Before we start, I should warn you: this book is out of print. The prices for a second-hand copy are probably not within the budget of the average student. Hightail it to the library and grovel at the feet of your librarian.
Janet Giltrow has written several book on academic writing, including Academic Writing: An Introduction, and Academic Writing: Reading and Writing in the Disciplines. These are very good books but the one you should get try to get your hands on is Academic Writing: How to Read and Write Scholarly Prose. For the tentative writer, this book is the best of the lot.
This book is full of wonderful explanations, such as when it’s acceptable to use and at the beginning of a sentence, and how to position a topic within an essay and “flesh it out”.
The Table of Contents looks like this:
1: summarising what you’ve read (part one)
2: summarising what you’ve read (part two)
3: topics and readers
4: topic and meaning
5: quotation and documentation
6: descriptive definitions
7: reader-friendly styles
8: scholarly styles and scholarly arguments
9: making presentations and writing exams
I’ve been writing essays for some 30 years now, and I still re-read this book on a regular basis, refreshing my memory as to what my literary goals should be. The book is written in a nice, easy style, and has cartoons which are just as explanatory as the chapters themselves.
If you can’t get hold of a copy, you’ll have to make do with the other two books. They’re fine: they contain much the same information but it’s not presented quite so nicely.
Tags: Academic Writing: how to read and write scholarly prose, Janet Giltrow, resources, writing style