How to Be a Scholar in a Digital Environment

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You find the article in an online database but print it out for highlighting. You show up to class with a laptop (dead battery, no charger) and a pen (no paper). You’re reading an ebook, but your style guide is full of advice for citing print books. It’s not just you—today’s reading and writing environment is beautiful mess, a hybrid of the print and the digital.

This hybrid environment can leave all of us writers and researchers—students and professionals alike—confused about how to get started, keep track of research and organize a project, facilitate focus amid constant distractions and massive amounts of text and information, and iterate drafts. But entrepreneurial readers and writers can take advantage of this environment by developing unique combinations of strategies and methods that leverage their strengths and make sense for their projects.

With our pals in the Munday Library, we’ve developed the following big-picture sampler, with links to many resources on campus and online, of strategies that readers and writers might pull from as they develop unique processes.

If the embed isn’t working for you, download the PDF file.

Need help developing a unique process for your project? Contact the library or Writing Center services.

The Singular “They”: Now in HaikuDeck

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Without going into too much backstory (if you’re interested, go right ahead), this HaikuDeck explains the controversy over the singular “they” and how to decide whether or not to use it.


The Singular “They” – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Five Tips for Better Email

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Good email messages can help you get what you want and represent yourself well. This HaikuDeck presents five tips for writing better email.


How to Write Better Email – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

How to be a graduate-level writer

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New graduate students often wonder how writing in grad school is different from undergraduate writing. The brief answer is that it’s more in-depth and more complex: graduate-level writing often requires more research, more synthesis, more attention to craft, and more time than college writing does. In grad school, you’re expected to actually contribute to the “conversations” in your discipline or field, so you’re often writing about real people and real problems—with real consequences.

So how do you do that kind of writing? There are five practices you can adopt to help yourself become a graduate-level writer:


How to Be a Graduate-Level Writer – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Writers on Writing on YouTube

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Need inspiration for your writing weekend? Here’s our Youtube playlist of writers talking about writing:

Digital Tools for Reading and Writing

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""Reading articles online doesn’t mean that you can’t write on them, and a paperless workflow doesn’t mean that you can’t map out your ideas visually. Here is the OWL’s collection of the best digital tools for reading, annotation, organizing, and writing.

Have a tool to share? Email us at owl@stedwards.edu!

Writing in APA Style? You Need to Know about This Resource

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""At St. Edward’s, APA style is required in many undergraduate business courses, as well as in the graduate programs in the School of Management and Business and in the Master of Arts in Counseling program. But the print Publication Manual of the APA was last updated in 2009 (6th ed.) and is directed at researchers and scholars writing articles for publication in scholarly journals, not students writing papers. So, although the Manual contains lots of good writing advice and essential information about formatting, documentation, and citation, it might not have a lot of clear information on how to cite the sources you find yourself needing to cite.

Enter the official, searchable APA Style Blog! How do I cite something I found on a website? How do I cite a social media post? How do I cite an annual report? It’s all covered, with examples. In the OWL, we couldn’t get along without the APA Style Blog; we use it every day.

Good Reads on Writing: Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction

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Serious about developing your writing skills? In the Good Reads on Writing series, we’ll suggest some books and articles in which writers give insider tips, complain about their writing problems, and tell stories about how they got from idea or assignment to published work.  

If you’re in a certain mood, you might find the title Good Prose (find it at the Austin Public Library) to be a reminder that most of the writing we do is not going to be great, and that even our best efforts might result in something that’s merely good enough. But it’s also a reminder that writing that good-enough stuff is hard work, real work. Authors Tracy Kidder, a writer, and Richard Todd, his editor for many years at the Atlantic, make no secrets of the many drafts tossed in the wastebasket during the process of crafting articles and books. Over the four decades that Todd and Kidder worked together, they’ve come up with lots of golden advice. Here are a few nuggets from the book:

  • There are two kinds of rewriting: tinkering with words and sentences, and actually writing the thing again.
  • Write a first draft as quickly as possible. Then you won’t feel so bad about yourself when you have to scrap the whole thing.
  • Be wary of using voices that try to nuzzle up too close to the reader.
  • Sometimes you must sacrifice beloved parts for the survival of the whole.
  • Don’t mess with chronology unless you have an extremely good reason to do so.
  • “Something is always wrong with a draft.”
  • “All prose responds to work.”

 

The book itself exemplifies clarity we should all strive for in writing. It’s a product of editorial synthesis, the result of collaboration between a writer and an editor who are equally relentless. Few writers have this relationship, but if you happen into one, by all means, don’t let it go.

The Singular “They”

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Update: The APA Style Blog weighs in on the singular “they.”

Question

Why can’t I use “they” as a singular pronoun? I tried to use “he or she” instead, but it’s cluttering up my writing! Are there any other options?

Answer

The short answer for students is as follows: avoid the singular “they” in formal writing unless you’re a language-change renegade, you’re working in  a progressive discipline, or you know your professor is OK with it. Use plurals instead.

This is a hot topic, so we created a Slideshare to answer the question.

 

Apostrophes

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Question

When do I place the apostrophe after the “s,” and when does it go before the “s”? I feel like I once knew the rules, but now I’m in the habit of relying on autocorrect,and my professor marked errors in my paper :-/

Answer

First off, let’s review the two uses of apostrophes:

  1. To replace letters in conjunctions: can’t, won’t, couldn’t. (Note that contractions should not be used in most academic writing).
  2. For possessives, which show a relationship of ownership: John’s car, the children’s lunches, the employees’ timecards, family members’ ages.

RULES

  1. For possessives of singular nouns and plural nouns that do not end in “s,” the apostrophe goes before the “s”: John’s car, the children’s lunches.
  2. For possessives of plural nouns ending in “s,” the apostrophe goes after the “s”: employees’ timecards, family members’ ages.

EXCEPTIONS

  1. The one possessive that does not need an apostrophe is “its”: The salesperson showed us the phone and its features. (“It’s” is the contraction of “it is.”)
  2. There are sometimes exceptions for proper nouns ending in “s”: Names ending with an unpronounced “s” and Greek names ending in “-es” may get just an apostrophe even though they are singular (Camus’ plays, Socrates’ disciples). However, these exceptions may be implemented differently by different style guides or publications.

Need a quick-reference resources for apostrophe rules? This infographic is the best!