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Click here for our resource guide masterlist, which we’re continually updating! These guides are also available by clicking on the “Student Resources & Handouts” sub-tab below this header using the drop-down menu on the home page. These pages provide activities, worksheets, and handouts that supplement blog posts.
Writing & Communication Blog Posts
Best Practices for Emailing Instructors and Professors
While it may seem like a no-brainer to “count” the emails you send as very important pieces of writing, things like purpose, tone, and punctuation matter significantly when crafting email correspondence. Even the subject matter, flow, and having audience awareness matter, much like they would when writing an academic paper!
Incorporating Headings & Subheadings
Headings and subheadings enable longer texts and differing topics and subtopics to be clearly differentiated for your reader, yet linked in a way that can be clearly understood and appreciated. Let’s go through a few other benefits to using headings and subheadings in your writing!
Revision vs. Proofreading
You see, revision and proofreading are two different things. Revision is the process of reviewing and improving our writing for clarity, conciseness, and to make sure it fits the prompt/serves our purpose as well as seems accessible to our target audience. It focuses on global, or overarching, concerns in our writing: things like organization, argument, evidence, continuity, clarity, and flow. Proofreading on the other hand is all about double-checking local, or minor, concerns like grammar, spelling, syntax, and word choice. While both are essential, they represent two separate stages in the writing process. Revision should happen after initial drafting, while proofreading occurs as a final step before turning in a piece of writing.
Engaging With Sources Effectively
When writing about a source or simply referencing it, we are positioning ourselves in response to, or in conversation with that source, with the goal of focusing our writing on our own argument/thesis. Sources do not stand on their own within a piece of writing and that is why, alongside finding strong and reputable sources worth responding to and making sure that we fully understand sources (even before writing about them), it is critical to engage with our sources in meaningful ways. But how exactly do we effectively engage with our sources in our writing?
The Dos and Don’ts of Using Tables and Figures in Your Writing
What do you do when words just aren’t enough?
For subjects outside of the Humanities, including STEM disciplines such as mathematics, physical sciences, and engineering, using tables and figures throughout your writing can effectively break-up longer pieces of text by presenting useful data and statistics. Within the Humanities, the incorporation of multimodal elements is championed in UCI courses ( Humanities Core!), and can aid in your construction or support of an argument. But what are some things to keep in mind when including these components alongside your written work?
Synthesis and Making Connections for Strong Analysis
When a writer draws from multiple sources on a topic to come to a conclusion or unique perspective for their own argument or purpose, it is called Synthesis; and you can visualize synthesis as a nesting doll.
Writing Strong Titles
You’ve finished your paper, and all that’s left is your title. What do you name the essay you’ve just worked tirelessly on, for days, sometimes even weeks to put together? Should it be long or something shorter? Should you prioritize grasping your readers attention...
TEAL Paragraph Development: An Approach to Developing Strong, Meaningful Body Paragraphs
In this post, we overview how to use TEAL (Topic Sentence, Example, Analysis, and Link to Thesis). Download a Word Doc with examples to see TEAL in action.
The Best Practices for Writing Productivity
This post helps boost writing productivity by overviewing goal-setting advice, accountability tips, journaling and writing log suggestions, and linking out to relevant tools and apps.
Transitioning to Long-form Writing
Typically, in your first and second year at UCI, most, if any, of your essay writing will come in the form of assignments where you are asked to cap your thoughts, ideas, and references in about 3-5 pages. Perhaps toward the end of a writing course or as a final assignment, you may be asked to build on those smaller assignments to create a 25–50-page essay, which can undeniably seem pretty daunting at first. Even longer than those can be the “essays” written for a dissertation, publication, or scholarship.
