Editing services by Heather Wallace, PhD
Today’s sentence makeover comes from an author who used “because” to create long compound sentences in almost every paragraph. When did she really need the “because,” and when could she cut it?
In this sentence makeover, we start with an overcrowded sentence that is trying to do too much work on its own. We break it down into three distinct sentences, each with its own, manageable task.
What kind of feedback helps us improve the quality of our writing, and where can we find it? We need information about what is going on in the minds of our readers when they read our work.
How can we get better at writing clearly? Practice. But how can we practice academic writing? Here are three steps to train yourself to become a better writer.
We can improve our academic writing by improving three skills sets: disciplinary mastery, our ability to write clearly, and our writing habits.
Deliberate practice is the best way to make significant improvement at a skill in the long run. How can deliberate practice improve our writing? Part I.
A well-written abstract or research statement is one key strategy to help your research reach a broader audience. This abstract makeover makes a technical article in philosophy more accessible for a non-expert reader.
To write a dynamic and accessible abstract, start by inspecting your verbs. Download a free handout to guide you in revising your abstract to reach more readers.
In this Writing is Thinking Sentence Makeover, we make small changes to a sentence that lead to big questions about meaning. In cleaning up the sentence we confront the question, what precise claim is the author making here?
In today’s sentence makeover, Bryce turns a single 68-word sentence into four sentences. He shows us how to map the relationship between parts of a long sentence by identifying subordinating conjunctions and relative pronouns.