Putting it all Together:
The Nuts and Bolts[1] of
Academic Writing
By Eowyn Ferey
Grammar / Writing 3
Lori Barkley, Eowyn Ferey, and Hilary Wang
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Table of Contents
The Writing Process: Eight Steps to a Great Essay
Plagiarism: A Serious Offense
Methods of Brainstorming
Formatting Your Essay
Creating a Title Page
Basic Five-Paragraph Essay Structure
How to Choose and Format a Title
Choosing a Title
Formatting a Title
Academic Style: No First Person!
The Writer’s Responsibility: Clarity
Catching the Reader: How to Write a Hook
Ineffective Hooks
Effective Hooks
Strategies for Writing Hooks
Putting Your Cards on the Table: Thesis Statements
Examples of Good Thesis Statements
Methods of Linking Ideas
The Importance of Parallel Structure
Happily Ever After: The Conclusion
Things to consider
Elements of an Effective Conclusion
An Editing Tip
Four Steps to a Winning Counter-Argument
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Writers
The Writing Process: Eight Steps to a Great Essay
What does it mean to write an essay? Could there be eight steps? Perhaps your current steps are 1) turn on computer, 2) type, 3) print, 4) turn-in, 5) receive low grade, 6) feel upset, 7) wonder what you did wrong, and 8) repeat. These are not the eight steps you are going to learn, however!
Several years ago, writing teachers noticed that good writers all followed the same basic steps as they developed their essays. The writing teachers realized that for some students, these steps were instinctual, or natural. Other students never really understood how to take an idea and turn it into a good piece of writing.
The teachers classified the basic steps the good writers followed. These have become known as “The Writing Process.” Today, it is a common way to teach writing in the United States.
To use the writing process, students must give careful thought and sufficient time to each of the steps listed below.
Step 1: Brainstorm—Brainstorming is a way of coming up with new ideas to write about. Once you have selected a topic, brainstorming can help you generate subtopics and support. You should always write down ALL of your ideas while brainstorming. You can go back through your brainstorm and select the ideas that you want to use in your essay. There are many different styles of brainstorming. Some examples include: free-writing, listing and clustering/mind-mapping.
Step 2: Outline—An outline helps you to organize your ideas. You do not have to use complete sentences in an outline. You simply organize your topic, sub-topics, support and examples. When you begin writing your first draft, you already have the skeleton of what you are going to write.
Step 3: Write draft 1—This is the first complete version of your essay. You will write an introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion.
Step 4: Self review—After you finish writing the first draft, you should read it several times. You should correct grammar mistakes. You should check that your ideas are relevant, logical, and connected.
Step 5: Peer editing—The peer review is really more helpful for the person who is doing the review than the person who wrote the paper. This is a chance for you to read one or two of your classmates’ papers. You will use a checklist like the self review checklist that will take you through the parts of the essay.
Step 6: Revise / write draft 2—You will use both the peer review and the self review to revise your essay. Remember that you must do two types of revision: grammar and content. Content revision means checking that your ideas are relevant, logical, and connected.
Step 7: Teacher review with comments or conference —Your teacher will read your essay and comment on it. You should pay careful attention to your teacher’s suggestions in order to improve your essay.
Step 8: Revise / write final draft— You will use the teacher-reviewed draft to revise your essay. You must make your own changes as well.
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Developed by Calderon and Ferey
Plagiarism: A Serious Offense
Consider for a moment the goal of education. In some ways, no matter what your field of study, the ultimate goal is the production, development, and application of ideas. One of the most important ways that ideas are expressed in a university setting is through writing.
So what does it mean if you steal someone else’s words? You have harmed them by theft. You have harmed yourself by missing the opportunity to practice the production, development, or application of an idea.
Essentially, plagiarism can be understood as stealing an idea by means of using someone else’s words without giving them appropriate credit. PSU defines plagiarism as including, but not limited to, “word for word copying, using borrowed words or phrases from original text into new patterns without attribution, or paraphrasing another writer’s ideas.” Typical types of plagiarism include turning in a friend’s paper as your own and copying sentences from articles on the internet.
In this class, you can easily avoid plagiarism by generating your writing ideas only with your group and by yourself. You are discouraged from using internet sources because you do not yet know how to use them properly. If you do decide to do some research online, please make an appointment to see your instructor early on in the writing process to discuss ways to avoid the problem of plagiarism.
Plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional, will result in a failing grade on the assignment in question and may result in a failure of the entire course. Be aware that plagiarism is treated seriously in American university classes as well: students can be expelled for the offense.
Methods of Brainstorming
Brainstorming is the production of an uncensored, unorganized group of ideas about a topic. There are a few popular ways to brainstorm:
1)Discussion. Talking to another person or group of people about your topic.
2)Listing. Making a sort of grocery list of ideas.
3)Mapping. Drawing an idea map and noting keywords and phrases.
4)Freewriting. Writing in complete sentences, but without stopping to organize or censor ideas.
Formatting Your Essay
It is important that your academic writing looks like academic writing. The process of doing this is called formatting. The essay below is formatted in the conventional way that is expected in American universities. All essays written for this class should follow this format exactly. If you are unsure how to set your computer, simply follow the instructions in the essay below!
The Formatting of Your Essay
Appearance is important for an academic essay. You must pay attention to formatting details so your paper will meet academic standards. The first thing you need to do is set your margins. In MS Word, go to the File pull-down menu and select Page Setup. Set all four margins to exactly 1.0 inch (note that the default setting is 1.25, so you must change this). Be sure that you apply this to Whole document, not This point forward. When you save your document, these settings are also saved. However, if you are working on more than one computer, you should check to be sure that the margins haven’t changed.
Next you should set the line spacing. Use the Format/Paragraph pull-down menus to select spacing and alignment options. You should double space your essay.
Use left alignment for most of your essay. There is one exception to this: the title should be centered. Notice that when you select Alignment: Left your margin will be straight and exactly 1 inch, but your right margin will be ‘ragged’ and vary from line to line. This is what you want. Do not select the Justified option, which makes the right margins straight.
The first line of each paragraph should be indented. Use the Tab key to do this. This will give you the correct indentation, which is about 0.5 inches.
The title of your essay should be double-spaced and centered on the line. Don’t add extra blank lines before or after the title. All words in the title, except articles and short pronouns, should be capitalized. Articles and short pronouns aren’t usually capitalized unless they are the first word in the title. Do not put quotation marks (“ ”) or brackets (< >) around the title.
You should use page numbering. You can find this option on the Insert pull-down menu. Select Bottom of page (Footer) and Center. Turn off numbering for the first page by removing the check mark in the box by Show number on first page. The software will automatically put numbers inside the bottom margin, about half an inch from the bottom of the paper.
Paper size and print size are important, too. Be sure to use standard letter-size paper (8.5” x 11”). You should use one side only. Do not print on both sides of a page. Use Times New Roman font, size 12. For the essays you write in this class, there is no need to use font attributes like bold or italics.
Don’t forget to use the Spelling and Grammar check on your computer. It won’t catch all of your grammar and spelling mistakes (for example, it won’t tell you if you are missing articles!), but it will catch a lot of mistakes and give you hints about how to correct them.
The content and organization of your essay is the heart of your communication, but the appearance of your essay is important for a good impression, easy reading, and receiving a passing grade on the formatting of your essay.
Creating a Title Page
Your essay should include a title page. Typically, the title page includes:
1)The title of the essay
2)Your first and last name
3)The date the essay is due
4)The type of essay
5)The full name of the instructor and, if appropriate, the instructor’s title (for example, Dr. Andrew Radford rather than just Andrew Radford).
The information block is often centered on the page. It is always the only thing on the page: use an entire sheet of paper for your title page.
An example of an information block is as follows:
Success in Grammar and Writing Three
Karen Park
October 31, 2008
Argumentative Essay
Instructor Eowyn Ferey
Basic Five-Paragraph Essay Structure
I.Introduction
a.HookYour hook should approach your topic indirectly or from a surprising perspective. It should make the reader want to continue reading the essay: think of it as your one-sentence advertisement for your essay.
b.Background Information These sentences transition from the hook to the thesis statement. This means they go from general to specific. These sentences should also link to each other.
c.Thesis Statement / Organizing PrinciplesThis is where you state the main idea, position, or argument you will explore in your essay and summarize your major supporting ideas.
II.Body Paragraph One
a.Topic Sentence
b.Supporting details and examples
c.Conclusion / Transition to next paragraph
III.Body Paragraph Two
a.Topic Sentence
b.Supporting details and examples
c.Conclusion / Transition to next paragraph
IV.Body Paragraph Three
a.Topic Sentence
b.Supporting details and examples
c.Conclusion / Transition to next paragraph
V.Conclusion
a.Restatement of Thesis
b.Restatement of Support
c.Final Comment: Prediction, Advice, Relationship of Topic to a Larger Issues
How to Choose and Format a Title
Choosing a Title
In order to choose a good title for your essay, it is first important to understand the purpose of the title. In some ways, the title is like a very short thesis statement. Remember that the thesis statement contains the main idea, or position, of the essay and then gives an outline of the structure to come. Similarly, the title of an essay should do two things. First, it gives the reader an idea of what your general topic is. Second, it gives the reader an idea of how you will approach the general topic. Look at the examples below:
Ineffective Titles / Effective TitlesIELP Group Work / Individual Work Measures Student Progress Better than Group Work
Literacy Changes / The Effects of Changes in Literacy on University Students
Effects of Children Using Computers at an Early Age / The Negative Effects of Childhood Internet Use
The title IELP Group Work tells the reader about the theme of the essay, but does not help the reader understand exactly what about group work will be discussed. The effective title on the same theme not only tells the theme, it shows the reader which two things will be contrasted in the essay and informs the reader in advance of the writer’s opinion on the subject.
The second ineffective title, Literacy Changes, shares many of the same shortcomings of the first ineffective title. However, in some ways, it is even worse, because it is not clear what the word changes means in this context. Instead of helping the reader, this title confuses the reader.
The third ineffective title looks impressive at first glance. The shortcoming of this title, which heads an argumentative essay, is that the writer’s position on the topic is not clear. Is she for or against? Does she believe the effects are positive, negative, or mixed? An effective title answers these questions.
Formatting a Title
Your title should be centered on the page on the title page.
In addition, there are special capitalization rules for titles that you must know. They are as follows:
1) The first letter of the first word of a title is always capitalized. The first letter of the last word of a title is always capitalized.
2) Capitalize all nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, and subordinate conjunctions ("as", "because", "although").
3) Articles (a, an, the) are not capitalized, except if they are the first word.
4) Prepositions (of, at, in, etc.) are not capitalized, except if they are the first word.
5) Coordinating conjunctions (and, or) are not capitalized.
Academic Style: No First Person!
Academic writing is formal writing and, traditionally, the use of the first person in this genre is incorrect.
This means that you should not say, “I think that math is more interesting than English” or “In my opinion, grammar is easier than writing.” I is the first person and the phrase in my opinion is from the first person perspective, too.
What should you say instead? In the first case, just make the subordinate clause a main clause and drop I think. The new sentence reads, “Math is more interesting than English.” In the second case, drop in my opinion. The new sentence reads, “Grammar is easier than writing.”
It’s hard to say exactly why academic style has traditionally banned the first person, but one way to look at it is this: the writer is presenting her ideas and opinions. The idea that something is the writer’s opinion or thought is already clear from the context. In other words, the phrase in my opinion is implied during the act of writing.
For an interesting discussion of this issue in a wider academic context, go to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s WritingCenter (
The Writer’s Responsibility: Clarity
If your reader doesn’t understand you, who has a problem: the reader or you? Answer: you, the writer. By extension, if your instructor does not understand your ideas, that is not her problem. It is your problem.
This is not because your instructor is malevolent, but because western academic traditions have developed the premise that writers are the ones who are responsible for clarity. This is in contrast to some of your traditional native writing traditions, in which the responsibility for understanding falls on the reader.
The consequence of writer-responsible essays is that clarity is prized above all. In other words, it is more important to state your ideas in a way that is easy to understand than to show off fancy grammatical structures or advanced vocabulary.
Of course, there are times when only the present perfect progressive will do, and you require the precise meaning of the word puerile, but pretension for its own sake not only fails to impress Americans, it’s risky because it’s easy to make grammar and meaning mistakes.
Remember: Clear is better than complicated. You are responsible for being clear.
Catching the Reader: How to Write a Hook
What is a hook?
The hook is the first sentence of your introduction. As the first sentence, your hook is unique and important. A well-written hook will be exciting. It will be attention-getting. It will make the reader want to continue reading. The consequences of an ineffective hook, in contrast, are ominous. The reader will feel bored. She may not want to continue reading your essay. If your reader is a teacher, she may form a negative first impression of your writing skills. So how are effective hooks written? To answer that question, let’s first examine some ineffective hooks.