Summarizing means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.
Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or analyzing the source—you should simply provide a clear, objective, accurate account of the most important information and ideas, without copying any text from the original and without missing any of the key points.
Continue reading: How to write a summary
Quoting means copying a passage of someone else’s words and crediting the source. To quote a source, you must ensure:
The exact format of a quote depends on how long it is and which citation style you are using. Quoting and citing correctly is essential to avoid plagiarism.
Continue reading: How to quote in academic writing
A direct quote is a piece of text copied word-for-word from a source. You may quote a word, phrase, sentence, or entire passage.
There are three main rules for quoting in APA Style:
Continue reading: Direct quotes in APA Style
Your thesis or dissertation is probably the longest academic text you’ve ever had to write, and there are a lot of different elements to keep in mind.
Use this simple checklist to make sure you’ve included all the essentials and submit your dissertation with confidence.
Continue reading: Checklist: Writing a dissertation
Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. When writing an essay, research paper, proposal, thesis, or dissertation, you have to use academic style.
Use this checklist to make sure you’ve followed academic conventions in style, tone, and structure.
Continue reading: Checklist: Academic writing
A research paper is an extended piece of writing based on in-depth independent research. It may involve conducting empirical research or analyzing primary and secondary sources.
Writing a good research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic and advance an original argument. To convincingly communicate your ideas, you need a logical structure and a clear style that follows the conventions of academic writing.
When you’ve finished writing your paper, use this checklist to evaluate your work.
Continue reading: Checklist: Writing a research paper
When you apply for graduate school, you’ll usually be asked to submit a resume or CV along with your application. A graduate school resume should give a focused, concise overview of relevant experiences and achievements.
The exact sections you include depend on your experiences and on the focus of the program you’re applying to. Ensure your resume gives full details of:
The main difference from a regular resume is that you’ll put more emphasis on your education and academic interests to show that you’re a good candidate for graduate school.
Download the Word templates and adjust them to your own purposes.
Resume template 1 Resume Template 2
Continue reading: How to write your graduate school resume
APA and MLA are two of the most commonly used citation styles.
The APA manual (published by the American Psychological Association) is mostly used in social science and education fields.
The MLA handbook (published by the Modern Language Association) is mostly used in humanities fields.
In both styles, a source citation consists of:
However, citations look slightly different in each style, with different rules for things like title capitalization, author names, and placement of the date.
There are also some differences in layout and formatting. Download the Word templates for a correctly formatted paper in either style.
Continue reading: APA vs MLA: The key differences
When you conduct research about a group of people, it’s rarely possible to collect data from every person in that group. Instead, you select a sample. The sample is the group of individuals who will actually participate in the research.
To draw valid conclusions from your results, you have to carefully decide how you will select a sample that is representative of the group as a whole. There are two types of sampling methods:
You should clearly explain how you selected your sample in the methodology section of your paper or thesis.
Continue reading: An introduction to sampling methods
In MLA (8th edition), the Works Cited entry for a lecture looks like this:
Lecturer Last Name, First Name. “Title of Lecture.” Course or Event Name, Date, Venue, City. Descriptive label.
Dent, Gina. “Anchored to the Real: Black Literature in the Wake of Anthropology.” Moving together: Activism, Art & Education, 16 May 2018, The Black Archives, Amsterdam. Lecture.
This format also applies to other types of oral presentation, such as a conference panel or a public talk. The format for citing PowerPoint slides is slightly different.
Continue reading: How to cite a lecture in MLA