We all know what bloat is. If something is bloated it is swollen, puffed up, flabby, distended, enlarged. Right now, we probably associate bloat with eating too much over the festive season. But bloat also happens in… Learn more.

Before you start to wrestle your material into a thesis structure, it’s helpful to consider the work that the thesis has to do, and the moves that ensure the work is done. Once you understand the work and the moves… Learn more.

Although I got reasonable marks for my creative essays in high school, literary criticism was never my strong suit. One of the issues with my analytical writing was that I didn’t really understand how to use verbs. It … Learn more.

I quite like a short sentence. And a phrase by itself. Only for stylistic purposes, you understand. Nevertheless, it’s important to vary sentence length, otherwise your reader goes to sleep. I prefer the active voi… Learn more.

I asked people in one of my Australian writing workshops to tell me what they thought was essential in good academic writing. The purpose of the activity was to generate criteria that participants could use to steer th… Learn more.

My approach to writing about and teaching academic writing is underpinned by some key principles. One of them is this – no one best way. Or I can alternatively express this as one size does not fit all. Let me expl… Learn more.

Lately I’ve been doing some more reading around my thesis subject in preparation for writing up. I’ve been making notes from textbooks, casting my eyes over topic reviews and poring over original research papers… Learn more.

Universities are a “thousand-year-old industry on the cusp of profound change”. That’s according to a study that explored Australia’s higher education landscape four years ago. One warning from the report rings t… Learn more.

There’s been much discussion about the needless complexity of academic writing. In a widely read article in The Chronicle of Higher Education last year, Steven Pinker, professor of psychology at Harvard and author o… Learn more.

Earlier this fall a headline in The Atlantic caught my eye. “The Needless Complexity of Academic Writing,” it said. Promising enough on its own, but there was also a subhead: “A new movement strives for simplicity.… Learn more.