10 Freelance Academic Writing Fears More Frightening than Stephen King

You know that there are numerous phobias with weird names for almost every fear that a person can have: balonephobia (fear of needles and pins), cometophobia (obvious) or bibliophobia (fear of books; a kind of sacrilege, isn’t it?).

I haven’t found anything related to academic writing specifically but the closest disorder to it is atychiphobia or academic phobia – the fear of failure in learning. Well, I can’t say that I’m obsessed with the idea that I must excel at everything I learn, but I have some fears that have appeared as a result of my occupation. Let’s look into them more closely.

1. I won’t make it until deadline.
2. I will accidentally plagiarize something.
3. My statement proofs are not convincing enough.
4. My writing skills haven’t improved.
5. The client won’t like the paper.
6. I have missed a mistake!
7. I am not qualified enough for that assignment.
8. My language has degraded.
9. I have missed an update in citation rules.
10. All my writing has disappeared from my laptop.

I am sure that some freelance academic writers understand me and my fears. It is natural to be nervous when you are about to complete a serious task because some details may not be taken into account. There is always a risk …

On the one hand, I understand that these fears make me more thorough and diligent. On the other hand, they sometimes stop me from using, for instance, innovative data because it seems almost unreal and I think that the client may not accept that.

Confidence play an important role in academic writing and it certainly needs to be developed but at the same time doubting your decisions can sometimes make your work better.  

5 Interesting Facts about Norway That I Found out During Writing for My Client

Well, you know that working as a freelance academic writers requires a lot of research. Thus, when I complete writing assignments for my clients, I get to know tons of new interesting data that I sometimes want to share with the world. That’s why I have decided to write from time to time posts on interesting facts which I find out during writing for my clients.

And today’s post is dedicated to Norway. I had to write a research essay about this beautiful country and as a result I got much pleasure doing it. Norway is one of the places of my particular interest due to its natural landscapes and winter resorts. Of course, my knowledge of it hasn’t been any deeper than of an average Internet user but I thought I knew enough. It turned out that I was wrong.

Global Peace Index says that Norway is the most peaceful country in the world. Well, when I came across this fact, it seemed to me logical because I have never heard about Norway being engaged in any internal or external conflicts, though I have never thought about this aspect.

London has been getting its Christmas tree from Oslo for the last 15 years. Given the natural constituent of this country, it comes as a no surprise that the capital of England is supplied by the best forests of Europe.

Drunk driving results in 30 days in prison and the loss of license for a year. These consequences may really stop people from driving under influence.

Norway has about 450 000 lakes. I’m sure that this impressive number of lakes makes the nature of the country even more beautiful.

Norway has made parental leave compulsory. There are some countries that have done the same thing but Norway was the first one.

In my view, Norway is an amazing country and when somebody asks me where I would live if I got to choose another place of residence, I always mention Norway.

And What Can I Do Now with My Research Skills?

Recently, I have found out (unexpectedly) that my research skills have completely changed my behavior. How could that happen? Well, I’m not sure but I do know that I benefit from this proficiency every day (and not only when I’m working).

• I Always Look What Is at the Bottom of the Sea

When I learn a new term or hear some new information, I instantly google it and never stop on the simple definition. I want to know more: how and when did it appear? Who contributed to it? What are the results of its existence? And I hardly can stop there. The best benefit of the research skills is that you always want to know more and deepen your knowledge on every new subject you come across. And you know what it does with your mind besides widening horizons …

• “Anything You Say May Be Used Against You in the Court of Law”

When there is a discussion, I never claim anything if I’m not 100% sure that it’s true. It often happens that my friends have hot debates over some matters but I prefer to avoid taking somebody’s side unless I know exactly who is right. That is the habit that you acquire while researching and writing academic papers. There is a strong benefit to that: I never turn out to be wrong :)

• I Can Find Any Info That I Need

When my husband needs to find out when that lecture he attends is or my kids don’t know how to make a cover for a DIY notebook, here comes the researcher that lives in me. Well, it may seem that everybody can find that information and that is true. But it concerns those who know how to form correct questions to type in the search bar and this is exactly what research teaches people to do.  

I think that the research skills have greatly helped me to become a better person because, now, I feel that I can find out anything I need or want. And that is a marvelous feeling!

Book Review: A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations

Recently I have published a post about “Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day” by Joan Bolker and today I will talk about something much more serious. The book by Bolker focuses on developing a writing habit of producing some text every day. And “A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations” by Kate L. Turabian has very specific instructions on academic writing and that’s exactly what every academic writer needs.

There are several reasons it is definitely worth buying (it’s better to opt for a paper copy because the kindle version has some navigation problems as the reviews say. Anyway, I have a paperback copy):

• It Is Compact

It doesn’t have any paper wasted on unnecessary information: everything is concise and each detail plays an important role for an academic writer.

• It Is Written in Plain English

You won’t have any troubles perceiving the information from the book because the language is simple and clear, so you won’t have to read the sentence twice to get what it is about.

• It Is Written for People

By this point I mean that this book contains not only technical details of academic writing (how to use abbreviations; how to cite electronic sources; etc.) but it actually gives some tips on how to place the word “research” in your head so that it would acquire the correct meaning. It also helps the process of deciding on the topic for your paper which is one of the most important things in academic writing.

I highly recommend this book to freelance academic writers because it will definitely help you become that professional you want to be. In spite of my 16-year experience I found much useful information in it. This is the most trustworthy resource and it gives you a great deal of confidence because once you write a paper following the instructions from this book, you are certain that you’ve done the right thing.

Why Do You Need to Use Corpora?

Corpora … It is a strange word that sounds a little bit scary for me because (I don’t know why) it associates with Umbrella Corporation from “Residence Evil”. Well, it doesn’t matter really. What’s important here is that corpora can help you a great deal with academic writing. How? Let’s see.

A corpus (pl. corpora) is a large electronic collection of texts which can specialize in a specific language (Corpus of Contemporary American English), certain dialect (Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech), separate industry (Corpus of American Soap Operas), etc. So what? How can it exactly help you?

Let’s imagine that you are writing an essay for an American student and you are not sure whether you should use the word “offense” or “offence”. So, you go to the Corpus of Contemporary American English and here is what you see:

You need to:

• Press enter;

• Type the word “offense” into the search bar;

You will see that the word “offense” has 13634 occurrences and if you want to see it in the context, you just need to click this word.

• Type the word “offence” into the search bar;

You see that it has only 289 occurrences and it gives you the evidence that “offense” is more common in American English. To compare the results you may also examine the same words in the British National Corpus.

Overall, corpora can be used to check which prepositions are used with this or that word or how some certain phrase is applied in the context. This way or another, corpora are irreplaceable tools in academic writing once you learn their value. 

Copyediting in Academic Writing

Checking your own writing can be a nasty task because you tend to miss lots of your own mistakes. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t do without a professional editor or proofreader: you can manage this yourself if you are attentive enough and have plenty of aces in the hole.

My previous article was devoted to editing itself and this one will be on copyediting. Moreover, it will be the last one from the series of after-writing text processing because content editing is simple and proofreading is a combination of editing and copyediting tricks.

So, we proceed to copyediting. It is a stage when you have to spot all the grammar and spelling mistakes: it means that you aim at the “landmine” enemy because they are tiny and not visible from the 1^st sight. This stage needs all your attention and concentration and that’s why you better use some of the techniques that can help you boost your focus:

• Use grammar checkers: I know that it’s obvious but some people radically avoid using them because free grammar checkers are useless (not all of them) and paid ones are expensive (true story). The truth is that you can find a free grammar checker that will indicate all your spelling mistakes at least. And for grammar pitfalls you’ll have to use your thorough eye.
• Watch for 3^rd person singular: the most common mistake in academic writing is –s with verbs when there is he/she/it. Why’s that so? Because academic sentences are long and even if you ace at English grammar, you can miss this sneaky –s among the clauses.
• Use the right preposition with the phrasal verb: you know how it’s going, you put the wrong preposition near the verb and it has a completely another meaning. So, always check the phrase in the dictionary or use corpuses.
• Check for commas with that/which: relative clauses are little devils of English syntax and punctuation, so you have to be sure where to put the comma and where you don’t need it at all.
• Don’t mix up which/who/that.
• Avoid filler words: filler words are indicators of a conversational tone and you don’t want to have that in an academic paper. So, delete all the “it’s like”, “sort of”, “um”, “you know”, etc.;
• Eradicate redundancies: it means that you have to remove unnecessary repetitions because academic writing is no place for extra words: everything must be clear and precise. Check out some redundancies that must be eradicated: http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/redundancies.htm.
• Eliminate contractions: they are likely to be found in informal writing but not in a research essay or dissertation.

These are the basic things that must be noticed first and foremost. Of course, there are more mistakes that can hide in your texts but they are individual. So, you must observe what corrections you make not to miss the mistakes the next time. I wish you luck with your writing! Be attentive all the time!

Editing Techniques for Freelance Academic Writers

As you have seen from my previous post, I started to write a series of articles on after-writing text processing. I strongly believe that writing is only 50% of producing a great piece, the rest is on editing, content editing, copyediting and proofreading. You have to be really attentive with writing because it is much easier to notice someone else’s mistake than yours. So, I’ll try to grasp the details of every stage of this process and I’ll start from editing.

As I’ve mentioned before, editing is the 1^st step you have to take after writing your rough draft. During this stage you check the text for structure mismatches that can spoil the big picture. For instance, you have three paragraphs in your essay but the 1^st one is 300 words and the 2^nd one is two small sentences. Or you see that the sentences are very big and the reader will lose the thread after reading it all. And there can be even minor gaps like full points that should or shouldn’t be at the end of your subheading or something like that.  Of course, it looks inappropriate and that’s what editing is for. But I won’t tell you long lists of 25+ editing techniques that you can find all over the Internet, I’ll just mention three that work best for me:

1)      edit 5 hours after the text has been written;
(after you have just finished the piece, it will seem perfect to you because you’ve worked so hard on it and have had several genius ideas. I don’t want to upset you but it’s surely not perfect and you will see it after some time passes.)

2)      read out loud or use some text-to-speech software;
(while listening to your own words, you’ll perceive them from a different perspective and you may notice not only perfunctory issues but touch upon other text processing stages like content-editing or copyediting.)

3)      change the font of the text.
(if you switch from Times New Roman to Comic Sans, your brain will think that it’s not the same text anymore, that it’s someone else’s. That’s why the possibility that you’ll notice more issues is much higher.)

These are my favorite means of editing and they always work very well. They seem very simple but that shouldn’t worry you: as the 1^st stage in text processing, editing with these strategies will be effective enough for the after-writing text processing. So, my dear colleagues, use these techniques and polish your texts with pleasure!