Walden University Writing Center

Where instructors and editors talk writing.

By Laurel Walsh, Associate Director of Writing Services

The first rule of writing at the graduate level is to befriend the delete key. Early iterations of scholarly arguments are cluttered with extra phrases. This is because we use phrases as placeholders on the page. We are waiting for good ideas, but we type things that do not illuminate an issue for our reader while those juicy thoughts marinate. One of the editors on our team would argue that you should find every adjective and adverb and kill it, but I am not quite so ruthless about prose. To compose elegant sentences, you need only promise the reader one thing: to inform and delight.

To inform your readers, you need to do your research. I am not talking about a midnight stroll through Wikipedia or making a few Google searches. To really inform and delight an academic audience, you need to look at the academic material that is available on the topic. The problem is that there is so much information. An essential part of becoming part of the academic community is learning to be a thoughtful consumer of information.

So much of what is available to us online is biased. News sources routinely promote video that was provided to them at no cost from corporate sources (check out this link to read a fascinating story on Video News Release or VNRs), and the stations most often do not disclose a source for this content. With so much misinformation, it is not surprising that student authors have difficulty writing in an unbiased manner. Writing for an academic audience requires clarity, cohesion, and fairness. Authors cannot inform their readers if they do not review many different approaches to a policy, phenomenon, or practice.

Learning to evaluate sources takes time and energy. By carefully reviewing, analyzing, and summarizing a variety of sources, you can begin to create a thesis by integrating several insights into an overarching theme. The trick is that you must not merely look at material that supports your hunch about a topic. To really delight your audience, you must include counterargument. By juxtaposing contradictory findings, student authors establish themselves as thorough scholastic investigators. Make sure that your audience can tell that you are trying to cast light on a topic and do not create essays that make the reader think you are out to prove a point.

I ask students each term to omit all unnecessary words from their drafts. Many students have asked me, “If you want me to omit unnecessary words, why did you assign 10,000 word assignments?” Writing academic essays is not like writing a haiku. In an academic paper, you are exploring and engaging your reader in an investigation. When authors delete clunky extra phrases and empty verbiage, we honor our contract with the reader. Our words are our gift to the world of scholarship and each one is a form of currency. Spend your words wisely and get rid of each phrase that does not carry its weight!

By Jessica Barron, Writing Tutor
There are a lot of APA rules to remember. A lot. Most students learn these rules through reading the APA manual. Others hear about these publication requirements through the Writing Center. And some people… well, some people just plain make them up. Below, I weed through common APA myths that are taken as fact and a few APA truths that are hard to believe.

True or False: Personal pronouns, like “I” or “we,” should never be used in academic writing. Using the third person, like “the author,” is more appropriate.

FALSE! Per APA section 3.09, the third person can be ambiguous in scholarly writing. Writing “the author found…” can make the reader wonder, “Are you talking about yourself or that theorist you just wrote about?” Personal pronouns are preferred, but be sure to follow up with your instructor if using the first person is appropriate for your assignment.

True or False: Always begin a sentence, title, or heading using words rather than numerals.

TRUE! Fifty-two percent of people begin sentences with numerals while only 12% actively follow the correct format. These statistics have been falsified, but the sentence demonstrates how numbers at the beginning of a sentence should be treated (see section 4.32 of the APA 6th edition manual).

True or False: As long as I put a citation at the end of my sentence, I have not committed plagiarism.

(KIND OF) FALSE! Citations should always be included when you use research to support your argument, but any time that you have taken word for word content directly from a source, your in-text citations need to be more thorough. For direct quotes, quotation marks should surround the cited material, and the citation at the end of your sentence needs to include the page or paragraph number(s) where this material can be found (Author, Date, p. #). Accidently forgetting to include quotation marks could be considered an act of plagiarism. Feel free to brush up on the plagiarism guidelines and the Writing Center tips on how to avoid committing plagiarism in your writing.

True or False: The APA manual is the first place I should look when I have a citation or reference question.

(PRETTY MUCH) TRUE! Your APA manual will be your best resource (and perhaps best friend) when you are writing a scholarly paper. The tips you receive from the writing center or your writing tutor on properly crediting sources are all based on the information housed within your APA manual. For specific Walden assignments or sources, however, the Walden Writing Center website provides information on citing course material, discussion posts, and yourself.

I hope these explanations helped ease a little APA confusion. Learning APA standards can be the most difficult process on your writing journey, so just make sure that you are asking questions of a tutor or your manual when you are unsure of the proper methods for scholarly writing.

By Amber Cook, Senior Writing Specialist

A specific image comes to many of our minds when we think of the word plagiarism. A sinister and perhaps lazy student surfs the Internet and finds a well-written paper by another writer. Hoping to avoid the effort involved in writing an original work, and knowing that this other writer’s paper will likely earn a higher grade, the student downloads the paper. Looking around to make sure no one is watching, the student deletes the name of the original author, replaces it with his or her own, and submits the paper, intentionally deceiving the unsuspecting reader.

This scenario might occasionally occur, but the plagiarism committed by many writers looks quite different from this act of blatant cheating. In the Writing Center, for instance, the vast majority of plagiarized passages we see are unintentional. Some writers paraphrase poorly or intend to add citations after finishing the paper. (This practice, by the way, is a bad, bad idea. You may want to refine your APA format after you’ve finished the writing, but you should always put at least a note to yourself to indicate the need for a citation.) Other writers do include citations, but these attempts are inadequate for the type of citation being used. For instance, many writers will borrow wording directly from another source and then provide only a parenthetical citation for that source. This is better than nothing, but without quotation marks or block quotation format, this passage would still be considered an academic integrity violation. Check out our website for more information on directly quoting or paraphrasing a source.

Although the plagiarism in the cases mentioned here may be unintentional, it is still problematic. Walden’s plagiarism policy, like that of most academic institutions, involves disciplinary measures. Learning to cite properly and use sources judiciously is part of the challenge of becoming an academic writer. If your instructor or writing tutor points out plagiarism during a paper review, try not to be offended. There is a broad range of mistakes that fall under that term, which can include the unintentional plagiarism mentioned above. Your reviewer’s job is to call your attention to anything suspect, and your job is to learn quickly, making the avoidance of academic integrity violations your top priority.

If you’re ever feeling unsure about your citation format, you may want to send your paper through the Academic Skills Center’s Turnitin dropbox. Turnitin will help you identify any material that matches other documents in its database, and you can then adjust any citation format as needed. Once you’re in the habit of thorough and proper citation, you can still use the tool to double check your use of source information.

By Jamie Patterson
One question we get a lot from new students is who in the writing center they should be working with: the writing tutors or the dissertation editors. The answer is dependent on what course a student is enrolled in, but for most students as soon as the dissertation or doctoral study process begins the shift from tutors to editors happens. The services between the two writing center groups do not overlap. On the Student Guide page of our website you will find a clear explanation of when to move from working with the tutors to working with the editors.
We tutors have gone through some title changes over the last couple of years: we began as tutors, became writing consultants, then graduate writing consultants, then writing specialists, now we’re back to being tutors. It is a title I am pleased with because when I tell strangers I am a writing tutor the title explains exactly what I do: I teach writing.
The best way to utilize the writing center services is to take advantage of meeting with a writing tutor every week while you’re in your course work. Tutors can work with you to develop your academic writing skills and we can share our APA style knowledge. By the time you begin your dissertation or doctoral study you’ll have mastered the elements of academic writing that will make writing a dissertation-length document a little less painful.
The dissertation editors work with students who have completed their courses and, in so doing, have reached a certain level of academic writing mastery. Unlike working with the writing tutors where students get ongoing suggestions for revision the editors do exactly what their title suggests: they edit. Their goal is to help you publish the best possible document that you, and Walden, will be proud of.
Take the time to get to know your writing center staff and know that we, both tutors and editors, are all here for only one purpose: to help you achieve your higher education goals.

By Brian Timmerman, Manager of Writing Specialist and Tutor Services

No one really ever told me that before either. I had to learn it. While I’ve toiled away, wrestling with a word or struggling to figure out a transition from Sentence A to Sentence B, I just figured everyone else was really good at it. It somehow came naturally for them.

Oddly enough (and perhaps sadly enough), It wasn’t until I taught freshman English when I realized that this wasn’t the case.

“Man, I just sat down and wrote the thing. Took me about 2 hours,” I’d overhear a student saying.

And initially I was impressed too. Two hours? Maybe she’s got this whole writing thing figured out.

But I can tell you now: She didn’t. Her paper was a mess. Because writing is hard and time intensive.

Now, I say this to you too realizing that I’m not offering any solutions here. You can find plenty of helpful advice on this blog, on our website, or from your peers on our discussion board. But still, I think it’s important to take 5 minutes and acknowledge this one truth, if only for our own sanity: Writing is hard.