Category: Learning for Success

Research writing is time consuming, and for many student researchers, questions pop up along the way. Am I citing this source correctly? Have I paraphrased effectively? Am I using too many direct quotations? And...

One of the skills college writers need is the ability to work with sources. Students need to be able to paraphrase, summarize, and quote, and in order to do that they need to be...

Whilst I was reading the other day, I noticed the annoying frequency with which the word “whilst” was suddenly being used. I don’t recall the word being used often if at all, but now,...

Lately, I’ve been seeing more and more errors in two sound-alike words: the possessive pronoun “its” and the contraction for “it is.”  Writers seem confused (or perhaps just too rushed?) about whether or not...

We all know that plagiarism is wrong, and that in the academic world, it is akin to stealing. Document content that doesn’t belong to you is the proverbial rule of thumb professors offer. If...

Before my first child was born (almost twenty-two years ago at this point!), I recall the major stress I felt trying to assemble the new-in-the-box crib. Admittedly, I am not a handy guy when...

In the twenty-seven plus years that I have dutifully taught some version of college writing, one of my standard first-day get-to-know-each-other icebreaker questions has been “What do you remember most about high school English?”...