As an academic--staff or student--wouldn't you like people to enjoy reading your work? In Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword offers dozens of suggestions as to how you might improve your work, get your argument across in a more appealing manner, and attract more readers. We can all learn something useful from this book, and it won't involve a lot of effort. -- Malcolm Tight, Editor, Studies in Higher Education Stylish Academic Writing challenges academics to make their work more consequential by communicating more clearly--and provides helpful hints and models for doing so. This is a well-crafted and valuable contribution that combines substance with style. -- Arne L. Kalleberg, Editor, Social Forces Occasionally the tedium of reading an unending supply of poorly written manuscripts is upended by a cogent, well-written, piece. Helen Sword details why this is so prevalent and offers sage advice to beginning--and even senior--researchers on how to avoid dulling academic prose. I take her advice to heart. I hope to change my numerous bad habits and I dearly wish those submitting manuscripts would read this book. -- Rick K. Wilson, Editor, American Journal of Political Science
Helen Sword is Professor and Director of the Centre for Learning and Research in Higher Education at the University of Auckland.
Sword has produced a sleek and, yes, nicely written guide based on
the principle that ‘elegant ideas deserve elegant expression.’
Aiming to be useful to writers in almost any discipline, Sword
defines stylish academic writing in the broadest terms.
*Times Literary Supplement*
[Sword’s] counsel is wise, efficiently written, and infectiously
winsome. She advises academic writers to use anecdotes and
carefully chosen metaphors, and to write opening sentences that
encourage readers to keep reading. She has drawn from a massive
array of academic articles (more than a thousand) and given
particular attention to authors known for writing readable
material… Helen Sword’s book contains much wisdom… Stylish Academic
Writing contains superb counsel for academics who want to write
with greater clarity and skill.
*Weekly Standard*
Stylish Academic Writing offers pithy, thoughtful, and concrete
guidance on ways to improve writing about scholarly research (or
anything else for that matter) so that it is engaging to others…
Teachers of writing at the college level will want to read the book
so as to help stem the tide of overly formal, dry-as-dust term
papers that are still standard fare in many classes.
*Psychology Today*
Helen Sword’s brilliant little volume is in many respects the ideal
companion to Stephen J. Pyne’s equally brilliant Voice and Vision:
A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Non-Fiction (Harvard)
and equally deserving of a wider audience than its target group,
which in this case comprises those academics who either write or
have to put up with ‘impersonal, stodgy, jargon-laden, abstract
prose.’ As Sword writes: ‘Elegant data and ideas deserve elegant
expression.’ Featuring oodles of ideas and tips backed up by
lashings of original research and bursting to the seams with case
studies exemplifying the good, the bad and the ugly of academic
writing (‘via a symbolic interactionist lens’ is one such monster),
this is a must for writers in any discipline.
*West Australian*
[A] practical and useful book.
*Australian Book Review*
Surely it’s time to declare war on terms such as postsemioticist,
flip-flop gates and feature theory, terms Orwell would surely have
included under his definition of obscurity as a cuttlefish
defensively spurting out ink. Anyway, let’s hope this excellent new
book is a sign that things are about to change.
*Taipei Times*
Stylish Academic Writing challenges academics to make their work
more consequential by communicating more clearly—and provides
helpful hints and models for doing so. This is a well-crafted and
valuable contribution that combines substance with style.
*Arne L. Kalleberg, Editor, Social Forces*
As an academic—staff or student—wouldn’t you like people to enjoy
reading your work? In Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword offers
dozens of suggestions as to how you might improve your work, get
your argument across in a more appealing manner, and attract more
readers. We can all learn something useful from this book, and it
won’t involve a lot of effort.
*Malcolm Tight, Editor, Studies in Higher Education*
Occasionally the tedium of reading an unending supply of poorly
written manuscripts is upended by a cogent, well-written, piece.
Helen Sword details why this is so prevalent and offers sage advice
to beginning—and even senior—researchers on how to avoid dulling
academic prose. I take her advice to heart. I hope to change my
numerous bad habits and I dearly wish those submitting manuscripts
would read this book.
*Rick K. Wilson, Editor, American Journal of Political
Science*
It’s a weird and complicated experience, picking up a book that
covers familiar territory and realizing it’s better than what you
might have written. That was the case when I first read Helen
Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing.
*Chronicle of Higher Education*
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