Category Archives: authority in writing

making your writing authoritative – a citation revision strategy

Posted on April 19, 2021 by pat thomson

Readers expect academic writers to know what they are talking about. We meet that expectation by grounding our writing in good scholarship – and making it sound authoritative. Authoritative. You can see the words author and authority contained within authoritative … Continue reading →

Posted in authority in writing, citation, citations, laundry list, revision, revision strategy | Tagged citation practice, citations, Pat Thomson, revision strategy, writing with authority | 8 Comments

writing more than one thing at the same time – part three, managing

Posted on September 10, 2018 by pat thomson

Writing several things at once is often called multi-tasking. This is a term I try to avoid, as it focuses on an action – ‘tasking’. Tasking has two problems – first of all, it doesn’t really highlight the thinking involved … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, academic writing voice, authority in writing, reflection, reflection on learning, time, writing and thinking, writing more then one thing at once, writing regularly | Tagged academic writing, Pat Thomson, reflection, reflection on learning, time, writing more then one thing at the same time | Leave a comment

writing more than one thing at the same time – part two, authoring

Posted on September 3, 2018 by pat thomson

There are good reasons for writing alongside the thesis. Besides contributing to the work (see first post) and your cv, there are authoring benefits. These include: the chance to learn more about academic writing the opportunity to develop a scholarly … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, academic writing voice, authority in writing, authorship, crafting writing, genre, good academic writing, writing more then one thing at once | Tagged authoring, convention, Pat Thomson, reader, thesis, voice, writing more than one thing at once | Leave a comment

leave a good last impression – the thesis conclusion

Posted on January 29, 2018 by pat thomson

Writing the conclusion to the thesis is hard. It’s often done badly. And it’s something that doctoral researchers often get asked to do more work on. Not at all what they/you need. Writing a conclusion is important. The conclusion is … Continue reading →

Posted in academic writing, authority in writing, conclusion, distance, thesis | Tagged authoritative writing, authority, conclusion, distance, Pat Thomson, thesis | 1 Comment

avoiding the laundry list literature review

Posted on September 11, 2017 by pat thomson

I’ve been asked to say more about the laundry list literature review. The laundry list is often called ‘He said, she said” – as one of the most usual forms of the laundry list is when most sentences start with a … Continue reading →

Posted in authority in writing, he said, she said, laundry list, literature review, passive voice, Uncategorized | Tagged authority, he said, laundry list, literature, Pat Thomson, she said | 38 Comments

writing an academic ransom note

Posted on November 28, 2016 by pat thomson

I’m in Australia at present. Inevitably I’m running some writing workshops. Inevitably I’m playing with some new strategies. I really do like to try out new things to see how they work, what they might do. And one of the … Continue reading →

Posted in argument, authentic voice, authority in writing | Tagged authority, Pat Thomson, ransom notes, voice, writing workshops | 2 Comments

boostering your introduction and conclusion

Posted on August 22, 2016 by pat thomson

Academic writing is known for its use of qualifiers – usually words which tone down the claims that are made. We academics know it is impossible/incredibly difficult to establish a generalisable result though research, and our writing signals this difficulty … Continue reading →

Posted in authority in writing | Tagged authority, boosters, conclusion, hedges, introduction, Ken Hyland, Pat Thomson | 3 Comments

exorcise the inner “doctoral student” from your writing

Posted on June 8, 2015 by pat thomson

Some of us can probably remember the film The Exorcist. It was one of those “demon child” films so popular in the 1970s. It featured Linda Blair as a possessed young teen – her green-slime spitting, 360 degree swiveling head … Continue reading →

Posted in "doctoral student", academic writing, authority in writing, style, voice | Tagged "doctoral student", authority, exorcism, Pat Thomson, voice | 14 Comments

what’s with the name doctoral ‘student’?

Posted on February 3, 2014 by pat thomson

One of the things I’ve been trying really hard to get over is the notion of the doctoral ‘student’. This is by far the most common way to refer to people doing a PhD, and it’s pretty hard not to … Continue reading →

Posted in authority in writing, doctoral research, identity, student or researcher | Tagged doctoral student or doctoral researcher, identity, Pat Thomson, writing with authority | 65 Comments

quotations – handle with care

Posted on November 11, 2013 by pat thomson

Quotations are dangerous. The way that you use quotations can give away whether you think you are still writing as a student, or writing as an expert scholar in your own right. Student assignments are often heavily strewn with quotations. … Continue reading →