Revised 22 June 2023 for more precise wording, additional clarification, minor typos, and updates to my qualifications. Revised 5 July 2023 to clarify the revision status of another article discussed herein.
Getting good at any kind of writing requires sustained effort for years, if not decades. But I’ve found that when it comes to academic writing in the humanities, some problems and struggles are more avoidable than others. Here, then, are a few easy-to-implement techniques. I have used all of them and can personally vouch for their success. More detail on my credentials can be found in this footnote.1
That said, I mostly used these techniques in the context of English and history classes. I have little experience with scientific, mathematical, or legal writing and am not sure how relevant these techniques would be to those areas.
Technique 1: Give yourself more time than you think you need.
Use it if you get this comment: “This seems rushed.”
I can’t really define what counts as “more time than you think you need,” but I can offer a rough suggestion: imagine the bare minimum number of days you would need to finish an assignment with the use of performance-enhancing substances (caffeine, Adderall, etc.), then multiply it by three.
There are some obvious cases where this strategy doesn’t work, particularly if you’re in an accelerated graduate program, where you might be asked to produce a few pages of writing on a complex topic that you only recently learned about.
Technique 2: Give yourself an extra day to think and an extra day to review.
Use it if you get this comment: “I think you would benefit from writing with an outline in mind.”
The day before you start drafting, take at least fifteen minutes, if not thirty or sixty, to write down your main argument and how you plan on backing it up. Use only as much detail as you need—if you know the text well, full quotes are unnecessary; you can just write something like “that one paragraph about the waves on page 19.” This will help you refine your ideas and make more precise claims. I have not written a formal outline in Harvard style since my freshman year of college, but I have frequently used bulleted lists and handwritten notes. Flowcharts and other graphic organizers can be helpful as well.
Then aim to finish your rough draft two days before it’s due. (So if it’s due on a Friday, finish on Wednesday night. You get the idea.) The day before it’s due, print out the whole thing with a pen in hand and read it over line by line. I guarantee you will find at least one thing that would benefit from some quick revision.
(I understand that some colleges require students to pay for printing, the costs of which can add up quickly. If printing is free or if you can easily afford the fees, you should definitely make a printed copy. On the other hand, if you’re on a stricter budget, just reading your draft line by line from start to finish, stopping only to note areas to revise or edit.)
Technique 3: Read your final draft out loud before sending it in.
Use it if you get this comment: “Please be mindful of typos,” or a lot of “AWK” proofreading marks.
This is probably the best way to spot typos, awkward phrasing, and minor departures from the conventions of standardized written English. (The Microsoft Word “grammar checker,” which is really a tool that checks your compliance with the conventions of standardized written English, has gotten pretty good. However, it isn’t foolproof, and sometimes it suggests really ugly alternate phrasings.2) Ideally, you’d do this with a printed draft and a pen in hand. See my note in Technique 2 about paying for printing.
Technique 4: Structure your paragraphs more deliberately.
Use it if you get this comment: “Paragraph structure could be stronger” or “Transitions between paragraphs seem abrupt.”
There are four basic principles for structuring good paragraphs:
Start with a general statement, get more specific, then steadily get less specific and end with a general statement.
One major idea per paragraph. Sometimes, people who were drilled on the five-paragraph essay form in school assume that all essays must have exactly three body paragraphs, even though the essay touches on more than three major ideas.3 As a consequence, they’ll try to cram two or three major ideas into one long, unwieldy paragraph. The overall effect is like listening to a bad band—the guitarist turns himself up so he can be heard over the drummer, then the bassist turns herself up so that she isn’t buried beneath the guitar and drums, then the drummer plays even louder, then the vocalist asks the sound engineer to bring up the vocals a little more, et cetera, et cetera.
The five-paragraph essay, however, is not a real genre.
The five-paragraph essay is not a real genre. I’d rather see a six-paragraph essay than a five-paragraph essay that features one giant paragraph with two major ideas. In the latter, it feels as though the ideas are trying to compete with each other. It’s like listening to a bad band—each musician wants to play louder than the others, so everybody plays as loudly as possible and the group has no sense of of cohesion or coordination.
Body paragraphs should have similar ideas. Note that I did not say “the same idea.” I said “similar.” By “similar,” I mean “just similar enough that it feels natural that discussion of one idea should follow discussion of the other.” I promise this will make more sense in a moment.
The first sentence of a body paragraph should remind us of the paragraph we’ve just read. The last sentence of a body paragraph should point towards the topic of the next paragraph.
These are probably too abstract, so let’s take a moment to look at a case study from a 2018 essay by Pankaj Mishra. My comments are in brackets and italics. Here’s the first of two consecutive paragraphs:
Other panicky white bros not only virulently denounce identity politics and political correctness — code for historically scorned peoples’ daring to propose norms about how they are treated; they also proclaim ever more rowdily that the (white) West was, and is, best. [A general statement with no specific names given.] “It is time to make the case for colonialism again,” Bruce Gilley, a Canadian academic, recently asserted and promptly shot to martyrdom in the far-right constellation as a victim of politically correct criticism. [Now a specific example of someone who proclaims that the ‘west is the best.’ This paragraph is from a newspaper article, and newspaper articles generally have short paragraphs. If Mishra were writing in a different medium, he’d probably give some more specific examples.] Such busy recyclers of Western supremacism, many of whom uphold a disgraced racial pseudoscience, remind us that history often repeats itself as intellectual farce. [another general statement]
There is only one major idea here: “Panicky white bros […] proclaim ever more rowdily that the (white) West was, and is, best.” The next paragraph will be about a similar topic; however, it will be distinct enough to merit its own paragraph.
The low comedy of charlatanry, however, should not distract us from the lethal dangers of a wounded and swaggering identity geopolitics. [two things: (1) this is a general statement, and one that invites us to ask WHY ‘identity geopolitics’ is dangerous; (2) note how the phrase “low comedy of charlatanry” mirrors “intellectual farce”—that’s what I mean by “remind[ing] us of the paragraph we’ve just read”. Also note the use of the conjunctive adverb “however”; see my note at the end of this section for more on conjunctive adverbs.] The war on terror reactivated the 19th century’s imperial archive of racial knowledge, according to which the swarthy enemy was subhuman, inviting extreme and lawless violence. [specific example, and one that ties historical and contemporary “Western supremacism” together—again, think back to the allusion to “history [repeating] itself” at the end of the previous paragraph] The rapid contraction of suffrage rights witnessed in early-20th-century America is now mimicked by Republican attempts to disenfranchise nonwhite voters. [another specific example] The Australian lawmaker who recently urged a “final solution” for Muslim immigrants was only slightly out of tune with public debate about immigration in Australia. [another specific example from another country] Hate crimes continue to rise across the United States, Britain and Canada. [a less-specific example, but an example nonetheless—see what I mean about getting steadily more general the closer you get to the end of the paragraph?] More ominously, demographic, economic and political decline, and the loss of intellectual hegemony, have plunged many long-term winners of history into a vengeful despair. [a general statement, and one that prepares readers for the next paragraph, which will be about contemporary manifestations of this ‘vengeful despair’.]
Now let me give an example of bad paragraph transitions from the first published version of my own essay “On Logging Off.” (This essay was revised in July 2023 and now includes the second version shown below.) With the caveat that no one can be a fair judge in his own case, I think the paragraphs themselves are good, but the transition is not.
But Logging-Off Theory (forgive me) did not only hold that Online was good for some things and bad for other things. It also held that there was such a thing as a healthy relationship to Online, and posited clear ways of understanding what an unhealthy relationship looked like. If you start to take Online as seriously as real life, you needed to log off; similarly, if Online was [messing] with the way you understood real life, you needed to log off. If you began to think that Online had more utility than it actually did—if you outsourced your education to memes, if you acted like posting was praxis, if you thought podcasts could change the world—you were doing it wrong and you needed to log off.
As I said earlier, I don’t often hear the “log off” refrain these days. But we need it now more than ever, now that Online has destroyed untold millions of minds, now that social media mostly functions as a perpetual live feed of every single bad thing happening in the world. The predominant attitude is one of resigned fatalism: Well, things may be bad, and I may be destroying my mind by viewing a perpetual live feed of every single bad thing happening in the world, but I have no alternative.
The first sentence of the second paragraph does not adequately remind us of the first paragraph. That’s what makes it seem abrupt: I describe Logging-Off Theory, then suddenly shift to talking about how it’s no longer popular even though it’s more necessary than ever. The problem is not that the topics are too dissimilar; the problem is that I needed to shift more smoothly. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably rewrite the second paragraph as follows:
It was a good theory; only the most dedicated professional contrarians could argue against it. [This is better for two reasons: (1) by making reference to the THEORY of logging off, it reminds us of what we’ve just read; (2) by making reference to how good of a theory it is, I prepare the reader for the first aspect of the topic I’m about to cover, the contrast between the theory’s hyper-relevancy in 2022 and its current obscurity.] And, today, now that Online has destroyed untold millions of minds, now that social media mostly functions as a perpetual live feed of every single bad thing happening in the world, it would seem more relevant and necessary than ever. Logically, it should only have become more popular. Yet, as I mentioned earlier, I almost never hear the “log off!” refrain today. The predominant attitude is instead one of resigned fatalism: Well, things may be bad, and I may be destroying my mind by viewing a perpetual live feed of every single bad thing happening in the world, but I have no alternative.
Also, learn how to use conjunctive adverbs. One of my professors told us that she could always tell when somebody had written a draft the night before it was due because they didn’t use any conjunctive adverbs.
Technique 5: For thirty minutes every day, read nonfiction that an editor looked at. (Ideally, it should have been published within the last 50–60 years in the same country where you’re attending college.)
Use it if you get this comment: “Improve your grammar” or “improve your writing.” (What they really mean: “Get better at putting sentences together.”)
This is simultaneously simple and difficult: simple to implement, but difficult to follow through. Think of formal written English as a dialect of English, albeit one with no native speakers. By reading nonfiction that an editor looked at, you’re learning formal written English by immersion.4 Look for the patterns that emerge and try things out.
Since formal written English is often taught as one big list of rules, we often think that if we want to get better at putting sentences together, we just need to learn more rules.5 Once you get to a relatively high level, though, that approach doesn’t really work, unless you’d like to read and memorize all 1,860 pages of this truly scintillating book:
There is no Eight-Minute Abs for writing. The only way to get better at putting sentences together is to do a lot of reading. You can read something that actually interests you (as long as an editor looked at it!) or you can read The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. I know which one I’m choosing.
Legal disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the bylined author. They do not represent the views or opinions of people, institutions, or organizations with which the author may or may not be associated in a personal, professional, or educational capacity.
As I’ve been saying from the start, self-promotion does not come naturally to me and I try to avoid talking myself up whenever possible. That said, here is why you might want to listen to what I have to say about formal writing (PLEASE STOP READING IF YOU ARE ALSO ALLERGIC TO SELF-PROMOTION):
I majored in English and received departmental honors for a 45-page thesis on Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (you can read it here).
Two highly accomplished faculty members at my undergraduate repeatedly urged me to get a Ph.D. (Out of respect, I won’t mention their names; I’m not sure if they would want to be associated with my silly little Substack.)
I have a graduate degree in English education and have worked with students from ages twelve to eighteen on assignments ranging from short paragraphs to ten-page research-driven argumentative essays
I assure you that everything listed above is more than counterbalanced by my many, many deficits in many, many other areas.
An example: usage authorities in the U.S. generally discourage passive constructions. In a very early version of this article, I wrote a sentence that went something like, “They’ll be followed by sections on fake rules, bad habits, and suggestions on avoiding awkwardness.” (The referent of “they” was “the first two sections” or something of that nature.”) The ever-vigilant Microsoft Word grammar checker suggested that I reword the sentence as follows: “Sections on fake rules, bad habits, and suggestions on avoiding awkwardness’ll follow them.”
The five-paragraph essay is not a real genre. I used to think it was a useful teaching tool, but its effectiveness as a scaffold is ultimately outweighed by the limited thinking that it promotes.
As each English-speaking country has its own dialect of formal written English, it’s best for students at American universities to read American writers, and for students at British universities to read British writers, and so on and so forth. Students at non-English-speaking universities should pick one variety and stick with it unless a faculty member requires you to use British or American English. Neither variety is “more correct.”
That said, if you’re determined to learn how to write from style books, I highly recommend William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, particularly the chapter on clutter. The chapters on style in Strunk and White’s Elements of Style are mostly okay; the chapters on grammar can be safely skipped. For more on this point, see Geoffrey K. Pullum, “The Land of the Free and The Elements of Style.”
Generally speaking, you should not take “grammar advice” from non-linguists. For more on this point, see Ch. 10 of Joseph M. Williams, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990): “Many of the grammatical rules that some among us like to invoke are not linguistic fact, but classroom folklore, invented by eighteenth-century grammarians out of whole cloth […] and ignored by the best writers everywhere” (169–170). For a slightly more nuanced view, see §198–204 of Albert C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, A History of the English Language, 5th ed. (London: Routledge, 2002). Many students and teachers say “grammar” when they really mean “the conventions of formal written English.” I discuss this point in greater detail in this post. My learning-by-immersion method described above will absolutely teach you these conventions as long as you are consistent. Immersion is how I, personally, learned the conventions of formal written English. I didn’t learn the definitions of an appositive, a restrictive clause, or parallelism until I had to teach them to other people. See the first footnote above if you’re wondering what kinds of results I got from that approach.
That said, you can learn the basic conventions of American English punctuation from the Writing section of any SAT prep book as long as you are also reading nearly every day. Reading every day will give you a basic sense of what sounds wrong or weird; learning the conventions will put a name to the thing that sounds wrong or weird.