Note: In the “Are You Working?” series, a Ph.D. and academic-writing coach answers questions from faculty members and graduate students about scholarly motivation and productivity. This month’s ...

Certain words instantly reveal someone who's spent more time reading academic papers than having casual conversations - and these seven signal high intelligence paired with low social calibration.

Nothing is more frustrating during the writing process than stopping because we cannot find an appropriate word or phrase. We have the idea in our head but no matter what combination of words we try, ...

I vividly recall when an editor in chief invited me to publish in a well-known journal. Fresh from defending my dissertation, I still grappled with understanding how publishing worked in academia—like ...

Academic writing will probably be very different to writing that you have produced before. There are very specific conventions, characteristics and rules that need to be adhered to. They convey ...

Writing assignments at the university level often require an academic voice. There are certain aspects of academic voice that are more formal than every day, conversational speech. Typically, academic ...

It’s a question that has hounded us all: What are the consequences of erudite vernacular used irrespective of necessity? OK, not really. That’s the ironic title of an academic paper published in 2005 ...

Stereotypical academic writing is rigid, dry, and mechanical, delivering prose that evokes memories of high school and undergraduate laboratory reports. The hallmark of this stereotype is passive ...