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    Round Up: Writing

    by Meghan Kowalski on 2024-06-19T08:00:00-04:00 | 0 Comments

    Whether you're doing it for school, work, or yourself, writing is a skill we are always using. Writing can be as simple as a note we jot down on a Post-it or as long as a dissertation. Learning about writing is never complete. We can always hone and improve our skills. In this round up, we're sharing resources that help you practice and expand your writing abilities. 

     

    Library Databases

    AP Stylebook This link opens in a new window
     
    This publication of the Associated Press has become the leading English style and usage reference for most corporate communication (and is the official guide for UDC communications). It offers a basic reference to grammar, punctuation and principles of reporting, including many definitions and rules for usage as well as styles for capitalization, abbreviation, spelling and numerals.
    Learning Express This link opens in a new window
     
    Online learning platform that provides comprehensive selection of academic and career-related resources. Includes these targeted learning centers: college success skills, core math and science skills review, core English skills review, career and workplace preparation, placement test preparation, ACT and SAT preparation, high school equivalency center, basic computer skills, and Spanish center. Features academic skill building, college placement test preparation, college and life skills tutorials, soft skills training, career advancement resources, professional licensing and certification test prep, basic computer skills training, and more.
    SAGE Research Methods This link opens in a new window
    New
    The ultimate methods library with more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online.
     

    Books

    Cover ArtStyling Your Writing by Jen McConnel
    This text helps developing writers in the academy and beyond think through their writing process and develop strategies for styling their writing to meet the demands of a wide range of goals. The book imagines writing as an assortment of "outfits"-- bundles of styles and strategies through which one approaches a writing purpose, such as writing focused on experimentation and growth or writing focused on a professional task. By assessing the outfits writers feel most and least confident in, and examining how to be more at home in the outfits that matter to them, this book helps students develop both specific skills and their overall identity as writers. Readers are guided through before-, during-, and after-writing strategies and techniques, including: freewriting, outlining, visual planning, and composing in multimodal forms. Readers are also introduced to the importance of setting clear writing goals and sharing their work in a variety of ways, both in preparation for classroom success through peer review and writing center visits, and beyond the classroom in virtual and in-person spaces. This book serves as a core or supplemental text for writing courses at the undergraduate, graduate, or high school level, or as a writing guide for individual readers.
     
    Cover ArtWhat is Good Academic Writing?: Insights into Discipline-Specific Student Writing
    This book is published open access. The field of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) developed to address the needs of students whose mother tongue is not English. However, the linguistic competence required to achieve academic success at any university where English is the medium of instruction is a challenge for all students. While there are linguistic features common to academic literacy as a general genre, closer investigation reveals significant differences from one academic field to another. This volume asks what good writing is within specific disciplines, focussing on student work. Each chapter provides key insights by EAP professionals, based on their research in which they bring together analysis of student writing and interviews with subject specialists and markers who determine what ‘good writing’ is in their discipline. The volume includes chapters on established disciplines which have had less attention in the EAP and academic writing literature to date, including music, formal linguistics, and dentistry, as well as new and growing fields of study such as new media.
     
    Cover ArtA Student's Writing Guide by Gordon Taylor
    Are you struggling to meet your coursework deadlines? Finding it hard to get to grips with your essay topics? Does your writing sometimes lack structure and style? Would you like to improve your grades? This text covers everything a student needs to know about writing essays and papers in the humanities and social sciences. Starting from the common difficulties students face, it gives practical examples of all the stages necessary to produce a good piece of academic work: - interpreting assignment topics - drawing on your own experience and background - reading analytically and taking efficient notes - developing your argument through introductions, middles and conclusions - evaluating and using online resources - understanding the conventions of academic culture - honing your ideas into clear, vigorous English. This book will provide you with all the tools and insights you need to write confident, convincing essays and coursework papers.
    Cover ArtWriting with Pleasure by Helen Sword; Selina Tusitala Marsh (Illustrator)
    An essential guide to cultivating joy in your professional and personal writing Writing should be a pleasurable challenge, not a painful chore. Writing with Pleasure empowers academic, professional, and creative writers to reframe their negative emotions about writing and reclaim their positive ones. By learning how to cast light on the shadows, you will soon find yourself bringing passion and pleasure to everything you write. Acclaimed international writing expert Helen Sword invites you to step into your "WriteSPACE"--a space of pleasurable writing that is socially balanced, physically engaged, aesthetically nourishing, creatively challenging, and emotionally uplifting. Sword weaves together cutting-edge findings in the sciences and social sciences with compelling narratives gathered from nearly six hundred faculty members and graduate students from across the disciplines and around the world. She provides research-based principles, hands-on strategies, and creative "pleasure prompts" designed to help you ramp up your productivity and enhance the personal rewards of your writing practice. Whether you're writing a scholarly article, an administrative email, or a love letter, this book will inspire you to find delight in even the most mundane writing tasks and a richer, deeper pleasure in those you already enjoy. Exuberantly illustrated by prizewinning graphic memoirist Selina Tusitala Marsh, Writing with Pleasure is an indispensable resource for academics, students, professionals, and anyone for whom writing has come to feel like a burden rather than a joy.
     
    Cover ArtOn Revision by William Germano
    A trusted editor turns his attention to the most important part of writing: revision. So you've just finished writing something? Congratulations! Now revise it. Because revision is about getting from good to better, and it's only finished when you decide to stop. But where to begin? In On Revision, William Germano shows authors how to take on the most critical stage of writing anything: rewriting it. For more than twenty years, thousands of writers have turned to Germano for his insider's take on navigating the world of publishing. A professor, author, and veteran of the book industry, Germano knows what editors want and what writers need to know: Revising is not just correcting typos. Revising is about listening and seeing again. Revising is a rethinking of the principles from the ground up to understand why the writer is doing something, why they're going somewhere, and why they're taking the reader along with them. On Revision steps back to take in the big picture, showing authors how to hear their own writing voice and how to reread their work as if they didn't write it. On Revision will show you how to know when your writing is actually done--and, until it is, what you need to do to get it there.  

    Research Guides

     

    Tools & Websites

    • Cambridge Write & Improve - Practice your writing and receive instant feedback.
    • Cliche Finder - Highlights cliched writing to help you improve your work.
    • Grammarly - Sign up with your UDC email! Grammarly provides support with writing fundamentals, revision, and citations.
    • Hemingway - It's like having a professional editor in your pocket.
    • Thesaurus.com - Find the right word you need
    • Ulysses - An app to stay organized across all of your devices
    • Zotero - Collect and track all of your sources.

     

    Podcasts

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