Writing Fundamentals: Part 3

Office of Graduate Studies Author

12/19/2016 Added

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Part 3 of a 10-part Research Writing Fundamentals workshop presented by Dr. Rick Lombardo

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[00:00:03.042]Many of you have come in here with some myths
[00:00:05.949]about good writing,
[00:00:08.136]I'm going to go through a couple of them,
[00:00:10.068]see if you don't own some of these.
[00:00:17.566]You write to impress,
[00:00:21.087]this is especially true in academ,
[00:00:23.945]because your fear is I have to impress my advisor,
[00:00:27.111]I have to impress,
[00:00:29.235]you don't write to impress, that's a myth.
[00:00:34.915]Two, use big words,
[00:00:37.814]you don't need to use big words,
[00:00:40.034]you're going to need the vocabulary of your discipline,
[00:00:44.505]but why would you say utilize instead of use,
[00:00:48.954]because you're trying to impress,
[00:00:50.947]I have to learn a lot of big words so I sound
[00:00:54.232]like a good writer, then you're falling short of your goal
[00:00:57.750]which is to communicate with your reader,
[00:01:00.528]it's not to impress.
[00:01:04.626]Use long sentences,
[00:01:09.418]try to use long sentences because I'm impressive,
[00:01:12.843]not that you never use long sentences but if all your
[00:01:15.204]sentences are long your reader's gonna get tired,
[00:01:19.055]and bored, this is common sense,
[00:01:23.700]when you write, logic flows naturally from brain to pen,
[00:01:29.233]this is the biggest myth, let me give you an example,
[00:01:32.747]when you go to the union here to have coffee with a friend
[00:01:37.193]and you have a conversation,
[00:01:39.476]how logical is that conversation,
[00:01:44.223]it's not very logical is it,
[00:01:46.645]you hop from topic to topic,
[00:01:49.222]logic doesn't come out of your head naturally,
[00:01:53.978]if you think it does you're gonna be in for some
[00:01:56.921]hard times writing.
[00:02:01.204]Of course you have to write things down,
[00:02:03.022]you have to outline ahead of time and we'll talk about that,
[00:02:06.762]but it doesn't come and you're not,
[00:02:08.459]there's nothing wrong with you because it doesn't
[00:02:10.607]come out of your head naturally,
[00:02:12.579]it doesn't work like that.
[00:02:17.082]Outlining is a waste of time.
[00:02:19.701]I'm going to spend some time briefly talking about
[00:02:22.852]how to outline well.
[00:02:27.465]If some of you think outlining is a waste of time
[00:02:30.616]you need to change your tune,
[00:02:32.880]you need to change your opinion,
[00:02:35.191]if you're doing a dissertation, if you're writing
[00:02:36.895]a research paper, you have to outline every section,
[00:02:40.445]and we'll talk about that.
[00:02:44.328]Again back to this one, if it's clear to you it's
[00:02:46.988]clear to the reader, that's a myth, it's not true,
[00:02:51.413]we saw some examples, yes,
[00:02:55.300]it's not true, these people didn't put themselves
[00:02:58.345]in the reader's shoes at all stages of the writing.
[00:03:03.140]Another one is, no need to adapt writing to reader's needs,
[00:03:08.484]if you're writing a report to a lay audience
[00:03:12.271]you've gotta change the way you present that information,
[00:03:16.707]if you're writing it to your dissertation committee
[00:03:19.546]or a journal, for your post doc,
[00:03:23.965]you're going to have to think of a different way
[00:03:26.442]of presenting that information 'cause you're
[00:03:28.238]writing to experts, but if you're writing to a lay
[00:03:31.332]audience you're writing to novices.
[00:03:37.295]Finally, this is a big one,
[00:03:40.824]and I think this is what we didn't learn
[00:03:43.035]in grade school and high school,
[00:03:46.576]we felt there is this whole series of rules out there
[00:03:49.690]that we had to follow in order to be good writers,
[00:03:53.241]as if we weren't in charge of making meaning,
[00:03:56.899]you are in charge of making meaning and you have
[00:03:59.920]the ability to do that if you get away from
[00:04:03.125]these other myths.
[00:04:05.432]So the last one is follow myths above and rules
[00:04:08.434]you learned when you were 12 years old,
[00:04:13.620]so if you want to continue believing in these myths
[00:04:15.965]you're gonna have trouble writing,
[00:04:18.329]you're gonna spend too much time writing
[00:04:19.912]whenever you sit down to write.

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Writing Fundamentals: Part 3

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