tailieunhanh - Writing for Publication part 4

Our greatest thanks go to our nearest and dearest, without whose tolerance, love and hard work these books would not be in your hands today. Many people in many different universities around the world inspired the books and unwittingly provided the material for our vignettes. | The Business of Writing 21 elements. Unless you are writing in some of the less conventional genres which we will discuss shortly these elements should include A question or questions being addressed. An overarching argument that contains different strands and themes. Evidence to support the argument which may consist of empirical data collected from archives or fieldwork or it might consist of the writings of others. Most likely it will include both. Just as a pile of bricks glass and concrete does not a building make so a poorly constructed pile of questions arguments and evidence does not constitute a convincing and powerful piece of academic writing. Academic writing like buildings needs to be put together in a precise and skilled fashion. As we ve said a plan is an essential first step in such a construction exercise. Builders don t just start randomly arranging bricks and carry on until they find something that looks interesting. You must not make your reader do more work than is absolutely necessary. Be kind to them by giving them signposts explaining what you are doing using clear language and pointing to the significance of what you are saying. If you do all this the reader is more likely not only to get real value from your writing but also to read it in the first place. It s only when you are an academic mega-star and sometimes not even then that readers will persist with impenetrable and poorly written texts in order to uncover the meaning. Our best and most basic advice on structure is that which we give to undergraduate students Say what you are going to say. Say it. Say what you ve said. By say what you re going to say we mean that near the start of your writing you should introduce what the focus of your enquiry or discussion is that is your question or issues and explain what your general line of argument and sources of evidence will be. You also need to set out the order in which you will approach things. However it s important not to pre-empt .