Understanding your assignment

Read your professor's description of the assignment over several times carefully. If you don't understand any part, ask the professor for clarification – he or she will be happy to meet to make sure you are on the right track. Never underestimate the importance of spending time getting organized: Time spent now will save you both time and effort in the long run!

Determining your focus: Coming up with a thesis statement

Read up on the topic of your assignment to find your particular focus. Then decide what claim you want to make about that topic; this is sometimes called your hypothesis, sometimes called your argument (or thesis). No matter what term your professor uses, most academic writing requires that early on in your paper you state one main claim, which you then go on to prove. This main claim is usually formulated in a thesis statement. For tips on putting together your thesis statement, check out these helpful pages:

• Using thesis statements (Gustavus Education Centre)
• Finding your thesis statement (Concordia University)

Creating an outline

Develop a plan of action by breaking your writing task down into smaller parts. An outline is a great tool that you can use to organize the content of your assignment and help you stay focused. For help on developing an effective outline, follow these links:

• Organizing an essay (University of Toronto)
• Essay Structure (Harvard University)

Writing a draft

Now that you have an outline for your assignment, it's time to fill in content by developing a first draft. At this point don't worry too much about the finer details of your writing. This stage is all about getting your ideas down on paper in an organized manner. For help on your first draft, take the time to look over the following:  

• Writing tips: Essay builder  (WritingDEN)

Paragraphs

Each paragraph generally contains one main idea and most paragraphs consist of six to eight sentences. Read through your paragraphs, checking for unity and coherence. For more information on how to write good paragraphs, view the following resources:

• Developing unified and coherent paragraphs (Univ. of Ottawa)
  Developing and ordering paragraphs (University of Ottawa)
• Paragraphs and Transitioning (Harvard University)

Each effective main paragraph has a topic sentence. See the following links for more on what this means:

• Using topic sentences (Harvard University)
• Using topic sentences (University of Toronto)

Grammar and punctuation

Too many grammatical mistakes in your assignment can be distracting and prevent you from communicating your ideas clearly. English grammar is tricky at times but the good news is that most mistakes are common and can easily be avoided. To understand some of the basic terminology, click on the following resource:

Punctuation is area of writing that tends to give students problems. To learn how to use punctuation marks correctly in your written assignments, take a look at the following sections of the University of Ottawa's "Hypergrammar":

Spelling

Do not rely on your spell-checker for complete accuracy. Take note of the following:

Test your grammar and spelling!

Go to the Purdue University OnlineWritingLab and take their "OWL Exercises" Best of luck!

Style

Academic writing is formal, meaning it follows quite strict conventions or rules, including those for organization, grammar, and spelling. This is important as your reader wants to focus on what you say – your evidence or results – and not get tangled up in how you say it. To be as clear and concise as possible, consider how to:

While we use slang to fit in socially and clichés to convey ideas quickly in a conversation, forms of informal language are not appropriate for academic writing. Clichés in your writing will not only bore your reader but make it look as if you put no time into revising your paper. One university keeps the following list, which shows just how quickly what seem like original ways of speaking become yesterday's news:

Be gender-neutral and avoid conveying other unintentional personal bias in your writing. To help you do so see the following:

Using appropriate diction (word choice) is a key to good academic writing. You may be expected to use technical vocabulary appropriately, but at the same time you don't want to sound too formal, pretentious, or bureaucratic. Avoid using a "big word" when a smaller one will do. 

Using synonyms correctly will spice up your writing . . . but be sure to look up a word if you're not sure of its meaning (don't just right click and choose randomly from a list of synonyms – they rarely all really mean exactly the same thing!). Get ideas for synonyms using the following:

Varying sentence structure and length will improve the quality of your writing as well. For more on varying sentences, see the following:

Learning to avoid common writing errors

Take a look at the Acadia English Department's explanation of the most common errors students make in their writing. When you think you've learned enough here, you can test yourself to make sure:

The importance of referencing your work

As academic writers, we must reference (or cite) ideas and facts that we get from sources. We must cite in quotation marks any of that author’s own wording, and we must cite her ideas even if we put them into our own words as a paraphrase. For tips on how to do all of this right, click here (Purdue OWL).

Failing to give credit for particular ideas or wording is to commit plagiarism – a form of cheating. For help on doing it right, see our "Avoiding Plagiarism" handout available in the right-hand column of this webpage. Also, the Vaughan Memorial Library’s interactive tutorial "You quote it, you note it!" teaches us how to reference work properly and avoid plagiarism.

How to reference your sources: Style guides (APA, MLA, etc.)

As you research your topic, you will want to refer to a variety of sources for facts or ideas – books, articles, and perhaps websites. Keep a list of these references as you will need to indicate any that you use in your writing. For each source you will need to give an in-text citation as well as a more detailed description of the source, often in a list at the end of your paper (this is your bibliography – often called the "References" or "Works Cited" section). How we format these citations depends on the specific style guide that we use.

Your professor likely wants you to use a particular documentation style. Some of the most common ones are APA, MLA, and Chicago. For an overview of each of these (with useful examples), refer to Style Guides in the right-hand column. For more detailed information for each guide, visit the Vaughan Memorial Library's Writing a paper & citing sources.

Online dictionaries

Merriam-Webster

Oxford English Dictionary online (When you're off campus, you'll first need to set up remote access here.)

Online thesaurus

Thesaurus.com

Grant proposals and thesis writing

If you need help with writing your honours or graduate thesis, the coordinator of the Writing Centre, Dr. Stephen Ahern, is available to work with you one-to-one. During 50-minute sessions he offers personalized attention in a comfortable setting.  This service is free to all Acadia students. To book an appointment, please e-mail (writingcentre@acadiau.ca). Dr. Ahern also offers thesis writing workshops during the academic year. Check out the Writing Centre website at writingcentre.acadiau.cafor upcoming events.

Writing resumes and cover letters

Did you know that Acadia's Career Services provides help with writing resumes and cover letters? Send an email to career.services@acadiau.ca to book an individual consultation.