat it anyway.”

So the enclosed quotation (what John says) gets the single quotation marks. British usage sometimes does the reverse, and this may be where the trouble lies. They put the single marks on the first speaker’s words and double marks on the second’s speaker’s words (the quote within the quote).

Another use of single quotation marks:

People in certain academic disciplines are accustomed to using single quotation marks on particular terms and phrases, which is contrary to what the vast majority of writers do in the United States. These fields are linguistics, philosophy, and theology. Tina Blue, an online writer, points out the following example:

Ex., There is an essential difference between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’.

Note that in this case the closing single quotation mark goes before the period, which is also contrary to common U.S. usage.

Aside from papers in linguistics, philosophy, and theology, there is no justification for the use of single quotation marks (except for a quote within a quote). When you want to draw attention to key words or phrases, use double quotation marks. What follows is an exhaustive list of the various occasions when double marks are called for.

When to use double quotation marks:

1. The first use is, of course, to designate words in a quote.

Ex., The doctor said, “You really should cut down on your smoking.”

Ex., Then I said, “I can’t do that without going to a smoking cessation program.”

Note that in U.S.-American English, commas and periods go before the closing quotation marks.

2. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) lists another occasion when double marks are called for: “to introduce a word or phrase used as an ironic comment, as slang, or as an invented or coined expression” (p. 91).

Ex., This is considered “normal” behavior.

In the previous example, the writer is calling into question the whole concept of normality, which can at times be quite subjective.

Bell (2008) explains that when you use double marks, you will render the sentence sarcastic, as in her following example:

Ex., People in many countries enjoy the “liberty” of voting for the only candidate on the ballot (p. 128).

She warns, however, not to use quotation marks with idiomatic expressions. “Quotes are not for showing your discomfort with a colloquial expression. Either make your peace with the idiom and use it without quotes, or choose another way to say what you mean” (p. 129).

Ex., That test was a piece of cake.

There is no need to put “piece of cake” in quotes.

3. APA (2010, p. 91) recommends using double quotation marks “to set off the title of an article or chapter in a periodical,” as in the next example.

Ex., Riger’s (1992) article, “Epistemological Debates, Feminist Voices: Science, Social Values, and the Study of Women”…

4. APA (2010, p. 92) says to use double quotes to indicate a quote within a block quotation, as in the example that follows:

Ex., Miele (1993) found the following:

The “placebo effect,” which had been verified in previous studies, disappeared when [only the first group's] behaviors were studied in this manner. (p. 276)

In the previous example, the writer wishes to call attention to the phrase “placebo effect.” Since this quote has more than 40 words (I didn’t put the whole quote, for the sake of brevity), the writer has blocked the quote; this means that every line of the quote is indented. Therefore, no quotation marks are needed around a block quote, as the indenting signals a quote. So if quotation marks are needed to call attention to a phrase, then we start with double quotation marks. That is why “placebo effect” is in double marks rather than single marks. Some people may get confused and think that this phrase should be in single marks, as it is a quote within Miele’s quote. We don’t put single marks because we already know it’s a quote due to the blocking; therefore, we start with the double marks.

5. Another use of double quotation marks is when you wish to give the translation of a foreign word. You can put the translation in double marks or in parentheses. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS, 2003, p. 291) offers the following example:

The Prakit word majjao, “the tomcat,” may be a dialect version of either of two Sanskrit words:madjaro, “my lover,” or marjaro, “the cat.”

6. Use double quotes for a word used as a term.

Ex., What do you suppose “liberty” meant to Mr. Henry? (Bell, 2008, p. 128).

In the previous example, we are asking about what the term “liberty” meant to someone. So quotation marks draw attention to the term.

7. Merriam-Webster’s Guide to Punctuation and Style (1995, p. 51) says to use quotes when you wish to highlight the words themselves.

Ex., He went through the manuscript and changed every “he” to “she.”

When not to use double quotation marks:

Do not use double quotation marks when trying to hedge (APA, 2010, p. 92), as in the next example.

Ex., The teacher rewarded the class with tokens.

In the previous example, it is not necessary to put “rewarded” in quotation marks.

The APA manual also advises not using quotation marks to introduce a key phrase or a technical phrase. It recommends the use of italics instead.

Ex., She compared it with meta-analysis, which is described in the next section (p. 91).

Disciplines may vary with regard to this last point, so always check with your department or professor to see whether your school uses quotation marks or italics. Remember, if you do decide to use quotes to signal key concepts, make sure they are double.

Summary:

American English practice differs from that of British English. If you live in the United States and are seeking to publish in U.S. journals, it is advisable to use our system. Though nowadays there is a trend toward using single quotation marks instead of double marks, I recommend that you not jump on the bandwagon (even if CNN is doing it). The rule is simple: Use single marks only to indicate a quote within a quote. Unless you are writing a paper in linguistics, philosophy, or theology, you should be using double marks for all of the cases discussed in this article. Tina Blue sums it up nicely at the end of her article: “We should just stick with the conventions that are already familiar to us, so we don’t commit the crime of stylistic inconsistency, which is always a danger when you try to adopt someone else’s way of doing things.”

Sources:

American Psychological Association (APA). 2010. Publication manual of the American Psychological Association(6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

Bell, J. (2008). Clean, well-lighted sentences: A guide to avoiding the most common errors in grammar and punctuation. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Blue, T. (2001, January). Single vs. double quotation marks: Once again British and American usage differ.

Merriam-Webster. (1995). Merriam-Webster’s guide to punctuation and style. Springfield, MA: Author.

University of Chicago Press. (2003). The Chicago manual of style (15th ed.). Chicago, IL: Author.

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Most teachers want research papers written in APA style, and many college classes require research papers. Where do you start?

Pick a thesis

A thesis is a premise for your argument, a hypothesis, or a brief statement of what your paper is about. A thesis for a research paper is just like a thesis for an essay, except that the thesis probably isn’t quite as narrow since your research paper will be larger.

Your thesis shouldn’t be too narrow or to broad. Take into consideration the teacher’s specifications for the assignment; that is, how long is the paper allowed to be? Then consider your thesis and if you can fill the space of your paper without making it too long.

How can you tell how much space you can fill defending your thesis or supporting it? Well, this depends a lot on how you write, but it also depends on how much information is available and how many sub topics there are for the thesis.

Research and take notes

Go to the library and read some books on your topic. Check out the magazines and journals. Go online and look for more information. Be particularly careful about your sources when you research online. Remember, online content isn’t subject to peer review or even a traditional book publisher and copy editor.

A great place to start your online research is at scholar.google.com, because journal style articles are returned. Books.google.com or amazon.com will allow you to see parts of books before ordering them. Another good place is to go to your local library’s website and find their “Online Resources and Databases.” These are links to library vetted websites.

Make a list of all your sources. This was traditionally done on index cards, but it might be easier to keep a log file in Word or Excel. For each book keep track of the author(s), the title, the publisher, city, state, and county of publishing, date of publishing, the name of the editor if it’s listed, and even the ISBN. Then, for each source, give it a unique number of phrase so you can easily keep track of it. For instance, I might give this article a phrase of “Nico-APA.”

Write down your source next to each piece of information you keep as a note.

If some things don’t make sense, try drawing pictures or putting some of the information into charts to help make sense of the data.

Revise your thesis

Now that you know what information is available, look at your thesis and determine if it needs to be revised or not. Remember, it needs to fill the space requirement of the assignment without going over.

Write an outline

A lot of people skip this step, but don’t. It’s important. Write an outline. Your outline should look something like this, but don’t be overly concerned about the roman numerals, letters, and such. In fact, you can skip those and just use indenting to keep track of which headings are major headings and which are sub headings.

Major Topic

^^^^^Sub Topic

^^^^^Sub Topic

^^^^^^^^^^ Sub Topic

^^^^^^^^^^Sup Topic

^^^^^Sub Topic

Major Topic

^^^^^Sub Topic

^^^^^Sub Topic

^^^^^Sub Topic

Determine if you need any tables, graphs, or charts

Did you run an experiment and you data to show? Did someone else run an experiment and you want to show their results and attribute the credit to them? Did you come up with an awesome chart or graph to help you understand the topic and it should be included in the paper?

Write a draft

Write the draft of your paper. Follow your outline, and if it’s easier for you, just write one section at a time. Before you type your research paper, set up your word processor for Times New Roman 12 point. Set up the margins to be 1 inch. Make sure each paragraph is more than one sentence. Make sure each paragraph is less than one page. Put two spaces at the end of sentences. Make sure the document is double spaced. Make sure each page has less than 27 lines of text (and this does not include the running header). Indent the first line of each paragraph.

Add a running head

The running head is a shortened version of the title. It should appear at the top of each page and it needs to be flushed to the left. The running head should be less than 50 characters. An example is:

Running head: THE TITLE OF MY PAPER

Edit, proofread, and revise

Look for potential bias in your paper and remove it. Remove jargon. Run a spelling check. Run a grammar check. Ask someone else to read your paper and have them mark it up. Don’t use abbreviations if you can avoid it, and if you do use abbreviations, explain the abbreviation the first time you use it. Do not use spaces inside the abbreviations. Dashes, such as en dashes, em dashes, and hyphens, should not have spaces on either side of them. Number all the pages, except pages that are entirely figures, sequentially. The title page is included in this numbering.

Create a title page

Create a title for your paper. Don’t use words like “experiment” or “method” in it. The title should have a maximum size of 10-12 words. Ideally, the title is less than 50 characters and fits into the running head. The title page should contain at least the name of the paper, the author’s name in the format of Firstname, M., Lastname. The last piece of mandatory data on the title page is the school’s name.

Write your abstract.

After you’ve written the paper, write an abstract. Your abstract should be less than 120 words and people should be able to read it and get the gist of your paper.

Put your paper in order.

Title page

Abstract, less than 120 words, on its own page

The text should start on Page 3

References, each appendix, and the author note should start on a separate page

List the footnotes together but on a separate page

List of tables should start on a separate page

List figure captions together on a separate page

Figures should be on a separate page

Gwen Nicodemus owns and operates Shiny Newts, LLC. Shiny Newts solves technical and documentation problems for its customers in a timely, professional manner–often going “above and beyond”–by providing custom services and pre-packaged services. Visit http://www.ShinyNewts.com to watch videos on how to use Joomla, Photoshop, and Word or to read Gwen’s ebook, “Write a Marketing Plan by Filling in the Blanks.”

©2010, Gwen Nicodemus

Are you feeling overwhelmed by your dissertation?  Don’t let it intimidate you.  Read on for a few dissertation writing strategies that will turn your dissertation from a monster into something a lot more manageable.

1) Respect your dissertation

First of all, acknowledge that writing a dissertation is a complex and challenging project and treat it accordingly.  Your future career depends on you doing a good job with it, and, most importantly, completing it.

In order to give yourself the best chance of finishing your dissertation, make it the top priority of your life for the duration it will take to complete it.  Put as many other parts of your life as possible on hold, or at least try to minimize your participation in them until you have completed your dissertation.

2) Take care of yourself

On the other hand, be sure to take care of yourself.  Get regular exercise and enough sleep. A dissertation does not get any better when it is written by someone who is sick or sleep-deprived.

3) Remember that you are the expert

Remember that you are the expert.  You were the one who did the experiments or the research that you are going to write about in your dissertation. So there is no need to be stressed out.  Just pretend you’re going to explain it all to a friend or colleague in a very long letter.

4) Understand the basic structure of a dissertation

Most dissertations, technical or otherwise, follow a similar structure if they are based on first-hand research, which technical dissertations usually are:

a) Introduction

In this section, you provide an overview of your entire dissertation and its purpose.

b) Theoretical background

In this section, you give an overview over the main research on the topic of your dissertation and explain how your dissertation research relates everyone else’s research.  This is also the place to explain what you expect to find in your research, i.e., your research hypothesis.

c) Your experiments or other research

In this section, you describe the research you did and exactly how you did it — in very clear detail.

d) Your results

Here you describe what your results were, and provide graphics and tables as necessary.

e) What it all means

Here, you describe how your results relate to your hypothesis as well as other people’s research, and discuss the ramifications of what you found.

f) Conclusion

This is where you present a summary of your entire dissertation and make suggestions for further research if you haven’t already done so in the previous section.

5) Write it all down

Once you understand the basic structure of your dissertation, the actual writing of it will be a lot less intimidating.  Considering that you’ve done all your research, which was really the hardest part, your task now is “simply” to write it all down.

Start by describing your experiment, i.e., by writing sections c, d, and e, in that order. These should practically write themselves, and once you have completed them, you’ll have the bulk of your dissertation written.

This will lower your stress levels considerably, which should help you complete your dissertation.

And if you would like some help with revising and editing your dissertation, check out http://www.WriteProVa.com and request information on editorial services.

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Everyone knows that you should write differently your term papers differently from your Facebook posts, and your journal submissions should be written differently than newspaper columns. What exactly are the differences between casual and academic writing? Between formal and informal writing?

The biggest difference

The single most important difference between casual writing and academic writing is style. That is, casual writing does not require you to adhere to any published style guide. Academic writing, or any formal writing for that matter, requires that you adhere to a style guide. Some schools and teachers will go so far as to specify which style guide to use.

What is a style guide?

A style guide is a manual, or document, that specifies a set of rules and standards, followed by writers to facilitate clear communication. The style guide for EzineArticles.com is a web page that indicates how to write articles to be included in the EzineArticles directory, for instance. Each school and corporation can have its own, personalized style guide.

Main style guides do exist, however.

1. The Chicago Manual of Style was one of the first style guides published in the United States. Currently (as of 2010) in its 16th edition, this style guide first came out in 1906. People often refer to “the Chicago style,” but people also refer to it as CMS or CMOS.

2. The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is in its sixth edition (as of 2010). This style guide was developed so professors and students could read papers more easily-and so comprehension was increased. APA Style calls for only two fonts in a paper, and the body of the paper must be written in Times New Roman 12 point. Underlining, bolding, and italics are permitted in some places.

3. The Elements of Style was written to help people write clearly. While the book has its critics, it is one of the shortest style guides.

4. The MLA Style Manual, 3^rd edition, is the Modern Language Association’s style guide. First published in 1985, this manual is used by many universities, colleges, and students.

5. Microsoft wrote The Manual of Style for Technical Publication, and this document is used for internal and external Microsoft documentation.

Common style guide conventions vs. informal writing

Contractions

Generally, it is okay to use contractions (like it’s) in informal writing. Academic writing requires writing out both words.

Technical terms

If you are writing informally to a group of people in your same field, you might use technical terms frequently and never explain them. If you are writing to a group of people that have no relationship with your industry at all, you try to take the technical words out altogether. If you are writing academically, you must explain the term the first time you use it.

Active/Passive

This is not different between informal and academic writing. Most often, active sentences are better. Both the APA and the Chicago style guides concur with this.

Grammatical person

The grammatical person is the point of view, or you might have heard it phrased as first person, second person, third person, and fourth person. The first person perspective contains a lot of “I” or “we” statements like “I fed the dog.” First person is the writer’s perspective. The second person is you, the person the writer is writing to. The third person is associated with pronouns such as he, she, it, and they. The third person is not me (the writer) or you (the reader). Sometimes academics use fourth-person sentences like, “One should always behave when one is in public.”

Informal and casual writing uses the first, second, and third person point of view, as appropriate. While academics often write in the fourth person, I have yet to find a basis for that style of writing in style guides. Style guides facilitate clear writing and fourth person, one-statements are anything but clear.

The grammatical person needed for a sentence often depends on if the sentence is active or passive.

Citations

Academic writing requires citations. If you are state “X is true,” you need to cite either where you found that statement. If you created that statement, your words must clearly show that.

Sentence length

Casual writing tends to have short sentences. (Bad casual writing has run-on sentences.) Academic, formal writing uses longer sentences. Take heed though. The goal of any writing is to get a point across, and if your sentence is too long, you will defeat that purpose.

Colloquial expressions and clichés

While “awesome,” “da bomb,” “the bees knees,” “kids,” “nose to the grindstone,” and “dude” permeate Facebook, these words and phrases are not used in academic writing.

Abbreviations

All your friends might know what LOL (and in the case of the ferret community, DOL), but whenever you use an abbreviation in an academic paper, you first need to write it out and connect it to the abbreviation so people know what you are talking about.

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As a PhD candidate or postgraduate you know that one of the things that is expected of you if you decide on a purely academic career is a long-term thesis statement. However, if you’ve never done this before you may be wondering exactly how you go about writing an effective thesis thing that will get approved by your counselor or mentor as well as that of your faculty. After all, it is certainly not something that you can just throw together an evening. As such, there are a few tips that you should keep in mind when beginning with can well be a very exciting and fulfilling journey.

The first set when it comes to writing effective thesis statement is to know your subject matter intimately. Remember, what you’re trying to do is, a particular subject or topic or body of research from a completely different angle. You want to ask questions that have never been asked before or take recent findings and reinterpret them in new directions. As such, this requires that you know your subject matter in precise detail. This of course does not just mean knowing the facts and figures but knowing the why of a particular topic. What makes the topic important? Things of this nature.

Another tip you may want to consider is both your faculty head and your counselor are looking for you to take your subject and delve deeply into it and really question things that may have been taken for granted and not explored further. Of course, you want to make sure that your statement includes what you intend to do, how you intend to go about it and the results that you’re hoping to find. However, one key thing of course to remember is that you never want to try and make the results fit your statement. The exhortation to follow the evidence is one that you need to keep in mind.

The final tip of course is to ensure that your thesis statement is focused and presents a clear argument. This is very important as it is something that you were going to spend a vast amount of time and you need to first start off by being focused and have a proper outline. This outline should include your main purpose or goal, tools you intend to use, what you expect to find, and overall, show the direction of your paper.

1. Go over possible ideas. It helps, if you write them down. Choose carefully, and do not eliminate topics too quickly. Be specific and remember: the narrower, the better. A theme too wide does not do help in writing dissertations.

2. In writing a dissertation time management is important. Dissertation writing also supposes that you are familiar with scholars that might help you on your long way. It becomes especially essential once the topic is chosen.

3. When you are done with researches, it is time for dissertation thesis writing. Remember that a thesis is a central idea of any dissertation. Dissertation thesis writing is something you should think about all the time. When writing a dissertation, mind that neither of the following sentences should contradict your main argument. On the contrary, every new paragraph should unroll the thesis step by step.

4. While writing your dissertation, make sure that all the notes are in the correct order. It is important to organize detailed notes of all the references to be ready for writing an annotated bibliography (see below the tips on how to write an annotated bibliography).

5. Schedule your work carefully. Dissertation writing is not a one-day work. Check your timetable and mark the days you can commit to writing your dissertation. Give yourself from 1 to 2 hours of work on these days. The best help with dissertation writing is your time. You know how it sometimes goes: today you think there is enough time, but next thing you find out is that the deadline is right here, and you are not done with writing dissertation.

6. Go on with writing a dissertation by starting a draft. During the dissertation writing you can print out parts of it on colored sheets of paper, read them out loud, and correct the mistakes.

7. Do not forget about the structure while writing your dissertation. It must have an introduction, main body and a conclusion. Table of Contents and Sources are vital, too.

8. Use the table of contents to improve your manuscript. Dissertation writing is a complex and long process. It is natural, if you leave something out. That is why it is important to check yourself. While writing your dissertation, check with the table of contents to fill in the blank parts or those places that need to be improved.

9. The Suggestion for Further Research section is the last one you finish in writing a dissertation. Usually by this time you are exhausted. Probably this is the reason why it usually does not make any sense. Dissertation writing suggests that you earn some experience and be able to put forward reasonable propositions. After writing a dissertation go over it to make sure that your propositions are correct.

10. Now it’s time to do the last chapter in your dissertation writing. After you’ve had a chance to write your dissertation all the way to the end, turn back to Chapter One. Reread Chapter One carefully with the insight you now have from having completed Chapter Five.

11. How to write an annotated bibliography? It should include explanation of the purpose of the cited work, theoretical basis of the authors argument, work’s intended audience, your own brief impression. Writing an annotation may help improve the impression from your work.

12. Be prepared to defend your dissertation. Writing a dissertation is only half of the job. It is better to attend 1 or 2 defenses to see how things are going. Be open-minded, not aggressive.

If you take into consideration all of the above, writing a dissertation may be a little easier for you.

If you’ve never written a thesis before, you know that the first time you’re asked to do so, you may feel a little bit unsure of exactly what a thesis format should be. In fact, this is something that can be quite common as up to this point most people of only done research papers or narrative essays. A thesis in and of itself, is something quite a bit different. However, there are some tips that you can follow for a good thesis format. Remember, a thesis is something that you have almost total creative control over so long as it stays within the guidelines set forth by your faculty and your advisor. As such, you have tremendous options and opportunities regarding the data and research you collect.

The first thing you need to remember is before you start writing anything down or begin working on your thesis statement, you need to have clear in your mind exactly what the purpose, goal, question, and conclusion of your study will be. This is Paramount to creating a good thesis format. You need to have clear in your mind exactly how your thesis paper is going to flow. You should already have at least some of your research and data collected, and have taken the time to really think out the question or theory that you’re going to base your thesis around.

Another tip to consider is that decides the question or theory you propose, a solid introduction is one of the basics that is required by good thesis format. So you will need to spend some time working on your introductory paragraph or section to ensure that it is almost perfect. The reason for this is that it can set the tone of not only the rest of the paper, but also in how you approach challenges that will inevitably come up.

One thing that will help here in ensuring that your thesis format stays on target is a solid outline. Depending on the subject, your outline could be quite expensive so you need to ensure that you take the time to created properly because you’ll find that the writing aspect will be that much quicker with a solid outline.

Something else that is vital to a good thesis format is the description of the process that you went through during your research. The idea here is that you want to back up your theory or question with the research and data you’ve obtained but also the process by which you use that research and data. This will allow the reader to fully grasp exactly how you came to your conclusions within your paper.

Finally, a conclusion that restates not only the question or theory, but also the main points of your argument is required as well. If you have all of these sections, then you have a proper thesis format.

For more info go to thesis format