October is the month of many things. It’s fall (or winter, in Montana); it’s far enough in your semester that the work has hit a busy stride. As the graduate writing tutor, it is my busiest month. Not only do student appointments increase, but I am also hosting a Graduate Writing Seminar [...]
Welcome to a new semester. During your graduate studies at MSU, I hope that you take advantage of all the services the university offers. Writing assistance is one of the services offered through the Division of Graduate Education. It is important to be a clear, efficient, effective writer, both during school and after, in your [...]
During the summer months, it’s hard to get motivated to write or work on projects. Often we, as writers, students, and professionals, want to take the summer off. We think that there is so much time between now and the new semester or deadline. What we all know deep-down, however, is that [...]
I’ve been sending out grad writing email tips and thought I’d post them to the site for those of you not on the grad student listserv.
Commas have been coming up a lot in my tutoring sessions lately, so I thought I’d provide a link to a helpful website. The comma is one of the more confusing pieces of punctuation, but there are really a few main uses of it.
One use is list-making, which a lot of us do in [...]
This article may not be perfect advice, depending on your discipline, but for my English Masters thesis, these strategies certainly worked. Some of the advice is also about surviving the writing process. I suggest reading it through and then taking what you like and changing any methods to suit your program or personal organizational style. [...]
Latin abbreviations like i.e. and e.g. are often used wrongly and too often. Here’s some advice on dealing with these and other “handy” abbreviations.
Remembering that writing is a process can help you find your way if you get lost in the middle of a long process. This article outlines the writing process and provides some practical advice for writers walking this path.
Paragraphs can be difficult for some student writers to wrap their heads around, likely because some “professional” writers don’t give them the kind of attention and care they deserve.
The difference between that and which, when used as relative pronouns, is one of those usage issues that most people think of as picky and unnecessarily pedantic. Yet mastering the subtle difference in usage between the two words can add a lot of punch to your writing and make the examples you use in your sentences clearer and easier to understand.