Thread by @CACEnotes

OK, back to work.... today, helping hard working offspring (year one, at Uni, all online, sigh) with his first major essay assignment.
So, a thread on tips for editing your own or other's writing #AcWri #Essays

This is a bit rough and ready, feel free to suggest edits!! But one of the joys of twitter is the different requirements to a long form essay.....

Check what kind of comments they want - I have come a cropper many a time with heavy handed full on corrections throughout, blinding respected colleagues and beloved offspring with a see of red track changes and those annoying comments that go off the page

But at same time, if you are editing to help with word counts in particular, or with ordering of argument, then they WILL see ten tonnes of red lines. Editing for word count I aim to cut at least one word per sentence

If I see "the x of the y" (five words), that is a red flag for me to replace with "the y's x" (three)

Can they do some of it in figures, tables, bullet points?

Does it really have to be in passive voice, wordy, lengthy, and cumbersome. Come on Universities, you are training - for instance - social workers to write good reports, but you ask for passive voice in assignments?? Yukk

Another tell tale ripe for shortening word count - you see the essay question/topic phrases repeated several times in the first para, usually can condense to maximum of two uses.

My poor youngster has sent me 4090 words for a 2500 word essay..... It is going to be a bit of a long thread!

What my kid has done well is read and learn from some 'top tips' info online, not just at his Uni, but some of my own faves:
blogs.lse.ac.uk/writingforrese…

Super resources at @Write4Research
I like these too
ed.ac.uk/students/acade…
and think they work for UG

If it's going to get cumbersome to use a particular phrase, early on, highlight your shortened or acronym version (if acronyms allowed). And you can do this economically with (hereon, XXXX). Thus, something like: "focusing on occupational therapy (hereon, OT) practice"

Or, something like "We focus on cases where patients request life-expectancy estimates (hereon, estimates), that is, seek information on how long they are likely to live...."
researchgate.net/publication/32…

Alongside the 'x of the y' being a place for brevity, also things like 'Focusing in particular on', you can get rid of the in particular and usually lose nothing.

Get your apostrophes, oxford commas, colons/semi colons right. Good academic writing uses grammar carefully to ensure crystal clear meanings. Numerous oxford comma jokes are available online, please feel free to contribute any you know on apostrophes.

Tell the reader/marker/examiner what you are going to tell them, early on, as briefly as poss, avoiding need to outline at start of each section what it will contain. Use subheadings to do that (if permitted)

It is rarely a good idea to use 'in this regard'. Avoid waffle.....

on seeing a stock phrase in an assignment, e.g. in sociology "institutions and structures", the marker/reader will wonder if you actually know what on early sociologists mean by those, so, provide concrete e.g.s as early as poss, and ideally avoid those heavy

Pet peeve - effect, affect...... Come on people, the internet is literally at your fingertips

PLEASE don't just tweak the original quote, make it yours. Yup, you can avoid turnitin peril by rewording a quote, but if it is in a different kind of vocab to the rest of your writing, we can spot what you have done, and we don't know whether or not you actually understand

Can you condense two entities (e.g. psychological theories and research findings) into one (e.g. psychological understandings)?

Ends (for now.....)

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