Walden University Writing Center

Where instructors and editors talk writing.

By Hillary Wentworth, Graduate Writing Tutor

Do you ever ask yourself how you wound up here, writing scholarly papers and worrying about serial commas? Staying up late at night agonizing over whether to use “et al.”? Well, I do. You see, I’m a creative writer and I often find it hard to switch between my artistic endeavors and my academic pursuits. Imagination and creativity—traits that put you ahead in other areas—don’t necessarily translate to a scholarly venue. Lately students have been asking for tips to make this transition into academia. There are indeed ways to keep your creative “you-ness” and still write in the formal style expected of scholars.

1. Theme-ify it. Your paper doesn’t have to be stuffy summary—in fact, it shouldn’t be. Just as creative writing follows thematic lines, so should your academic writing. As you read, make note of the themes that emerge in the literature and consider organizing your paper around them.

2. Relate it to real life. Creative writers are told “write what you know." However, I encourage all writers to give real-life examples to illustrate the points they make. This could be a situation in your own classroom or business that highlights a certain theory, for instance.

3. Look it in the I. Both Walden and APA allow you to use the first-person “I” in your assignments and capstone projects. This gives a personal tone to your paper, eliminates the awkward “this author,” and asserts your control over the narrative. If you’re used to expressing how you feel and what you believe, though, rein in the impulse to provide opinion. You are a scholar and your writing should be based on evidence.

4. Turn it around. Similes and metaphors, the beautifiers of creative writing, are not accepted in scholarly writing because they can be vague and confusing. If you normally like to make connections through analogy, that impulse is correct: the topic probably needs further description. It is your job now to explain it in clear, concise language.

5. Write it out. Sometimes you just have to give in to the creative spirit. If you’re reading a scholarly journal and it gets your poetic juices flowing, sit down in a quiet spot (not at your computer) and write a poem about it. Then go back to your computer and start fresh. You might find that writing creatively has given you a new perspective on the topic that you can use in your scholarly paper.

6. Deal with it. One of my greatest discoveries as a creative writer was how to flourish under constraints. It can be yours too. Challenge yourself to work within the boundaries of APA, and you will reap the rewards.

By Timothy McIndoo, Dissertation Editor

I recently learned about two productivity tools that can be useful in doing research. One highlights, while the other reveals deeper content without leaving the Web page.

Back in the day, researching the literature meant photocopying articles and then underlining passages with pen, pencil, or highlighter. I can recall typing up such passages (along with my notes). Today’s Web tools make such work much easier. For example, a software company, Diigo, has created an online highlighter that lets you use different colors to highlight text you read on the Web. It even lets you save all your highlighted text in one place. (It also lets you add permanent Stickies to a Web page.) If you think this might be useful in your research, visit the following page for further details:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/oojbgadfejifecebmdnhhkbhdjaphole. So far, however, it’s only available on the Google Chrome browser.


Performing searches on the Web just gets easier and easier. First there was the search tool embedded in the browser’s menu bar. But now Apture Highlights lets you search Google (as well as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia) without leaving the screen you are reading—and without typing. Simply highlight the word or phrase you’re interested in and voila! Up pops a small screen with the search results, whether text or video or pdf. If you think this might be useful in your research, visit the following page for further details:
https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/cppaadhnncohnjgallikmjdonfliciek.
This tool is available for three browsers: Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

By Erica Schatzlein, Writing Specialist

Google knows everything, according to a friend’s kindergarten-age daughter. Oh, how I wish it were true. I have thousands of questions: When will my retirement account start to grow again instead of shrinking? Where was the “very special place” I put that very important document I can no longer find? I wouldn’t be surprised if people type these questions into search engines. In fact, if you go to Google and type in “when will I” or “how do I” you will get some amusing suggestions for the rest of your question!

Less amusing but much more helpful are the number of search engines that will help your academic career. Here are a few of my favorites for saving time, money, and sanity:

1. Get Help Completing Your Reference List

Students get a majority of their scholarly articles online, often from different databases like ERIC or SAGE. Following sixth edition APA rules, though, listing the name of the database as retrieval information is not preferred. (You can read more about retrieval information details here: http://writingcenter.waldenu.edu/355.htm). The preferred retrieval information is the digital object identifier, or DOI. A search engine isn’t my favorite way to look for a DOI; instead, I use crossref.org (http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery). However, for articles that have no DOI assigned, the next preference is to list the journal homepage. How do you know if the journal has a homepage? Entering the journal title into a search engine is the best way to tell.

2. Nail That Picky Grammar or Style Rule

As I read papers from numerous students each week, I come across just as many different writing styles, and often many topics I know little about. How do I check if a student is using an unfamiliar term or awkward phrase correctly? I search for it. Additionally, many of us know how to write to avoid tricky grammar situations. For example, I always set my book on the table because I’m never entirely certain if I should lay it or lie it. But when I need to find out the right way to write something, search engines are blessings. Typing a “versus” statement often works: lay vs. lie. I have also searched for APA reference formats for sources students use that I’ve never seen before and aren’t addressed in the manual, like the first time a student asked me about the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which was not in my grammar nerd schema.

A note here about scholarly, reputable, and junk sources: Almost none of the sources in regular search engine results are scholarly. Thus, they are not good sources for a KAM or dissertation. Many of the sources in search results are pure junk. When relying on websites for factual information, be a savvy searcher! Two of my favorite (and trusted) sources for grammar are Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips and Grammarbook.com. They often come up on the first page of results when searching for a specific grammar topic, too. I feel better knowing that both of these online resources resulted from published books. For APA information, the best source is always the actual APA manual, which is not online. Besides that, apastyle.org is the official manual website, so anything that appears on the search engine from that site is my first choice. Many universities (including Walden!) have great APA information online. Please take a minute to evaluate the source before trusting the information found in web searches.

3. Get a Free Book

A kind student at July’s Summer Session Residency shared in one of my sessions that some of the books written by classical theorists (so commonly used in KAM Breadths) are available on Google Books for free, as they are out of copyright. Additionally, just like in a database search, where you restrict searches to “full text,” you can limit for “full view” sources in this search. For books that aren’t free, many offer a nice amount of pages to preview. I’ve since located hundreds of books I want to read, both scholarly texts and books for use when procrastinating about scholarly work.

By Hillary Wentworth, Graduate Writing Tutor

Is it becoming cool to misspell? Hip to abbreviate?

I asked myself these questions as I strolled through the business district of a town I was visiting recently. Everywhere I turned, something was a bit off. In front of the theater, the marquee read, “TONITE: JAWS!” I strolled by a salon with the name Hair and Moor (I doubt that meant a tract of marshy land). And to top it all off, the actual road on which I walked was called Mainstreet. Not two words but one.

It is true that language can change; the words in dictionaries today are very different from those 100 years ago (think of the computer terms alone!). Over the years, doughnut became donut due to length (and probably so we don’t have to think of all that dough while we’re eating it)—but doughnut is still the main entry in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. While you’re texting, how often do you write out because or see you later? Man, that takes time and finger strength. Instead, you truncate and cut corners. But does that make it okay?

Misspelling is not the only popular corruption of the English language these days. Abbreviations and acronyms have permeated American culture due to texting and emailing, and they’re likely to stay. Though APA allows acronyms (SAT instead of Scholastic Aptitude Test, for instance), limit their use. You don’t want your paper to sound like a string of HTML code. Your responsibility as a scholar-author is always to express meaning through clear language. And to do so, sometimes you just have to write the whole word or phrase.

Advertisers long ago discovered that if a business was “creatively” spelled or abbreviated it would get more attention. Passersby would stop and stare and think that’s not right. Then they would go inside to see what all the fuss was about. Misspelling was a way of attracting customers! Call me a purist, but I like my tonights with night in them and my doughnuts with dough. I think that misspelling in order to save time or business is, well, just plain lazy.

And as for scholarly writing, forget about it. It’s certainly not cool to write “thru this research” or “2day I will demonstrate” in your dissertation. It’s not even cute.

By Amy Kubista, Graduate Writing Tutor

Have you ever wondered, as you toil away at ensuring your paper adheres to all of the APA rules that the manual throws at you, what is the point? Why do you, as a student, commit so many mind bending hours to correcting grammatical nuances, inserting running heads, and choosing appropriate wording so your paper follows APA format? Well, for one, because your professor tells you to, but why is it so important? Let’s take a deeper look at this issue of APA format and its importance in the academic world.

Many journals within the social science realm require articles to follow the APA style in their publications. One of Walden’s goals is to help students produce scholarly articles worthy of publication, and therefore APA is drilled into the students via the papers that are assigned. It is much easier to submit articles for publication if they are already in the correct format, even though most manuals are very similar with their rules (the differences are often in the details). So the strict adherence to APA is due in part to the potential publication of students’ work.

Academic journals utilize specific formatting in order to maintain consistency throughout their publications. This helps avoid confusion between articles. For example, one article may have pretest, another pre-test, and a third Pretest. A reader may easily interpret these as different while in reality they all refer to the same type of test. By having rules to follow, uniformity is assured, and there is less chance of a misunderstanding.

APA rules also help professors in their reading and grading of papers. These rules act as guidelines so professors can easily look for necessary components of a paper instead of quibbling about certain grammatical or style rules. Instead, everyone follows the same rules. Think of it as something constant in a skill that has so much elasticity. Plus, learning to use APA shows you are capable of taking directions from professors (or a future boss) and problem solving by finding answers to APA questions you may have.

So the next time you are flipping through your APA manual because you can’t remember how to cite a personal communication, know that there is some reasoning behind the madness. When you are submitting articles for publication, you will be grateful that Walden and your professors were so insistent on using APA format.