Be conscious of your adverb placement

Published on November 26, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on July 23, 2023.

This type of problem is really a kind of grammatical mistake, but it’s such a commonly overlooked problem that we’ll cover it under the heading of style. Certain adverbs, such as only, should be used carefully.

Normally they modify whatever comes immediately after them. Although they are often placed before verbs, they rarely belong in that position.

Continue reading: Be conscious of your adverb placement

Generate topic ideas for an essay or paper | Tips & techniques

Published on November 17, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

If you haven’t been given a specific topic for your essay or paper, the first step is coming up with ideas and deciding what you want to write about. Generating ideas is the least methodical and most creative step in academic writing.

There are infinite ways to generate ideas, but no sure-fire way to come up with a good one. This article outlines some tips and techniques for choosing a topic – use the ones that work best for you.

Continue reading: Generate topic ideas for an essay or paper | Tips & techniques

Kinds of argumentative academic essays and their purposes

Published on November 5, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on July 23, 2023.

Most of the time, when your supervisors and others talk about academic essays what they mean is essays that present well-reasoned points of view on various topics. This article explains some essential kinds of these essays—exegetical, discursive, expository, and argumentative—and outlines their key differences and similarities. We’ll call the group of them “persuasive essays,” since they all require you to persuade your reader in some way.

Continue reading: Kinds of argumentative academic essays and their purposes

How to write the body of an essay | Drafting & redrafting

Published on November 5, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on July 23, 2023 by Shona McCombes.

The body is the longest part of an essay. This is where you lead the reader through your ideas, elaborating arguments and evidence for your thesis. The body is always divided into paragraphs.

You can work through the body in three main stages:

  1. Create an outline of what you want to say and in what order.
  2. Write a first draft to get your main ideas down on paper.
  3. Write a second draft to clarify your arguments and make sure everything fits together.

This article gives you some practical tips for how to approach each stage.

Continue reading: How to write the body of an essay | Drafting & redrafting

Tense tendencies in academic texts

Published on September 30, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on July 23, 2023.

Different sections of academic papers (theses, dissertations and essays) tend to use different tenses.  The following is a breakdown of these tendencies by section.  Please note that while it is useful to keep these tendencies in mind, there may be exceptions.  The breakdown below should help guide your writing, but keep in mind that you may have to shift tenses in any given section, depending on your topic matter.

Continue reading: Tense tendencies in academic texts

Verb Tenses in Academic Writing | Rules, Differences & Examples

Published on September 22, 2014 by Shane Bryson. Revised on September 18, 2023.

Tense communicates an event’s location in time. The different tenses are identified by their associated verb forms. There are three main verb tenses: past, present, and future.

In English, each of these tenses can take four main aspects: simple, perfect, continuous (also known as progressive), and perfect continuous. The perfect aspect is formed using the verb to have, while the continuous aspect is formed using the verb to be.

In academic writing, the most commonly used tenses are the present simple, the past simple, and the present perfect.

Tenses in different sections of a dissertation 

Continue reading: Verb Tenses in Academic Writing | Rules, Differences & Examples