Psychology Department

Writing clearly and well

Few people are born strong writers, yet throughout our professional lives, psychologists must write frequently and rapidly, making decisions that can have significant consequences on people around us. When we write well, we save ourselves time, do our job better, and are evaluated more positively. When we don't write well, we take more time to do our job less well. These pages can help you write better.

What do we expect and how to get there

• Our pet peeves about writing

• What we are looking for in a strong paper

• Our students' suggestions for writing a literature review.

• How can you write a good essay? This is excerpted and modified from Carmichael, Driscoll & Farrell (nd).

• How can you synthesize ideas from a variety of sources into a single paper?

Guidelines for using sources, and citing and referencing them

• The American Library Association's annual list to the best free reference web sites.

• How to evaluate web resources, from an article by Jim Kapoun in C & RL News.

• A cheatsheet for APA citation style (5th ed.)

• Princeton University's guidelines on when and why you should cite an article or other original source -- and what to do about "common knowledge."

• Three examples of various kinds of plagiarism, provided by Princeton University. Avoid each type.

• Princeton University describes work habits that make unintentional plagiarism less likely.

• A cheatsheet for APA reference style (5th ed.)

• The American Psychological Association's suggestions for how to handle references for electronic sources.

• A checklist for following APA style in a literature review or essay.

Stylistic and grammatical issues

• Purdue University's Online Writing Lab offers a range of writing resources to address many writing-related issues.

• William Strunk's Elements of style is a short, sweet and clear description of basic grammatical and stylistic issues in writing.

• Do you want to say accept or except? click or clique? compliment or complement? Paul Brians' Common errors in English usage is the place to look to answer these questions.

• How to write good -- pithy and funny advice. (from Kim Meyer)

Page by jms
URL=http://psy1.clarion.edu/jms/writing.html

Last modified June 7, 2006