Amitava Kumar’s Every Day I Write the Book: Notes on Style (Duke UP, 2020) is unlike any other book about academic writing I’ve read. Dense with diverse references across its short essays—some only a paragraph; some largely quoted—Kumar implies that academics should reform their approach to scholarly writing. The advice is diffuse: “two credos: (1)Continue reading “Why Academic Editors Should Read Kumar’s Every Day I Write the Book”
Category Archives: Recommended Reading
Getting Your Research into the World
Funding agencies and academic institutions are requiring researchers to participate in knowledge-sharing activities, which can go by a range of different names: knowledge mobilization, knowledge dissemination, knowledge exchange, knowledge translation, and integrated knowledge translation. For some kinds of research, the best approach is to do your study and then share your results—meaning, that you doContinue reading “Getting Your Research into the World”
First You Write a Sentence (Moran, 2018)
What is a sentence, anyway? In First You Write a Sentence (Penguin, 2018), Joe Moran skirts some possible definitions. Writing a sentence is like birdwatching (page 7), cooking (page 10), or tying your shoelaces (page 17). A sentence is “a small, sealed vessel for holding meaning. It delivers some news—an assertion, command or question—about theContinue reading “First You Write a Sentence (Moran, 2018)”
Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics (Jensen, 2017)
Tucked within the solid writing advice of Joli Jensen’s Write No Matter What (Chicago, 2017) are the quiet brewings of a manifesto. Jensen won’t say you need more self-confidence, or more free time, or a more positive outlook on life, in order to write productively. While her book offers the standard, tried and true, adviceContinue reading “Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics (Jensen, 2017)”