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Table of Contents

The following resources will allow you to improve upon every aspect of the writing process.

Writing Your Paper: An Overview

Preliminaries

Making Sense of Prompts | Prewriting

Part by Part

The Thesis: Purpose of a Thesis | Pointers for Writing a Thesis

The Introduction: Purpose of an Introduction | Pointers for Writing an Introduction | Common Mistakes in Introductions

The Argument: Effective Arguments | Arranging Arguments | Transitions

The Conclusion: Purpose of a Conclusion | Pointers for Writing a Conclusion

Research and Citation

Sources

Research: Finding and Evaluating Sources

Incorporating Sources: Quote vs. Paraphrase | How to Paraphrase | Cited Material vs. Analysis | Why and When to Cite Sources

Research Paper

Writing a Research Paper: APA Citations in a Research Paper | Crafting a Thesis and Argument | Incorporating Summary into a Research Paper | A Sample Research Paper

Literary Analysis

Writing a Literary Analysis: MLA Citations in a Literary Analysis | Crafting a Thesis and Argument | Incorporating Summary | A Sample Literary Analysis

Improving Your Paper

Revising and Proofreading

Revising: Revising Your Content

Proofreading: Proofreading for Errors | Commonly Confused Words

Feedback: Responding to an Instructor's Comments

Matters of Style

Tone and Voice

Introduction: The Difference Between Tone and Voice

Awareness of Audience: Assumptions about Readers' Knowledge | Providing Relevant Information | Presenting Key Terms and Concepts | Bias | Humor

Personal Pronouns: First-Person Pronouns | Second-Person Pronouns | Third-Person Pronouns

Passive Voice: What is Passive Voice? | Meaning and Emphasis | A Limited Defense of Passive Voice | Summary

Clarity and Grace

Word Choice: Principles of Word Choice | The Danger of Overwriting

Concision: Is Your Writing Concise? | Tips, Tricks and Things to Avoid

Vagueness: Vagueness is Bad | Vagueness and Persuasion | Vagueness and Statements of Fact

Grammar and Sentence-Level Issues

Punctuation

Apostrophes | Dashes and Parentheses | Ellipses | Exclamation Points and Question Marks | Periods and Commas | Semicolons and Colons

Words

Parts of Speech: Adjectives, Articles and Adverbs | Nouns and Pronouns | Prepositions, Interjections and Conjunctions | Verbs

Verb Tense: What is Verb Tense? | Perfect Tense | Progressive Tense

Sentences

Analyzing Sentences: What is a Sentence? | Phrases | Clauses | Sentence Types, with Notes on Punctuation

Creating Sentence Variety: Combining Sentences | Indicating Logical Connections | Other Sentence-Combining Strategies

Pronoun Agreement: The Rule for Pronoun Agreement | Gendered Pronouns | Collective Pronouns and Collective Nouns

Subject-Verb Agreement: The Rule for Subject-Verb Agreement | Collective Pronouns and Collective Nouns | Finding the Subject: Special Cases

Parallel Structure: What is Parallel Structure? | Parallel Structure in Longer Sentences

Additional Resources

Citation Guides | General Writing Guides | Common Problems | Online Resources